Anyone can beat Goku now

polygon.com:

Son Goku: Dragon Ball protagonist, trained alien warrior, and, sure, pretty powerful guy. But how powerful, really? Hardcore fans might tell you that there’s nobody out there that could beat Goku in a fight.

But consider this: Tony Tony Chopper is my sweet child and therefore would beat Goku because I said so.

Since the 1980s, fans have indulged in the thrill of arguing over Goku and his strength. As well as being highly influential on other manga and anime, Dragon Ball was one of the earliest Japanese series to gain popularity in the West. Spread first through fan-translated bootlegs and shipped-in manga, it eventually aired on U.S. television in the late 1990s, although it had several false starts before finding success. Through those years, anime found its Western audience, but it was still nowhere near as mainstream as it is now.

That’s probably why fans first wanted to make a case for its protagonist over the characters in more popular comic strips and TV shows of the day. One of the absurdities of the argument, of course, is that just because a character is very powerful, that doesn’t mean the media is inherently good. But Goku’s strength is a key focus of Dragon Ball stories. Like so many shōnen protagonists, he is constantly coming up against stronger and stronger foes, and getting stronger himself in turn. Dragon Ball gives strength a straightforward numerical metric in the form of power levels — you may have heard of that time that Goku went over 9000.

The manga and anime’s emphasis on Goku being very, very strong made it a constant source of interest for the community, too. And fans in the ’90s and 2000s latched onto Goku and his power as an emblem of their niche. “Goku vs. Superman,” for example, became a