I personally have always been on the side of Kuririn. The power up that he got from the Grand Elder on Planet Namek put him far above Tenshinhan. While that may not be fair, that is indeed the case. Yamcha's statement about Kuririn being the "strongest in the world" was the only part of the statement towards Marron that meant to make her feel good. He wanted a sweet little girl to believe that her father was the strongest in the world. The part when he says "Among humans" was clearly not directed at Marron and something that he was saying to himself. Thus, the entire statement was not to make Marron feel good, and the ending portion of it ("Among Humans") was indeed the truth.
Now, on to the point of this entry. A few days ago, on November 11'th, Kanzenshuu posted their translation of an interview conducted with Masako Nozawa (The voice of Goku), Takao Koyama (The TV Series' organizer), and the one and only Akira Toriyama (The creator of DragonBall). This interview covered a slew of interesting things and contained numerous fun tidbits. But the thing that stood out the most to me was the following statement:
Toriyama: Kuririn was originally supposed to be just a minor role, so to have him become Goku’s best friend in the blink of an eye…
Koyama: Well, he is the strongest Earthling male.Well, there you have it. A direct statement from Toriyama himself stating that Kuririn is the strongest among the earthlings. Debate over, right? WRONG!
Toriyama: You’re right, he is the strongest among the Earthlings. But in spite of that, he tends to end up in a bad way, so I thought, “once in a while, I have to let him be happy,” and had him get married. (laughs)
Upon bringing this new information up, someone actually responded to me, "That statement was suggested by Koyama" as well as "He (Toriyama) just didn’t care". ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! The insane amount of denial in the Tenshinhan faithful is staggering. I mean, we've got a direct quote from a character in the Manga as well the creator himself and yet people are still willing to refute all of this in favor of mere wishful (and baseless) thinking. As a matter of fact, Sean Gallagher, a mutual Twitter follower of mine posted this information himself on a random DragonBall Message Board and was met with not only blind resistance, but actual hostility towards him. I just don't understand the resistance towards Kuririn. Is it because he's short? Because he can be comical? Isn't the entire story of DragonBall filled with our heroes overcoming these types of seeming handicaps? Children saving the world and low-classes surpassing the elites. So why is Kuririn always an exception in fans eyes? It's downright annoying.
The only logical refute to this Toriyama quote that I've heard thus far was the fact that Toriyama said that Kuririn was the strongest "Earthling", while Daizenshuu #4 classifies Tenshinhan among the "Three-Eyed Clan". But this theory was quickly shot down by Herms (One of the Kanzenshuu administrators). Herms stated that while Daizenshuu 4 does classify Tenshinhan as a descendant of the Three-Eyed Clan, this mention of his heritage is brought up while he is being discussed within the "Earthling" section of the book. Thus making the Three-Eyed Clan a race within the Earthlings.
Anyway, I don't know why I'm still shocked by the actions of people on the internet these days. But none the less, I really wanted to post this rant. I hope that this entry is able to clear this topic up for everyone. Remember...Knowing is half the battle!
Well... to be fair, your account here of what happened when I shared on another forum may be a bit exaggerated. While a few people do still firmly stick to 'Ten > Kuririn, always' no matter what, the only person who's actually debated me about it ended up conceding and admitting he was only playing devil's advocate.
ReplyDeleteGozar, what about Tien's training on King Kai's planet. Wouldn't that increase his strength given the 10x and the training he put them through, or would this pale in comparison. I'm a krillin fan just like you, but even Toriyama himself tends to forget little things too. (Ex: Lunch, aka Launch)
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, Kuririn should be stronger, given his power up by the Grand Elder.
ReplyDeleteOn the other, Tenshinhan gave Semi-Perfect Cell a hard time, if just momentarily. And he did in fact train on Kaio's planet. Hmm.
I guess it's really not that important, ultimately. Tenshinhan and Kuririn were irrelevant before Freeza even came into the picture.
Tien is stronger than the Ginyu Force. That was the result of his training with King Kai, as we see him, along with Yamcha and Chaotzu, defeat them.
ReplyDeleteKrillin, even with the power boost from Guru, was taken out by Recoome.
All this proves is that Tien was stronger than Krillin by the end of the Namek Saga. This brings us to the Android Saga.
At this point, it's impossible to tell who's stronger as we don't know what either of them did for training during this time, and neither of them really fought anyone. Krillin did try to stop Cell from absorbing 18 while he was blinded by a Solar Flare, but we all knew it was futile.
As for Tien holding back Cell, it was successful for the same reason that Piccolo was able to defeat Raditz in the Saiyan Saga. He concentrated all of his energy into a single point. For Piccolo, it was his fingertips. For Tien, it was his hands. Remember, that not only was Tien weaker than Cell, he was weaker than 17 and 18. But so was Krillin. This incident with Cell DOES NOT PROVE that Tien was stronger than Krillin at this time.
As for the Majin Buu Saga, people might say that Tien is stronger because he continued being a fighter and thus kept getting stronger, while Krillin stopped fighting in order to raise his daughter. But, then again, he was married to 18. She probably kept him in fighting shape, especially when the World Martial Arts Tournament came around. But still, there is NOTHING definitive that says whether Krillin or Tien is stronger.
So, it's impossible to truly say which of the two is stronger. As for me, I thought it was Krillin before reading this article, and I still think it's him. Heck, even Toriyama said that Krillin is stronger, and who would know better, than the creator himself?
The comment by Toriyama isn't official enough for me. He said it in a passing joke. If it stated directly from a Daizenshuu that he was the strongest, then I'd have to believe it. But, that won't ever happen, so I am still on Tien's side here. Although I understand the Krillin argument, I just value different pieces of cannon above the ones you people seem to value.
ReplyDeleteI always thought Tien had the edge because of the Kikoho or Tri-beam as this technique allows him to damage much power-fuller foes because of it's brute force and even allows him to counter a finishing blow Super Buu fired at Gohan in chapter 307.
ReplyDelete...How anyone can believe that Kuririn is stronger than Tenshinhan is beyond me. Let's look at the evidence from within the series - during the battle against Vegeta & Nappa, there can be no doubt that Tenshinhan was still (marginally) stronger, as this was demonstrated by Battle Powers released by Toriyama around that period (i.e. the most trustworthy time to listen to Toriyama); then we have the Freeza arc, which gives Kuririn the major boost (in several installments, apparently) of the Grand Elder power-up (raising his Battle Power to as high as 75,000 during the battle with Freeza, according to one guide released at the time), which indisputably made Kuririn stronger than Tenshinhan (ignoring Ginyu filler) for a time. But then we have the fact that Tenshinhan chose to stay with Chaozu on Kaio-sama's planet while Yamcha was wished back first, given him and extra 135 or so days (270-ish in total) of training under 10x Earth's gravity, not to mention that he apparently continued his training on Earth once he was wished back, racking up an additional year of training until Goku and Freeza made their dramatic returns, in which time we can only speculate as to what happened to Kuririn's Battle Power - did it stagnate through lack of proper training? Or did it even continue increasing (even after death & eventual revival) through that seemingly endless Grand Elder boost? We can't be sure... but weighing up the situation, I would wager that Kuririn Grand Elder power-up was more or less cancelled out by all of the extensive training Tenshinhan did afterwards, which Kuririn clearly did not experience. (To be continued...)
ReplyDelete(Continued...) So that brings us to the Cell arc, in which it is very difficult to judge the Batlle Powers of either Kuririn or Tenshinhan (were they in the 10,000s? 100,000s? Heck, it's even possible they may have broken into the early 1,000,000s milestone!), but given the general air of the two going in to the three year training period, I would have thought that Tenshinhan took his training more seriously (as he usually does) giving him the edge in my mind. This trail of thought continues from here on out all the way into the Boo arc (with seven years of serious training for Tenshinhan, opposed to Kuririn's occasinoakl sparring matches with the, admittedly, daunting opponent of #18),l but to be honest, I don't think their respective Battle Powers are even relevent to this debate by the time of the Cell arc (after all this waffle...), simply for one reason, and one reason alone - the reason I, and quite a lot of other people believe that Tenshinhan will ALWAYS trump Kuririn is his combat techniques. Kuririn is a skilled martial artist with plenty of tricks up his sleeve and a great knack for improvising, it's true ... but when comparing Kuririn's modest talents to the plethora of abilities Tenshinhan has at his disposal (just WATCH the 22nd Tenka'ichi Budokai again, seriously, the dude's talents are endless, even way back then), they barely even register. I'll skip ovr the bulk of Tenshinhan's abilities (some extremely useful ... some not so), however, and cut straight to the chase - their signiture techniques - the Kienzan & the Kikoho. (To be continued...)
ReplyDelete(Continued..) True, the Kienzan is an obvious one-hit kill if it hits dead on (that cannot be in doubt), but let's face it, that move is not suited to one-on-one combat, where the opponent can openly see what Kuririn is trying to do. You'd have to be a complete idiot (like Nappa) to get hit by it in that situation, otherwise it is easily avoided. But the Kikoho ... oh, my word, the Kikoho ... or more specifically, the Shin-Kikoho. Let's not beat about the bush, this upgraded version of the original attack was not only able to hold of Cell's secondary form for a significant period of time (allowing 18 time to escape, something that Kuririn failed miserably at when trying to replicate the feat a few hours later, let's be honest) while causing him visible distress (something that even #16 had failed at doing just moments before), but most impressively of all, he was able to deflect a blast from Super Boo/tenks that was intended to finish off Fully-Awakened Gohan (who i know you're a major fan of, Gozar) ... let's just reflect on that for a moment, shall we? He deflected a blast ... that was intended to kill ... the strongest non-fused character in the series (stronger even than SSJ3 Goku, for crying out loud!). THAT is the power of the Shin-Kikoho. Now, I'm sure that even Tenshinhan's most avid fans (of which there seem to be a few) would dream of claiming that Tenshinhan accomplished these startling feats with his own Battle Power (he'd have to be on par with the Super Saiya-jins ... or Piccolo at the very least), which brings us to the conclusion that the Shin-Kikoho momentarily multiplies Tenshinhan's power by literally HUNDREDS of times ... more so than even a SSJ3 transformation, probably. Let's face it, that is quite frankly an INSANE technique for anyone to have (even if it does severely drain hislife force after every use). Can you imagine if Goku could do that? There would never be a remotely threatening rival or villain ever again! He could have pounded Boo to dust in his base state, never mind the kind of power he'd be putting out with a Super Saiya-jin Kikoho! Now let's return to the original debate and ask ourselves this - how the hell is Kuririn, talented yet unspectacular Kuririn, meant to deal with a vthreat like that on the battlefield. Sure, he might somehow manage to dodge one (or more) as that's been accomplished before ... but let's not forget that Tenshinhan can fire off these things rapidly until he basically drops dead mid-attack. There is no way in hell Kuririn (in my mind, and I would hope the mind of any reasonable individual) cxould survive that kind of onslaught for long. He would quite simply be screwed. Characters with far more power than Kuririn have had trouble dealing with that tecnique... And there you have my argument, good sir.
ReplyDeleteOh, and on the subject of your "proof of Kuririn's superiority"... I don't really regard Yamcha OR present day Toriyama as reliable sources of information. Toriyama may be the great man who gave us all this wonderful series, but his forgetfulness (even with regards to his own work) is legendary. And even if we take Yamcha's throwaway comment as a fact (which would require Yamcha to have met Tenshinhan recently, for one, in order to accurately measure his Battle Power against Kuririn's), we can't rule out the fact that Toriyama-san (i.e. Oh-crap-I-forgot-that-character-existed-san) might have actually forgotten about Tenshinhan & Chaozu (not that he's a factor) when making that statement. I always found it suspicious that with all of the shit that went on during the Boo arc (like the entire decimation of the populace, for one), Tenshinhan didn't step in to lend a hand until near the end. My theory has long since been that Toriyama had another one of his brain farts where Ten was concerned ... a brain fart that stretched on for the majoriy of the arc. That's my take on it, anyway. Hardly conclusive evidence to prove that Kuririn is stronger, especially when the facts (as detailed above) tend to lead you to believe that Tenshinhan was stronger for most of the series. In any case, like I said earlier, even if we take Yamcha & present-day Toriyama on their word and assume that Kuririn's Battle Power is higher ... it still doesn't affect the general issue with the Kuririn vs Tenshinhan scenario, which is? Yeah, the Shin-Kikoho.
ReplyDeleteHis forgetfulness ESPECIALLY with his own work is what you should have said haha agreed
DeleteA lot of these other comments are a REALLY good example of the reaching stubbornness that Gozar is talking about.
ReplyDeleteIf you're referring to my four (four? ... *counts* ... four) posts when you say "stubborn", would you instead care to counter my arguments? Because I believe I've brought up enough concrete points to counter Gozar's vague ones (which fail to even consider an actual battle between the two characters, for one).
DeleteIt isn't an easy question but I think a very strong argument could be made for tien. When it comes to Akira-sama's quote what was the date? Where in the series were they? If he said that during the frieeza saga, or trunks saga, or even the sayian saga I am inclined to agree, Kururin was stronger, first for factors not entirely known (including the kienzan technique) and later for a power-up the Grand Elder gave him on Namek. That being said it misses a few things that keep Tien fighting, if we accept tiens adventures on king kais planet as cannon(which can go either way, I don't remember the ginyus going there in the manga) Tien is at least as strong as Recoome or Burter or Jeice putting him ABOVE kuririn at this time. Next example I give is Tien's Ki-Canon on cell, could krillin have stalled cell or done better? No, I believe Goku could have barely pulled that off. At the end, while I don't believe he could take a kienzan I also dont think krillin could take a tri-beam, it is implied he has been training and krillin has not, it is very reasonable to assume he ascended to the next level, majin buu was not able to kill him right away asnd he actually landed a shot on a form of super buu. His charecter also isn't explored enough, can he use kaio ken? He is never given a place to show it off but how can krillin fight him in kaio-ken X 10?
ReplyDeleteTien appeared stronger to me, and not because of his size, but the way he carried himself(Vegeta appeared stronger than Nappa for the same reason), and I really got the impression that he was stronger when Goku asked Krillin to take a dying Yamcha to safety while he Piccolo and Tien face off against the androids (you'd think he'd want to 2 strongest allies to back him up), but that's just my opinion. It's not completely absurd for Krillin to be stronger, and I guess Toryama's statement makes it official (unless someone can prove he didn't take Tien into account).
ReplyDeleteI think the resistence from Tien fans (myself included)is more of a comparison of the characters of both Tien and Krillin and ,as others have pointed out, skill as opposed to raw power. Tien fights with honor and conviction, Krillin is a coward and at best he is an opportunist. Regardless of the odds of victory, Tien never backed out of a fight, whereas the only time Krillin didn't default to his run-and-hide routine was when Marron was threatened, and that one instance when Yamcha went kaboom fighting the Saibamen.
ReplyDeleteSuppose Krillin works up the nerve to fight, he still lacks skill, if he's not cowering behind a rock, he's being tossed about like a rag doll, even when fighting against stronger opponents Tien is agile and rarely lets his guard down. Krillin may have the higher power level, but he lacks the drive and the skill to use it effectively.
hey gozar and other fans yamcha is my favourite character does any one else feel the same way. Cus i feel he was really forgotten about and he could have offered a lot more he was just unlucky imagine if it was krillen who died instead of him by the saiberman
ReplyDeleteI love krillin, but twin is strongest human
ReplyDeleteBy you ppls logic tien is stronger cause he trains harder so basically i can say vegeta is stronger than goku cause he trains harder. Anyways kuillin is strongest human yamcha said it the creator said it and you all talk about kaioken when has tien used it never why hasnt he cause he either cant handle it or cant do it off of kai planet
ReplyDeleteBut lets be real, Hercule aka mr satan is strongest! He's the champ
ReplyDeleteI actually know someone who literally believed this
DeleteKrillin is the strongest human behind Oob. Some people say "but the attack of Tien can stop Cell"... well, the Master Roshi can destroy the moon with a kame hame ha and Yajirobe hasn't got any energy attack, but Yajirobe is most powerful. Therefore, Krillin is stronger than Tien although Tien has a stronger attack.
ReplyDeleteIt depends what era we are talking about.
ReplyDeleteDragonball: Tien was obviously stronger.
Saiyan saga: Hard to tell, i'll call it a tie.
Frieza saga: Krillin because he got a power up from the elder kai (the ginyu force on king kai's planet was a filler, AKA non cannon).
Android/Cell saga: Tien was stronger because Tien always trains hard and puts 110% effort in. Krillin most likely did not train that much within the 3 years preparation. Goku even told Krillin to take Yamcha to safety instead of Tien.
Tien suppressing Semi-perfect Cell is not a valid argument because that is a ki blast, and not pure strength. Otherwise you could say Krillin is stronger because Kienzan/Destructo Disc can cut through anything.
Buu saga: This should not even be up for debate. Tien is clearly the stronger person. Throughout the 7 years Tien and Chioatzu left the Z fighters, and trained in distant areas. While Krillin on the other hand settled down his life with 18, and stopped training. We know what a lack of training does through Adult Gohan. A comment Vegeta made saying "Pitiful, Gohan was much stronger as a kid when he fought Cell. That is what happens over 7 years when you settle down a stop training". -Vegeta, when Gohan went SSJ2 for Kibito.
Overview:
Dragonball: Tien
Saiyan saga: ???
Frieza saga: Krillin
Cell saga: Tien
Buu saga: Tien
I don't count that comment made by Toriyama for two reasons:
1. It was more or less a passing joke. Toriyama could've jokingly said Goku had a child with Bulma after the Buu saga (inb4 idea used in next ARDBZ episode)
2. Not a specific speculation, as seen from my analysis above, Krillin being the strongest human could vary from saga to saga. Think about it, when Piccolo fused with Kami he was the strongest Z fighter, up until Vegeta and Trunks became ASSJ.
Krillin is stronger than Tenshinhan.
ReplyDeleteYamcha say it to himself in the begining of the Majin Boo's saga (and not to Marron -to her he said that Krillin was the stronger fighter in the world, which is obviously a lie-).
And Toriyama say it again in a interview.
By the way, Tenshinhan don't training hard after de Cell saga, because he never go to the Room of Spirit and Time. At this time to the story, to all this characters the normal training in the Earth don't serve very much to go up the ki, so Tenshinhan don't increase it.