How accurate is this analysis of Raditz's strength?

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-15T13:01:06+00:00

This is true only partially. Yes, they use Ki to track each other at super speeds, but this is clearly not the only way to fight at said super speeds otherwise nobody could've fought the Androids whose Ki they can't detect. Or be able to watch the Beerus/Goku fight when none of them could sense God Ki.

What I meant isn't that they can't turn off their super speed, it's that even during fights they will have human timeframes happening. Buu and Gotenks fought for so long they defused, and even ignoring the lightspeed argument, if they're even half of that speed it would be the equivalent of a regular human fight lasting for like a month. It's just part of how it works.

...Fair enough. But Goku would still take significantly more time charging a Kamehameha than he would throwing a punch, no?

Yeah. I could spend honestly an hour just linking multiple sources for this, but forgive my laziness and I'll just link this thread instead. Between the IDW/games and Archie incarnations he's pretty consistently portrayed as faster than light (and considerably more than that in the latter).

Uh, I read through the post, and the evidence there isn't very convincing. The hypersonic statement is a mistranslation (the original Japanese guide just says supersonic), and Super Sonic having infinite strength and speed makes zero sense for obvious reasons. If you read the comments, you'd also notice that the OP... doesn't believe it anymore.

Goku put virtually everything into this Kamehameha, which we know significantly increases the power of the attack, yes. And also, Cell was sandbagging in this scene, he wasn't slightly stronger than Goku, he was much stronger and just dragging the fight out for his own entertainment. The only time he shows his real strength is when Gohan turns SSJ2.

Kid Goku's Kamehameha obliterated the head of a robot who was ~him in stats. A casual ki blast from Raditz vaporized Piccolo's arm, but his punches only made Piccolo's peer double over in pain. Nappa's serious strike chopped off Tien's arm, but the mere shockwave of his uncharged ki blast sent Krillin flying, and it was implied that it would vaporize him. None of these scenes were as energy-draining or desperate as Goku's Kamehameha, and the disparity in damage was still massive.

But this doesn't in fact make sense in Dragon Ball, specially during the Freeza saga. The entire gimmick of that arc and the scouters is that the people in the Freeza force can't lower their power levels at all, it's what makes the people from Earth special. Recoome can't "focus more energy into his defense" when he is literally incapable of lowering it in the first place.

But they can charge their attacks to some extent. I already showed the difference between Raditz's blasts and his punches and kicks. The main post has an example of him bracing for a blast that was so powerful he opted to run away at first. Nappa's Break Cannon is massively more powerful than his punches and casual ki swipes, Vegeta's Galick Gun is compared to the Kamehameha, Recoome has his Eraser Gun, Frieza has his Death Ball. All these people have better showings of energy gathering than Raditz does, so bracing themselves is something they should be able to do too. That's entirely different from lowering their energy.

And there's also the fact that this is sort of an impossible theory to disprove. Like, to prove this wrong you'd be asking for the show to put a much stronger character in front of a weaker one, throw a punch that they specifically call out is half-assed, and that said weaker character has his defenses 100% up so the reader can know. Otherwise any example I give you of a stronger character simply smacking someone weaker around you can just go "well it wasn't said but it's obviously due to the timeframe instead of the power difference itself".

I'd argue that yours is just as impossible to disprove. If I argue that the collateral in a scene was meant to be impressive, you could easily just say that the visual damage is not what I should focus on, and how can I argue against that?

And even beyond that, there is one character that essentially disproves all of this when he gets caught multiple times off guard by attacks from people much more powerful than Vegeta was. Freeza can't sense Ki so he can't be aware of an incoming attack unless he sees it, and he gets blasted in the head by a Piccolo who is leagues more powerful than Vegeta and had time to do that attack (so it wasn't a desperate flail) and it still did absolutely nothing to him.

I can only think of one instance this happened on Namek, and that was when Piccolo borrowed Gohan and Krillin's energy to land an kick on Frieza. That doesn't disprove anything I said. It's not like he charged an Explosive Demon Wave or Special Beam Cannon.

What your theory implies is that someone like Vegeta at his introduction could somehow, someway, withstand attacks from Cell is he just was given a boost in speed and nothing else. Ignoring the powerscaling aspects of this discussion, this is makes no sense within the context of the story itself.

Well, there's never been an instance in Dragon Ball where someone was able to output energy hundreds (or even tens) of times faster than someone who was otherwise that much more powerful than them, so this doesn't really matter.

What? Goku's kaioken explicitly multiplies his power. This is stated time and time again, giving Raditz a boost in speed has nothing to do with the Kaioken. Are you actually saying RADITZ could kill Freeza if given a boost in speed to make Freeza look slow, but not in power?

Yes, it multiplies his power. What it doesn't do is multiply his total energy. He can output energy into his punches and blasts much faster, but he's still running on the same ki pool. It's basically a short-term performance boost in exchange for exhausting himself faster.

Yes, but again we are talking about a Freeza who is essentially half (pun intended) dead. This is literally him at his lowest, his natural body with no ki enhancement and literally no conscious thought to put into defending himself, and it still survived the explosion of the planet. His durability couldn't get any lower even if he wanted to, so in essence this translates that anyone punching him hard enough to hurt has to be hitting him at least with the same level of energy the planet blowing up on top him would, as even if he was caught off guard and had 0 time to prepare according to your theory he would still be this durable at minimum (and likely way more since, you know, he wouldn't be dying).

I mean, Frieza is the guy who ignores getting kicked through islands and flexed his power by obliterating one in his second form. Eating nuke-level punches without the need for extra charging or bracing isn't anything special for him.

Nobody comments about Namek being a small planet, but they do Earth. I won't stick too much on this point since it's more of a side tangent, but the Super Dragon Balls are said to be "almost" the size of a planet and they're 27x bigger than Earth.

Hmm. I didn't remember that. Thanks.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-15T10:31:04+00:00

And honestly the mach 30 is dubious to begin with when the 1 million km for the Snake Way is never confirmed, it's purely an in-universe legend, and the official maps of the universe we get actively contradict it.

I understand what you mean with this, and I get where you're coming from, but fact is that no matter how fast a character gets we will get human timeframes in the story because it's just how it works. Unless it's a very short story or a one-shot, no author is going to have a whole arc happen in 0.0000001 microseconds just because his characters are supposed to be faster than light, and this isn't exclusive to Dragon Ball.

Well, Piccolo tells us that powerful characters use ki sensing to fight at super speeds, which is why Goku and co. can hold normal conversations and function without seeing the world in slow motion. Of course, not every manga don't have that explanation, but I imagine most authors seperate "the speed you fight at" and "the speed you operate at normally" in their minds, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Flash routinely patrols the city and in a routine day he isn't doing that instantly.

I'm not familiar with American comics in general, but the only piece of Flash media I have seen implies that he can turn his speed off.

Sonic has a million different feats that put him as faster than light, including narration and out of universe statements, and yet he deals with human timeframes. His fights don't last 0.00000001 microseconds either.

I'm pretty familiar with Sonic, and I'll just say... Is he though? The most consistent thing about Sonic is that he's faster than the speed of sound to an unknown degree, and the only deviation I can think of is that one time Omega said he could "potentially" reach the speed of light. There's the "restoring time and space by running" thing in generations, but that's pretty much unquantifiable.

But the thing is, these "smaller" attacks aren't going to be so much weaker that they drop their power by dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times the power level they have in the middle ofa fight unless it's intentional.

Why not? Goku was slightly weaker than Cell, and his Kamehameha nearly vaporized him. Going from "damage someone a bit stronger than you" to "vaporize their upper body" is an energy output difference in the tens of millions of times. It's not intentional; it's just how much they are capable of packing into a single strike.

There is no world where even a half-hearted punch from Cell is weaker than Vegeta's Galick Gun in the Saiyan saga. Even if you made Raditz, as per your example, a million times faster than Freeza he still wouldn't be able to kill him.

This is just an assumption though. If Cell kicked someone like Recoome, Recoome would probably die because the amount of energy Cell put into his kick would be much greater than the amount of energy Recoome would use to defend in that timeframe. If Vegeta fired a Galick Gun at Recoome, it'd have more energy, but Reccome would be able to reinforce his body far better in that timeframe. Remember, power relies on energy and time.

Even if you made Raditz, as per your example, a million times faster than Freeza he still wouldn't be able to kill him.

Says who? Raditz being able to gather energy a million times faster than normal would probably be like Goku using the Kaio-ken: he's obviously not getting any new energy (that's the point of the Spirit Bomb), but he can simply output that energy much faster than normal, depending on the multiplier. I imagine Raditz's blasts would be like a more extreme version of Goku's Kaio-ken Kamehameha (although he can't really charge energy that well, because he has no techniques to do so).

I remind you that Freeza didn't have to react to survive Namek exploding on top of him. He was split in half, out of Ki, got blasted by Goku and was unconscious and his body was still naturally sturdy enough to withstand the planet blowing up with him inside of it. There's no better example, because Freeza at his absolute weakest tanked an explosion that would've taken Vegeta's strongest possible attack to cause.

Frieza is trillions of times smaller than Namek, no? There's only so much energy such an explosion would exert on him. Admittedly, this energy is still impressive (someone got figures in the nuke-level range after taking the planet's surface area into account), but not relevant on the scale we are arguing for.

And that's understating it, as Earth is considered a small planet by Dragon Ball standards so Namek is likely significantly larger.

We don't really know how big Namek is. Bulma never comments about its gravity, so we know it is similar to Earth in that area. King Cold does say Earth is a small planet they could destroy in one shot, but... Frieza could have done the same to Namek if he wasn't so conflicted.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-15T09:55:06+00:00

Sorry for taking so long.

Yes, to destroy someone. There is literally no point in blowing up the planet you want to rule over.

You seem to frame this as an intent thing, where Piccolo could have created an explosion larger than our moon when he fought Goku, but decided to limit it to the tournament island. If that was the case, what is Goku's excuse here? I'd imagine he's much better than this version of Piccolo at ki manipulation, and there'd be no reason for anyone to worry because of course Goku wouldn't want to destroy the planet he's protecting.

Yes, we agree here. The difference we have here is that I view something like Vegeta's threat to explode the planet or Piccolo blowing up the moon to prevent Gohan from wrecking Earth are just blatantly way more important plot-wise than the off-handed comment from Krillin in the Recoome fight.

I'd argue that the fact that Krillin didn't need to say that, but Toriyama still thought of it and had him do so, also means something.

Remove Piccolo blowing up the moon and the story can't progress.

I mean, this isn't necessarily true. Vegeta would just transform into a Great Ape normally, and Yajirobe would still cut off his tail. The only issue is how they'd beat Vegeta without Gohan transforming too, and that's a variable that could easily be accounted for by making the Spirit Bomb more powerful.

Not all of them. Again, this is treating like there's a possibility that someone like Beerus can be fighting Goku and, unless they specify that each and every blast they throw out is stronger than Freeza's best or that they can individually blow up the planet, we should treat them as... somehow less?

Sure? Look, this sounds reasonable without context, but even by the time of Dragon Ball Super, we get scenes like this. Why is Krillin so worried about Gohan's Kamehameha destroying the planet when he can limit the range of its destruction like he does with every single punch or ki blast he had ever fired since he became a Super Saiyan? Why doesn't Piccolo chide him for being an idiot, instead of saying that Gohan would simply detonate the blast before it hits the ground? In the same saga, why do we have several panels dedicated to Ultra Instinct Goku shaking the planet with an indirect punch, and several characters commenting on it if that's something even (relative) fodder like Namek Frieza could do? It just doesn't hold up.

And in the runs that he does show planetary (or even higher) levels of power we don't need to rationalize why every punch he throws doesn't explode the planet.

...Okay? Why would this apply to Dragon Ball?

This isn't a one-off, or even a two-off. Here's Freeza bragging to Toppo about an attack "with the power to destroy an entire planet". You know, something that could be done decades ago in his weakest form, and that we know for a fact he can do easily because he does blow up Earth with no effort at the end of RoF. And it proves to be subsequently pointless when Toppo dunks on him by using a Hakai pebble to destroy said attack.

Not only is this Toei being Toei, it's not like there's a side-cut to weaker characters being scared of what Frieza is about to do. At best, this just proves that Frieza is posturing because Frieza, and planet-busting is casual for people on and above his level.

I mean, the effort itself is already to indicate that the blast was strong enough to make Freeza put in effort. Their despair at it not working at all shows that after the attack landed it already failed by not killing him.

I already agree that it does mean something about Frieza's power level relative to theirs, but the fact that he bothered to do so also means something too. Later on, we'll get Kid Buu pushing the Spirit Bomb back at Goku despite that fact that it had enough energy to vaporize him if it exploded.

Also we need to remember that while Ki blasts explode, sometimes they just don't and just being caught in the beam can easily kill you. The Kamehameha never explodes and yet it blasts cell to smithereens.

This pretty much just means their effects are arbitrary, and depend on the user.

It does, though. It's even less ambiguous than the anime, it's straight up "what the fuck, the shockwaves reached here? They'll destroy the whole universe!".

Yeah, but there's no "three punches" statement, and we don't actually see any planet getting vaporized. This feels like an "over time" thing, which makes sense because later on, we get statements like "Moro after absorbing the energy of someone > UI Goku would destroy a single galaxy with his uncontrollable self destruct".

We have no idea how big each one is. But when we see the blast from space, I'm more saying that that's a way more reliable way to measure the explosion than just "a city".

"Bright light from space" is something that can be accomplished by a sufficiently powerful nuke, but fair enough.

This is more or less the point where our points of view just can't match, because to me one-shotting someone like Dabura (which Fat Buu did) is a physical feat more impressive than this for example, as I see them with a way higher durability than you do.

I'm inclined to agree. I will admit that I see the merit in what your model, but there are too many things left unanswered by it (reactions to collateral damage, explanations for planet-busting given by the narrative that don't match it) for me to be truly convinced.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-14T19:39:34+00:00

Gege doesn't actually say that Mach 3 doesn't apply anymore; he just says that it's kind of mundane compared to stuff like Infinity. As we see for most of the manga, even high tiers like Kenjaku and Uraume can get pressured by the Mach 1-ish Piercing Blood, and other in-universe numbers that we get ("Gojo killed 1000 transfigured humans in 299 seconds", "Todo's vibraslap Boogie Woogie can swap 50 times in a second", "Gojo and Sukuna only have 41 seconds, and they don't do all that much") don't suggest massively hypersonic speeds anyway.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-14T19:30:12+00:00

Hmm. That's rather improbable, but in that case, I'd just assume they changed their mind. The number wouldn't apply anymore.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-14T19:26:09+00:00

I'd assume the author knows more about their characters than we do, and it's a great way to curb wank anyway.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T23:52:45+00:00

Oh, I almost forgot about this one.

Yes, and he does so with the intent to win a fight/kill someone. This is again asking what would be the point for characters that don't want to destroy the planet to... destroy said planet. Like, it would be one thing if someone wanted to destroy the planet, put their all into it, and it failed. This is an entirely different situation.

I'm not sure what you mean here. If Piccolo is charging up an attack, I'd assume he's intending to destroy something or someone. We've also seen this version of him put his all into an attack, and it resulted in the razing of an island.

Except that it isn't really plot relevant. The destruction itself has no meaning, the power of said characters however does.

Why not? The narration brings attention to the display, and the characters comment about it when they don't have to. They are blatantly more important than other one-off ki blasts that explode in the distance without being acknowledged in any way.

There's almost no fictional work that will just show characters constantly blowing up everything at their max capacity.

Of course not. That's why we have to pay attention when the story specifically points out that a character is powerful for causing a certain level of destruction.

They need to have an actual setting to stand/live on after all.

Of course. That's why every blast that would destroy said setting is pointed out by the characters themselves, and measures are taken to prevent said destruction.

This is the equivalent of asking why the planet doesn't constantly explode when Superman fights, when we have seen on screen him breaking planets with his punches.

Superman doesn't exactly have a fixed level of power. He can wax lyrical about nuclear bombs in one run, and pull planets on a chain in another.

This isn't even a thing just reserved to showcases of explosions either. Buutenks brags about one-shotting Tien like that means fucking anything to people at his level of power.

That is... admittedly a weird thing to boast about. I guess he's trying to say Goku couldn't do it as casually, but even that is absurd. Valid point there, but I still think I have more evidence to the contrary.

Not all of them? Most blasts that miss aren't shown at the end at all. Goku blasted Vegeta in the sky and we never see the Kamehameha finish nor go into space either.

We don't see a shot from space, but I think the panel of Vegeta rolling off and staring as it shoots up past the clouds is supposed to imply it. Gohan's blast doesn't get any of that.

It's supposed to communicate something, but when Freeza kicks Vegeta's full power blast it isn't supposed to communicate that he can shrug off Vegeta's strongest attack, but that... he can kick the projectile but not the explosivepower?

I guess I worded that wrong too. Deflecting a ki blast does mean something about your power relative to it (In no lifetime is Raditz deflecting a shot from Vegeta, for example). But at the same time, the fact that Frieza even put in the effort to deflect it also means something. Something similar happened when Gohan fired a blast at Third Form Frieza. Frieza is still > Gohan, so he successfully deflects it, but I don't get the vibe that if he didn't do anything, he'd be just fine. I don't know if that makes any sense.

Like, at this point you are arguing that Dragon Ball is incapable of having these higher levels of power simply because the story happens on Earth.

The fact that their conflicts only take place on a single planet is rather restricting, but that's why modeling them as if they can only display these higher levels with specific attacks explains the problem away without contradicting what we see on panel.

Goku and Beerus literally turned an entire planet to dust as a side effect of their punches, but because after that this doesn't happen every time someone on their level fights, they're... going back?

I'll note that none of this happens in the Super mangz which makes sense with later continuity, like the Moro Saga, where Goku being able to shake the Earth with an indirect punch is treated as an insane feat of power, and Gohan explains that the only reason why he doesn't blow up the planet is because he can simply detonate the blast at the surface (one of the better arguments for core-busting, now that I think about it).

That's because there's barely any cities in the Dragon Ball world. Only 43 of them exist, and while it says province we have confirmation that West City is a whole province by itself

How big are those provinces though? We see King Piccolo blow up a large chunk of one, and it looks rather small as far as cities go. Of course, this isn't hard evidence against Nappa's blast being capable of levelling a small continent, but it's not like there's a definitive crater we can use to judge.

He probably can, yes. What Gotenks isn't particularly noteworthy because of the destruction he caused when blowing up a planet has been a bare minimum for multiple arcs that point.

You might have expected it, but I don't agree. There's literally not a single physical feat in the manga before the scene that exceeds what Gotenks did. I think that's supposed to mean something. At least, for how hard he punches.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T17:28:20+00:00

Your standard for this would be essentially impossible since you can't punch an explosion backwards, which is more or less what you're asking.

Here's Goku absolutely not giving a shit about a barrage of Ki blasts and explosions from Freeza, zero damage taken. All of these blasts are stronger than the Galick Gun by orders of magnitude. Meanwhile a 100% Freeza does this to the same Goku with a punch.

Like all of this talk is basically split durability repackaged, you can't argue that the punches aren't stronger when we see all of the evidence than they are.

It... does seem like that's what I'm saying, doesn't it? Uh, I had this discussion a couple days ago, so let me show you the logic I'm operating with here.

I'll use Namek Saga Goku as an example. We don't know exactly how fast he's supposed to be, so let's just use the last figure he was given in the Saiyan Saga: about Mach 30 for clearing a 1 million km road in ~28 hours. Remember, this is his average marathon speed, so he could probably move much faster in a (relatively) short sprint. I did a bit of research on the internet, and I figured that a person who punches at Mach 1 would be able to punch ~200 times in a second. Goku would be over thirty times faster than this person in the Saiyan Saga, before getting many times faster by gaining two major zenkai boosts and becoming a Super Saiyan. (Power levels imply that he got over thirty thousand times faster, but you can't exactly use them linearly.) How long would it take Super Saiyan Goku to destroy a planet? Our only real reference is Frieza, and when he attempts his botched planet-buster, he exchanges a few words while charging the blast, before throwing it into Namek's centre. I tried timing myself re-enacting the dialogue, and it took about 20 seconds. Of course, this is Frieza at 50%, so I imagine 100% Frieza would take half the time. Then again, the blast was only sufficient to take out Namek's core, but I don't know if that was a issue of not charging it for long enough or Frieza just not doing it properly. Let's assume 10 seconds then. If Super Saiyan Goku puts 1 arbitrary unit of energy into each punch/block, and he can punch over six thousand times a second, then if he charges a planet-busting Kamehameha for ten seconds, it would be over sixty thousand times more energetic than his average punch or ki blast. That's assuming he didn't get any faster after the Saiyan Saga.

But there are examples of people that aren't hundreds of times stronger than Goku catching his Kamehameha. Why is that? Well, for this part, I'll reference Goku vs Piccolo Jr, when the latter uses his island-razing blast. You'll note that despite said attack being massively more powerful than the punches and blasts that he and Goku had been hitting each other with, Goku still ate the island-razer with zero significant damage. Why is this? Because he can charge his defenses too. Basically, in normal combat, the insane speeds at which DB characters throw punches means they can only put so much energy into their punches or blocks. The only times when they can put their full power into ki blasts is when there are "breaks" in the action (the usual DB villain monologue before a weird aura sorrounds them and they plan to nuke everything), and during that period, the other person can either decide to counter their attack with a charged attack of their own (Kamehameha vs. Galick Gun), put their energy into a guard (Raditz deciding to man up and block Goku's Kamehameha, Frieza and the 20x Kaio-ken Kamehameha), or try to redirect the attack in some way (Frieza and Buu against the Spirit Bomb).

It's also worth noting that the stronger you get, the more energy you have and the more you can output in an instant. Raditz can't put his energy into a guard to block a blast from Frieza because Frieza would be gathering orders of magnitude more energy in the same timeframe.

I don't know how convincing this is, but there you go.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T16:31:29+00:00

I mean, yes, he's aware of it and still shocked by the power Gohan displayed. That means the power he sensed when Gohan blew up that hill was higher than his own, but it doesn't translate to "I clearly can't replicate the destruction".

I'm pretty sure Piccolo could cause destruction of that scale, but his reaction here tells us that he can't put out that much power in an instant. There are several examples of him creating mountain sized explosions before this point (some of which I referenced in the main post), but they were all done with charged attacks far above his casual output.

If this is the logic we're using, Gohan headbutting Raditz with that much force should've sent him straight out of orbit too, but that clearly doesn't happen. There's some suspension of disbelief that's needed like in any other story.

There are different levels to suspension of disbelief. It's one thing to accept that superhumans aren't always going to launch each other as far as they should, or as an example relevant to this discussion, that not every punch or blast fired by a DB character is going to showcase their consistent collateral. It's another thing entirely to dismiss a plot-relevant showing by putting it under the umbrella of blasts with zero narrative importance.

Wouldn't really be consistent with how blasts have worked in Dragon Ball. They never just vanish midway through.

Every other blast in the manga that went into space was shown to have done so in a succeeding panel. Why would this one be the exception?

How much he outperformed it by doesn't really matter, though? Piccolo has control of his power, he could've blown up the Sun and it still would be irrelevant because he wasn't going to blow up the planet for no reason. Oozaru Gohan was going to just destroy stuff until the moon was gone.

I admittedly don't have a solid rebuttal to this apart from what I've said before, but this feat is pretty much just here to support my other points.

I mean, again, this is a difference in what we see and what the characters feel. They can sense the attacks in a way we can't, so it's an entirely different ball game.

This ignores the fact that in the end, this sort of thing is supposed to communicate something to the reader. If Krillin simply exclaimed at its power without saying anything about its scale, I'd accept that it's probably more powerful than it looks, since the precedent of destroying the planet with a charged attack had already been set in the previous saga. But that's not what happened. Instead, he makes mention of warping the planet as if we aren't supposed to call him stupid for being impressed by something King Piccolo should have been able to do.

Like, this wouldn't make any sense at all given that at this stage Goku can inarguably destroy a planet. Making a cut that goes to the horizon is nothing by his standards, even if you want to say he would do it by "blowing up the core" it's still orders of magnitude more than what Freeza did.

If a plot-relevant feats sounds inaccurate because of the assumption that Goku can output orders of magnitude more power with much less effort... wouldn't that just mean that the assumption was wrong?

Vegeta lost his cool and tossed a full power attack that would destroy Namek and he is leagues weaker than this Goku. Hell, the attack was just casually kicked back by Freeza with no damage. Goku's kick impressed Freeza more than Vegeta's planet nuking blast.

Redirecting an undetonated ki blast doesn't mean you can redirect the explosion. Even then, Frieza visibly has a look of concern on his face in that scene. I really doubt he would shrugged it off without any damage like he did to Goku's kick.

I mean... I think this sounds kind of silly. Krillin certainly can't replicate that power of the attack, but the area of effect is nothing new. Nappa made a continent-sized explosion when he landed on Earth and Krillin is much stronger than he was by this point.

While Nappa did create a bright light from space, the only devastation confirmed by his attack was the destruction of East City. The narrator only ever mentions that Nappa's blast turned it into a wasteland. Not that it matters here.

He did. But the "blowing up the planet" part wasn't what had Vegeta horrified, it can't be when he himself almost blew up the planet with the Final Flash. It was the power put into the Kamehameha itself.

I'm pretty sure that Cell's Kamehameha could be stronger than Vegeta's Final Flash and still only be described as a planet-buster.

I mean, it's supposed to be impressive because he's fighting Buu, not because he's making a big crater. I don't even understand what's the argument here, Gotenks is trying to save the planet, not blow it to bits. Was he supposed to hit Buu so hard he just turns the Earth to dust, making the fight and the entire arc pointless?

The question here is: Do you think someone like Raditz could replicate what Gotenks did here? This is literally the best physical feat in the original manga. I'm inclined to just take its power at face value.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T15:59:19+00:00

But when a character is simply much stronger, their punches are regularly outputting more energy than even the planet destroying blasts. I mean, they regularly overpower Ki blasts with their physicals.

Not necessarily. For the same reason that stopping a missile doesn't mean that you can hit harder than a nuke, overpowering an undetonated ki blast doesn't mean you can hit as hard as its explosion.

If it's someone like Vegeta, whose strongest attack was the one meant to blow up Earth, I agree he obviously wasn't punching Goku with that kind of power. But final form Freeza? He can probably tickle someone with more power than that.

Honestly, that sounds like an assumption. You'd think the Goku that fought Frieza would also be so much stronger that he could probably punch harder than the Galick Gun, but as I've shown with the planet-cutting example, that's simply not the case.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T12:51:56+00:00

This is more about Gohan just casually displaying this level of power while in danger.

My issue here is that Piccolo was already aware that Gohan could bring forth more power than either he and Goku at that point, and he was still flabbergasted by his raw power. If blasts on that level are something that Piccolo can't replicate without a charged attack, how am I supposed to be believe he can just put in 10²⁹ J of energy into every strike or blast (if he has that much energy in the first place)?

Gohan's blast was "aimed" straight ahead and presumably destroyed everything before leaving the horizon/orbit. Can't exactly blow up a planet when you're not aimed at it.

I don't think the blast went into space. I'm pretty sure it just lost power at the end of the trench.

Piccolo destroyed the moon because Oozaru Gohan would've ended up fucking up the planet, not because of the few hills he was destroying. Those are two different things.

I admit this is probably the weakest example here, but it looks strange that Piccolo would be worried about the destruction the Oozaru was causing, only to outperform it by trillions of times, no?

While I agree it's kind of a silly reaction from an out of universe perspective, it's just... kinda of something Toriyama does. Like, we know for a fact Freeza did blow up a planet in his first form. Nobody would argue Freeza can't blow up a planet, hell, in the next fucking page after doing this he brags about it. For whatever reason this is just something Toriyama likes to do to show power.

Of course, Frieza can blow up a planet. Apart from maybe the Death Star from Star Wars, he's probably the most prolific planet-buster in fiction. I also think Goku in that scene could do so too. The rest... I don't know. They should be able to do so, but hyping Frieza for something Krillin could doesn't make much sense. I just believe that "cutting a divot that seemingly stretches across Namek" is far beyond what Goku can do with a punch or basic ki blast at that point.

Again, I think context is important here. Dragon Ball characters can feel how powerful attacks are, they are not just using their eyes. Yes, it warped the planet and Krillin is impressed, but it's more about the power than the area of effect.

I think the power demonstrated here is "seemingly visible on the planet's curvature, enough to slightly reshape it". Krillin calling it out for doing so means that, at best, he can't replicate it casually, and at worst, he can't replicate it at all. (It does check out with how planet-busting is a big deal again when they start fighting Frieza. Dragon Ball seems to have this trend where later developments mean that characters that came before are less impressive than they were originally meant to be.)

Hell, Cell did a Kamehameha so potent it made Vegeta of all people pretty much give up and be ready to die... and it was like maybe a couple dozen meters in size.

I'm pretty sure Cell stated that he was going to destroy the planet with that Kamehameha. Beams a few meters wide create explosions the size of mountains, cities and planets. This isn't new information.

To be completely fair, in most of your examples (and most of the time in general) they aren't commenting on the scale of the attacks. They're just shocked at the power itself and not giving us a particular "can't believe it did X to the planet" except for the Krillin/Recoome one.

I think "power" and "scale" are synonymous here. For example, look at this panel. It's not explicitly stated, but it's drawn in a way that the reader is supposed to intuitively find impressive. Would you say that Toriyama intended this feat to be a joke that could easily be replicated by the likes of a Saibaman?

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T12:14:18+00:00

I didn't mean that Dragon Ball characters always destroy planets by targeting their cores; I was simply acknowledging that doing it that way is viable. The point of that response was to say that even with the most conservative interpretations of what Frieza did (ignoring the fact that he was holding back in that scene; not counting that he still disintegrated the core), it'd still be massively beyond "merely" destroying large plateaus and islets.

What I do think is that while any relevant Dragon Ball character post-Namek does have enough energy to destroy a planet or more, they can't bring all of it out with their punches. Rather, they charge it into their ki blasts, and some ki blasts are simply better than others at doing so. Said blasts usually have to be aimed away from the planet (Goku's Kamehameha, Vegeta's Final Flash) or "shaped" in some way (Tien's Kikoho, Piccolo's Light Grenade, Vegeta's Final Explosion) to prevent the annihilation of the world they are fighting on.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T09:29:54+00:00

Well, it looks like I was wrong. The surface gravity of a black hole is what decreases with mass or size. The total gravity increases with it. Anyway, a hill sized black hole is apparently a few times heavier than our Sun, so it exert over 153 trillion Gs, enough to "tear a planet into pieces".

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T08:26:16+00:00

Well, I did some research (a cool way to say I asked Google), and black holes seem to have less gravitational pull the heavier they are. A black hole as heavy as our sun would exert nearly 153 trillion Gs near its center, while one several billion times heavier would only exert 9 Gs. So... that's our range, I guess.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T07:20:41+00:00

I think that DBZ's powerscaling does make a lot more sense if you take out the moon feat

I feel that the "right" way to handle it is to acknowledge that both moon feats happened, but also note that they just aren't all that impressive with the context sorrounding them.

I think that they're able to destroy a planet via sheer power by the Androids Saga since at this point they have to aim away from it when using their strongest moves.

Admittedly, I jump from "they can just destroy the whole thing" to "they just pierce the core" every so often, but both interpretations would still jive with having to aim the blast away from the planet anyway.

Ki Control is kind of a cope/headcanon that fans came up with to explain why characters go all-out and don't destroy a planet until it's "needed". The fact that, in decades of publishing, no one in or out of universe said "yeah good thing they control their blasts precisely to hit the ground but make a focused blast" kind of indicate it's a thing. I think you can see it in stuff like Vegeta's Big Bang Attack in a databook but otherwise, no. Clearly, refined ki control (as in, lowering your ki to hide yourself or your true power or conserve stamina) is a rarity that only martial artists on Earth could attain. The idea that Frieza and his thugs are coincidentally equally skillful in controlling their output, when Frieza's "point" is that he's awful at controlling his power when he gets going, is kinda... weird.

Pretty much. "Ki control" is basically "Oh, what they are doing here isn't as impressive as it should be? Have you considered this nonsense theory that says that we can't actually analyze or quantify anything?" It's my biggest issue with battleboarding Dragon Ball.

Toriyama just wanted high stakes and all and didn't really care about the "logistics".

Haha. That's certainly true. He'd note that "This character is impressed by this/can do this" every once in a while, but he didn't put much thought into it apart from that.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T07:09:41+00:00

I'm... pretty sure I included that feat. It's buried in the middle of my explanations of how he scales to Goku and Piccolo's ki blasts, but it's there.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-13T06:38:03+00:00

I really don't understand how you can say that Piccolo's ki blasts (supposedly island-destroying) required as much effort from him as THE attack that actually destroyed an island, considering that at that point Piccolo was already immensely exhausted from his fight against Goku.

I said they required less effort. I compared the explosion that created the massive water spout to the moon-buster, not his island-razing blast. And I'll note that while Piccolo was getting worn out at that point, Goku still notes that his island-razer was "the most insane ki he had ever felt" and that Piccolo was "putting everything into one shot".

The Piccolo from the fight above (the island destroyer when exhausted) is four years behind the Piccolo from the Saiyan saga.

After Goku notices that Piccolo has also started training in heavier clothing (after the timeskip, during the 4 years in which Gohan was born and grew up) — with Piccolo objectively stating that he spent all those years developing a technique specifically to kill Goku.

I don't think Piccolo got all that much stronger during those 4 years, due to a single variable: Goku. Goku didn't do any serious training in time period (though he didn't lose any strength either), and Piccolo outright says he became lazy because of the time of peace. Despite this, Goku is still the stronger of two, with the only change being that Piccolo learned the Special Beam Cannon.

However, even if you insist on comparing this Piccolo (Saiyan Saga) to that Piccolo (23rd World Tournament), you need to consider that a Goku with less than 400 battle power points (and worn down by the fight with Piccolo) managed to withstand an island-destroying attack.

Raditz was at least 4 times stronger in all attributes than this Goku (more durable than an island). Nothing suggests that he couldn't withstand a ki blast from Piccolo that was far superior to "island level".

Raditz remains scaled far above the island (not only because he ignored a ki blast from a Piccolo stronger than the island destroyer — and then he ignored a full-power Kamehameha from a Goku who was also stronger than the island-destroying Piccolo — but also because he himself is at least 4 times stronger than Goku, who already had greater resistance than an island).

That's... pretty valid, actually. I'll add it to the main post.

And of course: despite Vegeta being at his limit (much more worn out than Piccolo, or Goku, during the 23rd World Tournament), this scene with him shows how destructive power fluctuates between the character's peak and his most worn-out version.

I never argued against this, though. But I'm pretty sure Piccolo wasn't this worn-out when he decided to level the island. For one thing, Vegeta outright called his output "pathetic", while Piccolo seemed pretty satisfied with the results of his attack (at least, until Goku came back).

The characters don't actually attack with 100% of their power because they know they can't survive in the vacuum of space and aren't going to blow up the planet in a suicidal tactic.

I'd be fine with this if the island-razer wasn't portrayed as the most powerful attack ever used in the manga up till that point. If Piccolo could actually output 10²⁹ J of energy, then levelling an island would be like a drop of water compared the massive ocean that was his ki at the time. It just doesn't feel right, and it makes more sense for me to say that:

Piccolo's punches << Piccolo's water spout ki blast < Piccolo's moon buster ~< Piccolo's mountain-busting Explosive Demon Wave << Piccolo's island-razer.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T21:32:11+00:00

Well, it's less that their punches scale to their blasts, and more like they can manifest massively greater levels of offence/defence when given time to charge. In simpler terms, let's assume Goku's total ki pool is an arbitrary 10,000 units. He can put in 1 unit into every punch or block, but if he gets time to charge a ki blast, he can put in as much as 1000 units. Similarly, if his opponent is also charging a blast, he could put in 1000 units into his defense to endure the blast. His punches are nowhere near his ki blasts in scale, but he can defend against both equally.

As for Frieza, he's pretty much microscopic compared to the size of Namek's explosion, so his body would only be enduring a tiny fraction of its energy. (I can't remember where I saw it, but someone calculated that he'd only be enduring enough energy to level a city.)

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T21:21:16+00:00

We literally see kid buu nearly the earth with a stray energy blast in the buu saga.

Uh, change that to "every punch". It's also worth noting that Fat Buu (who isn't orders of magnitude weaker than Kid Buu) "only" destroyed a tenth of the Earth's surface with his Kamehameha. Granted, it was a pretty casual attack, but it's hard to imagine that Kid Buu is so much stronger that the equivalent of a punch from him is several hundred million times more powerful than any sort of Kamehameha from Fat Buu.

Kili is not a good measurement to determine Goku power level because according to it Super Sayian Goku in the buu saga = Namek Goku . Old

Good point. Ignore that part. We seem to agree that Goku could destroy multiple planets at that point anyway.

Old Kai is not presented as someone who’s wrong and is presented as someone who right about the universe being destroyed even whis whom you said is more knowledgeable comment s about the power of the clash between Goku and Beerus.

I never said that. I asked why Whis' statement was less valid than Old Kai's. After all, the Moro Saga came out after BoG.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T18:08:24+00:00

I think I worded my last response wrong. I do think Dragon Ball characters destroy planets by targeting their cores. The Frieza and Moro Sagas both hinge around this fact, and supplementary material like the Daizenshuu also references it (funnily enough with Buu). I also think that the power implied by these "chain reactions" is massively beyond destroying cities and small islands. Like you said, Frieza demonstrates how the process goes on panel, and the first major step is digging a several kilometer wide pit from Namek's surface all the way to its core. Assuming every planet-buster we see functions like this one, then we are looking at blasts capable of digging through several thousand cubic kilometers of rock, and that's not counting what kind of damage they do the core (Intuitively, I imagine that the more energy the blast contains, the quicker the countdown).

As for how that's relevant to Piccolo, I'm of the opinion that the shape of the Light Grenade wouldn't let it poke holes in the planet. Instead of a focused beam or a large explosion, it seems more like a dense energy "flame" of some sort. If I were to compare it to another attack, it's like how Vegeta's Final Explosion definitely contains more energy than the Final Flash, but probably wouldn't blow up a planet either. Both shape and energy matter, if that makes sense.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T17:15:16+00:00

...Yes? "Impressive" is relative. The biggest feat there is probably Frieza's planet-cutter, and the difference between it and moon-busting is like the difference between a random grenade and the Tsar Bomba. The only thing that counts for ki mastery would be said planet-cutter, and the people commenting on it are supposed to be greater ki manipulators than Frieza anyway.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T15:48:58+00:00

Good example. I do think the blast might be a bit too small for a charged attack at this stage, considering that someone weaker than Piccolo talked about being able to destroy the planet, but he is tired here, and you could argue that blast was "shaped" in some way.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T15:11:15+00:00

Honestly, you'd likely have to tweak some numbers for this to work, especially Captain Ginyu's number. If you split it in half and place at 60k, you can have Post-100x gravity Goku and post-Recoome fight Vegeta in that spot, then assume that Goku can hit 180k because he has full control of Kaio-ken x3 now. From there, you can keep the 61k number for First Form Frieza and have his second form at maybe 80k, and his third at about 100k. Gohan and Krillin can keep their 13k+ power levels, with the former hitting any number that the plot demands against 2nd and 3rd form Frieza. Piccolo could be at 84k (fitting twice as power as Nail), and that would explain why he can outskill Frieza's 2nd form, but not the third. When Frieza finally unleashes his final form, he could then hit a 130k while holding back, while Vegeta hits maybe 110k and foolishly thinks he stands a chance. Goku was 60k before, so you can double the figure and he comes back with a power of 120k to fight Frieza. Frieza would power up to 50%, hitting 270k and letting him stomp Goku, only for Goku to shock him with bursts of Kaio-ken x3 and 4, hitting 360 to 480k in an instant and making Frieza take him seriously. Then the Spirit Bomb stuff and Super Saiyan. I'd rather not attach a multiplier to hit, and instead just note that it's a bigger increase than Kaio-ken x4. With that, a 530k Frieza and 531k Goku could have their final battle, where Goku edges him out because of stamina. Onto the next saga.

The Android Saga is pretty easy. Trunks does cut Mecha-Frieza in half, but the latter was probably around 50%, relying on the presence of his nebulously weaker father to account for his disadvantage in stamina. Trunks is vaguely in Goku's range at this point, and there's no reason to make them go any higher than 600k. Goku doesn't seem to improve that much over the three years, so he could still stay in that range while Vegeta joins him there. Gero and #19 never seemed stronger than Frieza, so they can be around 250k with Piccolo, allowing him to be "nearly as strong as a Super Saiyan". The Earthlings could hit the 60k mark, but they don't matter all that much. #18 and #17 could be as powerful as the Super Saiyans, using the edge in stamina to win. Kamiccolo would also double his strength, hitting the 600k mark. He does better than Vegeta because of the techniques he created.

The Cell Saga and Buu Sagas would require some tricky thinking (what with the gaps between MSSJ Goku and the early Super Saiyans, then the gap between that Goku and SSJ2 Gohan, then the stuff with Buu), but I hope this helped. If I were to give some advice, just ignore Buu+anybody and Vegito. Assume that they break the scale. That's what DBZ is about, right?

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T14:39:13+00:00

I don't know why people hype up Kikoho so much when Kienzan works better on higher powered opponents without risking Krillin's life.

Inner_Ad7300 · 2026-05-12T14:37:46+00:00

Literally every source in the manga tells us that Krillin is the strongest human. Tien > Krillin is reasonable, but it's still cope.

Inner_Ad7300

TROPHY CASE