Cosmology

Seven spheres bearing one to seven stars, scattered after each use for a set period. The summoned dragon grants the first request spoken, without judging its content, and only within the limits of what its creator could achieve himself.

That last clause is the story’s most useful constraint: it explains why certain wishes are refused, why the loss of a creator removes the balls, and why several sets exist with different rules depending on the planet.

The franchise uses three: Namekian assimilation, which preserves the host’s identity; the Potara earrings, whose effect is in principle permanent; and the fusion dance, temporary, demanding in synchronisation and immediately voided by any mistake.

Each method has a different cost and duration, which makes it a real system rather than a shortcut.

Taught by the North Kai, the technique does not use its caster’s energy but the surrounding world’s, which makes it theoretically unlimited and practically unusable in close combat: the charge demands several minutes of stillness.

It also carries a moral constraint rare in the story: it only works properly in the hands of someone the planet agrees to feed.

Hakai does not destroy physically: it removes the target from existence, with no debris and no shockwave. It is the story’s only ability that cannot be countered with power, only by interrupting its execution.

Its use is bounded by the office of whoever performs it, which makes it an administrative act as much as an attack.

The principle is simple and brutal: push all energy output beyond what the tissues can take, in stages announced out loud. Each notch raises the power and the internal damage in the same proportion.

It is the first technique in the franchise to formalise the idea of a cost, which makes it more interesting than the transformations that follow it.

The technique requires gathering energy between the palms before releasing it as a continuous beam. Its strength is its modularity: it can be fired one-handed, in bursts, at point-blank range, or used as propulsion.

Goku learns it from a single viewing, which sets the learning rule for the whole universe: observation is enough if the body can keep up.

Krillin’s invention, the Destructo Disc is the best human answer to power inflation: it does not try to outmatch the opponent, only to find a cutting plane. Several major antagonists lose a limb to it.

It is the textbook example of what Earthlings bring to the story: technique where others bring volume.

A Crane School technique, the Tri-Beam produces an effect far above its user’s actual level, provided they accept leaving part of their life behind. Tien makes it his answer to opponents out of his class.

Alongside the Evil Containment Wave, it is the best illustration of the cost principle in this universe.

The Evil Containment Wave locks an opponent inside a container sealed with a talisman, and costs its user their life. It is the only known answer to certain enemies force cannot remove.

Its presence is structural: it establishes that some problems are not solved by climbing the power scale.

Presented as a legend before it appears, the transformation originally requires a major emotional shock combined with a sufficient energy level. The later stages extend the principle: static electricity, muscle mass, longer hair.

The franchise deliberately makes it routine, which forces it to invent the divine register in order to find a ceiling again.

The ritual requires six pure Saiyan hearts channelling their energy into a seventh. The result is not greater mass but energy of another nature, denser and harder to perceive for anyone untrained in it.

It is the pivot of Dragon Ball Super: from here on, progression is about control rather than amplitude.

The technique does not aim at coordinates but at an energy signature: you cannot go somewhere unless someone is there. That limitation makes it a clean narrative tool that does not solve everything.

It comes from a physically weak people, a detail the franchise never underlines but which matters.

Technically an angel discipline rather than a Saiyan transformation, Ultra Instinct separates action from intention: the dodge and the strike fire before the analysis. Whis lays out the principle long before the story shows it.

Its cost is mental rather than energetic, which explains why a fighter used to thinking mid-combat struggles to reach it.