Dragon Ball Z movie Goku vs anime Goku: who is stronger?

May 9 is known as Goku Day, so I took on a different kind of matchup: Goku versus Goku. I don't mean Goku against Goku Black. I mean the Goku of the Dragon Ball Z movies against the Goku of the anime and manga, because the films are full of interesting facts and strange statements about his power that don't line up with the main story. The verdict my guest reached at the end of our discussion was that, for the most part, movie Goku probably wins.

To be clear about scope, this covers the 13 original Dragon Ball Z films, not the original Dragon Ball movies, not the Dragon Ball Super films, and not Battle of Gods or Resurrection 'F'. Those 13 came out alongside the Dragon Ball Z anime (1989) in Japan, at a rate of two films a year while the show was airing. That means you can gauge how strong the characters are by when each movie was released. Goku in Garlic Jr.'s film, Dead Zone, can't hang with Goku in Wrath of the Dragon, because that's a completely different tier of power. Within the films, though, the power tends to scale up with some impressive feats and statements.

Goku shaking Other World in Fusion Reborn depends on how you read it

My guest thinks the choice between the anime and manga versions won't be a big factor until the Majin Buu arc, at least where power scaling is concerned. Early on there are some changes, but later there are big power gaps, so it doesn't matter much. The movies are another story. We've talked before about how Gohan in the tenth film is stronger than the anime version because he kept training.

The headline feat is Goku in Fusion Reborn shaking Other World. Asked whether that means anime Goku couldn't do the same, or whether it's movie exaggeration, my guest said it comes down to interpretation. Some people count shaking a universe as nowhere near a universal feat. Others put it at multi solar system level, because you're only sending out vibrations that move things a little. Imagine something shaking the Earth: that doesn't mean you're close to destroying it or vaporizing it into atoms. The analogy offered was hitting a car so it shakes a bit, compared with packing it with dynamite and blowing it up completely. Destroying it takes a whole different level of power.

Could anime Goku do it? My guest's answer was probably. The feat is presented a little differently in the anime. Goku's energy travels physically from the land of the living to the Supreme Kai world, which sits in a completely different time and space, at least according to the Daizenshuu and some statements. So the feat might have a longer reach than shaking Other World itself, because crossing the boundaries of time and space is very different from covering a very long distance. There could be an infinite difference in the range required. That's also debatable: some people think the Dragon Ball cosmology is linear in terms of distance, though my guest doesn't think that is necessarily the case.

The Dragon Ball Z movies sit on their own timelines

The films are in a different dimension. They aren't part of the same story. Even the Daizenshuu raises the question of why the characters behave the way they do in that time frame, which is a little strange. It's a different timeline, and it might be several different timelines, because the movies contradict each other too. People have long called them non canon, and the view put forward in the discussion was that there's no real official canon apart from the original manga.

The original Dragon Ball movies show why this matters. Lucifer builds a cannon that could blow up the sun, while everyone makes a fuss about Roshi blowing up the moon. Then Garlic Jr. creates a black hole, according to databooks, guidebooks and promotional material. Some promotional material says he made a hyperdimensional black hole, which might imply something four dimensional. More recently, though, it turned out he's only opening a portal to that four dimensional world, which is referred to as hyperspace. It's essentially a small pocket universe.

Since he's only making a portal to it, that might not mean he's four dimensional, but it's still impressive, and many people still say it's something like a black hole. The fact that Saiyan Saga era characters can do that is far beyond Piccolo vaporizing the moon or Vegeta threatening the planet.

The Spirit Bomb and Kaioken get a boost in the early films

The second film, The World's Strongest, is another good example. The Spirit Bomb is overhyped across the movies: Goku uses it to finish off four different villains, three of them in a row. Against Dr. Wheelo, the Spirit Bomb pushes through a giant red beam that could have destroyed half the Earth and drives on into space to take him out.

In the third film, against Turles, Goku uses the Kaioken times 10 for the first time, before he ever uses it on Namek. Then in Lord Slug he uses a Kaioken times 100, something seen only in that film. During the Saiyan Saga era, Goku's power level in the Turles film was around 30,000, compared with roughly 8,000 normally.

In the Japanese version, the Tree of Might is called the Tree of Might, and eating its fruit gives you the power of the gods. It's obviously not Beerus level, but in Lord Slug the villain is described as more dangerous than Frieza. These films hype up their villains over a running time of 45 minutes to an hour. One view was that Goku's fight with Slug resembles the Namek era, but he's much stronger than that, since he uses Super Saiyan and a 100 times Kaioken. Maybe he's a bit stronger, but those aren't the main feats.

Meta Cooler catching Goku mid Instant Transmission could mean immeasurable speed

Cooler can destroy a star, and maybe Frieza could too. The bigger example is in the Meta Cooler film, where Meta Cooler grabs Goku during Instant Transmission. He's fast enough to intercept Goku while he's teleporting, as if he knows how to do it. Instant Transmission is instantaneous and can take Goku anywhere regardless of distance, as long as he can sense where he's going. If Cooler can stop him halfway, that might be an infinite or immeasurable speed feat, something Dragon Ball doesn't have in many areas.

Does that put him beyond the Flash? Probably not, came the reply. There may be some Flash speed feats that can't be measured, but perhaps only in certain versions of the Flash. In Dragon Ball Super, people still argue over whether there's an infinite speed feat against Hit, or perhaps in shaking the Null Realm. Meanwhile, Metal Cooler in the Android and Cell arc era has infinite, immeasurable speed, which is wild.

Broly and Koyama's claim that movie characters are stronger

Then there's Broly, who wipes out quarters of the galaxy, and everyone says he'll destroy the universe if they let him go. That's just a saying. But he has a natural lifespan and has to destroy the universe within a set amount of time. Unlike Cell, he doesn't have infinite time. It's a lot like the introduction of Majin Buu, except it's Broly, much like the anime shot of Buu tearing apart galaxies.

There are also statements from Koyama, who was the main person behind the films. Koyama believes Broly is stronger than anything in the original anime series. The pushback in our discussion was that Koyama overrates himself and has a strange obsession with Broly, the first Broly superfan. He also created Janemba and Hirudegarn. There was a suggestion that he might have resented Beerus getting all that hype, though no one claimed to know for sure.

Broly also gets stronger in the second film, and many people don't realize he's stronger still in Bio-Broly. That won't sit well with many fans, but disc sets and guidebooks describe Bio-Broly as the deadliest and most powerful version of Broly. So he grew stronger in each film. The Japanese always do this to promote the next movie, raising the power to get you excited. Think about it, though: Bio-Broly is essentially beaten by Goten, Trunks and Krillin, and Goku says at the end of the film that he'll have to go to hell to deal with things. So Goku didn't even care about this version of Broly, who had given him trouble in the two previous films. Maybe Goku is the strongest thing in the anime if you factor in the films, who knows. Or maybe Bio-Broly's weakness was a big one.

Why Buuhan could tip the debate back to the anime

Whether you agree with Koyama or not, he believes Broly is stronger than the anime characters. The only question is how far you go along with it. If you don't, the anime probably wins, because anime Goku has to climb to the level of characters like Buuhan.

Buuhan's dimension scream rips the whole universe apart and throws a bunch of dimensions over it. Those dimensions might even be the movie worlds, though that's only a personal theory. Vegito counters it and laughs it off, essentially telling Buuhan that it was very good and he should do it more often. Goku is only slightly weaker than Buuhan, which was described as common sense. If you think Koyama's statement doesn't matter, Buuhan's feat is probably greater than anything in the movies, including shaking Other World.

Hirudegarn makes film 13 the peak of movie Goku exaggeration

Some movie feats still look remarkable. The big one is the 13th film, Wrath of the Dragon, with Hirudegarn. He knocks Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks out of the fusion with one hit. He one shots Super Saiyan 2 Vegeta, who had come back to life with a Zenkai boost, with his flames. He has hardly any trouble against Ultimate Gohan, and then Goku kills him with the Dragon Fist.

Goku in the 13th film being stronger than Gotenks and Ultimate Gohan was called the peak of exaggeration. The film's title amounts to: if Goku can't do it, no one can, or who can? The counterpoint raised was that the timelines don't match in power, but if you want to say they do for film 13, and you believe Gotenks was stronger than Goku in the Buu arc, which many people argue, then sure, Goku in the Hirudegarn film would beat him. He might even be stronger than Mystic or Ultimate Gohan. This film was described as the only one that truly exaggerates Goku's power.

Movie Goku breaks rules the series kept in place

There's more. In the Android 13 film, Goku absorbs the Spirit Bomb, something he never manages again. He teleports out of Other World to punch Bojack and then goes back, breaking the rules of Other World without Baba being there, when Baba is supposed to be present. And at the end of the tenth film, Goku's spirit appears to help Goten and Gohan, though it's debatable whether that's really him. Movie Goku does things anime Goku couldn't have done, and the point isn't to argue it so much as to explore how wild this version is.

The difference is that Goku has no thematic limits in the films. In the main series, Goku was made the strongest in the world in the Piccolo arc, which was the whole point. Then the Saiyans arrive, with their nature versus nurture themes, and the story becomes about teamwork. The movies don't care about any of that. It's as if they keep replaying the Piccolo arc, so Goku can stay the strong one who settles everything. Look at how odd it is that he turns Super Saiyan against Lord Slug and then finishes him with the Spirit Bomb. That's the exact reverse of what happened with Frieza.

Kid Goku breaking the manga panel, and the final verdict

Wrapping up: movie Goku has that remarkable Instant Transmission feat, and Koyama, who wrote the films, sees the movie characters as stronger than the main series. Whether you accept that is debatable and up to you. Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F' were left out because Toriyama was directly involved in them. Between the infinite speed feat, the shaking of Other World, and the 100 times Kaioken, my guest's view was that for the most part movie Goku probably wins, while admitting to being careful because talking about the films has upset many people in the past.

The point of all this is to get people who may not have thought about it to stop and see that movie Goku did crazy things that anime and manga Goku might be able to do. Manga Goku did once break the drawing panel as a kid, arguably his biggest feat. There was a joke that because Goku started out as a comedic character, Kid Goku might beat every other Goku, since Super Saiyan God Goku's universe shaking punch never broke a panel or the artist's wrist. As for my own take, I'll say it again: movie Goku is crazy.