A second time machine identical to the one Trunks used to get back to the past is found by Bulma, Trunks, and Gohan along with a weird type of shell and what looks like the skin of a giant insect (ew, Cell scrotum). As they analyze what it could be, Cell begins his rampage of eating his victims and leaving a trail of wrinkled, unironed clothes (Sweet hamburgers, no! The horror!). Kami finally takes Piccolo up on his offer of merging back together and another tenant is officially added to Piccolo Plaza (that makes three Namekians renting out Piccolo’s body if you include Nail). With his newfound power, Piccolo tries to stop Cell but Cell uses the Kamehameha wave and Piccolo’s own Special Beam Cannon to stop him in his tracks.
After Cell absorbs all the energy from his arm, Piccolo distracts Cell long enough for Cell to tell his back story while Piccolo regenerates. Cell is made up of cells of all of the strongest fighters on earth including Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, and the rest of the Z-Fighters; even Frieza and his father. But he’s currently in his imperfect stage. His plan is to absorb androids 17 and 18 and claims that by doing so he will not only become “perfect” but will also be the most powerful being in existence. Goku recovers from the heart virus and intends to have all the Saiyans (Vegeta, Trunks, Gohan, and himself) train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber at Kami’s Lookout where a year of training can be done in a day since they need to get stronger than the Super Saiyan level as quickly as possible. Piccolo squares off with Android 17 to buy them time, but Cell eventually finds them and makes short work of the Namekian before going after the androids.
As Trunks pushes the button to the duplicate time machine to make it go back into its capsule, the word, “Bun!” flashes on the screen; so apparently using types of bread as a sound effect is a thing now. When you really stop to admire the world Akira Toriyama has created, it’s really bizarre as time periods basically blend together anyway. In the present day, there are dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, pterodactyls, hover cars, one-wheeled motorcycles, and time machines.
There’s a brief scene at Kame House where you see Master Roshi smoking, which is weird since you’ve never seen him do it before (unless he smoked in “Dragon Ball”). Growing up watching the censored versions on television, it’s unusual seeing so much more adult material in these sets; Vegeta and Recoome gave the finger a few times on Namek, the males on the show reveal their naked butts as often as possible and the show has no problem with baby penises being waved in your face from time to time, blood is shown so often, and vulgarity such as “damn,” “hell,” and “bastard” is used frequently and it all just makes the show seem almost entirely different than the one shown on Kids WB where everyone was sent to another dimension and bad individuals went to the Home For Infinite Losers or HFIL instead of Hell.
Even though Kami and Piccolo have been apart all these years, they’ve always shared a telepathic link between one another which means they should know everything about one another and whatever the other one is thinking before they even think it. While Piccolo is trying to convince Kami to merge with him again, Kami is distracted by the events on earth which Piccolo is clueless about and has no idea what’s on Kami’s mind. What’s the point of a telepathic link if it doesn’t reveal anything concerning anything? After Goku finally wakes up and sees the new Piccolo for the first time, there’s this long pause before Goku yells, “Hey Kamiccolo!”
Many view the Cell and Android Sagas as the worst part of the series, which is odd because all of the fights are pretty spectacular. Everyone spends less time not fighting and more time actually beating the snot out of each other, which is the main reason the show interested you to begin with. There’s a lot of running and a lot of hiding when Cell is around, but it actually adds a bit of tension between battles. This article doesn’t cover much about the fights during the Imperfect Cell, Perfect Cell, and Cell Games Sagas because they’re pretty riveting and seem to make up for lost time.
The Imperfect Cell design is one of the best in the series, at least until you realize that the design on his mouth is exactly the same as the design on his crotch. The way his mouth moves is really lame too, so old crotch-mouth isn’t quite one hundred percent awesome. The stalking of his victims is fairly horrific though, but his awkward, spiky-tipped, unrolled condom tail is really bizarre. It’s how Cell eats, it drips acid, and it’s also used as a vacuum cleaner. It’s a pretty funky attachment. The power level detecting issue is certainly no longer relevant by this point, but the being formerly known as Piccolo may be. When Cell still calls him Piccolo after his merge with Kami, Piccolo declares that he must have him confused with someone else. He then yells, “I am The Namek!” So he wants his name to be similar to that of a generic superhero or wrestler? Maybe he’s the namek formerly known as Piccolo like a Prince reference. Whatever you say, Kamiccolo.
While all of this is going on, Krillin and Trunks are chitchatting while flying lackadaisically instead of just getting there as fast as they possibly can to help out. Why does everyone insist on flying so slow whenever everyone is anticipating their arrival? After Android 18 cleans Vegeta’s clock, he flies off to be by himself and stares angrily at the bottom of a canyon while 17 and Piccolo fight. To buy more time to search for the androids, Cell uses Tien’s Solar Flare technique, but you can see it coming a mile away and yet everyone stares at it like suckers.
Before Vegeta and Trunks go into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, Vegeta openly admits to himself that Piccolo has surpassed the power of a Super Saiyan and that Piccolo is even more powerful than him. Not even five minutes go by before Vegeta challenges him to a fight. Back on earth, Gohan is trying to train himself while keeping up the charade that he’s actually studying since Chi Chi is around. Someone should let him know that splashing around in water isn’t really a sufficient way to train.
As Bulma analyzes what the androids are made of, she says their cells are similar to human cells; they’re organic. So why does Imperfect Cell make that weird metallic noise when he walks then? As Piccolo and Tien try to find Cell, Cell plows Krillin's face through the wall of a plane then flies away. Piccolo and Tien stare right at Cell and he leaves seconds before they arrive and yet they still act like they didn’t see him. Back on Kami’s Lookout, Mr. Popo shows the Saiyans where the Hyperbolic Time Chamber is. He points to a brown door that looks like a giant chocolate bar and Gohan is the only one who’s impressed. “Wow! A brown door!” And according to Trunks, Vegeta’s “training” before he went up to Kami’s was staring into space for three days. Oh man, not that! That training is too intense for a mere mortal!
What is the purpose of Mr. Popo anyway? He’s obviously extremely fond of Kami, but he doesn’t really do anything other than water plants and get incredibly sweaty whenever somebody starts talking to him. As Vegeta and Trunks enter the Chamber, Trunks acts like he’s on the verge of losing it but his fear is never really acknowledged after he first enters. As the androids show up at Kame House, Piccolo is the first to notice them and quickly replies, “Oh, perfect. This is just what I wanted for breakfast.” Despite it being explained multiple times by this point, Krillin seems to be the only one who remembers the Kami and Piccolo fusion. As Piccolo and 17 fly to a nearby island to fight, he tells everyone else to stay behind. They can’t tell what’s going on despite being fairly close by, but later on when they’re back at Kami’s Lookout Piccolo and Tien can see absolutely everything that occurs in battle miles above the earth.
As the Z-Fighters at Kame House begin to sense Cell’s power level, Master Roshi declares that it’s “vintage bad stuff,” but then follows that up by saying that he’s “never felt anything like it.” So how does he know it’s vintage and bad then? Throw in Cell’s line about having to drink from the bouquet he just sniffed and you begin to wonder why there are so many references to wine this particular season.
Sources: dragonball.wikia.com, thedragonballblog.blogspot.com, tumblr.com, imdb.com, wikipedia.org, comicvine.com, funimation.com
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