Super Saiyan Rage Explained: Why Trunks's Blue Aura Form Is Still a Mystery

The Goku Black arc of Dragon Ball Super introduced us to Super Saiyan Rosé, but that wasn't the only new form we saw in the anime. The next one after Rosé is Trunks's Super Saiyan Rage, a form that is very mysterious, and I'm going to do my best to give you all the information I have on this transformation.

Super Saiyan Rage first appeared in Dragon Ball Super episode 61

Super Saiyan Rage is an anime only form, and only Trunks has been able to do it. The first time we saw it was in Dragon Ball Super episode 61, during the fight with Zamasu. Trunks began to power up his energy, and at first it looked like he was going to go Super Saiyan 2. As the episode went on, I thought that maybe he had tapped into god ki and could do Blue, but it wasn't quite that either.

From appearance, this form is basically a Super Saiyan transformation, but there's a blue aura that surrounds Trunks and goes along with it. It's a very unique aura, and it's one that's exclusive to this transformation.

The blue aura points to god ki, but Trunks never trained with a god

The blue aura in this form would imply that there's some form of god ki here. The problem is that we've never seen Trunks train with any god, and neither the anime nor the manga version of this arc ever states that he did. The only exception is that he got brief help from the Supreme Kai against Babidi and Dabura.

I find it very unlikely that the Supreme Kai taught Trunks how to use god ki, because why didn't he teach Goku and Vegeta all the way back in DBZ? That never made sense to me. The first time we ever saw any form of god ki was in Battle of Gods, so to me it seems like the Supreme Kai either doesn't have enough knowledge of god ki to teach Trunks or thought it wasn't necessary for him as a warrior. There is a possibility that the Supreme Kai taught Trunks off screen, but we've never actually seen it and it has not been stated.

Rage as the trigger is odd, since Super Saiyan forms already come from rage

Multiple sources, whether you go by the episode or read up on it, state that this form is triggered by Trunks's rage. The only thing I find weird about that is that every Super Saiyan form is triggered by rage except for the god forms. We've seen Goku rage out, and we've seen Gohan rage out and tap into new forms, yet Trunks found something totally different.

At one point, his irises and pupils even turned white, which is similar to the Legendary Super Saiyan form Broly used in the old DBZ movies. At the time I put this guide together, nobody else in Dragon Ball had used this transformation, and we hadn't seen it again since Trunks used it.

Trunks's spirit energy has fans believing the form mixes in genki

You also have to remember that shortly after this, Trunks was able to gather genki for his spirit bomb sword. The fact that he could gather genki has led a lot of fans to believe that this transformation has genki in it. It's sort of like some kind of mixture of rage and spirit energy, which is reminiscent of what Goku did in the Super Android 13 movie, but once again, it's a different form.

Trunks was able to hold his own against Goku Black and Future Zamasu. That tells me this form, power wise, seems to be relative to Super Saiyan Blue, because Trunks wouldn't have been able to fight those two if it wasn't. That's even more evidence that there might be some kind of god ki here, and that somehow Trunks was able to combine Super Saiyan 2 with god ki. Does that make the most sense? I don't know.

My best theory is a hybrid Saiyan form, but almost nothing official exists

One of the problems with this form is that we know almost nothing about it. Even though it's been discussed in video games, there's almost no information about it, and that's why I kind of postponed covering it. I had been waiting years for some kind of guidebook or interview that goes into how Trunks used this form, how he was able to tap into it, and who taught it to him.

We can theorize all day, and I feel like I've given you a lot of the popular theories about where this form came from. But because Goku and Vegeta never used it, it makes you wonder if it's a Trunks exclusive form, and if so, whether it's a form that hybrid Saiyans do. Could this be a form where a Saiyan who isn't full blooded was somehow able to tap into god ki with Super Saiyan 2? That's my best theory on it.

The form doesn't appear in the manga, except that Toyotaro did draw it for an alternate cover. Nobody even talked about it when Trunks did it in the series, and nobody explained it, not Whis, not anyone. So we're left just kind of shrugging our shoulders. I'm doing this transformation guide in chronological order based on appearance, and this one was next. If someday we do get a guidebook or an interview, I'd probably come back with an updated version, because there's not much here about this form and all we can do is theorize. The next entry in the guide was set to cover completed Blue, a form with tons of stuff to talk about.

Where do you think Trunks got Super Saiyan Rage?