While Goku has harnessed the power of the gods and continues to grow in cosmic-level strength each day, one classic fighter has a power he never will.
While Goku is perhaps the strongest fighter in the Dragon Ball universe, one of his oldest (and weakest) allies has an ability that puts the Saiyan warrior to shame as it is one Goku could never hope to attain.
Goku is a Saiyan who was sent to Earth as a baby while his homeworld was on the verge of destruction. When Goku arrived on Earth, he was taken in by a man named Gohan who was a well-known martial artist. Raising Goku as his ‘grandson,’ Gohan taught the Saiyan child the ways of combat, and Goku fell in love with it immediately. After Gohan passed, Goku was left to fend for himself in the wilderness, until he came across a young woman named Bulma. Bulma was hunting for Dragon Balls out in the woods, and upon seeing Goku’s inherent Saiyan strength and his martial arts skills, she recruited him to join her in her quest to find the wish-granting artifacts–though they found themselves picking up more than just magical orbs along their journey.
In Dragon Ball Chapter 5 by Akira Toriyama, Bulma and Goku travel to a town that is living in fear as the townspeople are plagued by a monster who regularly visits them and steals their daughters and brings them to his home a great distance away to do with as he pleases. When Bulma discovers that one of the town elders has possession of a Dragon Ball, she says that Goku will take care of this monster in exchange for the orb. The townspeople agree, and Goku gears up to fight the terrifying monster known as Oolong. When Oolong arrives to steal more young women from the town, Goku is disguised as a woman himself and when Oolong tries to abduct him, Goku springs into action and challenges the monster to a fight. Knowing he is no match for Goku, Oolong retreats. His retreat reveals that he isn’t a ferociously powerful monster but a humanoid pig who is not only weak but cowardly. However, despite Oolong’s non-existent power level, he still managed to rule over an entire town for some time–all because of his power of shapeshifting.
Oolong can turn himself into nearly anything he can think of, including inanimate objects, for five minutes at a time with only a minute-long break in-between. So, as long as he finds a way to rest for one minute every five minutes, Oolong can transform into anything that his team may need in any given situation, making him incredibly useful for creating a distraction or providing a quick get-away. Even though he is introduced as a villain, Oolong turns over a new leaf and becomes an ally of Goku, Bulma, and the rest of the Z Fighters for the rest of the series. While Oolong is arguably Dragon Ball’s weakest fighter, which was well established upon his first appearance, he will always be a better shapeshifter than Goku, no matter how strong the Saiyan gets on a cosmic scale.
While Goku wouldn’t want to have Oolong’s shapeshifting power to begin with since Goku believes in standing up to a challenge head-on rather than resort to trickery during a fight, it is interesting that someone who has the power to battle with demons and gods can’t do what a weak creature like Oolong can. No matter how cosmically powerful Goku becomes within the Dragon Ball universe, a lowly, earthbound humanoid pig will always have one thing over him: the ability to shapeshift which is an ability Goku will never have.
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