Nerd Time: Goku vs. Superman

Monday, March 11, 2013

I came across a video today about this very topic. Yes, that's right. Hide from any women you ever may want to have sex with in the future. It's time to talk about a classic type of nerd debate!

As a fan, this type of crossover battle has crossed my mind once or twice. Not to the point of coming to any sort of conclusion on who would win or even discussing it, but it did sound cool and interesting. Well, thanks to some guys at ScrewAttack we can see how this battle might play out! Without spoiling the outcome, I can assure you that over the course of the video you will realize that thorough thought and analysis went into this. So it's worth watching based on that, or purely for the entertainment value.

And for fans of DBZ Abridged, there's some TeamFourStar cameo voices in this!

Without further ado, here's the video.




Click read more to read my thoughts on the fight and outcome, and comment yourself.


...

Now I'll start of by admitting I'm more of a DBZ fan, then a Superman fan. So obviously I was wanting Goku to win. But sadly that didn't happen. But I don't disagree with the outcome exactly. This was a battle to the death, and of the 2 heroes, Goku has died 2 times where as Superman hasn't "really" died even once. That alone puts the odds in Superman's favor.

But I will say that the reason Superman won was purely due to amount of source material. There have been so many stories involving Superman over the years that the writers kept on having to expand and exaggerate his abilities to keep things interesting. Goku as a character had a similar (but shorter) path, constantly having tougher enemy's and the need for him to reach new heights. But he just doesn't have the sheer amount of growth points as Superman had refine points. I know this battle excluded the Golden Age stuff, but that still played into defining the Superman character in the grand scheme of things.

One could also argue that a lot that was used to define Superman is obscure/non-common knowledge pulled from the corners of the comic books, when most people know of and define Superman based on the movies, tv shows, and cartoons that reached a much broader audience. But when you start breaking things down like that, picking and choosing what you want to include/exclude for source material, well a debate would never end and constantly bounce back and forth. Leaving who would win purely as a matter of personal opinion. So as much as it pains me to say it, it's in the source material, it's canon, Goku loses. =(

But even based of that, there's nothing stopping us from delving deeper. If were so strictly going to look at this battle based off source material, and theorize this to begin with. Why not ask the question "Who would win the rematch?".

Why ask such a question? Well, if were using source material so intensely, DBZ is a series that thrives on overcoming insurmountable opponents with Goku at the top of the list of characters that does that. And DBZ also highly features the device of character resurrection. Yea, Gokus died and has been brought back twice already. But pure and simple, from a story stand point, doing it a 3rd time is far from out of the question.

Now you may say "Ok, through whatever means, he can be alive again to participate in a rematch. He would simply just die again. He was clearly outmatched based on the numbers". Well, now we would get back to the common theme for DBZ and Goku himself. He's seen his hurdle now, and as Goku does, he would find a way to reach a point of leveling the playing field. And as he often does, then win by the skin of his teeth. But that's where the clash of source material gets murky again. Both are heroes and both should find a way to pull out a win in the end. So in theory, a rematch might just be a draw. Which as a DBZ fan is good enough for me. I'm sure more thorough analysis of such a rematch might have one or the other winning, but I'm not figuring out who. Diving this deep and relying on the source material this much would produce the dilemma of, Superman never truly loses, and Goku never loses in a bounce back scenario (he always rises to meet and exceed a challenge in the end).

I will say though that, Superman by character design is supposed to be invincible, but has limits until writers redefine them. But Goku as being a Saiyan has limits that get redefined in the story as part of the character design itself. In theory, if Goku had a Konami code for himself, he would eventually far surpass Superman. But this is only round #2 were talking about, so who knows.


To sum things up.

Goku vs Superman: Round 1 = Superman (due to amount of source material advantage)
Goku vs Superman: Round 2 = ??? ( hard to tell based on as strict use of source material)

With a new DBZ movie coming out soon, maybe there will be some more source material to help draw a conclusion to round 2!

/nerd off