- Joined
- May 31, 2015
- Messages
- 27,967
So, the general consensus seems to be that Gohan had the edge over Dabura in their fight and Dabura is weaker than him. After looking things over, however, I'd say that's far from the case and Dabura is a lot more powerful than given credit.
First, the most obvious evidence for this would be how he treats Gohan later on:
Chapter: 459 (DBZ 265), P2.2-3
Badidi: “How about it, Dabra? Just to be sure, do you have confidence that you can defeat that Earthling [Gohan]?”
Dabra: “Naturally. I fought him a little bit before, after all. There’s no doubt that I can take care of trash like that.”
It's easy to write this off as Dabura being arrogant, but there's a large difference between arrogance and complete stupidity. If Gohan was indeed capable of keeping up with Dabura at the full extent of his effort, Dabura would know and wouldn't feel the need to be so overconfident.
Next, we'll look at the fight itself. Throughout most of it, Dabura has a smug expression and is never shocked at Gohan's ability to counter his moves or survive clean hits from him. We see this with his smile after Gohan survives his Evil Impulse:
And his calm expression when throwing away his broken sword:
In fact, it would be accurate to say that he was far more composed than Gohan was throughout the entire fight. Gohan's aura was flaring constantly and he seemed very serious throughout the fight, with it later being revealed he'd already used up a lot of stamina from it (something even more relevant when remembering the benefits that came from Gohan and his father mastering the SSJ state). Whilst Dabura seemed to be annoyed at some points, it was never to the extent of desperation or tension and would lead me to believe he wasn't giving it his best.
The most obvious counter to this will be him using his spit, but it's important to consider the context on that. Dabura was distracted when focusing on what Vegeta was saying which delayed his reaction to Gohan charging at him. Furthermore, and more importantly, he'd know he'd have to face two other opponents after Gohan and had a decent idea of where their strength would be from Goku's fight with Yakon, the current fight against Gohan and Vegeta's comments. All that would seem to point towards Dabura only testing Gohan or conserving his Ki for the fights to come, with the stone spit being due to Gohan being expendable when he could still draw energy from his 2 other targets, and let's not forget Babidi estimated the damage dealt to 3 base Saiyans alone ought to be enough. Dabura could definitely risk taking out a Super Saiyan too early and still having two to damage.
On the subject of damage, there's of course Babidi saying Dabura wasn't dealing enough damage, for which it's important to take into account the first statement I posted. Dabura only fought Gohan for a short amount of time and the statement would recontextualise this as Dabura gauging his opponent and toying with him. Combine this with Dabura having worn down Gohan so quickly and being confident in taking down a rejuvenated Gohan and the gap between them seems fairly evident. It's also worth remembering Goku even reminded Gohan to utilise his rage and Gohan was trying to do so before the battle, suggesting Gohan wouldn't be able to defeat Dabura without tapping into a rage boost. We even get a decent feat from Dabura at the time with him easily getting Babidi out of the way of a Kamehameha that was at a very close distance to them. All that said, it seems Dabura was indeed noticeably above Gohan, probably by a greater gap than Suppressed Perfect Cell had over Goku when considering how one-sided the stamina loss was.
With that out of the way, the question turns to how strong is Dabura at his full power? Well, it's difficult to say, though Goku VS Yakon may give us an idea. Dabura was confident in facing 3 fighters that could each have up to 3000 kili and Goku was flaring his aura as a SSJ. As we saw in the Cell Arc, the mastery of the Super Saiyan form doesn't even display the user's aura when they use 50%, only when they're using their full power.
Some of you may be asking things such as "If that's the case, is SSJ just a 4x multiplier in the Boo Arc?" I wouldn't necessarily say so as that would be working on the assumption kili works on a similar standard to battle power measurements, which wouldn't necessarily have to be true when battle powers don't even scale linearly with actual energy values (eg. A planet buster like Freeza being little more than worth 100,000 humans when the energy of a million humans still wouldn't accomplish Piccolo Daimao's city busting). Kili and battle powers are simply two completely different systems, and attempts to try and quantify them in official sources have always been wrought with errors. Take into account the V-Jump stating 1 kili = 50,000BP yet the Daizenshuu doubles down on the anime stating that 200 kili is required to destroy a planet, something Saiyan Arc characters are capable of. They're simply two different systems that can't be scaled between each other.
That said, regardless of where you stand on what form Gohan was using, Dabura's full power should be far above Boo Arc SSJ Goku, which lines up well with how his future self in Super was capable of overpowering a SSJ Trunks who's base self could lift the Z-Sword for easier than Boo Arc Goku could do. So yeah, Dabura being at least around Perfect Cell's full power seems pretty fair, whether or not Gohan was a SS2 against him.
First, the most obvious evidence for this would be how he treats Gohan later on:
Chapter: 459 (DBZ 265), P2.2-3
Badidi: “How about it, Dabra? Just to be sure, do you have confidence that you can defeat that Earthling [Gohan]?”
Dabra: “Naturally. I fought him a little bit before, after all. There’s no doubt that I can take care of trash like that.”
It's easy to write this off as Dabura being arrogant, but there's a large difference between arrogance and complete stupidity. If Gohan was indeed capable of keeping up with Dabura at the full extent of his effort, Dabura would know and wouldn't feel the need to be so overconfident.
Next, we'll look at the fight itself. Throughout most of it, Dabura has a smug expression and is never shocked at Gohan's ability to counter his moves or survive clean hits from him. We see this with his smile after Gohan survives his Evil Impulse:
And his calm expression when throwing away his broken sword:
In fact, it would be accurate to say that he was far more composed than Gohan was throughout the entire fight. Gohan's aura was flaring constantly and he seemed very serious throughout the fight, with it later being revealed he'd already used up a lot of stamina from it (something even more relevant when remembering the benefits that came from Gohan and his father mastering the SSJ state). Whilst Dabura seemed to be annoyed at some points, it was never to the extent of desperation or tension and would lead me to believe he wasn't giving it his best.
The most obvious counter to this will be him using his spit, but it's important to consider the context on that. Dabura was distracted when focusing on what Vegeta was saying which delayed his reaction to Gohan charging at him. Furthermore, and more importantly, he'd know he'd have to face two other opponents after Gohan and had a decent idea of where their strength would be from Goku's fight with Yakon, the current fight against Gohan and Vegeta's comments. All that would seem to point towards Dabura only testing Gohan or conserving his Ki for the fights to come, with the stone spit being due to Gohan being expendable when he could still draw energy from his 2 other targets, and let's not forget Babidi estimated the damage dealt to 3 base Saiyans alone ought to be enough. Dabura could definitely risk taking out a Super Saiyan too early and still having two to damage.
On the subject of damage, there's of course Babidi saying Dabura wasn't dealing enough damage, for which it's important to take into account the first statement I posted. Dabura only fought Gohan for a short amount of time and the statement would recontextualise this as Dabura gauging his opponent and toying with him. Combine this with Dabura having worn down Gohan so quickly and being confident in taking down a rejuvenated Gohan and the gap between them seems fairly evident. It's also worth remembering Goku even reminded Gohan to utilise his rage and Gohan was trying to do so before the battle, suggesting Gohan wouldn't be able to defeat Dabura without tapping into a rage boost. We even get a decent feat from Dabura at the time with him easily getting Babidi out of the way of a Kamehameha that was at a very close distance to them. All that said, it seems Dabura was indeed noticeably above Gohan, probably by a greater gap than Suppressed Perfect Cell had over Goku when considering how one-sided the stamina loss was.
With that out of the way, the question turns to how strong is Dabura at his full power? Well, it's difficult to say, though Goku VS Yakon may give us an idea. Dabura was confident in facing 3 fighters that could each have up to 3000 kili and Goku was flaring his aura as a SSJ. As we saw in the Cell Arc, the mastery of the Super Saiyan form doesn't even display the user's aura when they use 50%, only when they're using their full power.
Some of you may be asking things such as "If that's the case, is SSJ just a 4x multiplier in the Boo Arc?" I wouldn't necessarily say so as that would be working on the assumption kili works on a similar standard to battle power measurements, which wouldn't necessarily have to be true when battle powers don't even scale linearly with actual energy values (eg. A planet buster like Freeza being little more than worth 100,000 humans when the energy of a million humans still wouldn't accomplish Piccolo Daimao's city busting). Kili and battle powers are simply two completely different systems, and attempts to try and quantify them in official sources have always been wrought with errors. Take into account the V-Jump stating 1 kili = 50,000BP yet the Daizenshuu doubles down on the anime stating that 200 kili is required to destroy a planet, something Saiyan Arc characters are capable of. They're simply two different systems that can't be scaled between each other.
That said, regardless of where you stand on what form Gohan was using, Dabura's full power should be far above Boo Arc SSJ Goku, which lines up well with how his future self in Super was capable of overpowering a SSJ Trunks who's base self could lift the Z-Sword for easier than Boo Arc Goku could do. So yeah, Dabura being at least around Perfect Cell's full power seems pretty fair, whether or not Gohan was a SS2 against him.
