I think we have reached the end of the road here. We fundamentally disagree on how to interpret a story, but I will concede one major point to you: Toriyama is not perfect, and Dragon Ball is full of genuine mistakes.DanielSSJ wrote: Wed Feb 18, 2026 2:44 pmNot going to address all of this, but:
1. There isn't a perfect translation of the manga available (Viz is noticably imperfect), and I can't read Japanese. Steve Simmons' subtitles are generally accepted as the best official translation Dragon Ball's ever relieved, and Piccolo's dialogue matched up well enough to the only translation of the manga available to me ["But how could you not know about my powers of regeneration? You have my cells."], so I figured it was probably correct.
2. Regarding the computer, regardless of how much of a genius Gero is, his computer was left alone in a cave for over 20 years. If it got a little humid, or if there were a power surge or outage, or an earthquake, yeah, something could've been lost.
3. Yes, Bluma is a scatterbrain. She's an engineering genius, but she's also prone to lapses in common sense, like when she accidentally blew up Nappa's spaceship in the previous arc. So yeah, I could easily imagine a scene of Future Bluma watching Trunks disappear and then immediately going "Shit, Goku got there early because he teleported in, didn't he?"
4. The whole point of this post was that there's no logical, in-universe answer for Cell not knowing that Goku could teleport, and your ultimate answer is that Future Trunks B selected a different, earlier year to return to the past for no logical, in-universe reason.
They're all just oversights. The Cell arc is the most ambitiously complex plot Toriyama's ever attempted in Dragon Ball, and he struggles to execute it. This isn't even a dig at Toriyama. Time travel plots are hard to get right when you have ample time to fine-tune them, and Toriyama was having to come up with the story every week, with former and current editors requesting changes to the plot as he's writing it. So yeah, I do think Cell and Trunks not knowing about Goku's teleportation is just an oops with no in-universe explanation.
You are absolutely right that he wrote by the seat of his pants and made blunders.
Editor Mandates: Trunks originally naming #19 and #20 instead of #17 and #18? Yes, that was an abrupt change forced by his editors.
Continuity Errors: Cell getting his upper half obliterated by Goku, only to later claim his nucleus is in his head? Yes, that is a classic, undeniable Toriyama mistake.
But here is the crucial difference: Complicating a plot unnecessarily is not an 'accident'.
You prefer to explain the plot holes by stacking 'In-Universe Accidents':
The Magic Glitch: Gero's computer suffered 'humidity' that corrupted only the Instant Transmission file, but left complex DNA (Frieza, Piccolo, Saiyans) intact.
The Incompetent Genius: You equate a comedic gag with Bulma's life's work. She recorded the ship's landing coordinates. If Goku teleported, recording the ship's location is nonsensical. You are asking us to believe the smartest woman on Earth forgot the most miraculous event of her life.
The Illogical Trip: You admit there is no in-universe reason for Trunks to travel to Age 763 when the easiest logical path was to travel to 767 directly.
I prefer to explain it with 'Authorial Intent (Retcon)':
If Toriyama just made a mistake or wanted a simple villain, the easiest, zero-effort route was for Cell to arrive in Age 767. Simple, clean, no plot holes.
Instead, Toriyama forced a date (763) that made no sense for Trunks. He created a convoluted excuse about Cell 'not fitting in the machine', forcing him to revert to an egg and spend 4 years buried underground.
Come on, let's be real: you cannot call a 4-year underground incubation plot an 'oversight'. That is a blatant, highly specific narrative patch. It was a deliberate attempt to justify the Instant Transmission plot hole and every other anomaly.
In fact, I'd bet money that Toriyama had a twist like this in mind the moment Trunks returned and realized the Androids were different (#19 and #20). That whole 'mystery' vibe—the realization that history was profoundly off-track—screams that Toriyama wanted a hidden root cause altering the timeline long before the Androids arrived.
The Method & The Fix:
Toriyama wanted to showcase Trunks' power against Frieza. For this to work, Trunks had to be unaware of IT; otherwise, he would have waited for Goku.
Toriyama realized that if Trunks didn't know the move, it meant it was never used in his history. But chronologically, Goku should have known it.
To solve this, he forced Cell's machine to Age 763. Cell's Egg represents the Primary Bifurcation. Because of Cell arriving in 763, the timeline split earlier. Every time a timeline splits, quantum randomness takes effect ("re-rolling the dice"). This explains the butterfly effects: stronger Androids, delayed virus, and a different training path for Goku (learning IT).
Conclusion:
You view the Cell Arc as a pile of mistakes where machines break due to humidity and people forget things.
I view the Cell Arc as Toriyama's complex attempt to retroactively fix his own loose ends by inserting a root cause (Cell in 763).
If you are satisfied believing that the ultimate biological weapon just had a hard-drive error due to bad weather, that is fair! It's certainly the easiest explanation. But I find the 'Time Travel Causality' explanation much more rewarding and consistent with the manga's events.
