Was 18 holding back when fighting Goten and Trunks as Mighty Mask?

[ahill1]

Was she? Or do you think she was going all out?

Main gripe I've with her going all out is that she still seems easy going when she sees they went SSJ and became considerably more powerful. If they were already fighting almost evenly with her unrestricted powers, wouldn't going levels above with SSJ be a reason for her to start worrying, which she didn't until she saw their blast fired, while held back, was slightly above her? She should have realized that sooner.

 

[Dagon]

I think yes, she was trying to win. She may not have a full understanding of how SSJ works as in the Cell saga she could not sense ki. Might not sense ki even still in the manga but she sure does in the anime when Majin Vegeta appears.

As for feeling their energy or judging their power somehow, mastered SSJs can be suppressed while transformed, so it is very plausible that when Goten and Trunks transformed their ki signature did not change much, and their power would only become apparent when they fired the ki blast.

 

[SSJ2]

It doesn't make sense for her not to be going all out. Sure, you could argue that she wasn't initially as she was feeling out her opponent, but it would have been simple to make an adjustment to easily beat Mighty Mask if she wanted to.

 

[Natasha Romanoff]

Realistically, she could have. Krillin told her to not kill the participants which she agree even before the fights started.

Spoiler

However, I think that people would also make the absolute impossible to say no and that she didn't held back so to justify their scalling. On top of being the actual way to have a notion and measure the kids' power.

 

[GreatSaiyaman123]

Yep. As you said, she wasn’t threatened to see the boys turn SSJ before the blast. And it’s not like the boys stood a chance anyway. They never landed a single hit.

 

[VampireWicked]

Yup, give the situation she was holding back.

 

[Dagon]

More evidence that people don't change.