Some of you reading this will know exactly what I’m talking about. But here’s some context for those who don’t: In the Pokémon video game franchise, the Pokémon have stats that are used to determine their attack power and defensive capabilities. However, the attack and defense stats are split between physical and special. The attacks themselves are thus also split between these categories and actual damage dealt/received are calculated with the respective stats.

For example, a Pidgey would receive more damage when hit with a Hyper Beam than when hit with a Giga Impact. Both moves have a power of 150, but Hyper Beam is a special attack whereas the latter is physical.

So why do I think Dragon Ball has a similar phenomenon?

In the world of Dragon Ball, all the characters have Ki, which is this sort of life energy they use to do cool things like shoot energy blasts and fly. During fights, characters will frequently use physical attacks and ki attacks.

Dragon Ball and its associated continuations is a series famous for its somewhat absurd power scaling. Part of that is due to the inherent problem of trying to portray changes in character strength in a visual medium. How strong we as the audience perceive a character to be is mostly based on how strong they are in respect to other characters, not the magnitude of things they can blow up on the manga panel/animation clip.

But even with this in mind, we can notice a discrepancy in how characters react due to physical attacks versus how they react due to Ki attacks. Take for example Master Roshi blowing up the moon with a Kamehameha.

If we take that at face value, that energy blast would have been equivalent to around “600 billion 50-megaton nuclear bombs” according to Wikipedia. But later down the line, a much stronger Goku used a Kamehameha against King Piccolo and the blast barely scratched him. But previously in the same fight, kicks and punches from Goku at the appear to hurt or at least faze King Piccolo. Are we supposed to interpret each of Goku’s punches and kicks as having the force of 600 billion 50-megaton nuclear bombs?

Now you can make the argument that we can’t take the moon-destroying feat literally since that segment was still written relatively early on when Dragon Ball was more of a gag manga than a serious action series. We can chalk it up to being a narrative contrivance. But I can simply revisit this argument in any future fight that features Ki attacks that are on such a large scale.

For example in the Saiyan saga, Vegeta threatens to blow up the Earth with his garlic gun. Goku’s Kamehameha was able to overpower it and then in return land a direct blow on Vegeta himself. Vegeta survives this. If we take that at face value it means Vegeta can survive an energy blast that is in the nonillions of joules.

So if we do a little reductio ad absurdum, both fighters must have physical strength comparable to that feat in order for any physical confrontation to make any sense. Otherwise, each punch and kick would have to feel like being smacked with a feather in comparison. But that’s not what we see.

We repeatedly see the characters feeling visible pain and experiencing implied damage from attacks such as getting punched through mountains. Which don’t get me wrong, must hurt a lot. But is it reasonable that someone who can survive a planet destroying attack should even flinch at these?

Let’s fast forward several years

The image above shows a picture of Goku in his God form getting slammed into the ground by Broly. They are in a polar region on planet Earth, so presumably the ground is made of ice. Broly slams Goku with enough force to create a crater from the impact. Goku winces in visible pain. Keep in mind this is Goku in his GOD FORM. And at this point in the story Goku is canonically millions of times stronger than he was back during the Vegeta fight.

It doesn’t really matter in context that Broly is super strong and whatnot, the ground should break like paper mache. And yet. Goku screams out in pain.

The prevailing theory is that in the Dragon Ball universe, Ki users will supplement their defenses and endurance with Ki. Which is how they survive absurdly powerful attacks that they don’t seem like they should be able to. A good example that supports this theory was when Vegeta asked Krillin to blast a hole through him during the Frieza Saga.

Krillin presumably isn’t stronger than Vegeta. So the only way this should have been possible would have been if Vegeta lowered his defenses to allow this. Given that we know characters are capable of controlling their Ki, it’s likely that he was able to drop his guard.

So in conclusion, Dragon Ball characters are like Pokémon basically. Not really. But you get the idea.