Hello everyone, today I'll be discussing the power scaling community and why I don't necessarily believe that many are all that intelligent. I've spoken in the past about how I do not like power scaling's incredible focus on powerful character over characters that are skilled or well written but it was mostly in the context of Dragon Ball so today I'd like to speak about it on a general basis.
For many who know what power scaling is, you're probably most likely aware of the two largest ones, Seth The Programmer and Chuck the Cybercuck. And they're both popular but I have no real clue why. Keep in mind, I won't be saying much about Chuck here just because I know very little about him and I've never seen any of his videos. Seth, however, I'm going to have a field day with so let's get started on him right now.
One of the videos I saw of Seth that made me discredit him as not only a decent power scaler but also someone who could be seen as intelligent was his response to anti-power scalers. I say response because even though the video says he's debunking them, all he really did was complain about how none of the anti-power scalers want to talk to him about power scaling and that somehow makes them hypocrites. Here's a specific example from the video.
In the video, he brings up PlagueOfGripes, who said in his third Dragon Ball Gripes video that saying a character is stronger than time is like saying they're stronger than the color blue, what does that even mean? Then Seth requested to discuss with him the logistics of how being stronger than time makes sense. And from here, I want you to keep that in mind because I'll be coming back to it later. And apparently Plague blocked him and Seth called him out as if to say he's a coward for not wanting to discuss it.
Now, I do agree somewhat with the idea that the block function can be abused by certain people to prevent themselves from receiving criticism, as a form of cowardice. However, that doesn't seem to be what's going on here, firstly because Plague himself has never blocked just regular haters in the past, and secondly the context seems to imply the fault of Seth more than anything. In reality, if Seth had actually watched any of Plague's previous videos, he'd know that power scaling is a topic that is simply not among his interests, he's more interested in how the characters are written and how interesting the world is, what a character can do is about their capability, not their identity, that sort of thing. More than likely, Plague probably blocked him because people send him comments and messages about power scaling all the time and he just doesn't want to deal with it. In reality, that whole situation could've been avoided if Seth had a little bit more foresight.
I've seen several of his other videos as well and none of them were particularly convincing. His video on the Super Saiyan forms was talking a lot about how much stronger each grade on the first Super Saiyan form is than the previous ones but in reality there's no consequence for any of it. Firstly, because that form lost relevance after the Cell arc and secondly because none of it changes the perception of how any of the events that took place can be perceived. Put in layman's terms:
Initial Thoughts on Powers in the Cell Saga: Wow that character sure is strong, it's so fun watching them.
Thoughts after Seth's video: Wow, that character sure is strong, it's so fun watching them.
The thing is, even if you like the fact that Seth broke down multipliers in that video, which it's fine if you do, ultimately all those bigger multipliers mean is that the characters involved are somewhat stronger than we thought they were. It doesn't make the stakes any more dramatic, especially since those events were over 20 years before that video even came out. Secondly, it doesn't change what actually happens, Vegeta still got KO'd, Trunks still gave up, Goku's fight with Cell is still entertaining, Gohan's curb stomp of the Cell Juniors is still cathartic, the entire arc is still full of iconic moments, and whatever feelings you had on these events are still probably not going to change much.
But all of this is about Seth as a person, I'm sure you're marveling to yourself. And to that I say, you're right, I'm stating this about him mainly so you understand the kind of mentality that we're working with in terms of most power scalers. Seth thinks he's clever and intelligent but in reality he's no different from any other teenager talking to his friends about which character is stronger than who, he just has a lot more friends to talk to about it.
However, when I actually watched his power scaling videos, I noticed a few things. He kept bringing up feats but that was all he was bringing up. When he talked about Ichigo in Bleach, all he did was bring up what the characters did or said they could do in the story, which in itself isn't even really good power scaling. Again, I'll come back to that.
That said, I did find one argument from Kuro The Artist that most likely came from either Seth or Chuck due to affiliations that I take serious issue with. He said "Power Scaling is a measure of how good of a fighter you are." This is factually incorrect and I'll explain why in just a second but what bothers me more about this is just how Dragon Ball's method of handling fights has poisoned versus debates.
If you don't know much about what power scaling exactly is, it's simply a measure of what a character is capable of performing. Judging what a character can lift or break, how quickly they can go from point A to point B, how many hits they can withstand before they're KO'd that sort of thing. These things do not equate to being a good fighter.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying that physical condition isn't important. Obviously, if someone is strong enough to knock you out in one punch and tough enough to take anything you dish out, obviously no amount of any combat principles is going to help you win that fight. The problem with this line of thinking though is that it assumes that most fighters are on completely different levels physically.
The thing about this I want you to keep in mind is that the human body has a physical limit on performance in every area, and the vast majority of athletes of any kind are operating at or around that limit. To exemplify this let's pit two random people against each other, one who fights for a living, and one who is just physically strong. Let's pick the World Heavy Weight Boxing Champion and pit him against the world record holder for dead lifting.
Now, it is entirely possible that the dead lifting record holder is physically stronger, no arguments here. However, in a fight like this, that gap isn't going to be all that huge. The heavy weight boxing champion may not be as strong but first off, they're still going to be plenty strong enough to handle this kind of opponent, and secondly they have other things that work in their favor.
A major factor in a fight is precision and coordination. What I mean by that is two fold. Firstly, in relation to striking, it doesn't matter how strong you are if you can't hit your mark. And secondly, in relation to grappling, it doesn't matter how strong you are if your opponent can get you off your feet and on the ground. Obviously the boxer's not going to have experience grappling but in relation to a strike match, his punches are going to land far more frequently because he has experience attacking moving targets, and also because he has another thing working for him. His reflexes.
If you go off the power listing wikia, reflexes are listed as your ability to move a part of your body from point A to point B. This is false. Reflexes are more about your ability to notice a threat, recognize the nature of that threat, and take the correct course of action to prevent the outcome that's on its way. The thing about reflexes though is that they're not innately about speed or intelligence.
99% of the time when someone has good reflexes, it's because they've trained themselves to handle a specific threat and have enough muscle memory to avoid it completely on instinct. The heavy weight boxing champion is bound to have this because he's constantly fighting people. However, the dead lifter is not as likely to have good reflexes because they're not put in a lot of situations where they need to develop those reflexes. That doesn't mean a dead lifter can't be a good fighter, just that being a good fighter isn't a prerequisite for being a good dead lifter.
Fighting skill on a general basis, is mainly about dealing enough damage to defeat your opponent before they can deal enough damage to defeat you. And while you can argue that strength or speed can help with that goal, that's only if you can overwhelm your opponent in either so completely that they're completely unable to deal damage to you in the first place.
However, that's not to say that all power scaling videos are bad, just that Seth and Chuck are not the best people to go to for those kinds of videos. If you want my personal choices, they are The Imaginary Axis and Comic Books vs. The World. And the reason is largely the same for both of them: they don't just tell you what the character can do, they also break down what they do into actual math calculations, with formulas and quantities. The thing is, power scaling can be interesting if you tie in something more than "X character can perform Y feat." You also want to break down what performing that feat actually means. Bonus points if you're able to correct other people's math, like for example telling them they should use the Earth's circumference for high speed calculations rather than its diameter.
One thing that's bothered me a lot about power scalers in general though is how they tend to use certain types of logic to justify why a character doing something makes sense. For example, Seth said in a previous video that being stronger than time makes sense and though I haven't seen any video where he elaborates on that, knowing him it's probably going to amount to concepts that he thinks he understands but he really doesn't.
For example, an idea in Quantum Physics is that all forces are actually fictitious due to being space time coordinates rather than being actual laws of the universe. So in that way, if Jiren just naturally had the ability to manipulate space time coordinates, you could argue that Jiren is in fact stronger than time. Now that I've said that, I'd like to debunk that notion with two simple counters.
Firstly, it is very well established within Dragon Ball Super that Jiren has no ability to manipulate space time coordinates, he's just very strong. The characters who could in theory manipulate such quantities are the characters that can actually stop time, like Guldo and Hit. And though Hit seems like he's a bit of proof for this idea, his ability to transmit forces at a distance seems to be just an extension of his general ability to manipulate time and space.
The other counter argument that I have, which is a bit less talked about but one worth understanding, this argument only applies if we assume that Dragon Ball operates on Quantum Mechanics. And, the short version of what I'm about to say, is that it doesn't.
You see, the thing to understand here is that Quantum Mechanics are things that you're only truly likely to understand to any significant degree if you either study them as part of your career or you have the free time to dedicate to doing so and actually dedicate yourself to doing so. The first doesn't apply to basically anyone in any creative field, and the second would only apply to Yoshihiro Togashi due to having gamed the system since around the Chapter Black arc of YuYu Hakusho.
Because of this it's fair to say that Dragon Ball doesn't operate on Quantum Mechanics. But then, what does it operate on? Well there are two different routes someone can take with a series if they don't want the hassle of Quantum states. The first is to use Classical Mechanics. What I mean by that is that the vast majority of series and even game engines operate on classical mechanics because, at the level that humans can perceive, quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are identical. The disparities only occur at very large quantities. For example in The Seven Deadly Sins, Ludoshel has the ability to move at the speed of light due to his grace Flash. If you don't want to take statements, just know I'm using them because speed is the hardest high end feat to prove in terms of environmental effects and also because the other three graces do exactly what the users say they do, so I'm inclined to believe they're being literal. With that in mind, nothing happens around Ludoshel when he moves at light speed simply because The Seven Deadly Sins operates on classical mechanics. The idea generally is that with a universe that operates on classical mechanics, everything around a light speed character or a fifty ton lifting character is the same as for a human who moves at regular speed and has regular strength, just with bigger numbers.
The other approach, which Toriyama seems to have taken unintentionally, is to just come up with your own set of universal laws that your story and world work within and simply do not contradict them. For example, in Hunter X Hunter, Nen allows a character to increase something's natural state, change the properties of their energy, turn their energy into physical substances, manipulate objects or people, fire their energy at a distance, and have a catchall power as their only power. If Hunter X Hunter were operating under any real world mechanics, Conjurers would be the Nen Users whose feats are the most impressive because they have enough energy to Conjure objects that until they become physical would require infinite energy. However, Hunter X Hunter operates on a completely different set of rules and its universe is consistent with them, so we just have to accept that Conjuration is a part of a potential Nen user's move list and move forward with that in mind.
Dragon Ball's laws of physics operate on the idea that you can do basically anything if you're strong enough. I'm not even kidding when I say that. Even when characters like Tien and Krillin have moves that can solve problems outright if used early enough in an Arc, and how characters like Cell, Buu, and Hit have so many moves at their disposal or so many unique moves at their disposal in Hit's case, that characters would surely have to strategize in order to win, and in the end they were all beaten by just raw power. The funny thing is that Buu's ability to convert someone into candy would be devastating in any other series. Not even kidding, how do you overcome that if he decides to use it on you? But Vegito just kept fighting in that state and Buu turned him back to normal for some reason even though he really didn't have to. He could've just Instant Transmissioned himself to the other side of the planet and blew it up before Vegito could catch up, because it's not like Vegito still had any of those abilities that require body movements. Hell, Monster Carrot in Dragon Ball had a similar ability to turn people into Carrots and even though he isn't as powerful as Super Buuhan I'm willing to believe that would also be devastating in any other series.
But all of these characters are beaten by pure overwhelming force, be it by Goku or Gohan or Jiren or someone else.
I've seen similar arguments, like Goku overcame Hit's time stop because he moved fast enough to break the time barrier, which is dumb because the time barrier is a DC idea and even if he did, in Quantum Mechanics, the Time Barrier is the speed of light so obviously Goku and everybody else has been moving slower than the speed of light until Goku turned Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken x10. Nice to know that Ludocel and Zeldris are faster than Super Buuhan and Golden Frieza. Obviously no power scaler wants to accept that though so we all just kind of have to agree that the Dragon Ball Universe bends to the will of whoever has the biggest ki number.
That's my rant for today, have a good day.
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