There’s a reason Toriyama stopped comparing blast radiuses.
Summary:
Power scaling is taking a character's every feat and comparing it to another character’s.
Dragon Ball’s power scale had gone into ridiculous territories over the years.
Does being able to destroy the observable universe even matter?
Power scaling is an issue in the anime community on the best of days. With the amount of jaw dropping action and ridiculous power sets across the medium, it’s no wonder some fans go into long-winded debates about whenever Saitama (One-Punch Man) could possibly defeat Ichigo at the end of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War (spoilers: he couldn’t), or if Goku could solo the universe of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken) (spoilers: he dies in the middle of Part 3).
Still, what happens when an anime makes its own power scaling both ridiculous and pointless? For this, all we have to do is to look at Dragon Ball.
What is power scaling?
Power scaling is a concept of taking one character’s feats as depicted in their source material, and comparing them to the feats of another character. For example, from one of his comics, we know that Superman is able to lift half of an infinitely heavy weight — which makes his lifting strength also infinite. This in turn means that he is likely to outlift Hank Hill, who through the entirety of the King of the Hill cartoon never lifted even anything as heavy as a skyscraper, let alone half of an infinity.
Back in the original Dragon Ball, Master Roshi blew us all away by annihilating the Moon. Then, in DBZ came Saiyans who could make a planet uninhabitable in a single attack. Then, emperor Frieza literally destroyed planets in a single blast in his first form (and he had four at the time!), and then… What?
Where do you go from destroying planets? Could Cell destroy the Sun? Could Buu and Broly destroy the galaxy piece by piece? Then what about Beerus the God of Destruction? How does he scale up? He was shown to casually destroy one half of a planet while keeping the other intact — how does that count? What about his and Goku’s meeting punches literally distorting reality? And what about Jiren? And what could Black Frieza possibly destroy Buu couldn’t?
Human beings have a very limited sense of scale. Some villain threatening to destroy the galaxy barely registers above threatening to explode our planet — and that is only half a step from threatening to turn our own city to ashes. Likewise, explosions the size of a solar system feel only marginally smaller than explosions the size of our galaxy. Scales like these are even cheaper than power levels — and perhaps that’s the reason Toriyama made away with them.
Nowadays, judging by the old feats, every notable character in Dragon Ball could destroy the entirety of the observable Universe — and yet, Goku is still hurt by handguns. And if that doesn’t prove power scaling is a foolish concept, we don’t know what will.
There’s a reason Toriyama stopped comparing blast radiuses.
Summary:
Power scaling is taking a character's every feat and comparing it to another character’s.
Dragon Ball’s power scale had gone into ridiculous territories over the years.
Does being able to destroy the observable universe even matter?
Power scaling is an issue in the anime community on the best of days. With the amount of jaw dropping action and ridiculous power sets across the medium, it’s no wonder some fans go into long-winded debates about whenever Saitama (One-Punch Man) could possibly defeat Ichigo at the end of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War (spoilers: he couldn’t), or if Goku could solo the universe of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken) (spoilers: he dies in the middle of Part 3).
Still, what happens when an anime makes its own power scaling both ridiculous and pointless? For this, all we have to do is to look at Dragon Ball.
What is power scaling?
Power scaling is a concept of taking one character’s feats as depicted in their source material, and comparing them to the feats of another character. For example, from one of his comics, we know that Superman is able to lift half of an infinitely heavy weight — which makes his lifting strength also infinite. This in turn means that he is likely to outlift Hank Hill, who through the entirety of the King of the Hill cartoon never lifted even anything as heavy as a skyscraper, let alone half of an infinity.
Back in the original Dragon Ball, Master Roshi blew us all away by annihilating the Moon. Then, in DBZ came Saiyans who could make a planet uninhabitable in a single attack. Then, emperor Frieza literally destroyed planets in a single blast in his first form (and he had four at the time!), and then… What?
Where do you go from destroying planets? Could Cell destroy the Sun? Could Buu and Broly destroy the galaxy piece by piece? Then what about Beerus the God of Destruction? How does he scale up? He was shown to casually destroy one half of a planet while keeping the other intact — how does that count? What about his and Goku’s meeting punches literally distorting reality? And what about Jiren? And what could Black Frieza possibly destroy Buu couldn’t?
Human beings have a very limited sense of scale. Some villain threatening to destroy the galaxy barely registers above threatening to explode our planet — and that is only half a step from threatening to turn our own city to ashes. Likewise, explosions the size of a solar system feel only marginally smaller than explosions the size of our galaxy. Scales like these are even cheaper than power levels — and perhaps that’s the reason Toriyama made away with them.
Nowadays, judging by the old feats, every notable character in Dragon Ball could destroy the entirety of the observable Universe — and yet, Goku is still hurt by handguns. And if that doesn’t prove power scaling is a foolish concept, we don’t know what will.
