Vegeta's power-ups: how he got stronger in Z and Super

Vegeta might be the most popular character in Dragon Ball, and if you disagree with that, I think your head is in a very dark place. There are many reasons for his popularity. One of them is that, whether you like him or not, he's always trying to better himself and become a stronger, faster and smarter fighter. Inspired by chapter 61 of the Dragon Ball Super manga, this is a look back at the power-ups Vegeta achieved in Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super.

I'm leaving Dragon Ball GT out of this. Vegeta did reach Super Saiyan 4 there, but not much was done with him compared to what Dragon Ball Super did and is still doing with him. My focus here is the story going forward with Vegeta and the philosophy behind him in Super.

Vegeta's Great Ape form and his first fight with Goku

When Vegeta first appeared in the Dragon Ball manga and the Dragon Ball Z anime, he already had decades of combat experience. He was one of a small handful of survivors of his race, and he worked for Frieza's empire most of his life, conquering planets to sell for the empire. Unfortunately for us, most of those battles happened off screen and off panel. We never got to see Vegeta grow from a kid into a mature adult. We've only had flashbacks here and there, some small scenes and things like the Bardock special.

When the time came to fight Goku, Vegeta showed he could create an artificial moon and become a Great Ape. That form gives a ten times multiplier to his power, and he used it to heavily injure Goku, who had just beaten him in battle thanks to the Kaio-ken times three. Once the Great Ape form was cut off, winning became a lot harder for him. After almost dying at the hands of Gohan and the others, he retreated and left Earth.

How Vegeta used Saiyan zenkai boosts on Namek

Almost dying brings us to the Namek arc, where Vegeta became the antihero of the series, going against both our heroes and Frieza's empire for his own selfish motivations. After his fight with Goku on Earth, he had learned many new tricks and ways of fighting, including how to suppress his energy and hide it from the scouters his enemies used. That became a useful tool as he picked off Frieza's forces one by one. Cui, then Zarbon and Dodoria, all fell to him, plus a couple of members of the Ginyu Force. Goku did much of the pounding of the Ginyu Force, but it was Vegeta who put the nail in the coffin.

Vegeta was not only a super elite but also a Saiyan, which gave him what fans call a zenkai boost. Zenkai is a fan-made term for the power-up Saiyans get when they almost die in battle, get injured in battle or actually die in battle. It works all three ways because of their DNA and the blood in their bodies. Mortals don't have it, just their race. We don't know how many zenkai boosts Vegeta got while growing up before the fight with Goku. It's an unspecified number, if he even faced any real challenges then, and most likely he didn't.

On Namek, though, he gets several, not counting the near death fight with Goku on Earth. After his first fight with Zarbon, Vegeta was rejuvenated with newfound strength, and in their rematch he made short work of Frieza's right-hand man. Then, after a near death battle with Recoome of the Ginyu Force, Goku gave Vegeta a Senzu bean, and his recovery gave him a big boost in power. That's two in about a day, and he wasn't done.

During the fight with Frieza himself, Vegeta had another zenkai, and this time he asked for it. He tried to convince Krillin to blast him over and over so he could get a boost, and he finally got his wish: a hole blasted through his chest. If it weren't for Dende's healing ability, Vegeta may have been mincemeat. I find that interesting, because Goku's best friend almost killed Vegeta on Earth before Goku spared him, so it echoes that moment, though probably not intentionally.

Vegeta came back as confident as ever and faced Frieza one on one, believing he was a Super Saiyan. He wasn't. He was beaten, pummeled and embarrassed, the will to fight drained out of him, and Frieza eventually killed him. Later in the Goku and Frieza fight, Vegeta came back to life through a wish to the dragon, and in the anime he remarks that he feels stronger, which counts as another zenkai. We never saw how strong he got, unless you count the filler Garlic Jr. arc, where Vegeta hunted down Frieza's minions looking for Goku. Those minions were presumably weak, but it still showed Vegeta more confident than ever, probably because he had more power than ever.

Vegeta's gravity training and first Super Saiyan transformation

In the next arc, Vegeta got more power than he probably could have imagined as a young warrior. After Trunks arrived and they learned the artificial humans would attack in three years, Vegeta started a serious new training regimen at Capsule Corp, training under 300 times gravity in a giant gravity room built by Dr. Brief. We didn't see the results until the battle with Android 19. Goku's heart virus kicked in, leaving him near death and in serious trouble, until Vegeta showed up transformed into a new golden warrior, the third one we had seen at that point in the Dragon Ball Z story.

At that point Vegeta was stronger than Goku, as a ballpark power scale, and not just because of the heart virus. He had trained harder under rougher conditions. The anime adds a flashback of Vegeta training in a space-like setting, motivated by the power he saw in Goku and Trunks to get his own. That's anime only, but I thought it was "a very riveting and a really cool scene" that showed Vegeta's desire to get stronger, which he kept for the rest of the series. This version of Vegeta could massacre 19, but against 18 he was in deep trouble.

Super Vegeta, the Room of Spirit and Time and Perfect Cell

After a year in the Room of Spirit and Time with his son, Future Trunks, Vegeta emerged a new man, tapping into a form above the one he had been searching for. This was Super Saiyan grade 2, which some fans call Ascended Super Saiyan. Some call it Ultra Super Saiyan, though that name usually applies to Trunks's grade 3 form. Either way, Vegeta called himself Super Vegeta after thrashing second form Cell, whom nobody had been able to challenge up to then.

Perfect Cell was a different story. He embarrassed and humiliated Vegeta. Even though Vegeta showed more vigor, stamina, strength and speed than any fighter before him, he fell to Cell's perfect power. Afterward Vegeta realized he needed to get stronger and took another year in the Room of Spirit and Time, presumably influenced by the emerging power he saw in Goku and Gohan when they left the room themselves. He came out even stronger.

It's been debated whether Vegeta tapped into Goku's grade 4 form during that time, the one called full power Super Saiyan or mastered Super Saiyan, whatever you want to call it. But we definitely know Vegeta got that form at some point, and even the one beyond it, because of what happens in the Buu arc.

Super Saiyan 2 and Majin Vegeta in the Buu saga

During the seven years between the Cell saga and the Buu saga, Vegeta kept training, unlike other people. He was able to tap into and surpass Gohan's then unnamed Super Saiyan 2, known as grade 5. There has been debate about when he did it, but the evidence I've laid out points to him doing it during the seven-year skip, not only when Babidi gave him the boost that made him Majin Vegeta.

That was his next big boost. Vegeta was inspired by the boost Spopovich got from Babidi's magic, which he picked up from Mr. Satan's comments about how unimpressive Spopovich was at the 24th Tenkaichi Budokai years earlier. Vegeta knew that if he let Babidi use dark magic on him, he might get a boost to even himself out and square off against Goku. That's exactly what he did. Majin Vegeta was stronger than regular Super Saiyan 2 Vegeta up to that point, and he had an epic battle with Goku. Unfortunately it had a bad side effect: Majin Buu was hatched. Vegeta felt terrible about what he did, sacrificed his life for his family and died once again.

It wasn't the last we saw of him. At the end of the Buu arc, Vegeta came back and fused with Goku to make Vegito and fight Super Buu. It's generally surmised that Vegeta got stronger after coming back to life, and although he never unlocked Super Saiyan 3, he found a higher power in the Dragon Ball Super era.

Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue for Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super

Dragon Ball Super gave Vegeta several new upgrades, some of them off screen. After Goku tapped into Super Saiyan God in the Battle of Gods movie, Vegeta said he wanted to become a god the next time they did the ritual. That's not how things turned out, despite what some video games may tell you. Vegeta trained with Whis and learned to tap into god ki on his own, which Goku and others stated several times in the series. He learned not only Super Saiyan God but also Super Saiyan Blue.

Shortly before the Universe 6 arc, we learned Vegeta was training in the Room of Spirit and Time again with Goku to reach higher powers. There Vegeta says he believes they may have reached, or be close to reaching, the peak of their power, and "boy was he wrong on that one." The Universe 6 arc showed incredible power from both, and in the Trunks arc Vegeta kept training, getting multiple zenkai boosts and power-ups before, during and after the fights with Goku Black and Zamasu. He kept getting stronger with these God forms.

Why Vegeta chose Blue Evolution instead of Ultra Instinct

The Tournament of Power gave new forms to both Goku and Vegeta. Goku got Ultra Instinct Omen and then the silver-haired Ultra Instinct, an ability Vegeta himself wanted. Instead he went in a different direction, and the two forms reflect different philosophies of power.

In the anime, Vegeta got Super Saiyan Blue Evolution, which resembles the old Super Vegeta form: buffer, bigger and with a slightly different shade of blue hair. In the manga he got what's referred to as perfected Blue or mastered Blue. They're very similar, and the official Dragon Ball website even calls the manga version a blue evolved form. Translations and retconned names make it tricky, but you could assume the anime and manga versions are essentially the same thing, a higher state of being. As far as we know, there are no drawbacks to Vegeta using it. At the time it was said to be the highest Vegeta could achieve, and even though we didn't see Blue Evolution in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, he definitely still had it in his repertoire.

The purpose of Vegeta getting evolved Blue forms through a different mentality than Goku used for Ultra Instinct was to show that he was choosing his own path, instead of following behind Goku as he had through all of Dragon Ball Z and most of Dragon Ball Super. He chose to find his own way to tap into potential he had never reached before.

Vegeta's Yardrat training and spirit control against Moro

That philosophy carried into the Galactic Patrol Prisoner arc, also known as the Moro arc, where Vegeta again went a different way from Goku. Moro posed different challenges from past opponents. He was more of a magic-based opponent with his own tricks, able to manipulate energy and absorb ki to make himself more powerful, and he had an army of prisoners behind him. Because of that, strength alone wasn't the way to beat him. Goku trained with Merus to use Ultra Instinct Omen at will and push beyond it. Vegeta went to the planet Yardrat to learn some of its people's unique, mysterious and magical abilities, choosing to become a better mental fighter rather than only working on his physical prowess.

He came back with two moves he didn't previously have, at least so far. He revealed he could now use instantaneous movement, which Goku had learned on his first trip to Yardrat. He also had a new technique called spirit control, or spirit separation, which lets him reverse Moro's spirit absorption and send the ki Moro absorbed back to its original source. This technique is presumably tailor-made to defeat Moro, something the Yardrats knew that happens to be useful against him. Will it be useful against other opponents? Probably not.

It does raise a question, though. If Goku powers up a Spirit Bomb, could Vegeta send that energy back to its source whenever he wants and outmaneuver Goku with it? Or could Vegeta do his own version of the Spirit Bomb? At the time, that was still unresolved, and it's the most interesting story going forward for Vegeta.