Ki Guide
Author: Tommy

So what is ki? Is it the same as chi or is it kinetic energy? Ki is a term mostly derived from the Dragon Ball series, and a lot of people confuse it with kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is an energy that the body gains because of motion, ki is a spiritual energy that flows through and inhibits every single living thing in existence, so yes it's the same as chi. Ki is basically a life force, an essence that bonds a body and a soul, a force that flows infinitely through the universe.

So what does ki provide to the body? Vitality, a person's vigor and energy, a person's 'power level', it's what governs a person's physical capabilities. The more ki or life force a person has, the stronger they are, the faster they are, the better their senses are, and the more durable they are. This is why in Dragonball Z a person with a large amount of life force was capable of being hit by a tank and still stand. Increasing one's vitality can be recognized as 'powering up' in Dragonball Z. In Dragonball Z, martial artists, whether they're namek, saiya-jin, or human had the ability to increase their life force at will due to their physical prowess. They also had a limit, or 'maximum power level', as stated before the amount of life force a person's able to contain is judged primarily by their body's capabilities. This is the reason why martial artists in DBZ trained so much; they trained to better their bodies to increase their vitality, thus increasing their life force, thus increasing their overall physical performance. As life force decreases, a person's vitality drops, their physical functions weaken, and if they lose all of their life force, the soul and body separates since there's no essence to bond them, in other words, they die.

So now you understand how a person's physical performance is affected by ki, and how a person's physicality affects their own personal ki, let's move on to the complexities of ki. In Dragonball Z I'm sure everyone notices how superb martial artists were capable of using ki as a destructive energy. So how exactly does that happen? Well as already explained, ki is a force that inhibits the physical body, but it remains unseen and latent until properly summoned. Martial artists seek to perfect their bodies, and some become advanced enough to learn to control their own latent ki, and channel abundances of it into projectile energy attacks. So what makes a serene vital energy turn lethal and destructive? Well, when latent energy becomes active it builds heat, of course the stronger the person the more energy they'd be capable of generating, so as a person grows in strength their energy does as well.

In Dragon Ball Z I'm sure everyone has seen energy attacks have a wide range of effects, from incinerating a person to simply knocking them down. When ki is channeled there's several things you can do with it, it can be streamed directly from the body in a constant stream of incinerating energy or charged into a dense orb set to explode upon impacting with an object, thus creating an explosion of concussive force and energy.

Moving on to more complexities, how does one use their ki to better their senses, such as sensing another around, how strong they are, and their intentions? I could think of several ways to explain this, but my favorite way is to speak about the more spiritual side of ki and not it's physical aspects. Ki is a spiritual energy, a life force, and life streams through every single living thing in existence. Every single person also has a spiritual conscious, and this reacts with ki. As for detecting another person's strength, a user of ki is naturally capable of determining the amount of energy another possesses. Also, as stated by Super 17 and Goku in the Dragonball series, they were capable of sensing the slightest shake in the atmosphere, so ki is capable of increasing one's senses just that much.

What about saiya-jins? Why were they so naturally powerful, and what's the whole super saiya-jin thing about? Saiya-jins were naturally talented martial artists and naturally had large amounts of life force. Ki didn't really have anything to do with the super saiya-jin transformation, it was purely physical, the transformation simply increase their physical capacity for energy, thus they were capable of generating more ki. In Nerima roleplay a lot of characters have adopted transformations to increase their capacity of ki, so there exists more methods aside from training to increase one's physical capacity.

So there you have it, ki, a spiritual energy, a life force, an essence, a latent energy that inhibits the body, a destructive energy channeled by those who learn to use it.