Review: The Cell Saga (DBZ Episodes 140 - 194)

At last, the perfect review for this perfect saga. But is it as perfect as our titular villain claims? Or could it use a lot more work?

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The Cell Saga

Rating: Poor (1 out of 3)

Story

The Artificial Humans are utterly unstoppable, leaving Piccolo and Kami no choice but to merge. Yet it is another force that truly makes Kami tremble in fear... The greatest of Dr. Gero's Artificial Humans, created from the living cells of Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, and Freeza... Cell. And once Cell can merge with #17 and #18, he will reach his Perfect, unbeatable form.

The thing is, the Cell Saga starts off really strong. Cell is an interesting, mysterious, and truly creepy villain who sneaks his way around our heroes to gain power ups that are critical to his success. Not to mention, Piccolo takes on the role of main character for much of the first act of the Cell Saga, and he carries the show very well. Things go very well until episode 150, where the plot comes to a screeching halt when suddenly Cell is insanely stronger than Piccolo.

Say what you will about the means of Cell's power up, but my biggest problem with the last Saga was the over abundance of one-sided fights. This Saga falls right back into that same trap, with Cell always conveniently having a new way to overpower our heroes, or our heroes having a way to conveniently overpower Cell. It goes back and forth like this for a huge chunk of the story, up until the Cell Games. And all of it is bogus. Everything from Imperfect Cell, to Semi-Perfect Cell, to Perfect Cell vs Vegeta and Trunks is all terribly boring and hamfisted.

Then we get a few fun episodes between Trunks vs Cell and the Cell Games. I like these episodes. They're fun and sometimes nostalgic for Dragon Ball. Nothing bad to say.

Then, the Cell Games. Well all know the story: Goku fights Cell to prepare Gohan for his mighty clash against Cell for the safety of the whole universe. I feel like the Cell Games should be the best part of the whole Saga. Goku and Cell's fight is really cool. And Gohan's transformation and subsequent punishment of the Cell Juniors is cool, too. But that's about all that's cool. Goku and Gohan are at best their most irritating, and at worst, out of character. Gohan's "fight" with Cell is barely a fight at all. And it all falls back into the same problem that this Saga and the Artificial Humans Saga share... another one-sided fight.

Perhaps I'm missing something here. Among DBZ fans, this is one of the most beloved parts of the whole series. But I just don't get it. I don't buy Gohan as the savior. His potential to save everyone comes out of left-field, having not been mentioned since the Freeza Saga. Cell as a bad guy is most effective when he's first introduced, and there's still an air of mystery and terror surrounding him. Once he becomes Semi-Perfect Cell, he becomes whiny and throws tantrums instead of sneaking around and outsmarting our heroes. And as Perfect Cell, he's just sort of... a guy. He isn't particularly scary or complex or sinister like Freeza or Piccolo Daimao. He's just something that our heroes have to beat. He's boring. Gohan's boring. This whole Saga is, by and large, boring.

Or maybe it isn't boring. Maybe it's irritating. Just writing about this Saga is exhausting to me. Suffice it to say, I don't like it.

Fights

As I said already, the fights in this chunk of episodes suffers from much the same troubles as the Artificial Humans Saga. Almost everything is painfully one-sided, so there's hardly any tension or excitement. There's a few fights I really enjoy, so I'm going to rank them below.

4.  Piccolo vs #17

3.  Trunks vs #17 and #18

2.  #16 vs Cell

1. Goku vs Cell

Animation

The animation during these episodes begins to see a bit of a decline. Not terribly so, but some of the better animators have exited the show by this point, to be replaced with more controversial animation styles. Particularly, the animation house which is introduced in Dragon Ball Z 179. It's a style that looks quite good in fast pace scenes, but loses a lot of the charm of Toriyama's original designs. The cleaner, bolder art that captured Toriyama's style really well in the series is gone from this point on, which is a shame.

Music

Musically this Saga is nothing special. That's to say, all the music up to this point in the series has been really good, especially the music of the last, Artificial Humans, Saga. This Saga doesn't get really any better or worse than the last Saga, but its new, original themes don't stick out in my mind as well as Sagas previous. This isn't a complaint however, because Kikuchi's DB/Z score is always quality. The biggest plus for this Saga's music is the insert song played when Gohan turns SSJ2, "Unmei no hi ~Tamashii vs tamashii~", which is actually my favorite part of this whole chunk of episodes. (True story.)

Conclusion

I don't get the hype behind the Cell Saga. Perhaps I just don't have the right nostalgia for it, but to me, it seems like a poorly written mess coming from an author who wasn't having fun anymore. Boring and irritating heroes, with boring and irritating villains, having predictable fights with uninteresting outcomes. For me, this is the lowest point in the whole of Dragon Ball Z, and I'm glad to be done with it.