With the power of Peroxide, behold! A transformation!
Summary:
Dragon Ball is one of the most influential works in the industry
Pre-Super Goku only had two creative transformations, and one of them is only semi-canon
Since 2013, all of Goku’s transformations have been lazily designed.
Yes, even Ultra Instinct.
Dragon Ball, created by Akira Toriyama, is the grandfather of the modern shounen. Started in 1984, it pioneered the genre with its wacky humor, ever growing scale of its battles, and only paying homage to real martial arts while focusing on supernatural powers, and is considered one of the classics.
Still, given how Toriyama picked the story back up in recent years, we feel like raising a particular complaint that was only exacerbated by the new material: Dragon Ball is very lazy with transformations.
History of transformations in Dragon Ball
In the original Dragon Ball, its main character Son Goku was just a weird little boy with a monkey tail. He was very strong and tough, and if he ever encountered a full moon, he would transform into a giant ape and go on rampages. He lost this wereape form if you cut off his tail — and he lost and regrew it multiple times in the story.
Then, came the Dragon Ball Z era, and it turned out that Goku is one of the last survivors of a powerful race of alien warriors called Saiyans. And due to plot reasons, he achieves a form of Super Saiyan — a powerful warrior even the evil Emperor of Space named Frieza is scared of — aaaand it’s just him, but blond.
The reason for this transformation to be so visually underwhelming was quite simple — Toriyama was tired of coloring Goku’s hair black, and this was a neat little way to save time. Still, given how cathartic this new form was at the time, nobody really minded.
Since then, and up until the end of Dragon Ball Z, Goku and the few remaining Saiyans obtained multiple transformations. There’s the Ascended Super Saiyan (looks like a regular Super Saiyan), and Super Saiyan 2 (same, but with arcing electricity) — oh, and Super Sayan 3 (same, but longer hair, and no eyebrows). Then, Dragon Ball GT treated us to the beautiful Super Sayan 4 — a monkey-like transformation taking direct inspiration from Sun Wukong from Journey to the West. Except, GT is not very canon (just kinda).
New Dragon Ball transformations
Then, in 2013, came Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, which gave Goku a new form in Super Saiyan God (Super Saiyan, but red). Then, he turned it blue. Then, he reached a not-super-Saiyan form of Ultra Instinct (Super Saiyan, but white). There was also evil Super Saiyan Rose when his body was snatched, as well as golden and black recolours for Frieza’s fourth form, for anyone still counting.
There have been many new shounens with cool transformations since Super Saiyan was first released. Just among the Big 3, we’ve seen Naruto’s Tail Beast Mode, Ichigo’s many Hollow forms and Luffy’s Gear 4 and Gear 5. We’ve seen good superforms — and it would’ve honestly been pretty cool if Dragon Ball returned transformations that had Goku actually, you know, TRANSFORM, instead of palette swapping. Just a pet peeve of ours.
With the power of Peroxide, behold! A transformation!
Summary:
Dragon Ball is one of the most influential works in the industry
Pre-Super Goku only had two creative transformations, and one of them is only semi-canon
Since 2013, all of Goku’s transformations have been lazily designed.
Yes, even Ultra Instinct.
Dragon Ball, created by Akira Toriyama, is the grandfather of the modern shounen. Started in 1984, it pioneered the genre with its wacky humor, ever growing scale of its battles, and only paying homage to real martial arts while focusing on supernatural powers, and is considered one of the classics.
Still, given how Toriyama picked the story back up in recent years, we feel like raising a particular complaint that was only exacerbated by the new material: Dragon Ball is very lazy with transformations.
History of transformations in Dragon Ball
In the original Dragon Ball, its main character Son Goku was just a weird little boy with a monkey tail. He was very strong and tough, and if he ever encountered a full moon, he would transform into a giant ape and go on rampages. He lost this wereape form if you cut off his tail — and he lost and regrew it multiple times in the story.
Then, came the Dragon Ball Z era, and it turned out that Goku is one of the last survivors of a powerful race of alien warriors called Saiyans. And due to plot reasons, he achieves a form of Super Saiyan — a powerful warrior even the evil Emperor of Space named Frieza is scared of — aaaand it’s just him, but blond.
The reason for this transformation to be so visually underwhelming was quite simple — Toriyama was tired of coloring Goku’s hair black, and this was a neat little way to save time. Still, given how cathartic this new form was at the time, nobody really minded.
Since then, and up until the end of Dragon Ball Z, Goku and the few remaining Saiyans obtained multiple transformations. There’s the Ascended Super Saiyan (looks like a regular Super Saiyan), and Super Saiyan 2 (same, but with arcing electricity) — oh, and Super Sayan 3 (same, but longer hair, and no eyebrows). Then, Dragon Ball GT treated us to the beautiful Super Sayan 4 — a monkey-like transformation taking direct inspiration from Sun Wukong from Journey to the West. Except, GT is not very canon (just kinda).
New Dragon Ball transformations
Then, in 2013, came Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, which gave Goku a new form in Super Saiyan God (Super Saiyan, but red). Then, he turned it blue. Then, he reached a not-super-Saiyan form of Ultra Instinct (Super Saiyan, but white). There was also evil Super Saiyan Rose when his body was snatched, as well as golden and black recolours for Frieza’s fourth form, for anyone still counting.
There have been many new shounens with cool transformations since Super Saiyan was first released. Just among the Big 3, we’ve seen Naruto’s Tail Beast Mode, Ichigo’s many Hollow forms and Luffy’s Gear 4 and Gear 5. We’ve seen good superforms — and it would’ve honestly been pretty cool if Dragon Ball returned transformations that had Goku actually, you know, TRANSFORM, instead of palette swapping. Just a pet peeve of ours.
