Highlights
- Super Saiyan Grade 2 and 3 transformations provide strength and character growth, but Super Trunks sacrifices speed for power, making it ineffective.
- Future Trunks learned Super Saiyan Grade 3 during the Cell Saga, but its flaws were exposed, rendering it outdated and unused.
- Newer transformations like Super Saiyan 2 and Super Saiyan God provide better boosts without drawbacks, so Super Trunks is unlikely to return in future Dragon Ball stories.
Dragon Ball has been known to use transformations as a vehicle for strength and character growth, and one of those happens to be the Super Saiyan Grade 2 and 3 transformations. Future Trunks in particular learned the ability to use Super Saiyan Grade 3 during the Cell Saga while he trained with Vegeta, which led him to become strong and able to fight against Perfect Cell before he was defeated. That said, there are very specific details about Super Trunks as a transformation that must be understood. Part of that requires one to admit that the transformation isn’t effective in the scope of Dragon Ball.
What is Super Trunks as a transformation, how does it work, and what exactly is the reason for it not being useful, that not even Vegeta used it during the fight with Cell?
Understanding Super Saiyan Grade 3
The Basics of Super Trunks
When one reads the Cell Saga from start to finish, Vegeta’s discovery of the Super Saiyan Grades led him to become stronger and focus all of his Ki into his muscles and nerves, bulking up and becoming stronger as a result. The same principle applied to Trunks when he transformed into Super Trunks, allowing him to become a Grade 2 Super Saiyan and strong enough to keep up with Perfect Cell for a time. However, Trunks, with his impatience and lack of battle-experience, pushed it even further to bulk up to the point of becoming cumbersome in exchange for more destructive power. The transformation known as Super Trunks worked pretty well, and generally speaking, the strength was more than enough to damage Cell every time it hit the Bio-Android.
However, there was a noticeable flaw in the transformation, that even Goku stated as he attempted the same thing in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, something that Trunks should have realized.
All the raw power in the universe won’t do me any good if I can’t catch my opponent! It’s gonna take a lot more than brute strength to win this fight. – Son Goku
This flaw seems obvious when you look at Super Trunks visually. Trunks had bulked up to the point that he looked more like a Hulk than anything a Super Saiyan should normally look like. This resulted with Cell picking up on it quickly, breaking the spirit of the young Saiyan when he explained that Trunks would never be able to defeat Cell, even with Super Trunks. All in all, Super Trunks as a transformation works with raw power, but the trade-off is too disadvantageous for any fighter to rely upon or even use at all, since it sacrifices the speed needed to hit the opponent.
Why Super Trunks Won’t Return
What Else Could Trunks Use?
With all this information, the transformation itself has become borderline useless thanks to the new transformations. Super Saiyan 2, Super Saiyan 3, and the Super Saiyan God line of transformations all provide greater boosts without sacrificing speed or power. This means that even if the current Trunks were to learn more powerful forms of Super Saiyan, Super Trunks wouldn’t be the first choice he’d arrive at, and even less something that Vegeta would allow. The transformation itself has become outdated, and its introduction only further solidified the weakness of Super Saiyan Grade 2 and 3; Future Trunks wouldn’t use the transformation anymore, and therefore Dragon Ball would most likely not introduce this sort of transformation in the future at all.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Future Trunks won’t become stronger or even be unable to use other transformations. After all, this learning experience made Future Trunks access Super Saiyan Rage in the Goku Black arc, and Dragon Ball doesn’t seem to be letting up the new transformations or new avenues of power that the main character will access. If at all, Future Trunks should be able to find a way to become a Super Saiyan God, which will put him at least closer in strength, and much faster compared to the enemies he has faced before. Dragon Ball may never reintroduce the idea of Super Trunks anymore, as that transformation has long outdated itself, and is already out of use. However, Future Trunks may not be out of tricks or options just yet to get stronger. In fact, one can only hope for the future.
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