PowerRankings

One cited deathDragon Ball Z
Does this death move the ranking?

Confirms the ladder

The higher-ranked entity killed the lower-ranked one. Record and ladder agree.

Son Goku vs Kid Buu

The killerSon GokuDragon Ball · rank 5
5 places
The victimKid BuuDragon Ball · rank 10

This is the rare Dragon Ball death that holds, and the ladder is already arranged as though it did. Fifth killed tenth, which is the order the ranking predicts, so nothing needs revising — but the manner is worth stating, because it is the franchise's whole economy in one move. He does not out-hit the thing. He is stalled for by two other fighters while a planet hands him its energy, and the shot lands because somebody else bought the seconds. Note also what did not happen: the death was never wished away. Kid Buu is reincarnated as a different person entirely, which leaves the original dead and the record intact — unusual enough here to be worth marking.

The connecting record

shownDragon Ball Z

Son Goku killed Kid Buu in Dragon Ball Z.

stalled by Vegeta and a freed Fat Buu first; the bomb was made of energy borrowed from a planet

What each of them is ranked on

The killer · Son Goku · rank 5

manga · anime · films

MangaToei animeCanon filmsGT and the old filmscomicanimationfilm

The longest depicted record anybody here has, and he is fifth because several of the entries above him have scored on him directly. Ultra instinct is the real thing — a state the narration describes as moving without deciding to, and which the panels back up by having him evade things he is not looking at. The screen and the page agree about him more consistently than about anyone else in this franchise.

  • shownDragon Ball Super (manga) · Universe Survival arc

    Fights Jiren in ultra instinct in the tournament's final stage. — 2018

  • shownDragon Ball Z · Frieza Saga

    Defeats Frieza on Namek as a Super Saiyan. — 1991

Son Goku on the Dragon Ball ladder

The victim · Kid Buu · rank 10

anime · manga

MangaToei animecomicanimation

He destroys the planet he is standing on, on screen, with survivors escaping only because somebody teleports them out — one of the few unambiguous large-scale kills in the run, and it happens rather than being reported afterwards. Everything after him operates at a scale the story stopped trying to express in comparable terms, which is a fact about the story rather than about the feat.

  • shownDragon Ball Z · Buu Saga

    Destroys the Earth outright during the fight. — 1995

Kid Buu on the Dragon Ball ladder

What this does not settle

One death in one work. It is the only place the record puts these two in the same room, and it is evidence about that meeting and nothing wider — not a general matchup, not a rematch, and not a ranking of its own.

The ladder above it is argued from everything either of them has been shown doing; this page is argued from one citation.

Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the point, and it stays visible rather than being resolved by whichever of them happens to be on this page.