Saiyan transformations have a fixed order inside the story, and most of the confusion comes from mixing that order up with the order the artwork got popular in. Great Ape came first, the golden-haired Super Saiyan and its numbered stages came next, the god forms arrived decades later, and Ultra Instinct is not really a Saiyan form at all.
Alongside the forms sit the three other marks that carry most Dragon Ball artwork: the Kamehameha pose, the scouter, and the seven orange balls with the dragon they summon. Here is what each means and where it turns up across our own Dragon Ball Z collection.
The Great Ape and the tail
Every Saiyan is born with a tail, and the tail is the trigger. Look at a full moon with it intact and the Saiyan becomes a Great Ape, a giant furred beast ten times as strong as their base form. Goku did it as a child without knowing what he was, and Vegeta arrives on Earth able to make his own moon when none is available.
The form disappears once the tails do: Goku's is removed for good, Gohan's is cut. It returns in one place, the golden-furred version a Saiyan must master to reach the red-furred fourth stage of the later GT series, which is why the tail comes back with it.
The Ape Shadow tee gives it the back of the garment in a single color, and the Primal Force tee takes it to the chest.
Super Saiyan, and stages 2 and 3
Super Saiyan is introduced as a legend: a warrior who appears once in a thousand years, feared by Frieza, who wiped out the Saiyan race partly to make sure one never appeared. Goku reaches it on Namek, and the trigger is not training but Krillin's death. The form takes rage, and every first transformation after it needs a breaking point too.
Hair stands up and goes gold, eyes turn green, and the aura becomes a golden flame. The second stage adds lightning to the aura and sharper hair; Gohan reaches it first, against Cell. The third stage, which Goku reveals against Majin Buu, grows the hair to the waist, drops the eyebrows, and burns energy too fast to hold for long. Broly's Legendary Super Saiyan is a separate branch: green-tinged, enormous, and less a choice than a loss of control.
The gold-haired Goku is on the Son Kakarot two-sided tee and the Son Kakarot sweatshirt. The Majin's Gym tee takes Vegeta at the Buu-arc stage with the mark on his forehead, and Broly's branch has the Legendary Broly tee and a tank.
Super Saiyan pieces
God, Blue, and what came after
The red-haired Super Saiyan God is not reached by anger. It takes a ritual: five pure-hearted Saiyans pour their energy into a sixth, and the result is a slim, calm form with god ki. Super Saiyan Blue is what happens when a Saiyan who has held god ki goes Super Saiyan on top of it. Gogeta, the fusion of Goku and Vegeta, is drawn in Blue for the same reason.
Ultra Instinct is a technique of the angels, taught to Goku by Whis, in which the body fights without the mind deciding anything; silver hair marks it. It is not a Saiyan transformation at all, and its opposite is Ultra Ego, the purple-haired state Vegeta develops under the god of destruction Beerus, which grows stronger the more damage the user takes. Gohan's Beast form, from the Super Hero film, is a third path, drawn from his own potential rather than either god.
Those three sit on the Ultra Instinct tee, the Ultra Ego tee and the Gohan BeastMode tee. Vegeta in Blue carries the Saiyan Pride tee, and the fusion is the Go X Geta Blue tee.
God-form pieces
The Kamehameha
The Kamehameha is Master Roshi's technique, not Goku's. Roshi spent fifty years developing it, and the joke is that Goku, a child, copies it after watching it once. Energy gathers between cupped hands drawn back at the hip and releases as the hands push forward. The name, chanted in four beats, is borrowed from a Hawaiian king.
The pose is what gets drawn. It is the outline on the Kamehameha Aura tee, the full release on the Kamehameha tee, and it runs down the leg of the Ki Technique sweatpants.
Scouters and power levels
The scouter is the eyepiece worn by Frieza's army, and it arrives on Earth with Raditz. It reads a fighter's strength as a single number. A farmer with a shotgun reads five. Goku, fighting Vegeta with the Kaio-ken, reads high enough that Vegeta crushes his scouter in disbelief: over nine thousand in the English dub, over eight thousand in the original manga.
The story abandons the numbers almost immediately. A scouter measures what a fighter is putting out right now, and the Earth fighters learn to sense energy directly and hide their own, so the readout is wrong whenever it matters. Frieza's own scouters explode reading Goku on Namek, and by the Cell arc nobody wears one. Vegeta carries the Rival Prince tee and the Saiyan Fueled tee.
The Dragon Balls and Shenron
Seven orange spheres, marked with one to seven stars, scattered across the Earth. Gather all seven, speak the summons, and Shenron rises as a green dragon that fills the sky and grants a wish. Then they scatter and turn to stone for a year. Bulma's radar is how anyone finds them.
Earth's balls were made by the planet's guardian, so the dragon cannot exceed his maker's power, and cannot revive a person who has already been revived once. Those rules are why the story goes to Namek: the Namekian balls are the size of basketballs, their dragon Porunga grants three wishes, and the wish has to be spoken in Namekian. When Earth's guardian is later replaced, Shenron is remade to grant more than one wish.
The coiled dragon is the most drawn image in the archive after Goku himself. He fills the back of the Shenron two-sided tee and the Shenron tee, runs in color on the Dragon Surge tee, and is drawn in line work with Goku on the Wish Bond tee and the Dragon Bond tee. The balls on their own dot the Saiyan Prodigy shorts.
Shenron pieces
How this translates onto cloth
Dragon Ball is the most colorful series in the archive, and that decides the cloth. A single-color silhouette, the Great Ape or the coiled dragon in line work, goes on a washed tan or gray tee where the cloth becomes part of the image. The full-color pieces, a gold aura, a purple Ultra Ego, a green Shenron, are kept on black.
All of it is printed as a bonded matte finish, so a bright aura does not double as a glossy patch under direct light. Most of the range is the 270gsm garment-washed vintage tee, a relaxed oversized cut that is pre-shrunk; the retro pieces are the 230gsm classic tee, a standard cut on combed cotton. Where a design sits is stated on each product page.
Measurements for every size are published on the sizing page in both inches and centimeters, and size exchanges and returns run for 14 days from delivery. The whole set is in the Dragon Ball Z collection.
Read next: the Wings of Freedom, the walls and the nine titans, and One Piece jolly rogers and bounties.
Torazen designs are independent fan-inspired work — not affiliated with or endorsed by the rights holders. Character and series names are used to describe what the artwork refers to.