dragon-ball-meta:

Fun little overlooked thing: Goku, despite being significantly stronger than Piccolo at this point, was unable to put the full force of his blow into this hit. That’s one interesting tidbit, yes, but another is that, even still it should have damaged Piccolo more than it did with him being wide open..

Seems the power-up process, and one reason it’s not interrupted, may actually lead to a bulked-up defense as well. Also slightly reinforced by Cell being essentially untouchable during his final transformation.

Almost as if there’s just some sort of counterforce as it happens. Then again with all but Freeza’s change into his true form, there wasn’t much of one. Vegeta’s power-up though, in the Saiyan Saga, had extremely intense winds whipping outward as well, and people are often seen shielding themselves from and even being pushed back by the force of some of these power-ups, transformation or otherwise.

Would be very interested to see if there’s any kind of official info on this somewhere.

(Also kinda cool to note Piccolo was always capable of storing energy he’d gathered even after taking a pretty good hit.)