The anime community finds all sorts of creative ways to explore the industry, and fans of combat shonen series such as Dragon Ball have fun comparing each series' strongest fighter to see who would win in a serious showdown. It's usually innocent fun and can lead to some great debates and death battle scenarios, but rarely do these hypothetical fights lead to serious answers.

Anything can happen in crossover media such as fan art and fan fiction with characters like Son Goku and Saitama the caped baldy fighting to the death, but by now, "Can X character beat Goku?" has run its course as a half-serious question for anime fans. From the very beginning, these questions failed to provide meaningful comparisons between anime series, as this is a case of comparing apples to oranges.

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Why Goku Crossover Matchups Trivialize Other Anime Characters

a variety of shonen anime protagonists

Anyone can daydream about Goku crossover death battles for fun, which is part of the spirit of fiction, as fiction is all about the imagination. However, in a more serious context, pitting fighters against Son Goku to see who's stronger is somewhat harmful, as it trivializes what other combat-oriented shonen series bring to the table. Few anime fighters can match or beat Goku on Goku's terms, nor should they be expected to. Shonen anime would feel awfully shallow if everything was written to be Dragon Ball wannabes, and the industry has enough Goku clones as it is. The entire point of shonen is to express the same basic, wholesome values in different ways, complete with varying power levels and systems.

Dragon Ball set a famously high standard with Super Saiyan heroes and alien villains who can blow up mountains or even shatter entire planets with energy blasts, making any fair matchup against Goku difficult. Most other anime heroes fall short of such raw power, but that's no reason to look down on them as failed rivals. Those other shonen protagonists are fairly balanced within their own series, and that's what provides entertainment, not trying to one-up Goku. Anyone who takes these Goku matchups too seriously is alienating themselves from fantastic shonen heroes who may lack Super Saiyan powers but are still highly compelling in other ways, and even jokingly asking "Can he beat Goku?" distracts fans from the unique substance that these non-Goku characters have.

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Shonen Is About More Than Raw Strength

Son Goku from Dragon Ball smiling against a sky backdrop

Even within the context of Dragon Ball, the #1 series for super-strong fighters, there is more to a shonen hero than raw strength and fancy new forms with colorful hair. As a true shonen series, Dragon Ball also emphasizes other virtues and strengths such as courage, the power of friendship, the virtue of never giving up, and the power of hope. All those are Goku's real strengths, not just his ki, and this is doubly true in shonen series where even the protagonists cannot blow up entire moons with their energy blasts.

The 1980s was a time of unabashed machismo, as Fist of the North Star showed, and the 1990s had some of that too. Now, by the early 2020s, shonen explores modern masculinity in more balanced and thought-provoking ways, which sets a better example for boys everywhere. Simply hitting people and being the strongest means little, as Goku already proved, and modern shonen heroes are best loved for who they are, not just their combat records or strength.

These are shonen heroes with a heart by even the most generous standards, and it would be a huge disservice to keep asking reductionist arguments like "Can X beat Goku?" It's a very high bar to clear, and shonen heroes don't need to clear it anyway. Rather, protagonists like Tanjiro Kamado, Izuku Midoriya and Yuji Itadori are outwardly strong enough to win fights and inwardly strong enough to change the world for the better, inspiring countless anime fans in the process. Son Goku would be immensely proud of these new shonen heroes, even if they're not even 1% as strong as he is.