ABED wrote:But he never looked down on the "battle maniacs" or put up a fight when Goku and the others made plans to fight the cyborgs. He was enthusiastic to help out. If it was about avoiding death as someone suggested, there are more expedient ways to stop the cyborgs than waiting and training three years. There's a lot about this arc that's started to bug me over the years. Now I'm not so sure anymore that I would place it above the Buu arc.
I agree. Gohan had even expressed a little frustration earlier on that the cyborgs (Gero & #19) ended up not being the "world-enders" that everyone thought they were, which led to him questioning why he went through all of that three years of training (when a healthy Goku by himself could have cleaned house at the time, never mind Vegeta and Piccolo). He also had to be held back by Goku at one point after they thought Piccolo had been done in, but that was Gohan falling into hysterics for good reason. Even in the RoSaT, Gohan was shown a couple times thinking about wanting to stop any big threat and protect everyone. Perhaps when Goku later revealed that Gohan had some unbelievable power (the flashback in the RoSaT), that was when Gohan became concerned about getting angry and flying off the handle -- he did lose consciousness for a couple days as a result according to Goku in an earlier episode.
I'd suggest that we revive one of our old favorite threads, ABED, but we're just seeing the story from different angles and interpretations. It provokes thought, and some probably don't care for it for that reason. It's all good. For my part, I recently went through that entire arc keeping in mind everything that you guys (pacifist Gohan supporters) have been expressing, and the Gohan stuff still works for me. I'd like to think, that if anything, every arc gave us something unique, for good or bad -- I think that we can all agree on that. :p
I like the first third of the Boo arc before it sorta putters along and becomes more silly and kinda aimless. It still has some great moments and twists here and there. I think that my biggest complaint about the Cell arc's narrative, is how F.Trunks VS Perfect Cell was handled as presented in the anime. That was the arc's lowest point, imo.
Anyway, it grinds my gears that Piccolo has become mostly useless in a battle capacity. The ToP -- and
Super, in general -- was a great opportunity to write in some nice Piccolo moments again, but he was written in such an underwhelming way mostly throughout, imo. His training and stern words to help get Gohan back into fighting shape again become a bit laughable looking back on it, because of the embarrassing way that he got eliminated (
). It doesn't help that #17 got all of these awesome moments written in over most of the rest of the cast in comparison (I like #17, btw).
(*whispers* just FYI, I don't really get my gears grinded from watching DB/Z/Super. That was just for fun. What grinds my gears, however, is endless speculation on the forums about things that will not happen in the series/franchise for months, or even at all!
