Dragon Ball Debate Surfaces Over Goku’s Ugliest Transformation

The Dragon Ball franchise has managed to sustain its brand power and awareness via one main avenue: the strength of its iconic imagery. Whether its the original Dragon Ball series, Dragon Ball Z or the modern Dragon Ball Super era, artwork and images of Goku, Vegeta (and so many other characters) in various stages of transformation or power-up has been the biggest lure for new fans to discover the series. Recently debate has popped up on social media, with Dragon Ball fans turning to debate about which of Goku and Vegeta’s various transformations is actually the least impressive, visually speaking.

Well, the debate over Dragon Ball‘s ugliest transformations has boiled down to two main contenders: Super Saiyan 3 and Super Saiyan 4:

If we’re all being honest here, both Super Saiyan 3 and Super Saiyan 4 came out of one of the least impressive eras of Dragon Ball‘s run. Super Saiyan 3 was born in the latter portion of Dragon Ball Z (The Majin Buu Saga), while Super Saiyan 4 was born during the infamous run of the Dragon Ball GT series. Both transformation debuted in the mid-to-late ’90s (in Japan), a period of time when Dragon Ball was exhausting good, meaningful ideas, and falling into the gimmickry of Super Saiyan numbering. It’s no surprise then, that both forms aren’t getting much love from fans, compared to others.

However, things have come around now. A lot of Dragon Ball Super fans are actually clamoring for Super Saiyan 4 to get an official canonized debut in Dragon Ball Super – and thanks to the Dragon Ball Super: Broly movie, the door has been opened for it to become a reality. So if we’re talking about whether SSJ3 or SSJ4 is the lamest, it seems like the answer has become much more clear with time.

The Japanese-language and English dub releases of Dragon Ball Super are now complete and available to stream with FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. Viz Media is releasing new chapters of the manga at a monthly rate that can be read entirely for free through the Shonen Jump digital library, and Dragon Ball Super’s big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. Fans in Japan are also able to enjoy fresh non-canon adventures from the franchise with new episodes of Super Dragon Ball Heroes‘ promotional anime series.