ABED wrote:That's just filler. And it never lacked coherence. You can tell what was going on.
The SSJ Goku VS Freeza fight gets lost in the shuffle often, so then it feels patchy. The coherence does take somewhat of a hit when so many cutaways are happening within a short time, imo. The other big fights are not nearly as affected as this one with the constant stop/start stuff going on, which sucks so much of the momentum away. It does finally get better during the last couple episodes because the other plot-related stuff had been resolved (other than Piccolo and Vegeta's storytime flashbacks).
The Cell arc just flipped that around on our protagonists this time.
Except the good guys wanted to fight. It's not the same thing. They didn't think "I can't lose, so I'll take my sweet time". They wanted a challenge.
But they were still careless, just like Freeza had been. The Z-senshi had been forewarned and still slipped up and let Gero escape. Then Piccolo got careless and Cell escaped him. Both of these instances our protagonists had the clear advantage. When the urgency is not there, that kind of thing tends to happen. However, that's one of the things that I find makes the Cell arc interesting. The good guys aren't ruthless and cold-blooded in the way Freeza was/is.
And the Gohan "passive" thing is something that we just won't agree on. I think that so many that have that mindset are missing out big-time on the story by ignoring Gohan's character (gentle, peaceful, spends a lot of time with nature,etc.) and that there had been other on-goings and some passage of time since the events of the Freeza arc. I'd rather not discuss that any further when the story provides us with words (and visuals) for why Gohan opted for peaceful resolve with Cell.
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lancerman: I agree with a lot of what you said. I still feel that plot convenience was in heavy favor of our protagonists -- Freeza could've had it all done and over with at any time, whether it be Piccolo, Vegeta, or Goku. His goal of making use of the DB's was no longer an option and there was literally nothing else standing in his way. The carelessness is fine to an extent, but it got pretty ridiculous with how long that it went on for.
I'm completely fine with Vegeta being a jackass and aiding Cell with achieving his goal. The narrative made that clear, and Vegeta was not a "good guy". It was all in-character.
And when I responded to the comment about the arc making use of the characters, that had nothing to do with how plot relevant they were. It was refreshing seeing guys like Tenshinhan and Yamucha interacting amongst everyone else because it had been so long. I don't need for them to have a "race for the DB's" plot -- there was no secondary plot for the "lesser" characters to get involved with during all of the cyborg stuff. I'm satisfied just seeing characters interacting and deliberating on what could be done about the threats. I do have a slight problem with characters like Piccolo and F.Trunks kinda getting taken out from having any real impact on the narrative post-RoSaT training. It's understandable though because Goku had finally been put back into the story after having been out of action for nearly the entire arc.