How Granolah Became the Strongest in the Universe in Dragon Ball Super

Granolah is the bloodthirsty Cerealian warrior, the survivor of a race destroyed by the Saiyans and Frieza, who wants revenge and wants to become the strongest in the universe by any means necessary. He accomplishes exactly that during the Granolah Arc in Dragon Ball Super, and I want to walk through the incredible power and feats that got him there.

Granolah did it his way, and his way was to cheat basically. He became the strongest in the universe not from having some kind of secret potential locked inside of him that he had to discover, and not by intense training year after year like a lot of the main characters did. Instead, Granolah found the Cerealian dragon balls in a very convoluted way, and I still hate that chapter, and was able to wish himself to be the strongest in the universe.

The wish to Toranbo cost Granolah most of his lifespan

Granolah became the strongest through the dragon of the Cerealian balls, Toranbo, but it came at a cost. Granolah was so bloodthirsty for revenge that this cost did not really affect him. The cost was that by becoming the strongest mortal in the universe, not including Gods, he leapfrogged everyone in the Dragon Ball story up to that point. Toranbo did tell Granolah that he could be made stronger, but he could not be made stronger than his latent potential would allow.

Granolah basically took a shortcut, took a warp whistle, because had he trained and done it the right way, or had the anger boost that Gohan has, he would not have had to make this wish. But the wish let him skip all of that, and it came at a cost: his lifespan was shortened from 150 years to only three. In three years, Granolah is supposed to die. Toranbo explains that he does this by multiplying Granolah's current strength by condensing all the power he would have had throughout the entirety of his lifetime. Granolah was willing to trade living a long life just to get revenge on Frieza.

As a result of making that wish, Granolah had some strange side effects. His hair grew long, almost like a Super Saiyan 3, because his time track had been shut down from 150 years down to three, so it is almost like he never got a haircut, though he does get one right after this.

Black Frieza trained outside the wish's reach, which is why he still surpassed Granolah

At that point Granolah tries to find Frieza to begin his revenge, but Frieza was nowhere to be found. We would not discover this until the very end of the arc, but Frieza was training in an alternate dimension that resembled the room of spirit and time, accessing the Time Chamber from a different gateway point inside that dimension, the dimension of no time, and training for ten years to become black Frieza.

Black Frieza is significantly stronger than even Granolah, and the reason Granolah did not get wished to be stronger than him is that black Frieza was already training in that other dimension, which is not part of Universe 7. Because of that, the wish only affected the mortal realm from Universe 7. Had Granolah made the wish when Frieza was not in the chamber, he would have probably been stronger than black Frieza, but maybe his life would be shorter than three years, maybe one year or a few months. We may never know.

The Cerealian dragon Toranbo is a big mystery when it comes to granting wishes, because he is the first dragon in the history of Dragon Ball, including GT, that grants wishes at a cost. From what I've seen, usually dragons just grant the wish, or sometimes they say they cannot grant it because the person the wish is being made upon is stronger than whoever made the dragon balls, in which case the wish might not work. Toranbo has a lot of unanswered questions we may never get answered.

Granolah's rematch with gas and his new arsenal of moves

There is a mini fight between Granolah and gas, and this time Granolah wins, fully accepting that the wish was granted properly and that he was way stronger than he had ever been or thought he would become. Granolah is a quick learner, and while he may not have been able to truly master his new body right away, he did it quicker than many expected given that huge leap in power. At this point he still had not used his full power. We do not really see Granolah get tested until his battle with Goku and Vegeta.

At that stage Goku had learned to tap into Ultra Instinct at will, including the Ultra Instinct speed tag tactic while still using Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Blue forms. On the Vegeta side, he was training with Beerus and learned a new transformation called Ultra Ego. Granolah demonstrates an unbelievable fighting acumen during the fight with both of them. It turns out the wish to the dragons not only made him stronger but gave him a brand new arsenal of moves, including cloning himself to fool Goku and Vegeta, and a form of magic resembling hakai but more of a mortal version, which I am calling entropy.

He also gained better senses, and thanks to his Cerealian blood he could use sniper like pinpoint key blasts meant to take out pressure points and hurt an opponent at a specific point on the body. He does this numerous times and knocks Goku out using one of these techniques. With his right eye evolved, his accuracy triples and he gains the ability to spot an opponent's weak points, making him a tactically dangerous fighter along the lines of Hit, except even stronger. Hit could do things like this, but Goku was able to surpass him easily. Granolah is a different story, and he is fighting a Goku tapping into Ultra Instinct levels of speed and keeping up.

Granolah blasted a hole through Ultra Ego Vegeta's hakai style attack

During the fight with Ultra Ego Vegeta, Granolah was able to evolve his right eye further, though I am not sure I want to call it a transformation since all he really did was unlock more of his power. Ultra Ego Vegeta did have the advantage for some of the fight because of his incredible tenacity and the fact that the Ultra Ego form can absorb hits and turn them into power, though some have debated that this might be a combination of Ultra Ego and the four spirit fission technique Vegeta learned from the Yardrats. I cannot confirm or deny that.

The most impressive thing Granolah did during that fight was when Ultra Ego Vegeta performed his version of a God of Destruction hakai Big Bang Attack, a giant ball made purely of hakai energy. Hakai energy at max power kills you if you touch it, and Beerus stated in Dragon Ball Super that he has the ability to wipe someone away so they do not even become a ghost, literally ending their existence. I am not sure if Vegeta learned that part of hakai yet, but Granolah was able to blast a hole through the ball of hakai with his own energy. That is how strong he is, able to even manipulate God techniques to a degree.

Toyotaro ranked Granolah above Goku and Vegeta before gas took the top spot

After the fight between Granolah and the Saiyans, we discover that Elec was able to gather the dragon balls again and this time wish for gas to become the strongest. Gas enters the battlefield, now becoming the true strongest over Granolah. Toyotaro himself said in an interview that during this arc the order of strongest mortals in the universe was, at number one, Granolah, and then slots two and three went to Goku and Vegeta, though he did not explain which of them went where. Now that gas has had his wish granted, gas is number one and Granolah is number two.

Vegeta was quick to notice that Granolah was way better at using his enhanced body from the dragon balls than gas was. There is clearly a period where you have to get accustomed to new power, and Granolah had been in his body being the strongest in the universe longer than gas had. As the fight progressed gas did get better and better, but his life was also draining, much like Granolah's, though at a faster rate because gas was tapping into this power and elevating it more and more during his battles with Goku and the others.

Granolah's final role: teaming with Goku against gas before black Frieza killed him

Granolah still plays a part in the finale of the fight, because he and Goku together worked to blast gas and almost finish him off. They pulled off the best move they could when Goku left his body and created that new giant Ultra Instinct hologram, launching himself up while Granolah fired a blast at pinpoint accuracy and hit gas to defeat him, until gas powered up again and was ultimately killed by black Frieza.

Granolah's time in the manga may have come and gone, and I am not sure if we will ever see him again. But prior to the gas wish and the black Frieza reveal, he was the strongest in the universe, especially once he evolved both of his eyes and tapped into full power to defeat Goku and Vegeta. Neither of those two really got a win in this arc, and I find that fascinating compared to other arcs.

Would you have made the trade Granolah made, giving up most of a 150 year lifespan for the power to get revenge on Frieza?