Top 20 Strongest Dragon Ball Z Characters

                I’m going to start off by saying that this list is my opinion.  I doubt it’s 100% accurate.  But I put enough thought into it that I believe the list is very close to as accurate as possible.  I also want to emphasize that I’m only considering the manga as much as possible.  That means no GT (Super 17, Syn Shenron), movies (Janemba, Hirudegarn), or any other filler (Pikkon).  This is largely just a personal preference.  I can understand including some of these characters, but I’d rather not have my list full of GT characters, when I didn’t even watch GT.  I am a fan of the Dragon Ball Z anime, but the manga trumps the anime in my opinion (and the manga is actually canon too).  For the purposes of my list, I’m also going to ignore the two “10 Years Later” chapters.  These chapters were too brief to get any relevant glimpses into the character’s strength at the time.  Rather than speculate on the amount of training Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan engaged in over the 10 year time skip, I’m going to stick with battle evidence from the Buu saga.  Additionally, I will only include one form for each character.  For example, I won’t have the nine forms of Buu that I can think of all make the list.  Only the strongest form of each character will make the list.

                Now that I’ve explained some caveats, I’m going to briefly explain my rating system.  The classic scouter rating system is too speculative to be used for hard ratings.  I do, however, find it useful to use Vegito1089’s ratings as a relative reference point.  I have found his ratings to on the whole be very accurate to judge character’s relative strength.  When I include numerical ratings in this blog entry, they are from his Youtube videos.  For my rankings, I use tiers to compare characters to each other.  Each of these tiers is exponentially stronger than the next (meaning each is approximately 10 times stronger than the previous tier).  The tiers that are relevant to a discussion of the top 20 characters are Android 16, Cell Jr, SS2 Teen Gohan, Majin (Fat) Buu, and Super Buu (no absorbtions).  These characters are useful to use as markers because their power levels don’t vary (either they’re killed, they take a new form, or they aren’t seen again until they’re much older).  Super Buu is much stronger than Majin Buu as Super Buu is about equal to SS3 Gotenks and Majin Buu is about equal to SS1 Gotenks.  Majin Buu is much stronger than SS2 Gohan as he easily wins in a head to head fight with 16 year old SS2 Gohan.  SS2 Gohan is much stronger than Cell Jr as he also easily wins in a head to head fight.  Cell Jr is much stronger than Android 16 as Cell Jr had a slight edge fighting Trunks and Vegeta who were much stronger than Android 16.  Now that should be enough set-up.

Rank 19 and 20

In my opinion, the top 18 characters clearly belong on this list.  After the 18^th spot, however, there’s a definite drop-off to the much weaker 19^th spot.  The candidates for these two spots are Goten (960 million), Trunks (990 million), Yakon (1.95 billion), Android 16 (510 million), and Android 17 (450 million), all of whom are in the Android 16 power tier.  First off, I’m going to eliminate Yakon from consideration, despite his high power rating.  Goku seemed to be able to keep up with Yakon fine in his base form.  I doubt Goku would be able to match the androids without going Super Saiyan, even after 7 years of training post-Cell.

Now this becomes a question of whether or not Goten and Trunks would be able to stand up against the androids.  The comparison is difficult to make as Goten and Trunks don’t have good battle evidence, except a battle proving that Trunks is slightly stronger than Goten.  Trunks and Goten do fight Android 18, but the battle is cut short without either side gaining a noticeable edge.  It’s not really clear quite how powerful the kids are.  To get a rough estimate of their power, I’m going to cheat a little and use a movie character as reference.  Gogeta, the only other fusion dance character besides Gotenks, is valuable as a tool to judge to power boost of the fusion dance.  Based on Gogeta’s fight with Janemba, I believe it’s fair to estimate that SS Gogeta is roughly twice as powerful as Super Buu.  SS Goku and SS Vegeta are both by this point about twice as strong as Cell Jr.  This means the fusion dance gives approximately a power boost of three tiers (quite a lot actually).  SS Gotenks is shown to be evenly matched with Majin Buu.  Three tiers below this would put Goten and Trunks as evenly matched with Android 16. 

There isn’t a good way to decide who exactly is stronger, in my opinion, as the three are so close, they are essentially tied.  The order I’ve decided to put them in is:

21. Goten

20. Trunks

19. Android 16

Rank 11-18

                This set of ranking is made up of characters in the Cell Jr range.  Besides Cell Jr (6 billion), this group includes both Future Trunks (4.34 billion) and Piccolo (5 billion, approximated without weighted clothing).  First off, Cell Jr can be assumed to be stronger than Future Trunks.  The fight between the two was close, but Cell Jr was winning.  Future Trunks was never seen to get any stronger after the Cell Games either.  Piccolo was also losing a close battle to Cell Jr, but it can be safely assumed that he trained in the 7 year period after Cell’s defeat.  It’s difficult to imagine Piccolo not training during this period.  I believe Piccolo would be stronger than Cell Jr after this extended period of time.

       

                Four other characters who would arguably be in this range are the four Supreme Kais (not including the Grand Supreme Kai or Kibito Kai).  The Supreme Kais never have their power clearly defined, but after some consideration I believe they are similar to Cell Jr in power level.  Ranking the three Supreme Kai besides the East Supreme Kai is difficult because they are actually only mentioned in passing.  It’s stated that the East was the youngest and the weakest of the Supreme Kai, and that the South is easily the strongest.  This was 5 million years ago, however.  I think it’s safe to assume that the East is stronger than he used to be considering he is now older.  I’m ranking them in the follow order: South (16.5 billion), East (7.8 billion), West (8.5 billion), North (1.3 billion).  Without considering filler, it’s impossible to determine if West or North are stronger.  For this reason, I will rank them next to each other, with West ranked higher solely because she has a higher power rating according to Vegito1089.

      

                The four Supreme Kais are now ranked among themselves, but they still need to be put in context of other characters to prove they’re in the Cell Jr tier.  The only way to do this is to compare them using the East Supreme Kai as reference.  Even the East was involved in very few battles, but there are three instances that can be used as reference.  The first is when Piccolo is intimidated into surrendering to the East.  It could be argued that the East was stronger than Piccolo, or that Piccolo just surrendered out of respect for a higher ranked deity.  I’m more inclined to think it was the first, however, as Piccolo seemed unnerved by the East.  The East is also strong enough to survive a frontal assault by Majin Buu.  Even though he was unable to retaliate, being able to survive Buu’s attack without permanent injury is an indication of great strength (enough strength to at least to be two tiers below Majin Buu).  A final indicator of the East’s strength is him being astounded by the strength of Super Saiyans.  This caps the East’s strength below SS Goku, SS Vegeta, and SS Gohan (all in the first Super Saiyan form).  All this considered, I’m going to rank the East Supreme Kai ahead of Piccolo.  I’m considering Piccolo to be close enough, however, that I’m going to rank both Piccolo and Cell Jr higher than the West and North Supreme Kais.  There isn’t a lot of clear evidence on the Supreme Kais’ strength so even though I’m sure they’re in this range of power levels, they’re exact ranking is definitely subjective.

            

                The final character who I believe has a power level in the Cell Jr range is Uub (9.85 billion).  Uub is another difficult character to rank.  Obviously I’m making an exception here on my ignore “10 Years Later” rule since Uub isn’t a character before this point.  I believe this is a valid exception to make, as Uub is a canon character, and therefore there isn’t any good reason to leave him off the list.  At full power, Uub has the same power as Kid Buu.  This would put him in the Majin Buu range, much higher than the Cell Jr range.  The issue is Uub is untrained and likely isn’t able to harness anything close to his full power.  Luckily, we do have his fight against Goku as reference, even if it was a very brief fight.  Uub seems to be able to match up with base Goku.  The hard point here is speculating how strong base Goku is after 10 years of training.  In 7 years of training after the Cell saga, Goku was able to able to approximately double to quadruple his power.  Considering base Goku was about equal to Yakon, if Goku trained about the same amount over the next 10 years, then his power level would be just high enough to make it into the Cell Jr tier in his base form.  Thus I’m going to rank Uub as the lowest member of this tier.

                The rankings for this section are then as follows:

18. Uub

17. Future Trunks

16. Northern Supreme Kai

15. Western Supreme Kai

14. Cell Jr

13. Piccolo

12. Eastern Supreme Kai

11. Southern Supreme Kai

Rank 6-10

                This next section is for characters in the same tier as SS2 Teen Gohan.  A few of these characters are about twice as strong as SS2 Gohan, but are significantly weaker than Majin Buu.  Also, Gohan himself is not included in this tier because he became much stronger in the Buu saga.  The first character that can easily fit in this category is Cell (77 billion).  In his Super Perfect Cell form, Cell is essentially equal to SS2 Teen Gohan in power.  Their Kamehamehas are almost even, with Gohan’s being slightly stronger.  Another character that fits comfortably in this tier is Dabura (9.4 billion).  Dabura fought a fairly even match with SS2 Gohan (age 16).  Since Gohan got weaker in the time between the Cell and Buu sagas (as said by Goku and Vegeta) then Dabura must be comparable to Cell, but weaker.

                Vegeta (160 billion) is another character in this range whose power level can easily be assessed.  Vegeta himself claims to be stronger than SS2 Teen Gohan and this claim appears to be valid.  This would automatically place Vegeta above Cell.  Vegeta also receives a power buff when he becomes Majin.  Still, Vegeta doesn’t stand a chance against Majin Buu, so Vegeta isn’t strong enough to fit into the next higher tier.  I think putting Vegeta as about twice as strong as SS2 Teen Gohan makes sense considering his Majin power boost.

                The other two characters who I would argue are in this tier aren’t as easy to compare to other characters.  These two characters are the remaining Supreme Kais, the Grand Supreme Kai (115 billion) and Kibito Kai (180 billion).  Like most of the other Supreme Kais, the Grand Supreme Kai doesn’t actually make an appearance in the manga and is only mentioned once by the East Supreme Kai.  There is, however, a good way to estimate his power.  When Good Buu is detached from Super Buu, Buu changes back into Kid Buu.  The two absorbees left in Super Buu before he reverts to Kid Buu are the Grand Supreme Kai and the South Supreme Kai.  This means that Good Buu’s power comes from a combination of the Grand and South Supreme Kais.  Good Buu holds out against Kid Buu a little better than the SS2 Vegeta, but not significantly better.  So Good Buu’s strength should be in between SS2 Vegeta and Majin Vegeta.  We’ve already established that the South Supreme Kai is weaker than fighters in the SS2 Teen Gohan tier, so a large amount of Good Buu’s power should come from the Grand Supreme Kai.  If we assume the Grand Supreme Kai is 75% as strong as Good Buu, then he would be stronger than SS2 Teen Gohan (and thus stronger than Cell).

                Kibito Kai is much more prominent in the series, but also doesn’t fight anyone.  When Kibito Kai is first formed, he feels so confident in his new power that he offers to help Goku fight Super Buu, but the Old Kai tells him he would be killed.  I consider the East Supreme Kai (and thus Kibito Kai) to be an unreliable judge of power, but the Old Kai seems to be a good source.  Therefore, Kibito Kai is definitely no match for Super Buu, but he is at least a decent amount stronger than the East Supreme Kai.  A good reference to use is Super Vegito, the potara fusion of Goku and Vegita.  This fusion increases the strength of SS Goku and Vegeta by 3.5 tiers (this claim will be evidenced in the section of Vegito).  A three tier increase for East Supreme Kai would make him as strong as Super Buu, so a 3.5 tier increase contradicts earlier evidence.  This can be explained by considering that Kibito isn’t a fighter.  Kibito is a member of the Shin-jin race with lower rank than King Kai, which might indicate that Kibito is weaker than King Kai.  This would put Kibito as weaker than Saiyan saga Goku.  Even ignoring this, Dabura effortlessly killed Kibito, so he can’t be very strong.  Despite having useful abilities, there is never any indication that Kibito is strong at all.  If we assume Kibito to be much weaker than the East Supreme Kai, than the potara fusion power boost would likely not be as great.  If we work with a half efficiency boost, we would get Kibito Kai is stronger than the SS2 Teen Gohan tier, but still not a match for the Majin Buu tier.  This would place him around Vegeta’s strength. 

                Vegeta has much more battle sense, so he’d win against an opponent like Kibito Kai even if they had similar power levels.  This speculation on the Kais power levels would result in the tier being ordered as follows:

10. Dabura

9. Cell

8. Grand Supreme Kai

7. Kibito Kai

6. Vegeta

Rank 5

                The next tier only has one character ranked in it.  This doesn’t mean that there is only one character in this tier period, but that the other characters approximately this strong all have stronger forms.  Majin Buu, for example, is the baseline for this tier, but he obviously transforms into more powerful forms.  Another character who would fit in here would be SS Gotenks, who was about as strong as Majin Buu, but Gotenks later powered up beyond this tier.

                One character who matched up closely to Majin Buu without later powering up was Goku (650 billion; 800 billion max, but unstable).  SS3 Goku fought evenly with Majin Buu, but Goku was trying to stall and wasn’t going all out.  Goku later claimed that he could have killed Buu during that fight if he fought at 100%.  This establishes Goku as clearly stronger than Majin Buu.  Later when Goku and Vegeta are in Super Buu’s body (Gohan, etc. no longer absorbed), Goku says that Buu will kill Goku and Vegeta if they exit Buu’s body.  This statement establishes Goku as much weaker than Super Buu.  Goku is probably near the top of this tier, but his unstable power in SS3 form also holds him back.

5. Goku

Rank 1-4

                The highest tier is made up characters so strong they make even people like Cell look pathetically weak.  The rankings for these characters are also very clear, so there isn’t as much need to explain the thought processes behind these rankings.  These are the characters that are in the same class as Super Buu.  As such, the strongest form of Buu, Super Buu with Gohan absorbed (9.4 trillion), is obviously in this category.  Super Buu was already stronger than Kid Buu, as seen by full-power Goku being able to defeat Kid Buu, but Goku saying he stood no chance against base Super Buu.  Buu then upgraded further by absorbing Gohan, Trunks, Goten, and Piccolo and adding their strength to his.

                As this tier is characters in Super Buu’s power range, Gotenks (4 trillion) is a logical inclusion.  In his SS3 form, Gotenks and Super Buu were basically an even match.  Gotenks was winning in their fight, but his time limit is a severe handicap.  It’s not entirely clear if Gotenks or Super Buu is stronger, but Gotenks is clearly close to Buu in power.  And since Buu is clearly much stronger with Gohan, etc. absorbed, Super Buu (Gohan absorbed) is stronger than Gotenks.  The other character who fought with base Super Buu was Gohan (5.5 trillion).  Unlike Gotenks, Gohan was much stronger than Super Buu.  Super Buu needed to absorb Gotenks (likely doubling Buu’s strength) in order to match up against Gohan.  Like Gotenks, Gohan is weaker than Super Buu (Gohan absorbed) as Buu was using Gohan’s own strength in addition to his own.

                The final character in the Buu tier is so strong, he is arguably in his own tier.  The strongest character so far is Super Buu (Gohan absorbed) who is about twice as strong as Gohan (the next strongest character).  But this form of Super Buu loses badly in a match to Super Vegito (33 trillion).  Vegito is so much stronger, he showed he could beat Buu as a piece of candy.  Estimating Vegito as twice as strong as Super Buu (Gohan absorbed) is probably an underestimate of his strength.  As SS Goku and Vegeta are about twice as strong as Cell Jr, and Vegito is conservatively four times stronger than base Super Buu, the potara fusion grants Goku and Vegeta about 3.5 tiers of power boost.  The competition for the number one spot is really not even close as Vegito is the strongest character in Dragon Ball Z by a ridiculous margin.

                The final set of rankings are:

4. Gotenks

3. Gohan

2. Buu

1. Vegito

The list all together then comes out as:

Honorary Mention: Goten

20: Trunks

19: Android 16

18: Uub

17: Future Trunks

16: Northern Supreme Kai

15: Western Supreme Kai

14: Cell Jr.

13: Piccolo

12: Eastern Supreme Kai

11: Southern Supreme Kai

10: Dabura

9: Cell

8: Grand Supreme Kai

7: Kibito Kai

6: Vegeta

5: Goku

4: Gotenks

3: Gohan

2: Buu

1: Vegito