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This is it. We're fully into it now. The finale of the Dr. Gero's Artificial Human ambition and the Cell Games, with Cell and Son Gohan duking it out; Son vs son, for the grudges of their fathers.
And no matter who wins
Gohan's character development loses.
This episode is, quite frankly, bad. Yeah, this whole segment of Dragon Ball has a lot of things to nitpick and get frustrated at, but this is really why the Artificial Human era of Dragon Ball is the weak link in an otherwise sturdy chain. Gohan's character development comes crashing to a screeching halt in order to sell this new angst-driven storyline, and the characters go along with it despite the fact it makes no sense.
Chichi, we expect you to freak out.
But Piccolo? Seems pretty hypocritical to not want Gohan to be a martial artist when you made him one to begin with.
Even random muggles comment on how cruel and unusual this turn of events appears to be.
And it would be, in their eyes. For sure. But think about how this is meant to play out in a meta sense. Every voice in this episode, from the moment it kicks off until the credits roll, wants to convince you that Gohan shouldn't be fighting. Even Gohan himself stops the fight to tell Cell the most bizarre line about how he "doesn't want to kill" him.
This guy, who eats humans.
This guy, who wiped whole populations off the map.
This guy, who said on live TV he plans to kill everyone, just 'cus he's bored.
This fucking guy.
Which isn't even the entire issue. Having a pacifist character in a story about wanton muscle heads is an interesting angle to take. But that's literally never been Gohan. Sure, Gohan doesn't relish fighting, he was even scared to do it at all, at first. But he got over it. Literally dozens of episodes ago, he got over it.
"If you don't fight, I'll murder your friends."
"You asked for it."
"If you don't fight, I'll murder your friends."
"Meh."
Since standing up to Nappa, Gohan has never hesitated to get his hands dirty. True, he's not his father. Son Goku likes to train and fight even when he doesn't have a reason to - he does it to better himself, for its own sake. Gohan is more passive than Goku... but he's not afraid of his power. He learned back against Nappa what happens if he doesn't use them, and since then, has been the first person to jump into any situation, no matter how nasty it looks.
Son Gohan is a fucking badass. Not because he wants to kill, not because he even wants to fight, and not because he's a super-powered human-saiyan hybrd. He's a badass because of his commitment to the right thing. In a series where even our hero will selfishly fight over solving a problem much more easily and without violence (i.e. Bulma's strategy for dealing with the Artificial Humans), Gohan is a character more akin to an American superhero.
(Yes, I went there.)
When Peter Parker doesn't fight, people get killed. And that's why he fights. That's why Gohan fights. And that's why this sudden "twist" makes no goddamn sense.
Yeah, Vegeta shouldn't have let Cell transform. Yeah, Goku should have made an effort to make Gohan fully understand his strategy. But their mistakes are the kind of mistakes those characters would have made in any other Dragon Ball storyline. Gohan suddenly falling apart and being unable to step up when he's needed? That makes no fucking sense at this point in the story. And if you disagree, you're just simply wrong and need to reexamine the character.
"The truth is, I only fight if I'm mad."
"Oh, alright."
"I'M GONNA HUG THE ANGER INTO YOU."
So Gohan stops the story to tell Cell about his own backstory with his bouts of furious rage, conveniently leaving out all the important character-building information and boiling him down to "sad kid who fights when he's bullied". So Cell, predictably, bullies him. But did this scene even need to fucking exist?
His DNA seems to have given him a sort of 'memory' of the characters of whom he's made up from. It doesn't make sense in a real world scientific level, but then, neither does him looking like a crazy bug thing despite being made up with the DNA of distinctly non-bug things. Point being: He should already know this about Gohan. He has Piccolo and Goku's "memories" from everything up til the fight with Vegeta. He knows their abilities, names, and personalities. On top of that, Dr. Gero supplied him with near endless information on the Z Team from the fall of the Red Ribbon Army up til the battle with Nappa and Vegeta. Cell should all ready know this and it'd have been much more compelling to have him bring it up than for Gohan to literally stop the episode to explain it to him for some completely out of character reason of "Don't make me angry, you won't like me when I'm angry."
Gohan isn't Bruce fucking Banner. He's Peter Parker.
Anyway,
Goku decides to eat a Senzu and help,
but Cell steals them,
and #16 jumps on him to hug an explosion into him.
Mercifully, the episode ends.
But my anger and disappointment rages on.
What's cut?
DBZ 182, King Dog's military is ready to go.
But he insists their only hope is in Gohan, the son of their savior from Piccolo.
And in DBZ 183, Mr. Satan continues the annoying meta.
whats cut?
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