After-Thoughts Comparison: Gon Freecss and Son Goku

First character comparison is between the protagonist of Hunter X Hunter and the protagonist of Dragon Ball. I bet all 7 of you who are familiar with my content probably have a fair estimation of what you're in for. As for everyone else, allow me to elaborate.

I've been watching the English dubs for both Hunter X Hunter and Dragon Ball Super recently and it occurred to me that Gon and Goku have a lot of comparable traits among both themselves and their series. However, it occurred to me that despite how deep these comparisons go, a lot of things about the execution of the respective series are in the favor of Gon but not Goku. Here I'd like to elaborate on why I feel that way.

First, let's establish why I think these characters are comparable. First, both characters are very childlike at their introductions and even begin their respective series at the age of 12. They both have very physically based movesets, with Gon being an Enhancer class Nen user, and Goku being categorized as the melee fighter of the series in most DBZ games. On their adventures, Goku and Gon both come across many supernatural entities and opponents from robots to china the characters, to slug people, to a space newt, and an incest man for Goku, and a crazy clown, psychotic terrorist bomber, and demonic ants for Gon. Gon and Goku both use a lot of similar abilities within their series even though Goku could probably do more. Gon's Jajanken is a very literal rehash of Goku's Janken fist, but the representation amounts to a super powerful punch, a cutting attack, and a ki blast, all abilities Goku uses throughout his series.

Finally, both characters run into vast numbers of characters who are around for a certain amount of time and then are left behind, usually because enemies become too strong in Goku's case, and because those characters tend to come and go at their leisure for Gon.

So why am I talking about this? Well, mainly because it occurred to me that Gon is what Goku would be if Goku were placed in a series where raw power was not the only factor that matters.

"What're you talking about? Other factors matter in Dragon Ball!"

No, they don't. There are plenty of circumstances within Dragon Ball, whether original, Z, GT, or Super that prove this. That said, I won't be factoring GT into this discussion because the author of Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama had very little if any involvement with it so its problems are due entirely to other handlers. The same rule also applies to Yoshihiro Togashi, I won't be talking about the Hunter X Hunter movies because those are primarily from different people. I also won't be discussing filler in either any Dragon Ball anime or in the Hunter X Hunter 1999 adaptation, though I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what all the filler in the latter is regardless. I am judging these characters based on how their creators handled them from their inception to the present day.

Now, on the topic of things that matter in a Dragon Ball fight, it's honestly very difficult to find a fight in Dragon Ball where two opponents are equal enough in power that other factors can take hold, especially in Z. Goku beat Frieza because Super Saiyan made him stronger, Gohan beat Cell because Super Saiyan 2 made him stronger, Goku's Super Spirit Bomb beat Kid Buu because of bullshit, Vegeta never actually lost to Goku, Goku and Piccolo beat Raditz because Raditz couldn't raise his battle power, and so on and so forth.

Are there any fights where two opponents are even? Yes, there's one. Goku vs. Tien in the Tenkaichi Budokai Finals match. There's also Goku vs Majin Vegeta but rest assured I'll get to that one. Toriyama has stated in interviews previously that that was his favorite match because their power levels were even, and though his opinion on it may have changed, this does confirm that the two had equal battle power so we can proceed with that in mind.

Here's the thing though. In most series, anime, games, comics, wherever you get a fight where two opponents are roughly equal, how the match ends depends on who can use their abilities better. You get this a lot with rival battles in action games, your opponent can do what you do but on a greater level so it's up to you to close the gap with your own proficiency.

The thing is though that the combatant with the greater skill by miles was Tien. Tien had a far larger number of moves to work with, which meant more possibilities and more available tactics for him to use. A lot of Tien's options were superior to Goku's as well though. Tien's Dodonpa was as powerful as Goku's Kamehameha but was faster to use and Goku never truly overcame that fact even when he beat Tao. On top of this, Tien could negate all of Goku's Ki attacks with a Kiai, he could scream at Goku's energy attacks and render them gone. Tien could've also used the Multi-Form to overwhelm Goku with numbers and while that might have had diminishing returns depending on how many, Tien still had that option. He also had the ability to read Goku's mind to see what he'd do next. The only ability Goku had besides the Kamehameha that was useful was the afterimage technique and Tien could use that as well. Goku didn't have many options in this fight.

And yet, in spite of that fact, the fight still came to a draw, at least by my definition. Technically, Tien won by ring out and if that car hadn't come Goku would've won by ring out but the fact is both characters rendered each other completely unable to fight. And that's really damning.

In most series, if two opponents are equal in overall power, the one with greater skill in other areas will win because that's the primary difference. However, even though Tien had more moves, was smarter overall, and had more options to work with, the fight came to a draw because the power levels were even.

Alecszandxr on Youtube made a great video about Gon's morality in Hunter X Hunter and one of the major points he made was that even though he's a shounen protagonist who behaved like one, the world didn't bend to his will to the extent that it does in other shounen. And while I'm not sure that applies to all shounen, it absolutely applies to Dragon Ball. In Dragon Ball, power levels are the only thing that matter, even when power levels are even and one character has superior skill, they'll still stalemate because the numbers are even.

This extends to a lot of things in Dragon Ball, like how Gohan is the strongest character in the series at the end of Z in spite of the fact that he has a tenth of the combat experience and skill with Ki that many of the other characters have, the fact that the humans all fall behind because they're not strong enough even though humans have the best techniques by far, and why the only ability that can overcome or supplement a big number besides abilities that raise that number is regeneration.

By contrast, in Hunter X Hunter, Gon is very frequently punished for his reliance on sheer brute force. That said, when I bring this up, I'm mainly referring to events after Yorknew since most enemies prior to that were on a level that was so vastly above Gon's that he wouldn't have survived a one on one engagement with any of them.

When Gon went up against Genthru at the end of Greed Island his reliance on brute force only put him in trouble, especially when he lost one of his hands. When Gon went up against Knuckle, his tactic for overcoming Knuckle was to hit harder and harder and that only sped up his defeat by reducing the amount of aura he had left to pay back the balance on Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Gon was able to overwhelm Neferpitou with brute force and win that way but in doing so he left himself with such a powerful curse that it took a literal omnipotent wish granter to remove it.

The fights Gon tends to win the most consistently are the ones that require some use of strategy, like using a tree to knock an enemy formation out of whack, or screaming in the ear of an enemy that uses sound to detect its surroundings, or lift a tile underneath an opponent to knock them off balance, or a giant rock and trap hole to knock an enemy's Nen defenses away, or group together with two other people to catch a dodge ball, weird as that may sound out of context.

The only times where Gon's use of brute force doesn't backfire are against opponents who don't use Nen. Like when he defeated the armadillo chimera ant, that opponent used brute force as well just like Gon but he didn't use aura while Gon did. If that opponent had aura during that fight, Gon most likely would've lost. Or when Gon punched a chimera ant with like 20 arms and almost got punished for breaking only 2 of them, though he won that fight with strategy in the end as well.

In fact, there's another similarity Gon has with Goku in the chimera ant arc that I already brought up if you were paying attention: the way Gon defeated Pitou. Gon's total rage and desire for bloodthirsty vengeance transformed him into something more than he was. Sound familiar? This is basically identical to Goku's Super Saiyan transformation. There is a caveat but I'll get to that.

Though Gon's transformation wasn't exactly an ancient alien prophecy, it is something that occurred due to a series of circumstances that had previously been established in the series. Strong enough Vows and Restrictions can augment your power at a certain cost, which is what happened here. Gon's rage was building up to a battle with Pitou, even if Gon himself didn't know exactly what to expect. The jump in power was so vast that it allowed him to overwhelm an opponent that otherwise would've been too much.

The caveat to this, is that the consequences for Gon's power boost is actually more similar to Ultra Instinct in Dragon Ball Super. Although the contexts are completely different, both are similarly damaging to the user at the end of its usage. It also turned him from a kid to an adult like Super Saiyan 4, and made his hair longer like Super Saiyan 3, really it's a mixture of a lot of things from Dragon Ball's history.

However, the difference here is distinct even if you have to think about it to realize all of them. Firstly, despite what some people think, Gon's transformation actually wasn't a complete ass-pull. Gon's development into his adult body could be seen as a very powerful augmentation type technique. Whereas I've speculated in the past that Bisky's change from buff-girl to loli has to be a manipulation technique since that's the only category that fits it best, although apparently Togashi didn't see it that way but I digress, since Gon is doing the opposite, you could see it as an Enhancement skill just giving him the necessary body developments to make him physically what he needs to be to deal with this opponent. This interpretation actually comes from the 1999 English dub of Hunter X Hunter which better explains Kurapika's Holy Chain, where rather than Enhancement skills encompassing healing, it's more like Kurapika's using enhancement skills to augment his body's natural healing process. Under this lense, the same idea applies to Gon's transformation.

Also the sheer vastness of aura Gon had during this form can be explained by Vows and Restrictions. Specifically the fact that Gon's condition on this skill was to kill Neferpitou and the contract would be to destroy his body after the fact. This interpretation can also be seen in context, where Gon had already killed Pitou but then used his power one last time to destroy Pitou's remaining body after her power caused her to attack Gon after death. Destroying Pitou's body would break the condition and activate the contract.  We can also see the exact same thing in use with Kurapika's Conjured Chains where Uvogin brings up that there is an absurd amount of power in Kurapika's chains, to the point that even Uvogin's regular body couldn't break them, in spite of the fact that a significantly weaker character in the form of Gon or Killua can break regular chains with raw brute force without Nen and it's never stated that that level of base physical strength is exclusive to those who train for the Zoldyck family, showing just how much stronger the chains become with those rules.

Finally, although we had not seen any punishments for this kind of thing before, we did previously receive a warning from Izunabi, Kurapika's master, that Conditions and Contracts will harm you or backfire if you're not careful.

What I'm getting at is that everything present in Gon's dark transformation was previously established in the series, specifically in Yorknew. Despite what some people think, about how it makes no sense in context, it only doesn't make sense if you take the ridiculousness of what's happening without thinking about what went into it. And this claim especially gets on my nerves because people who make this claim about it not making sense don't apply that same thought to Super Saiyan. And no, I don't just mean giving it a pass because it came first and is pure entertainment, that would be fine, I'm more referring to the fact that people think Super Saiyan makes complete sense when in reality it's the result of years of retcons and bullshit. Let me give you an example.

Firstly, anyone who thinks all of Dragon Ball makes sense from start to finish are looking at it from the perspective of someone who's seen the entire series from start to finish after all the retcons have taken place, not from the perspective of someone who's seeing every event as it's happening.

Most things we see in Dragon Ball that we think make sense only make sense in retrospect because Toriyama spent a lot of time reworking the logic of the world and recontextualizing events in the series based on new ideas. It's not like Haki in One Piece, or Nen in Hunter X Hunter, or even elemental abilities in Naruto which are demonstrated well before they're explained and have their mechanics revealed at a later date. At the time Goku climbed Korin's Tower to drink the water to defeat Tao and the exercise turned out to be the reason Goku got strong enough to beat Tao, there was no hidden concept of Goku being an Alien, if there was, Goku's Saiyan Pod would've been found by Capsule Corp prior to Raditz' arrival in Mount Paozu. The idea of Zenkai augmenting Saiyan's power when they recover from near death was created to justify why Goku's number rises so quickly and, even then, it doesn't really make sense because Tao didn't actually nearly kill Goku, even though he thought he had, Goku didn't get any stronger after nearly losing his life against Tien, Tambourine, and King Piccolo prior to training with Kami, and Goku was never able to use Zenkai to augment his growth rate on King Kai's planet in the first place.

Zenkai was created specifically for the Namek arc to justify why Goku and Vegeta would be able to go up against characters with 5-8 figure power levels with little or no actual time or training respectively. Likewise, the Super Saiyan Prophecy wasn't even brought up in the Namek arc until Goku beat Recoome in a single hit, and then Vegeta suddenly gets obsessed with the idea of achieving the prophecy to defeat Frieza after immortality is removed from his grasp. Prior to that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Vegeta was planning on Zenkai'ing his way to victory.

Not only that but even the physical appearance of the Super Saiyan form doesn't make sense. Sure from the perspective of electric potential his hair is just spiking up due to raw power but that doesn't explain why it became blond. The real answer is because Toriyama didn't want to color it in. However, from an in-universe standpoint there really wasn't a reason to think that would be the case.

Another illogical thing about it is that Goku's desire for revenge against Frieza for killing Krillin had already been done against Tambourine in the manga when Goku was a kid. The thing is though that while you can argue that Goku knew that Krillin would be revived, that doesn't change the fact that Goku was, at the time devastated by his friend's death and that, if Goku were always a Saiyan, he should've become a Super Saiyan as a kid, especially with information we have now with kids like Goten and Trunks being capable of it, and characters like Cabba and Caulifla awakening it randomly by getting a little bit angry. Sure there's the power threshold argument but even that doesn't hold water since various sources suggest that power is an irrelevant factor, between Bardock in Episode of Bardock becoming Super Saiyan with a power level of around 10 thousand, Broly becoming Super Saiyan as a baby at a power level of 10 thousand, Goten and Trunks apparently just being born with the form, and Gotenks being unable to transform into a Super Saiyan initially in spite of the fact that he filled the power requirement even before Goten and Trunks did.

In fact, quick rant, it's actually Goten himself who throws a lot of qualifiers out the window for this. Power level threshold doesn't hold up since he's only about as powerful as Ginyu, emotions aren't a factor since Goten just unlocked it randomly while training with Chichi, and being born with a father as a Super Saiyan doesn't hold up since that argument doesn't apply to Trunks nor Pan.

All this means that there's really no reason for Goku to turn into a Super Saiyan against Frieza and not Tambourine if Goku was a Saiyan from the outset.

Finally, after Goku obtains the form, the power doesn't disappear or punish him for using it, it just becomes a permanent part of his abilities. In this way, you can kind of see a comparison to Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry and, of course the form being a permanent fixture in Goku's move list is not inherently a problem. Other Shounen like YuYu Hakusho, One Piece, and others have power boosts that become permanent parts of their skills. But there are significant issues you have to tackle if that's really what you're going to do.

Firstly, you have to get over the psychological impact such an ability would have on the user. One Piece largely sidestepped this with Luffy by having him develop his gears through training rather than emotional turmoil and Yusuke had to go to the demon world to learn more about himself and his lineage since the reveal of his demonic heritage called all of that into question. Dragon Ball doesn't deal with this at all. The character gets angry, they get stronger, deal with an enemy, then they just have the perk added to their skill tree. No psychological damage, no nothing, just a new skill.

Secondly, since transformations like this are inherently overpowered you have to deal with what costs and limitations come with these forms. One Piece reigns supreme here since all of Luffy's gears have some limit on them that make them impractical either in certain situations or, more commonly, long form battles. YuYu Hakusho admittedly didn't do this part very well by just making Yusuke as strong as an S Class demon but with the skills he learned as a human.

Thirdly, and this is very important, you want to make sure that this power up is either usable by everybody or only this one character. One Piece restricted the Gears to Luffy because they require his rubber body in order to use properly. Yusuke's Mazoku Atavism is something that could in theory apply to a large number of different humans but so far only applied to Yusuke because he was the only one who met the conditions, specifically in relation to spiritual power, which is why he didn't awaken it after his first death but since the requirement is to have just some spirit energy, he could've in theory awoken it if he had died at any point after his initial revival.

In Dragon Ball, Super Saiyan applies only to Saiyans but applies to all Saiyans at this point, making the series tell you you're only special if you're from this near extinct alien race.

That last requirement is very important not because of who can beat who necessarily but because of what impact such an ability has on the series. If everyone can use the ability and one character only manages to because they meet the conditions for it in terms of training or resolve, it's an achievement. If only one character can use it, then other characters have to find their own ways to catch up, and even if they never succeed at least it won't poison every other facet of the story. Dragon Ball screws this up by having everyone important go Super Saiyan and have everyone be important because they can turn Super Saiyan.

In Hunter X Hunter, you don't really get any of this. I've already stated much of the reason why but elaborating on my thought process further Gon's transformation took the visual form it did because he's an Enhancer. I'm speculating on this here but it seems like if a character of a different aura category gained this form, a very different visual effect would've taken place.

Transmuters would have a wide variety of effects depending on their ability, for example Killua would probably just be covered head to toe in burning plasma where Genthru would most likely become a nuke. Conjurer's probably wouldn't change that much but their power would rise substantially, like Kurapika's chains would probably become unbreakable and extend endlessly to cover an opponent in wrappings.

An Emitter would likely have their aura floating around them in the effect of their choice, similar to Kuja in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Manipulators would probably bend space and time around them since Manipulation skills are not restricted to mind control. And Specialists would have an effect associated with their specific power so I can't talk much about that.

However, while the form it takes would change, the relative power and cost would be the same. Killua's lightning would burn his body to a crisp, Kurapika's chains would entomb him, an Emitter would be crushed by their own projectiles, and a Manipulator would probably lose their free will and become catatonic. So even though the effect is not entirely restricted to Gon it's not necessarily something you want to have happen to you.

In Dragon Ball, however, there is no downside to having the Super Saiyan transformation. The Cell Saga made a big deal about how the power couldn't be maintained well but even though Trunks and Vegeta both used a version of the form at around that exact same episode that used even more energy than the basic form, they were still able to use it for long spans of time. And the Super Saiyan form, level 0, gives you 50x the power of regular you.

If you have the ability to lift 100 lbs. over your head in base form, that's 5000 lbs. in Super Saiyan, or about 2.5 tons. If you could run 12 miles per hour in base form, that's 600 miles per hour in Super Saiyan, which is subsonic. If a hammer broke a bone in your body in base form, that hammer would probably only bruise your bone in Super Saiyan, and that's being conservative. Not only that but the form scales with your base form, so if you're able to boost those numbers to 150 lbs, 15 mph, and fractured bone, those would scale up to, 7500 lbs or 3.75 tons, 750 mph or almost Mach 1, and your bone durability will rise to the point of probably being a little shocked but still entirely in one piece. And, on top of it, with training, you could maintain Super Saiyan 1 without any loss in stamina, achieve Super Saiyan 2 for double the benefits of Super Saiyan 1, and through bullshit that Vegeta did become a Super Saiyan God by means unknown to anyone really. There is no downside to having the ability to turn Super Saiyan. Sure there might be contexts where it isn't good enough to close a colossal gap but that isn't the same as causing problems from overuse or not being careful or whatever.

That said, straight buffs are not entirely a problem. All of this has been from the perspective of the third most fun way to handle an overpowered character, thinking about costs and limitations. The other two don't work very well for Dragon Ball but do in Hunter X Hunter as well. The second, is make the antagonist just as overpowered.

The thing is, this is Dragon Ball's go to, if you have a really powerful character, make the next antagonist even more powerful. However, this idea is predicated on the assumption that the overpowered antagonist you're going up against is both a long term villain that spans the entire series and the series ends after they're defeated. Obviously, Dragon Ball doesn't handle this very well, and anyone who's even remotely knowledgeable about Z knows why and doesn't need an explanation. However, another facet of this is predicated on abilities, not strength.

This could arguably work if the writer started off with Goku having the ability to destroy anything and have the antagonist, let's say Frieza, have the ability to create or restore anything. This way, Goku's still technically hitting hard but he'd have to find a way to overcome an opponent who, for all intents and purposes, counters his specific moveset. You probably already know how it actually went down.

The most fun option, however, is to make the overpowered abilities not solve problems. In reality Dragon Ball doesn't do this one at all, might makes right, the winner is the one who survives, etc. It's actually Hunter X Hunter that dabbles in this one a lot more.

In the Hunter Exam Gon is going up against all of these opponents he's no match for but due to some unique rules and his unique disposition, he passes without ever winning a single fight. In the Zoldyck Family arc, Gon could've easily been killed if he had tried to rip Killua out by force but Killua was allowed to leave after talking to his father about this new opportunity for growth, even if malicious intent is implied in context but that's not important for this discussion. In Heaven's Arena, fighting does actually resolve the arc but Gon loses because the point of the fight was to establish a long term goal in the form of Hisoka rather than prove that he's the best around. Yorknew, fighting doesn't resolve anything and after probably one of the best fights in the series, Kurapika vs. Uvogin, Kurapika is left without an outlet for his anger and at the end of the arc just has to abandon his goal of killing the Phantom Troupe temporarily. The fighting itself caused more problems than it solved.

Greed Island is the most shounen of all the arcs in this regard as it ends with Gon, Killua, and Bisky defeating the bombers in a climactic battle and even then it's due to ingenuity not strength that Gon was able to win. The Chimera Ant arc had a climactic battle between Meruem and the Royal Guards and Netero and his group of Hunters but even the battle between Meruem and Netero didn't resolve the arc, it was the miniature rose which Netero only used because he knew he wouldn't survive, and Meruem's acceptance of his fate that resolved the arc. The battle itself was kind of irrelevant. Finally, the Chairman Election arc is resolved by Killua just talking things out and rescuing Gon and Alluka.

That's the main thing here, though. Out of the three ways to handle overpowered characters, Hunter X Hunter does number 1 pretty well but is somewhat lacking due to not really having any characters who are especially overpowered, though Tserriednich may end up causing me to eat those words, where Dragon Ball takes the second approach and handles it poorly.

And this is a problem that doesn't have to exist. Ignoring Goku's skill theft, he has a lot of techniques to pull from during his battles especially in Z that he just refuses to use. The Afterimage Technique would've been very useful against Frieza due to his inability to sense Ki and lack of Scouter revealing his true location. The Solar Flare would've been incredibly helpful against Raditz, Nappa, and Vegeta without even needing to grab their tails or augment power.

The thing is, Goku could've used the solar flare on Raditz to shut off his eyesight long enough to actually grab Raditz' tail or to keep him in place for Piccolo to hit him with the Special Beam Cannon. Tien could've used the Solar Flare on Nappa to keep him in place long enough for the Kienzan to hit, or screw it, Krillin could've done both those things himself since he knew the Solar Flare. Goku could've used the Solar Flare at the beginning of his fight with Vegeta long enough to obliterate him with the Kamehameha Kaioken x3, that wouldn't have necessarily won the fight for Goku but it would've given him a distinct edge that he simply didn't use. The afterimage against Frieza could've prevented Frieza from landing hits and opened the way for Goku to hit Frieza in his blind spots.

I'm not saying that these techniques would've changed the outcomes, at least not all the time, what I'm saying is that because Goku doesn't use techniques that he's clearly demonstrated he can, it only shows that Goku either isn't thinking or is holding back for no discernible reason.

Of course, I've heard the argument that Toriyama didn't want to overuse any of the more creative techniques and you know what, fine. The Kamehameha and Super Saiyan already prove you wrong but fine. Even if that's the case, using a really powerful technique that never shows up again even when it would be a massive benefit only goes to show how stupid some of these characters can actually be. This is a problem I have with a lot of series, even ones I like.

Ren not using his barrier and Explosion Fist skills again in RWBY even though it would've come in handy against both the Knucklavee and Hazel is just stupid. Goku only using his most iconic abilities when other skills would've helped him overcome the odds is just stupid. Ban using Hunter Fest against Galand and Melascula in The Seven Deadly Sins when ripping out their hearts with Fox Hunt is a lot more viable is just stupid.

The problem isn't that these characters are no longer capable of these skills, which I'll get more into in a bit. It's not even that those skills wouldn't be useful in those circumstances I listed. It's that the writer either wanted to drum up drama or it just never occurred to them to do such a thing. Sometimes it's understandable, other times it's not. For example, Ban getting himself trapped in a corner against Galand and Melascula shows stupidity when he had the necessary skills to kill them both but if that hadn't happened, Escanor's introduction would've had to have been handled some other way and the way his introduction is handled as it is is pretty cool so I'll give it a pass on that alone.

Likewise, there are characters in Hunter X Hunter who hold back their strongest abilities for various reasons. The difference however is reason. In Hunter X Hunter, Kurapika doesn't use Chain Jail very much because he can only use it on the Phantom Troupe and he simply hasn't run into them a lot. Knuckle held back Chapter 11 Bankruptcy against Gon and  Killua initially because if he had used it prior to the end of the month, it would've taken away Gon and Killua's chance to grow and prove they could go to the NGL. Ultimately it's just a sign that Knuckle is too nice for his own good but it is pretty safe to say that if Knuckle had done that from the outset Gon would've been eliminated without even really having the chance to fight. Killua doesn't use God Speed too much after its introduction because it drains too much of his stamina and against opponents like the Chimera Ants, he needs as much of that as he can get, so he only uses it when he comes across an opponent who it's actually necessary against.

With Goku, there's no reason he couldn't use the Solar Flare on Raditz, there's no reason Krillin couldn't do that to Nappa and use the Kienzan to kill him. There's no reason Goku couldn't use the Afterimage against Frieza. There's not even really a reason Goku couldn't use the Kaioken against Cell during Super Saiyan. Even if he did do those things and they proved to not be useful or as useful as I've made it out to be, at least showing that it doesn't work is better than having a technique that could potentially change the course of a battle that you simply refuse to use.

Gon only ever uses Jajanken because those are the only three techniques he has apart from the advanced applications of Nen which he never abandons. However, Goku has shown all of these abilities in the past and going off of Dragon Ball Super he can still do all these things.

In summation Dragon Ball characters are idiots and Gon is too but Gon suffers the consequences of his decisions where Dragon Ball characters do so a lot less often. I apologize for turning this into a Dragon Ball rant but I just had to finish this. I have three other posts in the works so don't be surprised if another one comes within a day.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful time.