Zen Buu, true powerhouse or not?

I think the idea that U4 Buu is too overpowered or a fully blown Mary Sue stems from Buu's magic truly becoming reality wrapping on a large scale like the Dragon Balls. In terms of writing a story that is too broken. Toriyama even realized this and had to put some limitations on them in the Saiyan arc. Suddenly it is revealed the dragon cannot bring a person who died once back to life more than once. The dragon cannot kill someone who is stronger than its creator directly, a limitation to avoid the whole why don't they just wish the bad guy dead. 

When someone as powerful as Majin Buu obtains that reality bending power of the Eternal Dragons, they can do even more than they can, because they are already crazy powerful. What stops Buu from making a black hole or trapping everyone in a pocket dimension inside his hand? He can wrap reality in a way where he essentially destroys Vegetto's mind, so even if Vegetto is stronger than him and Buu cannot directly wish him out of existence, by eliminating Vegetto's mind he has turned his biggest threat into brain dead idiot who cannot use his power wisely anymore or makes Vegetto's awesome techniques inaccesible to him, so making him infinitely easier to kill. That doesn't assume the reality wrapping couldn't be used to turn Vegetto into his slave outright. 

I do understand why people feel Buu's magic becoming wide range reality wrapping like the dragons might be a step too far. I don't necessarily think that U4 Buu can do all of that, but I can see how Buu being revealed to have the ability to revive the dead and fix everything just like the dragon can does open the door Majin Buu being able to essentially do anything and everything now with a snap of his fingers. He is only really limited by his mind. 

To be honest, I'm not sure if he's capable of all that. I think all he's done so far is still within DBZ magic. He became stronger and gained the power of the dragons but nowhere near the level of cosmic reality warping seen in Marvel and DC. He was still affected by Gast and XXI's magic showing that his own power isn't limitless. I think the story has been setting him up to lose or incapacitated in some way.

True but I don't think we'll get that far with Zen Buu. The dragons themselves were only basic reality warping from what we've seen. What I meant by comic book level of reality warping is the control of time and space like creating universes, traveling between them and time, or anything they can think up. The fact that he was sitting in his universe until the organizers showed up to invite him means he likely can't do all that. He also seemed to have tampered with the Vargas tech to prevent himself from being sent back so he probably couldn't return on his own.

Everything that makes Zen Buu a formidable opponent are his existing traits from the manga. Infinite stamina, regeneration, absorption, and learning any ability after seeing it. I think all he gained from the dragons was being able to perform resurrection since most of their other magic he would've already been able to do. Any future fight involving Buu would still come down how he improved on his previous abilities but the tournament showed there's still some magic and even technology he wasn't familiar with.

I’m sort of in the camp of he might be too powerful now. Or the very least that the comic is falling into the trap of making a character too powerful that it just makes it harder and harder to write a way for that character to be beaten believably. Even if XXI can just neutralize Buu’s power that just leaves the question of how is everyone else supposed to deal with XXI then?

You mean specifically on Buu's magic? Yea, I suppose is nanomachines can work on Mr Invincible Broly, antimatter should too (and on Vegetto). But then, Broly was able to survive and eventually break out of a fucking black hole, so..... flip a coin.

But I really would've liked to seen him use this stuff against the other contenders and especially Vegetto to see if it could matched or potentially countered, or if it would actually be as equally a curbstomp on an engaged entity as it would be on someone unsuspecting. As is I find it hard to say stuff that deals with powerlevels as high as Dragonball and such, is overpowered. But the trap on Gast does look like a valid potential example.

I don't think U4 Buu's on SS3 Vegetto's level of power. At his highest power level, I would put U4 Buu at or above SS2 Vegetto. That seems like an extreme power up from what he was, but the comic does seem to favor that thinking. Even though he hasn't surpassed Vegetto in raw power he is in the same weight class. Now his magic can affect even someone as strong as Vegetto now. Magic is so versatile and vast that it gives Buu more options than Vegetto. I just keep picturing Buu coming up with a similar to trap to Gast or he is able to magically drain or sap Vegetto's power when the latter goes Super Saiyan 3. Buu's limitations are more limited by his own imagination and creativity. I'm sure he has thoughts more than a few ways on how he would deal with Vegetto in his universe if he ever got the chance to face him again. 

If take account on how Salagir wrote out U4 Buu, it really does feel like Vegetto just being immune to magic or his power being so great he can no sell magic without any effort flew out the window. I don't see a Shenron/Shenlong situation where Buu's magic can't work because his opponent is stronger than him. That is what makes Buu so terrifying. My guess Vegetto could only ever truly hope to best Buu is if he spent his time learning magic the same way Gast did. That would allow him to come up with magical defenses and counters to handle what Buu could throw at him. 

It might have done this character more justice to give his more uber magic greater costs. 

I think you're right, he's far too bloated, and at a point where it hinders the series at times, which is probably why he had to eave before the end game of the series. Now granted Buu was already insanely overpowered in the original series, and that was an issue to an extant too. Cell's regeneration was already bloated but Buu's is so much worse as there's no risk of fatigue and even more effort into killing him. But at least there it was tempered by Buu being an idiot in almost all of his forms. The kept him from being too bloated. Here, it's too much. He's got extreme strength, far past genius levels of intellect, almost unstoppable regenertation, at least hundreds of haxy types of magic including dark matter, the ability to turn people into candy, and teleportation. He can revive people and supposedly do other things the dragonballs can. He can multiply indefinitely, supposedly without losing strength like the multiform, and can't die unless every atom of him is destroyed. That's kind of boring, at least in a series like dragonball where there are little counters for that and Buu is deemed an actual threat. He's like Rick from Rick and Morty, eventually the character becomes so bloated that there's either no tension with him or it makes no sense that he's losing. The majin rebellion had no tension because he could just revive people whenever. Gast vs Raichi (in the novelization) was a great and intense fight because Gast was their last hope, only to be reminded that Buu was still fine, which is so lame. Don;t get me wrong I really like Buu. He's really funny, has great chemistry with Uub, and keeps things interesting. But he really does sap a lot of tension, I feel they should've toned him down a little.

I'm more annoyed that Buu never got a good focused fight with Vegetto. I mean this would be one of the most anticipated matchups, and I think we all wanted to see what Buu could do when he brings all his tools to bare, his powerlevel and his magics. But what we got was him forgoing magic to duke it out with Vegetto OFFSCREEN for the most part, and then basically overcome Vegetto with the same trick he's been using from the beginning, spreading himself across the place so he can't be fully exterminated. I wasn't against seeing the others learning not-hakai on the fly and in general seeing them deal with Buu's attack, but I figured the main even taking up the chapter would've been Vegetto vs Buu, and it could've been an awesome spectacle.

I personally don't think Buu was overpowered with what he showed, or at least he didn't HAVE to be, so long as there was a way to escape or counter Buu's magic attacks. Teleportation, overpowering through stronger ki, perhaps some use of tactics, and his own smorgasbord of abilities.

But instead, pretty much all we got was Vegetto lighting up like a sun that eradicates all of the Buus around the arena, but of course only the ones WITHIN the fucking barrier, and just those that hid deep underground. It was a pretty cool attack, but at the same time so disappointing when the obvious limits came to fore.

The way I see it, with how powerful the characters in Dragonball have become, they should be tackling insane powers like Buu's. But if I had to guess, I can only assume Salagir made Buu too OP and couldn't do anything with it than what he did, or had no intention of giving him an actual focused fight thus the OP powers anyway, which is disgusting to my dragonball appetite.

I really hope Buu's last battle is expanded upon in the novels.




Oh shit, you're right there. That would be tough as hell to handle. They can break through dimensional barriers, but that's usually more for an escape... and how do you break into a dimension that you don't know exist or its location point...

You do bring up some points that I'd forgotten about even with the original Buu. I sorta hated that he was basically the androids on crack with infinite stamina AND limitless regeneration. And magic in dragonball seems to be a practically free ability, doesn't have a usage limit or anything. It might be because Toriyama never bothered to think it through (actually, of course it is), and nothing gets my gall than infinite powers of near any kind.

Still, I am hoping he gets a proper and more dynamic battle in the novelization.

I think the overpowering magic or magic being ineffective if ki is too strong exist to an extent in DBM. Salagir had to address why Vegetto had such resistance against it when he fought Buuhan/Gohan Buu in the Buu arc, but I think that was mentioned because Salagir had to justify that since it happened in canon. Largely, I think Salagir disproves of the ki trumping all style that Z era of DB gave us. I think that because DBM has tried to bring back tactics, strategy, and more diverse move sets that effect warriors with more ki. I honestly think that is a good call. As much as I loved Z era and got into DB by watching DBZ I can admit making everything come down to ki to the point the more diverse moves were lost in favor of making bigger blasts that the series lost a lot of the creativity we had in Goku’s youth.

That is why we have universes like U6, U9, and U19. Those warriors on their own are much weaker than everyone else, but thanks to grounding DB a little more and making ki not the be all end all it was in the Z era we got human warriors defeating the same enemies as canon through teamwork and strategy. We got U19 create technology that can harm and or kill SS3 level fighters. I think having Vegetto just power through U4 Buu’s magic just because he has more raw power would go against the spirit of what Salagir has tried to do. That is why I don’t think we got the big showdown where Vegetto fought against all of Buu’s tricks. Buu’s magic is so diverse and while Vegetto has more diverse ki techniques that doesn’t guarantee he has a counter for every spell. A ki barrier might save Vegetto from spell that use heat or energy beam, but that doesn’t mean it could protect from a magic that attack his mind or a spell from materializing from inside of him. That is where the problem lies. Buu’s magic allows him to wrap reality on the scale of the Dragon Balls he can do things regular magicians likely could not do.

What is stopping Buu from using magic turn Vegetto’s organs water? No matter how strong Vegetto is he needs his organs to live. What stops Buu from reducing Vegetto’s intelligence and make him a vegetable? Now Vegetto cannot even think to use his awesome power let alone try to use it to kill Buu. With no clear limits on Buu’s magic or heavy cost he can do almost anything to kill or hinder anyone.

Even putting Vegetto into a pocket dimension could work. We have seen strong enough warriors can break through dimensional barriers, but it still takes some time to do. What if Buu sent Vegetto in a pocket dimension with a mini-black hole in it as soon as Vegetto gets sent there? Broly survived by dumb luck thanks to his crazy invincibility, and even that only worked for U20 Broly since other Broly in similar scenarios were killed by black hole instantly. Vegetto would likely be just as screwed since he doesn’t even have LSS automatic invincibility.

While Vegetto is really powerful and essentially a god to most other beings in DBM he is more of brute force type of god. Buu has brute force and ability to manipulated life, death, matter, energy, souls, dimensions, and possibly more. Vegetto came up with a technique to specifically kill Buu by obliterating Buu’s body as soon as it hits. That is impressive the problem is he needs to actually hit Buu for it to be effective. Thanks to Buu’s own innate abilities he can split parts of himself off and make them microscopic and hide them away. If he wants to he could put a part of himself in the other side of the universe. Vegetto still needs to know where every piece is and hit them to kill him. Whereas Buu can create complex traps by combining different types of magic together to stun or kill his opponent. With all of Buu’s original abilities stacked on with his increased magically ones he is OP to really work without any high costs or hard limits.