Should Krillin have died vs Perfect Cell?

[TheMikado]

So should Krillin have died vs Perfect Cell or Cell jrs.
How about the rest of the crew? Should tien have died when Buutenks hit him?

Is the power gap too great for these characters to survive a single blow from these characters? Is their instadeath a realistic expectation. What about Mr. Satan? He should have definitely died when Perfect Cell hit him out of he ring. What do you guys think?

[Akyon]

No.

What would be gained from Krillin dying? From a story perspective, him surviving allowed him to pass on the exposition to Trunks(and the audience) about how strong Cell really is and just how totally boned Vegeta was at that moment. Afterwards Krillin's role of being alive to protect the vomited up 18 and wish the bombs out of her and 17 were needed.
From an in Universe perspective, what is Krillin to Cell? He's not even powerful enough to be considered a nuisance by the time he'd reached his perfect form. He was simply kicked to measure how much control he had over that power. Cell may also know keeping Krillin alive may allow him to go and fetch Goku who could be the only person worth fighting him and testing that perfection, but that's admittedly speculation on my part.

Tien might as well have died from Buu though since the planet blew up after he was rendered unconcious and he died anyway. Both in and out of universe it doesn't make much sense for Buu of all characters to bother holding back considering how casually he murdered everyone previously and it's not like Tien didn't die straight after he got KO'd.

[Darkprince410]

WIth the Cell Jrs, it was implied, although not outright stated, that he was having them intentionally play around so as to help Gohan get angrier. Watching his friends get tortured like that would only drive on the anger more than them just being killed outright.

As for Tenshinhan, we don't know if he actually did or not. While it's clear in the anime that he was just rendered unconscious and that Dende healed him up later, in the manga, that's it for him. We don't see him at all after Buu kicks him until after everyone's been revived by Polunga, leaving it very possible that Tenshinhan was killed by Buu and not simply knocked out.

[nickzambuto]

The story is so inconsistent with this shit. I've stopped caring.

[LuckyCat]

Cell held back when fighting Mr. Satan; it is consistent with his character to show Krillin the same level of apathy.

[Lord Beerus]

Cell held back when fighting Mr. Satan; it is consistent with his character to show Krillin the same level of apathy.

But the issue is that doesn't fit Cell's character to suddenly hold back and try not to kill people, given what we've been lead to believe was his characterization up until that point. The story portrays him to be a sadistic, cruel bastard, with zero empathy and zero concern for life. For him to now suddenly show apathy toward Krillin, let alone Mr Satan, just feels out of character. Why he should give a shit about either of those guys and goes out of his way not to kill them? Especially considering he kills Android 16 later on and later tries to blow up the planet... twice.

[ekrolo2]

Krillin should've stayed dead when Freeza killed him. Never mind Cell and the PL BS.

[LuckyCat]

Cell held back when fighting Mr. Satan; it is consistent with his character to show Krillin the same level of apathy.

But the issue is that doesn't fit Cell's character to suddenly hold back and try not to kill people, given what we've been lead to believe was his characterization up until that point. The story portrays him to be a sadistic, cruel bastard, with zero empathy and zero concern for life. For him to now suddenly show apathy toward Krillin, let alone Mr Satan, just feels out of character. Why he should give a shit about either of those guys and goes out of his way not to kill them? Especially considering he kills Android 16 later on and later tries to blow up the planet... twice.

The in-universe explanation is that Krillin and Mr. Satan weren't even worth killing in Cell's eyes, but Android #16 and the Earth as a whole were. Remember Cell does have Goku's characteristics, so he cares about a challenge and, conversely, is bored by lack of a challenge. As mentioned above, threatening the Earth and killing #16 were part of Cell's scheme to provoke Goku and later Gohan to fight him seriously.

[Lord Beerus]

Cell held back when fighting Mr. Satan; it is consistent with his character to show Krillin the same level of apathy.

But the issue is that doesn't fit Cell's character to suddenly hold back and try not to kill people, given what we've been lead to believe was his characterization up until that point. The story portrays him to be a sadistic, cruel bastard, with zero empathy and zero concern for life. For him to now suddenly show apathy toward Krillin, let alone Mr Satan, just feels out of character. Why he should give a shit about either of those guys and goes out of his way not to kill them? Especially considering he kills Android 16 later on and later tries to blow up the planet... twice.

The in-universe explanation is that Krillin and Mr. Satan weren't even worth killing in Cell's eyes, but Android #16 and the Earth as a whole were. Remember Cell does have Goku's characteristics, so he cares about a challenge and, conversely, is bored by lack of a challenge. As mentioned above, threatening the Earth and killing #16 were part of Cell's scheme to provoke Goku and later Gohan to fight him seriously.

Those islands of people he killed when he was searching for Android 18 weren't worth his time and effort, but he did it anyway. That just further proves much Cell holds zero value of life. I mean, think about. He could inadvertently killed Android 18 and ruined his chance of become perfect with how he was acting. He was willing to essentially rike his entire plan and the very meaning of his own existence, purely because he had such a lack of empathy for life had severely affected his critically thinking. He so does not give a shit about holding back when fighting. When Cell confronts you there is 99.99999% chance that he wants to kill you and also make it quick. The only time that doesn't apply is during the Cell Games. And even then he all up for the idea of beating Gohan, Goku, Vegeta, Trunks and the rest of the Z-Fighters to death and destroys Android 16 like he's nothing without a second thought.

[TheMikado]

From what I've seen Perfect Cell doesn't seem to care one way or the other about killing people. If did he would have just killed people to get Goku to fight.

[nickzambuto]

The way I interpret things, it takes more effort to power up than to not. Cell wasn't going to extra effort in order to hold back; he was exerting less effort.

[LuckyCat]

Those islands of people he killed when he was searching were weren't his time and effort, but he did it anyway. That just further proves much Cell holds zero value of life. I mean, think about. He could inadvertently killed Android 18 and ruined his chance of become perfect with how he was acting.

According to Android #16, Cell was holding back on the island blasts just enough so that he wouldn't harm Android #18. But this topic is about Perfect Cell and Cell Jrs., Imperfect Cell has different objectives and may well have absorbed Krillin or whoever's energy if he needed it.

[floofychan333]

I don't think he should have. Remember, everyone has extremely high endurance so I don't doubt they could survive.

[Soppa Saia People]

Aside from "bhu mah powa levelz" there's no reason to. It doesn't make sense from a story standpoint, so why do it ?

[Pantalones]

Is the power gap too great for these characters to survive a single blow from these characters?

You seem to be forgetting the degree that these characters are capable of suppressing their power. Heck, Trunks with a power level in the millions suppressed his level all the way down to 5, the same as an ordinary adult human. Cell or Buu hitting a weaker opponent with a force only in the low ten-millions or so rather than their usual billions should be no problem.

The Cell Juniors were pretty much just messing around with anyone not named Piccolo, Trunks, or Vegeta... so of course Krillin wasn't going to die from them, at least not right away. They were holding back enough to beat up the weaker fighters without immediately killing them in an attempt to gradually push Gohan's rage to a breaking point and get him to actually fight Cell.

As far as Super Buu's kick vs. Tien, he wasn't trying to kill him, just knock him out. He was no threat to Buu, but his techniques might have possibly come in handy (Shin Kikoho when you're already beyond SSJ3 level and have virtually infinite stamina? out of everyone in the entire Buu saga only Vegerot might survive that, and it might take something beyond regular Super Saiyan to pull it off, since I doubt the power gap between him and Buu is nearly as big as the gap between Cell and Tenshinhan was... unless you believe that "power level is literally Goku's PL times Vegeta's PL" silliness.) So maybe Buu chose to just knock him out in case he decided to absorb him later -- presumably absorbing a dead body wouldn't really benefit Buu much since once the soul is gone there's no trace of their ki and no memory of their techniques.