Dragon Ball Super: Gohan Beast, Explained (2024)

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero as a movie is what many fans were excited for, and certainly blew out a lot of expectations from the audiences despite the leaks at first, and most of that success is due to the new transformation that Gohan exhibited in the last minutes of the movie. This new form of red-purple aura, and with white hair and red-eyes showed the fans that Gohan still had limitless potential hiding underneath, and that it needed a greater snap for him to awaken to it in order to defeat Cell Max. However, many would be forgiven for not understanding just how the power works, when it surfaced, and why, and especially how strong Gohan is in this form compared to the other characters in the cast. With all that said, just what is Gohan Beast, and what could this mean for the story going forward?

It is important to acknowledge that Gohan Beast as a transformation is still relatively new but making waves across the community for what it has shown us to be for Gohan's strength. This may seem like a small detail, but is in truth a great opportunity for Dragon Ball to express how strong Gohan Beast is at the moment. Of course, there remains to be seen a lot of explanation regarding what Gohan Beast really is as a transformation and its role in the future.

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How It Manifested

To begin explaining Gohan Beast as a transformation, one needs to first understand where the form came from and how it manifested within Gohan in the first place. During their battle against Gamma 1 and 2, Gohan and Piccolo would soon find themselves in the fight for their lives as Cell Max was released from the Red Ribbon depths, and from there a fight for the fate of the planet would occur. Despite the combined efforts of Goten, Trunks, and Android 18; there wasn't much of a way to defeat Cell Max traditionally without risking destroying the planet due to the self-destruct mechanism in Cell Max. However, when Piccolo encouraged Gohan to break his limits right then and there to defeat Cell Max, the fight against the monstrosity left Piccolo in a seemingly defeated and deceased state; which is what triggered a similar snap within Gohan when Android 16 was destroyed.

From there onwards, Gohan manifested the strength of Beast within him; in a shout of rage that further shook the earth and amazed everybody who was there to witness it. Thankfully, Piccolo wasn't in any way defeated, just temporarily knocked out by the time Gohan Beast manifested as a transformation. Thankfully, due to the manifestation and eventual promising timing of Gohan Beast; Gohan and Piccolo were able to defeat Cell Max together and save the earth on their own without needing Goku and Vegeta to be there. Of course, this led the fans to be hyped and excited for more appearances of Gohan Beast in the future, as the ability and transformation is officially canon in the story as well as in the Dragon Ball universe overall. However, this leads to one more question: just how strong is Gohan Beast when compared to the other characters, like Goku and Vegeta?

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How Strong Is Gohan Beast?

Dragon Ball as series used to have calculable power levels, but soon ditched them as mere novelty for favor of power scaling by explicitly or implicitly giving information that certain characters have gotten stronger or achieved newer transformations. In the case of Gohan Beast and Cell Max, which is important to compare to Goku and Vegeta, it is implicitly remarked by Piccolo that even Cell Max would give Goku and Vegeta a lot of trouble due to Cell Max's data and strength when compared to even Orange Piccolo. This is enough to show us how strong Cell Max is, but Gohan Beast is most likely to be stronger than Cell Max and even able to rival Goku, Vegeta, and even Broly. Due in part because Gohan Beast barely struggled against Cell Max, and defeated it with one charge and blast of the Special Beam Cannon.

From what we can gather, Gohan Beast as a transformation is not only an immense boost in power for Gohan that allowed him to defeat the enemy Cell Max, but it is also narratively what allows Gohan to be on the same level of power as Goku, Vegeta, and Broly; allowing him to potentially participate in more fights in the future. What this means narratively is that Gohan Beast is an equalizer for Gohan, and overall an important boost that puts him as one of the few strongest beings in Universe 7 that could rival and even defeat Goku and Vegeta in a fight. Of course, whether Dragon Ball as a series will keep this consistent and show it to be that way in the future is to be seen.

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Dragon Ball Super: Super Heroes Is Available To Stream on Crunchyroll