Akira Toriyama’s Goku is undoubtedly the most famous anime character ever. The character is the most unique protagonist as the character has dedicated his life to constantly breaking past his limits and coming out with a new transformation when all hope seems to be lost. While power is one of the defining traits of the hero, his pure acts of kindness, selflessness, and dedication, make him different and have helped him remain on top of the popularity list for several decades.
While Kakarot is known for his character, his most iconic trait is how Toriyama-Sensei featured transformations as a key part of the series, adding the next steps in Saiyan’s journey. While SSJ forms were Kakrot’s iconic trait, the mangaka was tired of making him look too macho. As a result, he decided to give him a new form sick of making our hero too manly.
Akira Toriyama Was Too Tired Of Making Goku Macho
When Akira Toriyama added the Super Saiyan form in his magnum opus, Dragon Ball Z, it quickly became a fan-favorite. The iconic form featured our beloved protagonist in a new look, as his hair transformed from black to blond, his chiseled physique, and his energy level spiked dramatically, making him look macho.
All of Kakarot’s SSJ transformations, made him look too manly, however, this cycle was broken when Dragon Ball Super was introduced. As the series progressed with its first arc, the mangaka pushed Son-Goku even further as he introduced a new transformation, the Super Saiyan God. This form differed from the traditional SSJ transformations as it did not feature Kakarot in his iconic blond look, instead, it featured him in his base form with crimson hair and eyes, with divine aura emanating from his body.
The transformation helped him to harness the power of 6 pure-hearted Saiyans, making him much stronger than a Super Saiyan. Fans complained how this form was not as flashy as the SSJ 1 or SSJ Blue as it stripped the protagonist of the bulging biceps, turns out, this was not a mistake.
During an exclusive interview translated via Kanzenshuu, the manga artist shared how he decided to make a course correction, as he was making the Z Fighter “more and more macho” with a “flashy transformation.” Hence, he came up with the SSJ God form. He said,
“I was resistant to [the idea of] Goku getting more and more macho, or having a flashy transformation, so I wanted to make a course-correction. Except, visually-speaking, a Goku who doesn’t have any change at all would be difficult to understand, so I changed just his hair color and his eyes.”
The interviewer asked the mangaka what made him choose the concept of “6 Saiyans” for the ritual of the transformation. The creator explained that it was just for his convenience,
“To be perfectly frank, as a story concept, it was just a convenient number for the author.”
Well, SSJ God was indeed different from the traditional SSJ transformations, but the epic fight that followed the transformation between our hero and Lord Beerus, the God of Destruction was thrilling and made up for the lackluster look of Goku.
Toriyama-Sensei Explains The Difference in Power Level Between Lord Beerus and The Super Saiyan God
In the same interview translated via Kanzenshuu, the interviewer asked Akira Toriyama about the difference in power levels between the God of Destruction and Kakarot’s new form. Toriyama-Sense explained in simple terms how Beerus’ “strength is a 10, [Super Saiyan] God would be right about 6.” However, the Saiyan has a unique trait as he will fight his foes.
He said,
“Only, Saiyans rapidly increase in strength as they fight against strong opponents, so the longer they fought, the more that gap would shrink, and it might even be possible for them to eventually turn the tables. Incidentally, I guess Whis would be about a 15.”
Nevertheless, the creator shared how losing the fight to Beerus was important “story-wise” as losing led to the development where a new and hopeful future for the Z Fighters has taken place, which led to the Dragon Ball Super that we know and love.
Dragon Ball Super can be streamed on Crunchyroll.
