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- Feb 23, 2023
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The argument goes, "His bangs went up, therefore he turned SS2"
It's cap, because we saw Goku's bangs get erected like that when he powered up earlier in the episode:
No reason he'd turn SS2 just to stop himself from rolling over. His bangs only went up for an instant here, but that was only because he was powering up for an instant. If he powered up longer like when he blocked the slimeball, his bangs would have stayed up longer. That wouldn't make him SS2, though; he'd just be powering up. It's too coincidental that the animators would draw him looking like an SS2 in two scenes from the same episode and only one of them was intended to be SS2. He was using the same form in both scenes and we can see he was only powering up in SS1.
Furthermore, why would Goku turn SS2 just to block a slimeball? Why not just stay in SS2? "He wanted to conserve energy because Rilld could endlessly regenerate" is cap, because after he blocked the slimeball, he says:
He wants to hurry up and finish the fight, so you'd think he'd stay SS2 to quickly wipe out Rilld. At this point, Goku isn't aware of just how incredible Rilld's regeneration and control of the planet M2's metal are. He believes that he can quickly kill Rilld without destroying the planet itself, so there's no reason why he wouldn't have stayed SS2 to try it.
Furthermore, later in the same episode, we see Goku block a slime wave without powering up. His bangs didn't go up at all. This was after he blocked the slimeball:
There's no reason he'd turn SS2 to block the slimeball but stay SS1 to block the slime wave. It serves no purpose. You can bet your ass nothing in the episode's screenplay or storyboard said that he turned SS2. He was SS1 the entire time. The reason his bangs went up SS2-style was the animator(s) felt like drawing him like that and nothing more. Whenever Goku powers up in episode 20, his bangs go up. Both to stop himself from rolling and block the slimeball. That implies the animators drew him like that only because that was how they wanted him to look when powered up.
Granted, this is Toei we're talking about and they're not very logical writers. I don't deny that it's possible Goku went SS2 even though it would have served no purpose in the episode. But you'd think if Goku turned SS2 in this episode, or anywhere in GT for that matter, it'd be said in something official. Perfect Files says that the only time Goku turned SS2 was in the second opening. There is literally no official material that says Goku turned SS2 at any other point in GT. No guidebooks, model sheets, no trading cards, no posters, no storyboards, no gengas, no cels, nothing.
1996 Super Battle card screenshotting the episode:
1996 Super Battle card of Goku with SS2-like hair:
1996 Jumbo Carddass card of Goku with SS2-like hair:
2006 Seal Retsuden card screenshotting the episode:
None of these cards say anything about SS2. You can translate them with Google Lens if you're curious what they say.
It's true that now, you can find cards of SS2 GT Goku in Heroes and Dokkan Battle, but those games make crap up all the time (like SS3 Vegeeta, SS4 Vegett, LSS3 Broly, LSS4 Broly, etc), so they mean jack. Neither Heroes nor Dokkan Battle are saying that Goku used SS2 against Rilld; they just have SS2 GT Goku to sell more cards.
Anyway, one way to end this argument would be to pull up storyboards, gengas, or cels of the SS2-like frames and see what they say. I can't find any of the frames in question, but I have found some of basically the frame right after:
I have some of other frames from the episode, but not the SS2-like ones. I do think it's kinda interesting, though, that some frames from the episode's storyboard had Goku in base before it was corrected to SS1:
Anyway, Goku didn't turn SS2 against Rilld. The fact is that GT almost entirely skipped over that form. The animators drew him with SS2-like hair for a few frames of this episode, but he was only powering up. This can be concluded from how he powers up with SS2-like hair just to stop himself rolling; he wouldn't turn SS2 just to stop rolling. Likewise, he wouldn't turn SS2 just to block a slimeball, especially when we see him block a slime wave without even powering up as an SS1.
tl;dr Goku wasn't SS2 against Rilld.
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