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Do Power Levels Matter?
Topic Started: Mar 31 2017, 04:50 PM (531 Views)
+ ThePrinceOfSaiyans
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I’m sure we’re all familiar with that line from episode 26 of TeamFourStar’s Dragon Ball Z Abridged series. It has become a meme, and is often used to dismiss inquiry or discussion about power levels. A lot of people will claim that they’re useless or irrelevant. What people mean by that varies from person to person, but the most common interpretation seems to be that power levels are unreliable. To quote VegettoEX of Kanzenshuu:

“The entire point of introducing them was to show how unreliable and meaningless they were.”

That is, in part, true, however, people have used this quote to claim that power levels aren’t a reliable way to scale how strong the characters are. I believe this is false. The unreliability of power levels can be attributed to the scouters, but the numbers themselves are a reliable way to account for the differences in strength between characters, at least when displayed accurately. Power Levels may have become obsolete after the Freeza Saga because the scouters couldn’t keep up with the fluctuations, but it has always been the case that if character A’s hypothetical number is X amount amount larger than character B’s hypothetical number, character A is X amount stronger. If this weren't the case, scenes where a character is in awe of their opponents battle power would be meaningless.

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So, the numbers themselves are reliable, and many the people in the fandom realize this, however, some have gotten overzealous, and have started trying to figure out what the power levels would be beyond the Freeza saga. Now, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that this isn’t a fun little puzzle, I’ve made power level lists too. The problem is that without any power levels to go on, assigning power levels to characters after the Freeza saga is all guess work. Before, we could extrapolate based on power levels assigned to other characters. Without any power levels to go on, we can’t be as accurate as we’d like to be, and even the guidebooks aren’t as reliable as we’d like them to be. A lot of that is guess work merely signed off on by Toriyama, without careful consideration. Sure, the Super Saiyan multipliers provided by the Super Exciting Guide, for example, can work, but again, that’s merely guess work, and was not thought of by Toriyama when he was writing his manga.

So, if we can't assign power levels as accurately as we'd like after the Freeza saga, do they really matter? My answer to that would be yes and no. I think power levels were a great way to show how strong these characters could become in a short period of time, but I also think it was probably a good idea to introduce the idea and leave it behind, especially for someone like Toriyama, who is notoriously forgetful. Working with exact numbers would have no doubt created inconsistencies down the road, so I’m glad it was a short term solution to showcase the strength of the characters. There are other ways to power scale, so trying to figure out what the power levels are beyond the Freeza saga isn't really necessary.
Edited by ThePrinceOfSaiyans, Apr 18 2017, 12:16 AM.
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