LogFAQs > #976751204

Prismsblade posted...

The difference between Supermans and gokus defense is that the former is passive which means its always on. Vs gokus whose is active which means he has to manually turn it on and concentrate to maintain it.

And growth is certainly a thing in comics. Just remove the training arcs and mid season upgrades or power ups pretty much. Then extend the story across decades.

Err, I know. That is basically a part of my point: stuff in anime is really dumb when you actually try and put real world logic to it just like how it's being done versus the Justice League. Think about it this way: there are only three ways that "passive" versus "active" make any sense. The first is that ki is what is actually stopping the bullet, and thus any time that Goku is prepping/prepped ki he is strong enough to ignore damage that would normally be inflicted by bullets. However, this obviously cannot be the case as this would mean that Goku would natively be vulnerable to any attack with stronger power than a bullet and that could move faster than a bullet (as he cannot react to the speed of the bullet in the scenarios where he was hit by one... for the obvious reason that he got hit). So unless he had a ki uptime of 100%, completely negating the entire point of this entire thing, he would be defeatable by anyone stronger than a gun: something that is pretty obviously not the case. The second is that his physiology is stronger when he is flexing/powered up and thus is able to avoid damage from being shot. This, however, is once again proven to be false as if this were the case then his skin, which would not be changed no matter how much he flexed his muscles, would not escape the damage (and any attempts to go backwards would end up with it being ki that is stopping the bullets, which has already been proven to not be the case).

Finally we have the final, and real, answer: you aren't supposed to think about it. Goku escapes damage because he's Goku, Goku takes damage because he is Goku. Much as I alluded to before the entire logic is just "because anime" and trying to make a big deal about it is missing the point. If you tried to apply any form of logic to Goku it would make no sense why anything worked the way that it did and so you are "the greater fool" when you try and act as if there is some greater narrative behind it. The fact that comic book characters have weakness' isn't because that is a narrative thing that they like to do, but so that there can be any tension for the people that don't just turn off their brains whenever characters are punching each other. Goku doesn't need one because he is anime: when he needs to be beaten he just will. When he needs to win he just will. While not all characters of this nature are terrible in this way there is a reason that the characters like Edward Elric or
Gon Freecss are considered masterclass: the writers gave enough of a crap to humanize them in such a way that their loses actually make sense and their powers are somewhat quantifiable in spite of breaking the laws of nature.

And of course growth is a thing in comics. Otherwise Superman wouldn't have been bench-pressing planets. No clue why you put that in there as that really wasn't ever a point that I was trying to make.