The Genkidamas used on Vegeta & Freeza

[Natasha Romanoff]

Do you think one of the reasons on why those attacks failed is due to just collecting a little bit of genki? Or just to show how extremely durable they were?

Goku and Kaiosama both assured that the Genkidama would kill Vegeta, but it ended failing on killing an heavily injured Vegeta, even then, Vegeta believed that he was going to die.

Against Freeza, Goku was making sure of gathering enough energy to kill him, and initially Kaiosama thought that Goku has defeated Freeza, even though, it turned out that Freeza actually survived, but, as well as Vegeta, he thought he was going to die.

What would be a good explanation on why the Genkidama was useless on both occasions?

 

[SSJ2]

Don't forget that the Genki Dama against Vegeta was only a sliver of the original one. I don't recall it being promised that it would kill Vegeta, but Goku thought it would be enough to beat him.

I guess it just speaks to their overall durability. Vegeta had demonstrated insane levels of durability during the entire fight. Freeza not only survived the Genki Dama, but survived getting cut in half and hit directly by a Kamehameha. He then managed to survive the explosion of Namek.

Both of these guys displayed top level durability.

 

[Natasha Romanoff]

Don't forget that the Genki Dama against Vegeta was only a sliver of the original one. I don't recall it being promised that it would kill Vegeta, but Goku thought it would be enough to beat him.

I guess it just speaks to their overall durability. Vegeta had demonstrated insane levels of durability during the entire fight. Freeza not only survived the Genki Dama, but survived getting cut in half and hit directly by a Kamehameha. He then managed to survive the explosion of Namek.

Both of these guys displayed top level durability.

Even then, during the fight, Goku seems to be willing to kill Vegeta, also words such as "destroy" are used to describe the situation:

Spoiler

On top of that, the Genkidama seems to be implied just to be 50% of that:

Chapter: 237 (DBZ 43), P1.3, 3.6
Context: after giving Kuririn the Genkidama
Goku: "Genki-Dama. Yes, ki that I gathered bit by bit from all over the Earth. About half of it got away, but I think there's enough to beat him as he is now. [] Do it, Kuririn! Gohan couldn't control such power."

Goku just regretted his decision of killing Vegeta after everything happened, because he considered as an unfair win and wanted to beat him on his own.

Even then, it doesn't make sense for Goku to practice and learn this technique just to fail on his estimations twice.

 

[GreatSaiyaman123]

I can see Freeza surviving the Genki-Dama just because he's tough, but Vegeta surviving is nuts. That Genki-Dama was supposed to kill Oozaru Vegeta, but a Vegeta over 10x weaker was still capable of fighting. People talk about Vegeta surviving the Kamehameha x4, but the Genki-Dama should've pulverized him.

 

[Yoshi]

I can see Freeza surviving the Genki-Dama just because he's tough, but Vegeta surviving is nuts. That Genki-Dama was supposed to kill Oozaru Vegeta, but a Vegeta over 10x weaker was still capable of fighting. People talk about Vegeta surviving the Kamehameha x4, but the Genki-Dama should've pulverized him.

Even Krillin was like...

"Can't anything kill him?"