Nah, that's power levels. Nothing kills the story more than having villains that the heroes can't touch because the heros didn't grind enough levels.
DB operated on that logic since day one. It was just given a name and arbitrary numbers with the scouters. DB has very basic logic, villain is strong, previous villain/characters/hero's first fight are used to show this off, hero is weaker, has to find new (extreme) (training) method to become stronger than main villain. Training got introduced with the first tournament arc, the fight-rematch shit was used with Tao first when Goku lost then trained with Korin for 3 days and steamrolled Tao, and the one off powerup equalizer shit was done first with the magic water during King Piccolo.
There was never anything to be ruined by that. That's how it always worked, just without any description. The only other variation is that both the hero and the villain/rival are equivalent from the outset and so the fight results in a flukey technical victory for 1 side. See Roshi vs Goku or Tien vs Goku 1. DB fights at no point were about wit, or synergies/counter abilities, tactics, technique. It always boiled down melee/blasts, whoever is stronger wins.
I disagree. Power levels was Toriyama being an idiot. The Super Saiyan transformations was him giving up.
All 3 of the initial transformations served purpose and tied into the bigger character/story arcs. The first one is a surpsise in and of itself, but it's also used to invert Goku's character during the fight, denoted by his hair literally inverting it's color palette in the black and white manga. Basic visual metaphore. He becomes cruel, vengeful, torments and humiliates Frieza. Manages to turn back into his normal self when Frieza is begging for his life. Neat character work, for Goku.
Second transformation is the focus of an entire arc this time. Results in, Goku forcing his own kid into his role, it backfiring because he misunderstood him, since he's pretty clueless about reading people. Plays into Goku's flaws and Gohan's character, who's fairly peaceful compared to his dad and friends, and is scared of Cell and his own power/anger. Also plays off the first transformation. Like Goku against Frieza, Gohan loses himself and becomes cruel. This time this backfires. Goku decides to sacrifice himself, which is basically him apologizing to Gohan.
The third one is once again a surprise, but unlike the first one, it comes unceremoniously. But it plays into the overall point of the Buu arc, which is subversion. It's a new tranformation, but it isn't the goal you build towards, nor is it the solution to the problem at the end. Giving way to other concepts to take stage instead, fusion and Gohan's ritual. Straight powerups that also fail in the end, like SSJ3. Showing that this time, that's not gonna cut it. Instead a move with a 100% failure rate, the spirit bomb is the thing that saves the day.
It's some of Toriyama's best work in the series. No shit, he probably put the most amount of thought into these parts, mainly the first 2, since a lot of it is core character/story work at the arcs peaks. Actually building off of Goku's personality and flaws. If you think that was him giving up/not giving a shit A, look at Battle of Gods and onwards, B, you are retarded.
Both your takes are right out of the bingo chart. Of shit takes that got calcified due to shit tier fandom, aka stuff like TFS. All you need is 'fuck Broly', 'DB got ruined by Z', 'muh characters were great in DB' and you'd have a bingo. Oh, yeah also 'Goku dumb bad dad'.
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