Webtoon Spotlight

Random Spotlight#11: Ranking the Super Saiyan Form

March 19 1991: That was the day that all of fiction would forever remember. Because that was the day that a powerful alien named Son Goku was able to fulfill the ancient prophecy that made the cold emperor of the universe feel fear for the first time in his entire life. Because on this day the power of the Super Sayian was made in full force. Since that legendary moment Dragonball has been using transformations as a convenient ass-pu I mean an amazing idea to keep the story "fresh" and "interesting" for better or worse. So I thought that I would decide to share my thoughts and rank the various Super Sayian transformations to see which one I find to be supreme.

Note

This will be pretty much a post giving my overall thoughts on each Super Sayian form, impact, appearance, transformation and specific traits from worst to best. That being said I decided that for sanity's sake I'll be talking about only the main line super saiyan forms which in my opinion are 1-4, God and Blue without any variants. If you like this post I could do more but right now that's the limit. I think nothing else needs to be said so let's get into it.

Super Sayian 3

Okay so I don't know how much hate I'm going to get for this but I'll explain my thoughts on the form soon enough. For starters if we are ranking the forms purely on the transformations themselves than 3 beats every form by a country mile. The way Goku slowly shows off each of the forms, only to show off just how further beyond he's come in those 7 years is freaking excellent before the massive reveal. And just when you think what he's about to do is impossible, Goku then starts his 5 minute scream session.

Cities shake, monitors are destroyed and the clouds start to gather as Goku pushes his limits to become a brand new warrior. His transformation in Fusion Reborn was even worse as we see him literally shake the entire Outer World with his power. Both of them are amazing pieces of animation that can hype up any DBZ fan. Unfortunately I've got problems with literally everything else with the form.

For one since Toryiama didn't plan the existence of this form very well it completely fucks over Majin Vegeta's Motivation since it makes clear that Goku despite the grave situation was holding himself back the entire time in one of the best fights in the series. Secondly the design Super Sayian 3 is one of my least favorites. I like the added pupils and the lighting like aura, however the long hair and lack of eyebrows makes everyone involved look like a 90's neanderthal. And I haven't even gone into the obvious issue that this form eats up ki faster than Goku in an all you can eat buffet. All that combined makes the form kind of useless as it never really has any moments to shine or get over these obvious flaws, which in turn makes it dead last.

Super Sayian God Super Sayian

If I could summarize all of my problems with Super this is it. Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan is redundant, too safe, poorly throughout and feels like nothing more than an excuse to sell toys. Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan is a terrible name and while yes it is called blue it would make a hell of a lot more sense to just have this be Super Sayian God and let the much better predecessor of this form be called Sayian God for less redundancy. Speaking of redundancy this form's design is overall boring as all hell. I love the blue shell breaking effect it has going on but after that it's just as Freiza pointed out, Super Saiyan with blue hair dye and a lighter aura. There is no style and no substance behind the design choice and it really shows considering how in the movie we never learned how we got the form which is a problem when it's the actual first introduction.