Super Saiyan God explained: origins, ritual and powers

Super Saiyan God is where the modern Dragon Ball renaissance began, and I think it's an iconic form that represents what modern Dragon Ball is. It first appeared in the 2013 film Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and carried on into Dragon Ball Super. Below is how the form came to exist, how it's achieved, what it can do, and why some of the ways fans talk about it don't hold up.

Its original concept didn't come from Akira Toriyama at all, and the look nearly ended up very different.

Super Saiyan God started as Yusuke Watanabe's idea, not Akira Toriyama's

When work began on Battle of Gods, the team at Toei Animation wanted to create a new transformation for Goku. They didn't want to call it Super Saiyan 4, because there was already a Super Saiyan 4. Yusuke Watanabe signed on as the film's writer, and in his original script he created the Super Saiyan God transformation as a power to rival Beerus, the God of Destruction.

Soon after, Toriyama became involved. Because of the nightmare that was Dragon Ball Evolution, and the fact that Toriyama felt disrespected by the creative team behind that film, he stepped into Battle of Gods and changed much of what would happen in it, including the actual look of Super Saiyan God.

Before Toriyama redrew the form, Tadayoshi Yamamuro drew his own version as concept art. In it, Goku looked more like Super Saiyan 4, but with blonde hair and a cape. "Yes, I'm serious, I'm not making that up." At the time of writing, that concept art had not been released to the public, and I'm not even sure Toei Animation still has it. The best we can do is look at fan art for what it may have looked like.

How Toriyama redesigned Super Saiyan God with magenta hair and a thinner build

Toriyama added the non spiky magenta hair and the unique aura that Toei Animation's team brought to life in the film. He also made Goku thinner, because Beerus is thinner. The idea is that gods don't need muscle mass if they're gods. That's always been my perspective on it. So Toriyama drew Goku very thin, but perhaps more agile in combat.

From what we understand, Toriyama and Yamamuro went back and forth on the design, but Toriyama insisted on a much more simplified look. The first time the design was revealed was through a leaked image from Toei Animation's offices showing Goku with his now iconic red magenta hair, which all of us were gasping at in early 2013, before the movie came out.

The official trailers and promos from Japan didn't reveal what Super Saiyan God looked like. They kept it a big secret. I remember that at first many fans didn't like the form, but it feels like it became more appreciated by the fandom after a while, or at least the visual side of it did.

Two ways to become a Super Saiyan God: the ritual and training with Whis

Achieving Super Saiyan God is very different from how Goku and the others reached the earlier Super Saiyan transformations, which usually came through rage, anger and a focus on getting stronger. Here, there are two methods.

The first is the Super Saiyan God ritual. Six righteous Saiyans come together and, in a weird way, perform something that feels like a prayer, and one of them is blessed with the powers of a Super Saiyan God. In Battle of Gods, that was Goten, Trunks, Gohan, Vegeta and Goku, plus Videl, who was pregnant with Pan, a quarter Saiyan. That was enough to get the power into Goku. The real backstory behind the ritual, beyond what the Eternal Dragon explained, came from Toriyama when he talked about Yamoshi.

The second method is how Vegeta tapped into the form: proper training with Whis, or with somebody who has knowledge of god ki. Once you understand the fundamentals of god ki, you can train yourself to eventually tap into it and transform. Vegeta's training with Whis opened his eyes to a level of power that he and Goku had no idea existed before they made friends with these deities. Talk about having friends in high places.

Whichever route you take, it involves understanding yourself from the inside. In the ritual, you give your inner light to the person you're performing it with. In training, you need a deep understanding of how to control and contain the energy inside your body. That's what leads to the knowledge and ability to use god ki.

What god ki gives Goku: heightened senses, paralysis and self healing

God ki can also be referred to by a Japanese term that translates to the aura of a god. When you can tap into it, you can sense god ki in other individuals and possess it yourself, and it increases all of your senses, your speed, your power, everything. These are levels of power far beyond anything Goku and Vegeta had in Dragon Ball Z.

Super Saiyan God also grants Goku unique abilities he couldn't use before. For example, he can now paralyze people. In the Dragon Ball Super anime, he also has the ability to self heal. That's something we only saw once in Dragon Ball Super and never again, and it's an ability Goku has never had access to other than when he first got Super Saiyan God.

The Dragon Ball Super anime's universe cracking clash between Goku and Beerus

Whether you're watching the anime, reading the manga or watching Battle of Gods, Super Saiyan God is very powerful. The anime, though, adds another layer of power and another feat. We find out that when Goku's and Beerus's fists collide in space, they're cracking the fabric of the universe, and Old Kai even states that these punches could wipe out and implode the entire universe, which is a macroverse.

That single statement from that one fight has been used by power scalers to justify Goku's unbelievable strength and to argue that he's universal tier even at the beginning of Dragon Ball Super. You can't argue with them, because it's a statement in the series. Remember, though, that Toriyama was a writer on the film and not on the TV series, so this may not have been his idea. Either way, it raises the power level beyond what we expected.

After the story of Battle of Gods, we didn't see Super Saiyan God for a while. When it returned, it had changed and gained elements that were previously unknown, which in my opinion are very interesting. Beerus having a prophetic dream and talking to the Oracle Fish is where this whole thing began, but it didn't stay there.

Why calling it Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue Super Saiyan God doesn't work

For years I've seen people in this fandom say Super Saiyan God should be called Saiyan God, and Super Saiyan Blue should be called Super Saiyan God. That doesn't work, for a couple of reasons.

First, when they came up with Super Saiyan God, they had no idea there would be another form afterward. There was no indication at all that Dragon Ball would continue, and you can't go back in time and tell them in 2012 to change the form. Second, Saiyan God would imply there's no transformation, when Super Saiyan God is a transformation. It's an unorthodox and unique one, achieved differently from the other Super Saiyan forms, but it's still a transformation.

Super Saiyan God's time limit and how Goku learned to control it

The form's properties didn't stay as they were originally intended in Battle of Gods. Super Saiyan God was supposed to be a being that surpassed everything and could rival Beerus. We had no clue about Ultra Instinct or any of that, and neither did Toriyama or the writers of Dragon Ball Super. So things changed.

Super Saiyan God has drawbacks, especially at first. There seems to be a time limit, because as Goku was fighting Beerus, his god power faded and he returned to his base form without even realizing it. What happened was that Goku's mind and body were able to instinctively contain some of that god ki within his own body.

Later in Dragon Ball Super, it seems Goku has learned to fully control Super Saiyan God and tap into it at will. As the series progressed and Goku and Vegeta learned more about their bodies and about god ki, they were able to work it into battle alongside Super Saiyan Blue.

Super Saiyan God versus Super Saiyan Blue: speed, strength and stamina

There's a big misconception here. In the manga, during the Goku Black arc, Goku and Vegeta switch between Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan Blue, sometimes at a very rapid pace. That was done because it was stated that Super Saiyan God is stronger and faster than Super Saiyan, but not stronger or faster than Blue. Some folks got confused and think it was said that Blue was stronger but red was faster. That's completely wrong.

Super Saiyan God is significantly faster and stronger than regular Super Saiyan, and Super Saiyan Blue is faster and stronger than God. The problem is stamina. Goku and Vegeta struggled for a while with how much Blue would eat up their power when they transformed, and Goku himself said it takes a lot of training to achieve. I feel that by the end of the conflict with Jiren, they had already overcome that stamina problem.

As Super progressed, these two kept learning about the god forms and their own bodies, overcoming limitations they'd had earlier. That's always been one of the more interesting things about Dragon Ball Super to me: Goku and Vegeta never stopped learning, and I like that about the series. The anime later confirmed what we saw first in the manga. In the fight with Dyspo, Goku goes back to Super Saiyan God because, even though it isn't as fast or strong as Blue, it uses far less stamina.

Super Saiyan God also seems to carry a more relaxed, calmer demeanor and is less explosive than Super Saiyan Blue. Either one is effective in battle, but neither could in any way mess around with Ultra Instinct.

Toriyama's 6, 10 and 15 power scale no longer applies

When Battle of Gods first came out, Toriyama famously offered a very simple scale. To be clear, these weren't actual power levels, just a very simplified comparison. He said Goku as a Super Saiyan God would be a 6, Beerus would be a 10, and Whis would be a 15.

He said that before Resurrection F and before Dragon Ball Super, a long time ago. I don't know if retcon is the right word, but it's not applicable anymore, and there's no sense using it in debates, because everything has changed. There have been new forms and different feats since then, and Goku inched closer and closer to Beerus's level as Super progressed. Who knows if we'll ever hit Whis's level, which is a different power level altogether.

That scale probably applied when Battle of Gods first came out, because there was no intention of continuing after it. Because of how much money the movie made and the demand for more Dragon Ball, they did continue, so the scale can be left in the past as no longer relevant.

Either way, Super Saiyan God was the first new transformation we got in decades, and it will always be remembered fondly by me, because I think it's pretty cool.