After the bullshit of the last volume I’m glad things are getting better in volume 15 but this whole section still isn’t a great part of the Dragon Ball Z saga.
Son Goku recovers and, realising his weakness against the androids, takes Son Gohan, Vegeta and Trunks to train in the Chamber of Spirit and Time. In the chamber time is distorted so one year inside equals one day on Earth - but only two can enter at once, so Vegeta and Trunks go in first while Goku and Gohan watch the chaos unfolding below.
Poor Piccolo. There are a lot of characters in the cast but so few that are actually effective at this point. Take away the Saiyans and you’ve only got him! The dude is taking on every single bad guy himself but he never beats any of them. That’s been his lot for a while now - he holds his own but all of the major victories are reserved for Goku! So he fights Cell and temporarily sends him into retreat, then he takes on the horribly named android #17, and then calamity strikes.
Because Cell’s able to conceal his chi, he could absorb an entire city’s worth of people, giving him the energy burst he needed to take on the androids. His mission: to absorb them and become an unstoppable force even against the fully powered-up Saiyans.
As strange as it sounds, I can accept super-powerful beings if they’re organic and train for their strength and whatnot but what I hate most about these androids and Cell is that they’re artificial beings and they’re powerful to a ridiculous degree - except they’re just robots! It’s weird that I can accept stuff like Super Saiyans but not robots that sophisticated, but there we go - that’s why I hate the androids and, though I like him a bit better, don’t much like Cell.
There’s more happening in this volume so I liked it better than the last one - there’s finally some traction after the Freeza arc and this one is beginning to take shape. Akira Toriyama is really good at juggling multiple plotlines and he’s at his best when he’s got at least three or four going at once, like he does here. I may not like this storyline much but it’s steadily improving and heading in the right direction. Volume 15 is a moderately good Dragon Ball Z book though Toriyama usually produces work much better than this.
Dragon Ball Z, Volume 15: Cell, Stealthily Approaching
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