“All of powerscaling will lose its sh*t”: Akira Toriyama’s Goku Can Never Surpass Sun-Wukong for 1 Reason Unless Dragon Ball Wants to Break Powerscaling Forever

Dragon Ball has been focusing on powerscaling since time immemorial. Sure, the series began as purely an adventure series with the Pilaf arc, but after the 21st Budokai Tenkaichi arc, the tournament format rose in popularity and creator Akira Toriyama shifted the focus to battles and matchups.

As a result, the powerscaling community changed forever and has never looked back ever since. Dragon Ball fans have always been eager to pit Goku against every fictional character in existence, including a matchup they’ve been wanting to watch forever: Son Goku vs Sun Wukong.

With Wukong rising to relevance once again with the new game “Black Myth: Wukong“, fans began wondering once again whether Goku would ever surpass Sun Wukong in the future.

The reason why Sun Wukong is still stronger than Son Goku

Goku and Sun Wukong by Toriyama | Credits: Shueisha

There are many videos and posts on Goku vs Wukong uploaded on the internet (it’s a shame Death Battle hasn’t done a video on this matchup yet).

But one user on Reddit gave a pretty logical reason why the Monkey King still surpasses the Earthly Saiyan.

They state that Sun Wukong cannot be killed at all since he’s attained the state of immortality by eating the pills of longevity. At the end of Journey to the West, Wukong had achieved Nirvana and thus basically elevated himself to the level of the Buddha, who is literally the strongest and most powerful being in the multiverse and beyond.

This is because the Monkey King can shapeshift to become more powerful than whoever he’s fighting, and this ability only caps at Buddha-level characters.

In the 2013 film, Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons, we see Sun Wukong facing an Earth-sized Avatar state of Buddha, wherein Wukong struggled to protect the Earth and himself from an Earth-shattering attack from Buddha. In the next scene, Buddha acknowledges Wukong’s elevation in consciousness and strength, officially crowning him as a liberated soul.

On the other hand, Grand Zeno, the Supreme being in the Dragon Ball verse, has not officiated or acknowledged Goku for his exceptional strength or level of consciousness. However, the Saiyan is the ONLY friend Zeno has made thus far and Dragon Ball Super hasn’t ended yet so there’s a chance Goku can actually surpass Wukong in the future.

Goku surpassing Sun Wukong will break the powerscaling community

Goku in his Avatar state vs giant Moro | Credits: Shueisha

With every new character manga authors cook up with time, powerscalers always compare them with Goku. We’ve seen it across time: Goku vs Superman, Goku vs Saitama, Goku vs Satoru Gojo, Goku vs Makima, etc.

However, Sun Wukong is a character beloved not only by fiction readers but by historians as well. And if a pure fictional character like Goku is able to surpass him, powerscalers will lose their minds.

One Reddit user gives an insight into whether such a possibility exists.

He’s not lying though. A lot of fans on social media can’t catch a break with the whole “Goku solos” thing because they see it in every powerscaling debate, even when Goku isn’t even mentioned.

Everyone knows that Goku is based on Sun Wukong and Journey to the West and that tale is regarded as one of the most intellectual pieces of work in history. If Toriyama’s successor, Toyotaro, brought Goku to that level of power, Dragon Ball may have to end. And that’s something Shueisha is not planning to do anytime soon.

Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball Super are available to watch on Crunchyroll.