Thanks for waiting everyone, back at my PC and was able to finish my rough draft sandbox proposal for the Future Trunks arc
here.
The ratings, justifications and scaling layout is in there, but in a nutshell:
- Goku and Vegeta are Solar System level in their base forms and lower Super Saiyan forms.
- Goku Black's Post-Zamasu heal key and his Super Saiyan Rosé key are combined to streamline the profile a little.
- Goku Black's Super Saiyan Rosé is stronger than Goku's and Vegeta's weakened Super Saiyan Blue states, but still weaker than their full power.
Let me explain how I narratively interpret the fights scenes in the manga between Vegeta and Goku Black.
1) Goku Black does not just go through a typical Zenkai when he suffers a near-death experience and gets healed by Zamasu, and not every Zenkai he goes through in the manga is an infinitely large boost in power. The reason for this is that we know he has already gone through multiple Zenkais off-screen
before and
after fighting Trunks, and yet for his first fight with Vegeta his Super Saiyan form is still only Solar System level. The reason for why he gets such a drastic boost is that he explains it as "
The more these damaged cells regenerate, the more they become my own to control! The soul of a god and the body of a Saiyan - they are increasingly becoming one and the same." Getting full access to Goku's power is the most logical explanation for how he can contend with Super Saiyan Blue Vegeta.
2) When Vegeta returns for a rematch after training inside the Hyperbolic Time Chamber,
he hasn't gone through a drastic change in power as noted by Goku Black who is capable of sensing energy. Indeed when
Vegeta transforms into Super Saiyan God, Goku Black isn't surprised by some kind of drastic change in power where Vegeta had gotten incomparably stronger than before. He even calls it a "
downgraded Super Saiyan form", indicating that Vegeta appears weaker to him than what he fought him as a Super Saiyan Blue initially.
3) Trunks also questions how Vegeta, as a Super Saiyan God, is able to contend with Goku Black. Goku provides the explanation to both Trunks and the audience.
Vegeta is storing up the power of Super Saiyan Blue inside of him and only transforming in extremely brief bursts - so quick that Goku Black can't even tell it is happening at first.
This enables Vegeta to fight at full strength without the power of Super Saiyan Blue decreasing which is what was causing him to lose in his earlier fight with Goku Black.
So from this we can tell that:
Vegeta's full SSB's power > Super Saiyan Rosé Goku Black's power > Vegeta's weakened SSB's power
4) The same thing holds true for Goku's full power. When Goku takes on Fused Zamasu alone and uses his completed Super Saiyan Blue against him, Vegeta explains it as "
Blue's weakness is that its full power lasts only for a short while. He faced that weakness and overcame it. He's continuously fighting at 100%."
In other words:
Goku's full SSB's power = Fused Zamasu's power > Super Saiyan Rosé Goku Black's power
Both Vegeta's and Goku's explanations of each other's methods are consistent; Super Saiyan Blue loses power too quickly so neither of them can fight at full strength against Goku Black earlier.
Vegeta gets around it by transforming is super-quick bursts, enabling him to fight at 100% strength when he throws an attack.
Goku gets around it by containing the power inside his body, enabling him to fight at 100% strength at all times.
If the argument is that "Vegeta
must have gotten some
giant power-up because he trained in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber for a day", then how is that Goku is just as strong as Vegeta without that training? All Goku did was practice the Mafuba sealing technique for less than a day. The answer, narratively, is that neither of them recieved a massive power boost; instead all they did was harness different methods that allowed them to fight at full strength. This satisfies the issue of "Why did Vegeta struggle so hard earlier against Goku Black, while he's able to beat him later on" which was an issue I've seen brought up in earlier threads.