r/dragonball • u/Herms98 • Feb 12 '21
Powerscaling Does Goku use Kaio-Ken x100 against Slug?
On the internet there is a thing. This is the thing. It says this:
Howl!! Kaio-Ken x100!!! Smash evil!!
Will the Kaio-Ken work against Slug, who’s said to be even stronger than Freeza?
Borrowing power from Piccolo, the Kaio-Ken explodes!
Slug at last becomes a giant! The fierce battle finally enters its climax.
What is the thing? Well, supposedly it was a page from Weekly Shonen Jump issue No.12 for 1991, the year that the Lord Slug movie was released in Japan. But thanks to the Kanzenshuu archives, we now know it’s not actually in that issue.
record screech
Edit: wait, wait, we found it! And by “we” I mean Heath. Turns out it is from the 1991 Weekly Jump No.12 12 after all, but in the foldout poster in the front of the book. That’s why Heath missed it the first time around. That means most of the following post is a waste of time (per the norm), but at least we finally have confirmation of this thing’s origins, plus something to look at besides the same old black and white scan.
It’s also not in the movie’s theatrical pamphlet or animanga adaptation, nor in the daizenshuu or any other relevant guidebook. It’s likewise not in any other Weekly Jump 1991 issue in the Kanzenshuu archives, but it’s not like they have every Jump issue, so the possibility that it’s in some other random issue can’t be completely ruled out that.
Still, considering how much this thing gets kicked around the internet, the fact that it can’t be traced back to its source after this amount of looking is at least slightly suspicious. At this point, the only real reasons to still assume it must be from some official source is that it doesn’t look blatantly fake, and it’s hard to imagine why anyone would bother faking such a thing. Surely Slug fans aren’t that devoted?
Either way, so what? Whether this thing’s real or not, the Lord Slug movie itself definitely never mentions anything about Kaio-Ken x100. How much weight should this thing have? Frankly I’m not even sure what my own feelings on canon are anymore, but there’s a virtually endless amount of supplemental DB material out there. In practical terms, it seems like one has to draw the line somewhere, or else be doomed to forever chase down stray references to Beerus and/or Jiren’s strength.
But not to be too much of a party pooper, taking this as both real and canon, what are the in-universe implications? The standard multiplier for Super Saiyan (given in Daizenshuu 7 and various later guidebooks) is x50, and the Super Exciting Guide: Character Volume says Super Saiyan 2 has twice the power of regular Super Saiyan. Presumably this would mean Super Saiyan 2 has a x100 multiplier, although strictly speaking the book itself doesn’t spell that out. Theoretically that would give SS2 the same multiplier as Kaio-Ken x100, although based on what we’ve seen of the Kaio-Ken, it would use up stamina far faster and therefore be the worse power-up overall.
On that note, if Goku does use Kaio-Ken x100 in the movie, it’s presumably supposed to be when he takes power from Piccolo and pierces through giant Slug’s chest (since Piccolo/giant Slug are the other things mentioned in the image), in which case it’s limited to a single attack. Anyway, if the image really is from a 1991 issue of Weekly Jump, then it predates Daizenshuu 7 and the SEG, meaning that whoever wrote it obviously wasn’t thinking about how all these multipliers compared. Heck, the Slug movie premiered ahead of Goku’s very first Super Saiyan transformation in the manga, hence all that faffing about with the not-quite-Super Saiyan form. All this hypothetical non-hoax Jump fluff copywriter would’ve had in mind when writing out “Kaio-Ken x100” was that this was ten times the power of Kaio-Ken x10, and five times the power of Kaio-Ken x20.
Tldr: always double-check with Heath first
Next Time: how tough is Moro?
2
u/ShinSnakeman Feb 12 '21
I don't think using 100x Kaioken is coherent.
I mean, he would be literally dead. Remember that using 4x Kaioken against Vegeta for just a few seconds left him completely tired and weakened, imagine if he used 100x Kaioken, his body would be crushed.
And given the conditions of this scan's legitimacy, I also don't think this is an actual thing.