Discussion Main / PowerLevels

Perhaps the Dragon Ball section should get its own page?

Anyone care to add Alucards levels (from Hellsing) to the list?

• Despite the name, evolutionary levels in Digimon are closer to this trope than that trope. As characters rise from Baby to In-Training to Rookie to Champion to Ultimate to Mega (Mega/Ultimate/Perfect by Phlebotinum-related means almost exclusively; Champion/Adult is considered 'fully digivolved') he or she becomes stronger (in Japanese version, that's Baby 1, Baby 2, Child, Adult, Perfect, and Ultimate.) and a Digimon's stage is the most important fact given in an Enemy Scan. An In-Training/Baby 2 couldn't do much damage to an unprotected human. An Ultimate/Perfect packs as much power as a small nuclear missile. A Mega/Ultimate can do significant damage to a moon.
  • In certain cases the evolutionary levels only measure power for the individual digimon, showing growth of power, as lucemon has the power of a mega level digimon while he is a rookie.
  • Digimon age also has something to do with it. As explained above, Lucemon is a super-rookie because he's not just ancient, but antediluvian as far as Digimon Frontier's digital world is concerned. Similarly, the Dark Masters of Digimon Adventure 01 claim to be super-powerful because, while the digidestined were in the real world dealing with Myotismon, years were passing in the digital world, and the Dark Masters were just getting progressively more powerful.
  • Apocalymon, the Big Bad of Digimon Adventure 01, claims to be comprised of the data of Digimon who attempted to evolve, failed, and died out, such that digivolution is actually possible without digivices and Digidestined. In this sense, the digivolution == evolution is played more straight than the henshin-esque way it was previously portrayed up until that point.
  • The Big Bad of Digimon Tamers, the D-Reaper, started out as a precautionary program to destroy any digital program that evolved too far. The problem was that this program was very simple and decided that humans had also evolved too far.
    • And whoever programmed it forgot to account for the fact that Technology Marches On.
  • To be noted, Digimon can digivolve without human intervention, mostly due to absorbing enough data, and its more prominently shown in later seasons. Also, Digimon Savers has humans using a more typical version of this trope through Digisoul, the "power of human emotions", effectively ki, that the heroes can use to digivolve their partners without the need of Phlebotinum-related means, and they don't even need a Digivice to do it, as Masaru's sister Chika demonstrated. The Digivice in this season seems to be more of support device to make channeling Digisoul easier, but it can also allow the use of Burst Mode, which goes even above Mega. Masaru also uses it to punch the hell out of anything that comes his way, whether it be Digimon of any level, gigantic spears, or or a deity. And make him explode.
  • And finally, there's a level beyond Mega, called Super Ultimate, and its a major plot point in the Digimon V-Tamer 01 manga, and the number of Super-Ultimates can literally be counted on one hand. The first Super Ultimate to appear in the franchise, Arkadimon, can fire beams that delete whatever they touch from existance. Lucemon's moon-smashing has nothing on these guys.

As noted in Lucemon mention, exist digimons more powerful that his evolutionary level, also exist other digimons more powerful and outright mentioned as this(coff..coff...Aero V-Dramon) And exists one entire category of digimons(the "junk" digimons) that are mentioned and portrayed as less powerful that more child levels despite being champion level.

• Saint Seiya does not use "power levels" as much as "power tiers", classifying the different level of powers in Bronze (at the start), Silver, Gold (Gold saints, Divine Warriors, Marina and Kyotos), and God (Thanatos, Hypnos, and Hades, this one surpassing even the former two). There are certainly variations between levels, as most Marina are significantly weaker than Gold Saints, but the tiers are pretty clear.

This is not the tier of the characters but the tier of the clothes and the minimum power required to use them. Many characters are mentioned and showed as more powerful that his cloth hints.

So, is there an inverse of this trope? Meaningless Power Levels. You know, along the lines of: Brainiac 5 is a 12th Level Intellect, but what does that even mean? If a normal Ph D is a level 11, not so much, but since the never give the scale other than to gasp that Brainy's at or near the top of it, it's meaningless.