Future Trunks vs Kid Trunks: Three Theories on Their Super Saiyan Potential

Someone emailed me a very interesting question. If Future Trunks was born exactly the same day, the same way, to a post Super Saiyan Vegeta, why couldn't he go Super Saiyan as a child the way present day Trunks could? Put another way, why did Future Trunks struggle to become a Super Saiyan in his early teenage years, while the present version of Trunks was already a Super Saiyan before he was even eight years old?

It's a very good question, because "biologically Future Trunks and present Trunks are the same." They're born at the exact same time, and they're both conceived by the same parents at the same time. So why did Kid Trunks end up with so much more potential, beyond the S cells explanation that everybody talks about? There are a few things at play here.

The butterfly effect made the present timeline stronger than Future Trunks' world

First, you have to understand the butterfly effect. Whis himself explained it during the Future Trunks arc of Dragon Ball Super, and when I was covering that arc regularly at the time, we discussed how just because something happens one specific way in one timeline does not mean the other timelines will necessarily follow suit.

In this case, the two timelines may have appeared similar, but they were not. In the present timeline, Vegeta was already training extremely hard, because they knew the androids were coming. Trunks told them so. The present version of Super Saiyan Vegeta is unquestionably stronger than his future counterpart, and in fact pretty much all the Z Fighters were stronger in the present timeline than in Trunks' timeline.

Vegeta being around may have pushed present Trunks further

Another key reason present Trunks had so much more potential is that Vegeta was there. Don't forget that in the future timeline, Vegeta died when Trunks was relatively young, so he couldn't really inspire or train Trunks the way he could in the present day.

After Gohan killed Cell, there was a seven year period of peace, and during that time Vegeta still kept training, and he also was able to achieve Super Saiyan 2. I've gone into why and how Vegeta got Super Saiyan 2 during that time skip before. On top of that, in the early Buu saga episodes of Dragon Ball Z we see Vegeta and Trunks kind of training together, and we see Vegeta there as a figurehead in the household. It would make logical sense that in the present timeline Vegeta would push Trunks further and further to achieve this power.

Obviously, Vegeta did not know for sure that Trunks was going to be a Super Saiyan until he actually did it, which is where he made the comment about it being a bargain sale or whatever. But just Vegeta being there may have been inspiration enough for present Trunks to try to power himself up a bit more than he normally would have.

In Toriyama's History of Trunks manga, Future Trunks was already a Super Saiyan

Where things get really interesting is when you look at Toriyama's original vision, and this is where you have to do your homework. If you read the manga version of the History of Trunks story, which Toriyama himself penned, Trunks was already a Super Saiyan when we first see him.

In the anime version of the Trunks special, Trunks was struggling to become a Super Saiyan, with Gohan as his mentor trying to get him to transform. He couldn't do it until Gohan was killed by 17 and 18, which is what triggered his transformation. That scene is anime only, so it could be that Trunks already had it as a kid in the future timeline, based on Toriyama's original vision.

I hate canon debates, because people don't know what they're talking about most of the time. But if you're going by what is canonical in its purest form, it's the original 42 volumes of the manga, including the History of Trunks manga special, and that is what happened there. So for all we know, Future Trunks may have already been a Super Saiyan since he was a little kid. "We don't know, we may never know." Those are the three different scenarios I'd put forward to think about.

Which of these three explanations do you find most convincing?