Super Saiyans undeniably changed the ballgame. After the first stage’s jaw-dropping debut during Goku’s battle against Frieza, it quickly became a go-to transformation for Akira Toriyama, who would create several variations of the form.
When Buu appeared, however, Toriyama began exploring other power-ups, including what U.S. fans originally called “Mystic,” due to the magical ritual that unlocked it. While not exactly a transformation, Mystic still provides an extraordinary boost to its recipient. To date, Gohan is the only main character and Saiyan to have received it, with Goku and Vegeta instead exploring their new Super Saiyan God forms. Perhaps they made the right choice, but there are also reasons why the Mystic ability should not go overlooked.
10 Mystic: Doesn’t Need Super Saiyan
In many ways, the Mystic power-up is a replacement for the famous golden-haired transformation— in fact, powering up as if going Super Saiyan was how Gohan managed to unlock Mystic in the first place.
Furthermore, because Old Kai brought out all of Gohan’s latent power and increased it even further, becoming a Super Saiyan would offer no increase in strength at all. If anything, it would be detrimental, given how merely transforming into a Super Saiyan consumes energy. A fact that would no doubt please Chi-Chi, as she always felt the Super Saiyan form made her Saiyan family members look like delinquents.
9 Super Saiyan: Has Multiple Forms
As extraordinary an initial boost a martial artist can receive from the Mystic power up, it doesn’t really offer much in the way of further advancement. The beauty of the Super Saiyan form, on the other hand, is that there’s almost always another more powerful version lying in wait to be discovered.
If one Super Saiyan stage can’t conquer an enemy, for instance, all a Saiyan has to do is move onto the next Super Saiyan form they’ve reached. The Mystic power-up doesn’t share that luxury, as there are no other stages to the ability.
8 Mystic: Can Multiply Strength By A Lot More (In The Right Person)
All Super Saiyan forms provide enormous power boosts, but neither Gohan’s Super Saiyan 1 nor 2 was enough against Majin Buu’s “innocent” form. The Mystic power-up, conversely, made Gohan vastly stronger than first-stage Super Buu, whose power dwarfed Innocent Buu’s. Gohan’s Mystic’s boost even exceeded Super Saiyan 3’s, by Goten’s own admission: Gotenks’ base form level exceeded Gohan’s, for instance, but Super Saiyan 3’s power increase didn’t completely protect Gotenks from Super Buu’s attacks, as Mystic did for Gohan.
It’s important to note, however, that Mystic’s boost depends entirely on a fighter’s latent strength. For Gohan, a half-Saiyan, the increase was enormous, but the same may not apply to a fighter with less hidden power.
7 Super Saiyan: Has God Forms
When used on a fighter with enough hidden potential, Mystic’s boost blows the first three Super Saiyan forms out of the water. Yet the Super Saiyan God forms dwarf even Mystic’s power increase in most cases by a substantial margin: Gohan’s maximum Mystic strength wasn’t anywhere near enough to challenge Beerus, for instance.
The first Super Saiyan God form alone, however, was enough for Beerus to start taking his fight against Goku more seriously. Gohan effectively used Mystic against Super Saiyan Blue Goku later on, but the boost Mystic gave his base form likely hadn’t changed—Gohan had simply gotten stronger on the whole.
6 Mystic: It’s Always “On”
The Super Saiyan God forms do share the same weakness of the other Super Saiyan stages, however, namely that they’re not permanent. If a Super Saiyan or Super Saiyan God is harmed too much in battle or loses too much energy, they will power down to their base form, whether they want to or not.
With Mystic, however, that’s not the case. A person with the Mystic power-up will always be at that level of strength, no matter how badly they are hurt. Furthermore, losing large quantities of energy does not cause a fighter to “power down” from Mystic: it essentially functions as a new base form.
5 Super Saiyan: Doesn’t Need Help To Attain (Mostly)
To access the Super Saiyan God forms, Saiyans must either train with a deity or, like with Mystic, take part in a ritual involving other people. Yet the first three “classic” Super Saiyan forms don’t require another person to unlock them: just training and oftentimes, extreme anger. They’re perfect transformations for Goku, who prefers gaining strength the old-fashioned away.
He did, however, express enthusiasm when Old Kai offered to awaken his latent power before the Tournament of Power, perhaps due to the direness of the situation. After all, Goku has broken his “rule” out of necessity before, namely when he drank the Ultra Divine Water.
4 Mystic: Doesn’t Need Rage (After It’s Unlocked)
Gohan did need to tap into his anger when reaching Mystic the first time, as he had to try becoming a Super Saiyan to awaken his newfound power. Since Gohan didn’t need to power up to reach Mystic afterward, however, he no longer required rage as much to boost his strength.
In fact, since the only requirement for unlocking Mystic is to power up as if going Super Saiyan, then Goten and Trunks, who can become Super Saiyans without anger, could theoretically awaken Mystic without any rage at all. They would, of course, still have to sit through the Old Kai’s (extremely long) ritual.
3 Super Saiyan: It’s Not As Easy To Lose
As efficient as Mystic is, it suffers from one deficiency: if you don’t use it, you lose it. By Resurrection ‘F’, Gohan, who’d stopped training regularly, no longer had access to the power-up, only re-attaining it after training intensely with Piccolo.
Funnily enough, this was far less of an issue with Gohan’s Super Saiyan forms. Even after seven years without training, Gohan could still become a Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan 2, although he had grown weaker. Furthermore, he had no problem accessing his first Super Saiyan stage when fighting Frieza’s army, although it was unclear if he could still access the second.
2 Mystic: Doesn’t Waste Energy
Accessing any of the Super Saiyan forms requires at least a little energy expenditure. Worse still, certain Super Saiyan forms are real ki drainers. Super Saiyan Blue’s full power, for instance, depletes energy more quickly than Super Saiyan God (especially in the manga), and Super Saiyan 3 was exceptionally difficult for Goku to maintain while alive because it consumed so much ki.
Mystic, however, doesn’t suffer from the same problem. It doesn’t passively waste energy the way Super Saiyans 3 and Blue do and doesn’t even require special training to minimize energy loss.
1 Super Saiyan: Can Be Combined With Great Ape Form For New Transformations (In GT)
Though not canon, Dragon Ball GT did give the Super Saiyan an advantage over Mystic that’s hard to top. A Saiyan can access a brand new transformation after becoming a Super Saiyan in their Great Ape form and regaining control of themselves: namely the signature form of the series, Super Saiyan 4.
That said, a Mystic Saiyan might be able to unlock Super Saiyan 4 anyway, as the Mystic power-up doesn’t stop somebody from transforming into a Super Saiyan. It is difficult to say if Super Saiyan 4 would provide a significant boost, however, as Mystic already draws the user’s latent power out completely.