Why Vegeta Turned to Stone After His Final Explosion Against Majin Buu

Vegeta's Final Explosion led to one of the most emotional moments in Dragon Ball Z: his atonement and sacrifice against Majin Buu, a move he used to take himself out and try, unsuccessfully, to take Buu out with him. I'd call it a very interesting kamikaze style technique with the biggest blast radius of any move in Vegeta's arsenal, and perhaps the most dangerous one.

This is the fourth Vegeta technique in my technique guide, after the Galick Gun, the Big Bang Attack and the Final Flash. Further down, I'll also get into the question that puzzled me for years: why Vegeta's body is left behind as a stone statue after the blast.

The Final Explosion takes the Final Flash one step further by spending Vegeta's life force

These technique guide entries are meant to build on each other. My Kamehameha breakdown explains how ki manipulation and ki energy work, and without that it may be hard to understand how Vegeta's moves work, from the Galick Gun to the Big Bang Attack to the Final Flash. That order matters here because of something I discussed with the Final Flash.

When Vegeta gathers energy for his Final Flash, he uses every possible molecule of energy in his body, with the exception of his own life force, to deliver an attack that powerful. The Final Explosion does almost the same thing, except it includes Vegeta's life force. It's a kamikaze self destruction technique that appears to be more powerful than 10 nuclear warheads. Of course, this is Dragon Ball, and that kind of thing can happen here, but it's pretty powerful, with the biggest blast radius of any technique ever.

This move is meant to take you out. When you do it, you die, because you're using your life energy. Dragon Ball Super kind of modified that, and I'll come back to it below, but first I want to focus on the Dragon Ball Z version, which is what Majin Vegeta used to atone for his sins against Majin Buu.

Vegeta used the move to atone for unleashing Majin Buu

Majin Buu was the creature Vegeta and Goku had unleashed upon the world because of Vegeta's own selfish motives: he wanted to fight Goku with a stronger body than before. At this point in the series it had been seven years since the Cell saga. Vegeta had already mastered Super Saiyan 2, and with the upgrade he got from becoming a Majin, he was able to go toe to toe with Goku in an epic rematch of their fight from the Saiyan saga.

By this point, though, Vegeta realized he'd made a huge mistake in unleashing Buu. The lives of everyone on Earth, including his own son Trunks and his wife Bulma, were in danger, and Vegeta felt he had to do the right thing: do what he could against Majin Buu and take him out. The problem was that Vegeta was nowhere near as powerful as Buu. Because of all the guilt and remorse he felt for his sins, he felt this was the only way out, taking out Buu and taking himself out along with him.

Vegeta miscalculated how far beyond Cell Majin Buu's regeneration was

During the conflict with the newly released Buu, Vegeta quickly realized that Buu had a fearsome regeneration technique, even more potent than Cell's. Because of that, he concluded the only way to wipe Buu out was to destroy every single particle of his body so he couldn't regenerate. Much like with the Final Flash, Vegeta felt that even though he couldn't compete with Buu blow for blow, channeling his life energy together with all the energy in his body could create an explosion big enough that Buu wouldn't be able to regenerate, saving the Earth from this evil threat.

But Vegeta badly miscalculated. Majin Buu's regeneration was several levels above Cell's. Cell was a biomechanical artificial human, while Buu was a demon made up of magical body parts, magical ooze if you want to call it that, which is sort of a spiritual type of thing. Because of that, Vegeta's incredible power with this explosion still wasn't enough to actually kill Buu. He blew him up into a zillion pieces, but he couldn't finish him. If you want the reference point, it's Dragon Ball manga chapter 467, which correlates with Dragon Ball Z TV episode 237.

This isn't the first kamikaze type move in Dragon Ball. The Saibamen and Chiaotzu both did very similar self destruct techniques earlier in the series. This one just happens to be the most powerful, probably because Vegeta did it at a point when he was multiple times more powerful than he'd been back in the Saiyan arc. And since Buu survived, the sacrifice really was for nothing, except for Vegeta's atonement of his own sins.

Vegeta turned to stone because his whole body was converted into energy

The question people have had for years, including me, because I didn't even know what it meant when I first saw these episodes, is why Vegeta turns to stone when he does this move. After the explosion, a stone statue of Vegeta is just floating in the air before it falls.

Here's what happened. Vegeta expelled every particle of energy in his body, stopping just short of his own soul, and his entire body was converted into energy and expelled outward in a suicide blast. He pretty much dried up, and that's why that stone, mysterious figure appears after he's dead.

If you go back to the original roots of this, there are tons of references in Journey to the West, like the Monkey King emerging from a stone, that connect it to this scene. But I don't think it's really that much of a connection here.

I think Vegeta was purging Babidi's possession, with Taoist and samurai ideas behind it

What I think makes the most sense is that Vegeta was purging himself of his spirit being possessed by Babidi, and the only way to remove that mark of possession, the Majin symbol, was to push it out by force. Taoists believe the spirits of animals and demons can grant powers and gifts, but at the exchange of your soul, your physical energy and your virtue. So if you're possessed for too long, you end up as an empty husk, because Vegeta sold his soul. When he killed himself using the Final Explosion, it was a way to atone for allowing Babidi to possess him, and to use all that power for good instead of evil.

If you look at the deep essence of suicide, a lot of religions are pretty much against it and consider it a sin. But in the Shinto and samurai belief system, the philosophy is that sacrifice can be considered normal and worthy of respect, and that's kind of what happened here. Vegeta kind of took on the way of bushido and performed the ritual of suicide as a samurai.

"Am I looking too deep into it? Absolutely not," because the Japanese are educated in this from the time they're little kids, and Toriyama loves to put this stuff in Dragon Ball. I want to thank Derek Padula of The Dao of Dragon Ball for helping me with the research on this.

Against Toppo in Dragon Ball Super, Vegeta's Final Explosion wasn't final

Vegeta's Final Explosion against Toppo in Dragon Ball Super was different. The first thing to understand is how much more powerful Vegeta was in Super than in Z, especially during the Tournament of Power. He was facing Toppo, a God of Destruction, and his Sphere of Destruction, and Toppo was giving him a very tough time.

By then Vegeta had developed Blue Evolution, after mastering the previous god forms and training with Whis and Beerus for an unspecified amount of time. That gave him new power and new knowledge he didn't previously have about his own body and its limitations. So this time Vegeta had knowledge of god ki, and when he used the Final Explosion on Toppo, it wasn't really final.

The principles are the same as before: Vegeta expels all the energy in his body to create a gigantic explosion and inflict major damage on his opponent. But he knew Toppo had Hakai energy and wouldn't go down with traditional energy alone, so I think it's pretty safe to say Vegeta used god ki in addition to regular ki to perform it. The difference is that this time Vegeta survived. He was drained and tired, but he survived.

My most logical explanation is that Vegeta simply didn't use all of his ki

The most basic explanation for how he survived is that he didn't use up all of his ki. There are other theoretical ideas, though. One is that Vegeta used god ki to blow himself up but kept his regular ki in his body to survive, which could be plausible. Another is that he used god ki to keep his body from dying. In the TV version of the Battle of Gods arc, Goku in Super Saiyan God could heal himself, so what if Vegeta tapped into that healing power and sort of retroactively healed his body while he was blowing himself up? That's just a theory.

I think the most logical explanation is that Vegeta just didn't use all of his ki, but because he was so much stronger than he was as Majin Vegeta, he could survive it and still use a tremendous amount of energy to knock Toppo off the Tournament of Power stage. At this point in his development, he'd learned to use the technique as an attack without sacrificing his life, though it still costs a lot of energy and leaves him very tired. It's kind of like a Hail Mary throw, but at least Vegeta survives, and that tells me he pretty much mastered the Final Explosion in Dragon Ball Super.

So it's a better version, but not as impactful and definitely not as emotional as the one from Dragon Ball Z, which remains one of Vegeta's most epic moments of his entire life.

Which version of Vegeta's Final Explosion stands out more to you, the sacrifice against Majin Buu or the blast against Toppo?