The One Line in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero I Really Did Not Like, and Why It Shortchanges Jiren

The one thing about Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero that I really did not like is a single line from Vegeta claiming that Jiren was not actually that strong. The film is not perfect and I enjoyed it overall, but that line is the specific part of it I really despise. Spoilers for Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero follow.

Vegeta learning focus from Jiren is the part I actually like

During the film there is a sequence where Goku and Vegeta are training, and Vegeta is meditating. He reveals that the reason he is meditating is that during the Tournament of Power he picked up on the fact that Jiren was hyper focused and very much under control, and Vegeta wants to borrow that concept to make himself a better fighter.

That part of the story I actually like. Jiren was so calm for most of the story until near the end, when, in the anime version, he snaps and tries to kill Goku's friends. I like that Vegeta noticed that and was trying to learn from it. It is always a good thing when a character sees an enemy or a rival do something and tries to learn it, and Vegeta at one point even wants to learn Ultra Instinct as well. So Vegeta thinks this could help him be a better fighter.

Vegeta's claim that Jiren was not that strong contradicts the marketing

What I did not like, and remember this movie is written by Toriyama, is the line where Vegeta says that Jiren was actually not that strong, that he was not that far ahead of them, and that he just knew how to use his power. Not only does that somewhat nerf Jiren, which does bug me, but it contradicts pretty much all the marketing that was going on at that time.

Marketing for these films is always going to be overly hyped, and "the japanese love to overly hype things up." Whenever there is a new villain, they always say it is the strongest, the most powerful, the most dangerous. The original teaser for what would become Resurrection 'F', released in the summer of 2014, was simply called Dragon Ball Z 2015 and talked about the worst wish in history being made.

That worst wish turned out to be the resurrection of Frieza, which is not really the worst wish that was ever made. Frieza did not get his way, Goku and Vegeta still won, and the Earth was safe. It did get blown up in the film, but when Whis reversed time it pretty much did not happen.

Jiren was hyped as the mortal stronger than a God of Destruction

When Jiren was first being teased and later introduced, I was covering Dragon Ball Super news pretty much every single week, including all the different spoilers that came out in the magazines and all the different statements that were made. They really hyped Jiren up. Even before he appeared, he was billed as the so called mortal who is stronger than a God of Destruction, and that is who Jiren turned out to be.

They did not clarify which Gods of Destruction he was more powerful than, but back then we all assumed it meant Beerus, because he is the one we had become most familiar with in the series. That seems to have changed as time progressed, and now it has really gone downhill.

In the anime, Jiren manhandled Goku and Vegeta

Jiren was written quite differently in the anime versus the manga, and in the anime he appeared to be much more powerful. He was blocking Super Saiyan God Goku's attacks with one finger. Goku hit him with everything, including Kaio-ken Blue, and nothing seemed to affect him. As the fight went on, Goku and Vegeta together started to gain some leverage, but Jiren was still able to pretty much manhandle them for most of that fight.

As I have said before, Toriyama sends Toei Animation a manuscript. Perhaps Toriyama did not really give details on Jiren's power or focus too much on it, and Toei Animation possibly took liberties to make him stronger, then realized they had made him too strong and tried to scale him back. That is entirely possible. Either way, Jiren was a real threat to everyone in the Tournament of Power, and he was pretty much the strongest fighter there until Goku tapped into mastered or completed Ultra Instinct in Dragon Ball Super episode 129.

It reminds me of how Cell was treated in the Other World Tournament

Nerfing an old character is annoying in itself. I am one of those Dragon Ball fans who really disliked the disrespect the Toei writers showed Cell in the Other World Tournament. It took 70 something episodes of the Android arc to finally beat Cell, and then he was taken out in one shot in the Other World Tournament. That always bugged me.

I understand doing it to build up the next character, but it was done by Paikuhan, somebody who never became a mainstay in the series at all. In Jiren's case it bugs me because he was so heavily hyped up. Unless you lived through the Dragon Ball Super era as it was airing, you may not have the full context. For Goku and Vegeta to not be that much weaker than him, when we saw him handling both of them with ease, seems extremely unrealistic.

Super Hero's power scaling was already confusing

The power scaling in Super Hero is already kind of weird, because the film came out in the middle of the manga's Granolah arc, which was still ongoing at the time, and in it we see Goku and Vegeta reach new heights of power. So when Goku and Vegeta are referenced in the film, people have different opinions about which versions they mean: the ones from Broly, the ones from this film, or the ones from where the manga is at.

It is probably not the manga, but this film clearly takes place later in the timeline, past where they were in the Granolah arc at the time. You would think this version of Goku and Vegeta knows how to use Ultra Instinct and Ultra Ego effectively, but since that arc was not over yet, we did not know what the final status of these characters would be by the time it ends.

Rewriting Jiren's strength feels like cheap writing

"i'm not even a huge jiren fan," but this is how it should be. It is one thing if our heroes overcome the wall that was Jiren through training, will and desire. It is another thing to write in that he was never that strong, when Jiren's character for the majority of that arc was entirely focused on his strength. It is a very odd line, and I am not sure what Toriyama was thinking when he wrote it. Perhaps Toei Animation overhyped Jiren just to get eyeballs on the product.

But given how long it took for Jiren to be beaten and how impressive he looked, and "you have to remember how awesome he looked in all those episodes," it feels like something they came up with out of the blue. "it feels like cheap writing to be honest." It would have been better if Vegeta had said he wanted Jiren's focus and control without adding that Jiren was not much stronger than them. Becoming a better fighter by learning from your opponents is one thing; claiming an opponent was never that strong, when you know full well he was, is something else.

There are a few parts of the film I did not like, but this is the one I really did not like. Jiren will probably get stronger, but I am not sure that fixes this line. It reminds me of the line in Resurrection 'F' where Frieza said he could hit a certain power level, even though that was something he had overcome back on Namek. It feels like Toriyama writes these things and none of the Toei editors step in to say it is inaccurate or makes no sense. Clearly the Japanese do not care about stuff like this; it is all about entertainment.

Did Vegeta's line about Jiren bother you, or do you think it holds up?