Dragon Ball Is One Step Closer to Making Super Saiyan 5 Official

Thanks to Dragon Ball Daima, Dragon Ball is now one big step closer to making Super Saiyan 5 an official part of the series’ canon. Dragon Ball fans have been joking about a potential Super Saiyan 5 form ever since it was first revealed that Super Saiyan 2 was possible. Fans naturally took the idea and ran with it to imagine what future forms could look like, and things started to take real shape when Super Saiyan 3 and 4 were later revealed in Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT. From here on, Super Saiyan 5 started to form within the fandom and had a distinct visual identity.

Dragon Ball GT gave fans the launching pad to imagine a version of Super Saiyan 5 with flowing white hair and a more primal look born from Super Saiyan 4 (which was even thought to be officially canon in the early days of the Internet), and fans sort of got this with the debut of Goku’s Ultra Instinct form in Dragon Ball Super. But now that Dragon Ball Daima has officially introduced Super Saiyan 4 to Goku’s line up, it’s now possible to fuse these two abilities into an official Super Saiyan 5 form.

Would This New Form Be Super Saiyan 5?

Super Saiyan has technically gone far beyond five different variations if you count all of the god forms seen later with Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan (or Vegeta’s unique Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Evolution), but Dragon Ball Daima officially coined Super Saiyan 4 as Goku’s fourth Super Saiyan transformation. If you separate the two transformation categories, then there’s still room to grow within the traditional Super Saiyan line without god powers. There’s at least a place where Goku can name a new form “Super Saiyan 5” if he wanted to.

Dragon Ball Daima takes place shortly after the events of the Majin Buu arc, but before Beerus and Whis arrive during the Battle of Gods arc. Although Goku decidedly (and hilariously) ignores his ability to transform into Super Saiyan 4 in later fights thanks to this retcon, there’s a way for him to combine these abilities much later in a future Dragon Ball Super story. It’ll just be explained away by the usual Toriyama style gag of the character simply forgetting to use the ability, and we’ll ultimately accept that excuse if it means a new transformation is on the way.

But while Goku has used other Super Saiyan transformations, he could still call this new form Super Saiyan 5 if the source comes from his base Super Saiyan power. If this power is naturally welling within him, and then potentially boosted by the God Ki, then it’ll be a fusion of those abilities to bring about a new kind of Super Saiyan transformation that’s not exactly a god form nor exactly is it in the traditional line. Then again, it all depends on how Goku reaches this level.

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How Can Super Saiyan 5 Happen?

If Goku continues to train with Ultra Instinct, then that’s the path to bringing about a new kind of Super Saiyan transformation. This ability could be mastered even further to the point where Goku can also layer on his other transformations on top of it much like he did with the god transformations. Although Ultra Instinct’s main feature is how clean of an ability it is compared to the other forms, there’s a potential future where it could advance to look more like Goku’s Super Saiyan transformations.

Now that he’s reached a fully mastered version of the Ultra Instinct form, fighting a stronger foe (like Black Frieza, for example) could bring about “dirtier” versions of the ability. He could boost it further with a potential “Ultra Instinct Super Saiyan” and eventually get to the point where he outright calls it Super Saiyan 5. Even if the form doesn’t officially have that name, there’s a world now in which a full Super Saiyan 4 Goku visual is completely turned white thanks to how far Ultra Instinct can advance from this point on. It’s doable now, but it’s only a matter of seeing if the Dragon Ball team goes that route.

Continuing the Dragon Ball story following Akira Toriyama’s passing is a massive endeavor. Those behind the Dragon Ball Super manga are likely taking care to be completely certain that when the series continues, it’s in a way that Toriyama would have wanted to see. This includes any potential new forms, villains and more in the future. We could see more anime releases in the future like Dragon Ball Daima that are initially planned to be set outside of the canon, but actually being part of the official timeline is a whole other thing entirely. So Super Saiyan 5 is possible, it’s doable, and one step closer to happening. But it’s a big step.