I disagree. Vegeta first shows signs of having a heart right at the end of the Cell arc, where he snaps at Trunks' death and madly rushes Cell. And later, he gives Trunks a subtle goodbye gesture before he departs back to the future. That was when, unbeknowest to him, he ended up having some love for Trunks. Before that, he didn't move a muscle to save Bulma and Trunks from Dr. Gero's blast, only caring about tracking down Gero and killing him. It was only over those 7 years where he'd become further settled in the comfortable life on Earth, that he began to love Trunks more and love Bulma (and vice versa).roidrage wrote:Vegeta never could have loved Bulma or Trunks if that was so. The Namek saga is where Vegeta first show signs of having a "heart", and I have a hard time believing his breaking down in tears (which never happens again, even before his second death) was due solely to self-pity. I'm sure being used by Freeza was a huge part of his resentment (maybe even the bigger part, certainly more than what the dub makes it out to be), but I doubt that was just it. The thing about Vegeta is, he only opens up when he thinks he has nothing to lose by doing so; pride doesn't mean much when you're dead. When in the company of others, he puts up a facade of uncaring, which comes naturally at first, but becomes more and more difficult as his personality softens.
In the Freeza arc, Vegeta first broke down in tears once he realized that he wasn't a Super Saiyan after all, couldn't defeat his former master he'd been striving to destroy his entire life and was going to be killed. Then, after that, he broke down because he was shedding his pride by asking a low-class Saiyan who he hated with a passion (probably the person he hated the most other than Freeza) to do what he could not after having yearned for it his entire life. If not at Vegeta's hand, then it had to be at Goku's, a fellow Saiyan.
I've never once thought that Vegeta's hard, nonchalant demeanour was a facade because he didn't want to lose his pride. Perhaps in the Boo arc, where he didn't want to admit to becoming comfortable on Earth and loving his family until he realized the shit they were in. And maybe when he saves Gohan and Kuririn from Gurd (we learn later that he wanted them alive so they could help him defeat Freeza). But not anywhere else.