Dragon Ball: Did Super Saiyan God Form Turn Goku & Vegeta Into Real Gods?
The power rankings in the "Dragon Ball" franchise can be incredibly complicated and hard to parse out. Every time a character has seemingly achieved the most powerful form imaginable, someone inevitably reaches an even higher power level, allowing the neverending cycle of battle to continue onward into infinity.
No transformation shows this trend more than Super Saiyan God, a form that's been achieved by Goku (Masako Nozawa/Sean Schemmel) and Vegeta (Ryo Horikawa/Christopher Sabat) in "Dragon Ball Super." However, considering how intense it is for a character to literally go God Mode, some fans have been wondering what that actually means. Have Goku and Vegeta ascended to true godhood?
Well, the short answer is no. While both Saiyans have achieved a level of power through their rigorous training and unmatched stamina that has the equivalent power of a god, they turn back into their standard forms and function as they did before the transformation when their powers run out. This also means that the duo are ultimately mortal, no matter how many times they come back from the dead. All the same, even if Goku and Vegeta aren't deities themselves quite yet, that could change somewhere down the line.
There's a reason why there are so many gods in Dragon Ball Super
All throughout "Dragon Ball Super," characters like the God of Destruction, Beerus (Koichi Yamadera/Jason Douglas), and Whis (Masakazu Morita/Ian Sinclair), his attending angel, have shown themselves to be the most formidable and dangerous forces in the expanded universe of the franchise. However, as with any ultra-strong character in anime, at some point, these two must also be defeated.
"Dragon Ball" has always been Goku's story. Over the course of the franchise, he has risen to the occasion to conquer countless seemingly unbeatable foes like Frieza (Ryusei Nakao/Linda Young) and Majin Buu (Kozo Shioya/Scott McNeil). Meanwhile, Vegeta has generally been right behind him in terms of these desperate surges of power. With this in mind, why even introduce god-level characters if they will be beaten by the protagonists?
Naturally, considering the trajectory of "Dragon Ball Super," this means that even though Goku and Vegeta may never be official gods in their universe, they may one day grow strong enough to defeat god-level foes. Still, only the stakes of such a battle will be able to demonstrate whether the two top-tier Saiyans have what it takes to take over the top spots themselves. After all, given their personalities and drives, Goku could easily be the angelic attendant to Vegeta's God of destruction at the endpoint of the series.