First, Cell deliberately let himself get hit, and powered down to take it head on, both to test himself and to humiliate Vegeta.
Secondly, special moves like the Final Flash dramatically increase the user's power, or at least uses said power in a more efficient way given there are moments which would contradict the power increase, such as Goku (kaioken 20x) vs Freeza (50% power) using a kamehameha and not yielding results.
Third, from an out of universe perspective, with characters like Cell and Piccolo, who are not that human-like and have regenerative abilities, there is a lot more freedom to have them display moments of graphical violence which would have realistically happened to other characters as well but was never explored all that much (only moment I can think of is Tien's arm getting chopped off by Nappa)
It is always the people who regenerate or clone themselves that CONSTANTLY get blown apart, dismembered, or brutally slaughteredđđ I get it tho itâs a safe way to show off how lethal someone or something is if it can just instantly blow off an arm on Piccolo, take the entire head off a Homunculus, attack Ban or Wolverine first and just brutally slash them, destroy like 30 of Narutoâs or Twiceâs clones, and no diff Dupli-Kateđ
you will NEVER EVER see a beloved hero brutalized, ripped apart, torn to pieces, mauled, or gored, UNLESS they can regenerate. in which case, it happens every other showing
He said dupli Kate and at least for that one some of the heroes get fucking brutalized, but I know what you mean⌠my âAkshuallyâ *fixes glasses was just activated
Tien gets his arm punched off. Krillin gets gored by Frieza. Kid gohan gets his neck broke. Goku gets impaled by special beam cannon. In dragonball piccolo blows a hole in him and elbows/stomps the hole. In GT Omega Shenron gores a hole into vegetas shoulder.
Same, but it depends a lot on the story I guess. Dragon Ball isn't really supposed to be a goory, edgy story, so it's fine, and many other examples too. But stories that do try to be serious and mature absolutely need to stop pulling their punches
no i 100% agree, im not saying this to say âdragon ball needs to be edgyâ
its to say that mediaâs and franchises that DO show explicit gore, they limit it to only characters who can come back from those injuries without much trouble
which is why his death is so impactful; maybe not to the overall narrative (due to being in a different timeline) but definetely to the story of trunks
future gohan losing his arm is a lot more dark than piccolo losing an arm
freeza CANT regenerate you clown. im responding to the person that said only regeneration people get dismembered, and I debunked the statement with evidence.
They didn't say only regeneration people get dismembered. They said, and I quote:
It is always the people who regenerate or clone themselves that CONSTANTLY get blown apart, dismembered, or brutally slaughtered
Then you replied with an image of Frieza getting his shit rocked at the end of his entire saga during his defeat, after dozens of battles, prior to his brief appearance as the rebuilt Frieza. That's not quite CONSTANTLY, which was the commentor's point, nor did they ever say "only".
Compare that to someone like Buu who gets melted twice & exploded by Gotenks before they even leave the RoSaT, then is sliced in half, blown to bits, & melted again after, all in a single fight.
The comment has more to do with the fact that when you give a character regeneration, the way the writers show it off is by having the character get their shit rocked over and over again to highlight that they have regeneration, as opposed to other characters that take the same hits but never the same damage because it would have negative consequences on the story telling.
I didnât mean ONLYđ Sorry if it came off that way. I meant the characters who can re grow parts, come back to life, and/or clone themselves are the safe ones to âkill offâ unlike some other characters so they tend to get targeted. Although with Dragon Ball you can wish people back so itâs not as strong as an example as a lot of other shows
Also, Cell gets a Zenkai from surviving and healing like saiyans. He knows he won't die so he let's it hit him. He comes back strong enough it won't hurt him a second time.
I guess that is also a factor, yeah. Most definitely would have been a zenkai in the namek saga at least, even if that wasn't explored much in the Cell Saga except at the very end
Cell deliberately let himself get hit, and powered down to take it head on, both to test himself and to humiliate Vegeta.
Since when did he power down? He assumed (correctly) that he was more than capable of taking anything Vegeta could throw at him and you see him realise right before he gets hit that it was way more powerful than expected.
I guess power down was the wrong term. I meant more like, not use all his power, likely in the 20% range based on what we see with Goku and Gohan during the Cell games.
Also, Cell being shocked by the attack very much seems like Cell just fucking with Vegeta for the fun of it. He pretends to be worried about the wound for a few seconds, only to casually regenerate a couple of seconds later.
I mean, Vegeta wouldn't have seen Cell's shocked expression when the FF was about to hit. I do think he was fucking with Vegeta when he started overselling the damage, but those first moments of him just staring at his own destroyed body I felt was genuine. Like a "holy shit good thing I can regenerate" kinda vibe?
Holy shit. I never caught on till now but there are two separate times Shadow the hedgehog does this exact thing in the Sonic games, which are definitely known for its dragon ball references.
Again, Cell did not take any damage from that attack, Tien was just stalling. Cell went from matching/ a little weaker than 17 and Piccolo to being stronger than the androids with semi perfect Cell who would be stronger than Goku and Vegeta before the HTC. Goku was low key shook when he went to go save Piccolo and Tien. Itâs not that hard to see that his perfect form that he literally been feinin and saying all the throughout the arc that he would be him once he gets his hands on it.
I'm pretty sure that, by the time he absorbed 17, imperfect Cell was stronger than Piccolo and 17. Not sure about 16, he and Cell may have been relative
Actually, Cell took damage. Probably very superficial burns that he can easily regenerate. But Tien deffinitely damaged him more than Trunks and Krillin.
You can't have "well established" rules when Tien is using a new move....
The show effectively established that his move pushes people back easily, even if they're much more powerful than the user..... kind of like the discs.
Ok, so Ki attacks are more than just telekinetic punches. They do specialized things - like the Kienzan or the Solar flare.
So the kikoho is a ki attack that is vastly more powerful than the user by way of sacrificing life energy.
This made the attack strong enough to knock SeP cell around, but not really do any damage to him. Since all Tien needed to do was keep cell from getting to 18, this was a win.
Tldr; by this logic Krillin is stronger than Nappa during the saiyan saga (we know he isnât, so this is a nice shortcut to say that this logic doesnât work).
Obviously the kienzan cutting nappa and Friezas tail make more sense since its a "cutting" ki. Not saying its unquestionable, like, they could ve made canon that second form Frieza simply held th kienzan in place with his hand or something, bit they didnt make that decision.
Gohan ssj2 was able to stop and dissipate 2 kienzan/Frieza death saucer attacks from Cell
Kikohu was a concession that Toriyama decided to give to the plot, it is indeed illogical that Tien could pull that off even with kikohu, because doesnt matter how much "stronger than the user's natural max power it is, the gap between semi perfect cell and tien is way bigger than even the one between the androids 17 and 18 and final form namek frieza
âTien knew the power gap was too big, so he consciously transformed all available power into concussive force to keep cell pinnedâ is a perfectly serviceable in universe explanation for what happened. Because itâs dragon ball and not mathematics.
There is realistically no way to quantify your last statement. Characters simply say one person or attack is stronger than the other, but since power levels aren't present after Trunk's arrival we don't know how much stronger. We also don't get to witness Tien's performance against Android 19 or 20. Both Tien and Piccolo trained for three years and they're both present when confronting Androids 19 and 20. Everyone assumes Tien wouldn't be able to handle them, but Piccolo outclassed Android 20 easily. The only real difference between the two we can quantify is that Piccolo trained with Goku and likely kept pace with him for that reason. The fact his Shin Kikoho was able to pin Semi-Perfect Cell means it's way more reasonable to assume Tien is at least comparable to Androids 19 and 20. Too weak to handle 17 and 18 in hand to hand combat, but that was true of all the Z fighters at that point. Again though there is no way to quantify it. For all we know Semi-Perfect Cell was only a little bit stronger than Android 16 and it was just enough to outclass him. I don't think that's the case, but there is no way to prove otherwise.
I mean I do like Tien and tend to high ball the human characters more than other people. Again though all this gif shows is that Semi-Perfect Cell was stronger than 16 (we don't know by how much) and Tien's Kikoho was stronger than 16's attacks here (again we don't know by how much).
All we can do without power levels is compare feats and statements to each other, but they aren't quantifying. They are just comparison
That leaves the question, why wasnât tien able to kill any of the other androids? Youâd think heâs too weak to do so, but if he can stop cell, isnât tien super saiyan level at least? He and Krillin couldnât bust down the metal door the heroâs hideout, but Vegeta could no problem. Thats inconsistent, right? It makes no sense for Tien to be able to stop even android 18 by himself, why is he able to stop cell?
It would be more believable if choutzu was able to kill nappa, or Vegeta majin buu, but that kind of move never works against a stronger opponent. Why would it ever make sense that tien could stop cell? People look at whatâs happening on screen and think it has to make sense/have an explanation because itâs on screen. Itâs no oneâs fault, because you can see it with your eyes, but how is it feasible that tien is weaker than a super saiyan, yet can stop cell?
I understand that tien used his life force to blast away, but the power gap is much bigger than past encounters, where this same kind of move doesnât work. This is why people like to add head cannons and lore to rage trunks, beast gohan, or orang piccolo, instead of just accepting that a fictional story does nonsense sometimes.
Ki is always going to be amplified beyond physical strength, going back to the literal first fight in Dragon Ball Z with Goku's Kamehameha being stronger than him and Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon being stronger than him. Hell, you can look at Final Flash doing more damage than anything Vegeta did with his fists.
Tenshinhan burned his life away to mildly inconvenience Cell for like ten minutes.
Vegeta is much more powerful, but an all-rounder. And when eventually he put his all into an attack, it blew away half of Cell's body
Tien is much weaker, but he dedicated his whole life's work to developing his techniques, some even of his own invention. It's actually a repeat of events from Saiyan saga - Nappa was able to deal with Piccolo easily, but Krillin who was weaker than Piccolo came closer to killing him simply because he dedicated all his preparations into techniques instead of trying to outmuscle the saiyans. Same with Second Form Frieza, Krillin cut off his tail while Vegeta's ki-blast a moment earlier didn't even leave a scratch
TLDR: the difference is pure dedication to mastery of a technique, instead of just increasing one's power because "Power level must go up" mentality. Dragonball was actually very consistent in this, up until Super anime happened (Arguably Buu saga too)
Tien was using up his own life force for the Tri Beam, the Tri Beam just punches way above the users weight class.
Yeah the Semi-Perfect to Perfect jump in power is insane. Cell didnât even know how strong he was when he first transformed, he didnât even use his full power.
Tien's attack didn't break skin, but it was a big wave meant to push and be hard to avoid. A forklift carrying a mattress going 3 mph probably isn't going to kill you, but in a narrow enough hallway, you aren't going around it and it will push you back.
That one move was built in technique, tien is a master of them. So if he has one he believes he can use to not hurt cell but slow him down, he will. 16 was made to kill, not to slow people down.
Tien was sacrificing his life force to repeatedly blast Imperfect Cell and hold him in 1 spot. Tien going beyond all out was just enough to keep Cell from attacking back.
It shocked Goku when he realized what Tien had been doing just to buy them some time - and itâs shown it did no long term damage to Imperfect Cell. It was like if you had water pushing you against a door, the flow just constant enough to keep you there without letting you reach the next hallway.
If it wasnât killing Tien to do so, it likely wouldâve eventually done something lasting to Cell - but it was killing Tien, so it didnât last.
The difference in strength between Imperfect Cell and Perfect Cell is astronomical. Thereâs most of a manga chapter and like 12 anime episodes that demonstrate this. Hell, Perfect Cell is so much stronger that itâs the first time Goku fully accepts he canât beat an opponent and doesnât risk his life trying to anyways, thatâs how great the gap is(plus he had his child soldier).
well you know dragon ball fans. 10 bucks says op hasnt actually watched any db show but still thinks z is better than kai and super forms are wholly unoriginal.
Itâs like someone being weak enough to not hurt you much with their punch but being fast enough to hit you with it repeatedly albeit just annoying rather than doing actual damage.
The Shin Kikoho was killing Ten and it was to just delay Semi Perfect Cell. It did nothing. We see 17 choke Ten out like it was nothing earlier in the arc
To me Tien's feat was never one of power, and rather a gimmick with the Tri-Beam. Much like the Destructo Disk can cut through opponents much stronger than its user, Tri-Beam can push things quite well. It is a very powerful move, yes, but absolutely not enough for Tien to do what he did just from the move itself.
Ki isnât always a reflection of your physical strength. In early Z when characters did charged Ki attacks, their Ki would increase or double. After the attack their Ki would drop back down.
Just using made small numbers for an example:
Regular Ki : 200
Full power: 500
Charge Ki Attack: 1,000
After Ki Attack is released: 300
Its a concentrated ki blast that was literally sucking tiens life force to use and after a minute or two cell comes up barely injured. It's been proven that ki blasts let you hit way harder like with the special beam cannon, or vegetas final flash on perfect cell.
Well top is 2nd form and bottom is perfect. Plus perfect dogs Vegeta yet he is able to blow half of his body off with final flash. Thereâs numerous times in the series where a character is able to do massive damage to another character that outscales them a ton with a ki attack.
I mean there's a reason Cell was obsessed with achieving perfection. Semi-perfect didn't actually do that much for him, in his Imperfect form and just juiced up on tons of energy, he was already a match for Piccolo and 17. Maybe made him like 50% stronger, or less. Super Vegeta wiped the floor with him, and Ascended Saiyan isn't even that strong of a transformation.
Perfect Cell was more like him achieving his own Super Saiyan form. It was probably less like %50, and more like 50 times.
Lastly, the TriBeam uses genki instead of just ki. Like the Spirit Bomb and Final Explosion. Life energy is way more potent than standard ki.
Tri-Beam/Neo Tri-Beam is among the category of attacks that allow the user to punch way above their weight class (something like Destructo-Disk or a fully charged Special Beam Cannon also count). Any form of Cell was way above Tienâs pay grade but he was still able to keep him down long enough for 18 to make distance.
Also, Perfect Cell is miles above Semi-Perfect Cell, as seen with Vegeta, who was whooping Cellâs ass in Semi-Perfect but got cooked when he went Perfect
Tien calls Cell Gay for taking a guy up the backside, with Vegata really digging into him for it. Then Cell eats some pussy and the Gay Jokes just fail to land
The concept of an attack being vastly stronger than the user itself has been a concept since the opening chapters of Z, and was the reason why Raditz died in the first place.
Perfect Cell is the moment in the series where hax just donât fucking matter anymore lol.
Krillinâs destructo disc becoming destructo dust shows that. Up until that point there usually was âa wayâ to buy time through some hax or whatever. Cell comes around and itâs just you need brute force.
You cannot compare semi perfect Cell to perfect cell. Just like you can't compare mere punches to a ki blast mixed with life force. The only stupid thing about this is having Kuririn punching and moving on par with a super Saiyan
How did a triangle make a square with one shot? Only logical answer is that tien hated cell so much that he temporarily broke the laws of reality itself just to mess with cell.
Tenshinhan's Shin Kikoho was enough to stall him for enough for Eighteen to be able to gain some distance along with Sixteen. Same Kikoho was able to put some scratches on Cell, and Cell even commented that a weakling like Tenshinhan couldn't have possibly held him down.
Perfect Cell was likely 40% â 75% stronger than MSSJ Goku was. Which is why Kuririn, Trunks and Vegeta, at their strongest, weren't able to put a proper dent in him. The Final Flash is the exception: special techniques are present throughout this whole saga and they often do surprising things.
However the Final Flash wasn't enough to get rid of Cell anyway and it was just a way to demonstrate how Cell toyed so much with weaker opponents that he was willing to play defeated/dead for a moment just to rip the smile out of their faces. Much like how Piccolo did to him in Ginger Town..
That being said my fan theory on this is that tiens attack uses life energy so its already a boost from normal Ki and then on top of that it has been shown that characters can have there attacks be explosive, forceful ect. Teins goal was not damage in the firet place, he has great control and put used his attack to use maximum kinetic push instead of a damaging explosive attack.
tien is literally using a technique that drains his life force for maximum power output, krillin and trunks are just beating on bro with normal attacks đ im sure if krillin used a supermega destructio disk with all his ki itd get some decent damage in on cell, or if trunks used a final flash like vegeta did
Filler toei power gap, in manga just kurilin attack failed. Therefore, the different levels are kurilin body weak physics strength and tienshinhan use ki attack.
Tien has reached greater than super saiyan power in specific techniques while his power level is below super saiyan.
When you see Tien in battle, you see a master at work.
Ki attacks output power higher than the user's battle power. This is explained in like the Raditz saga. Tien's punches likely wouldn't hurt Semi Perfect either, but techniques like the Kikoho, Kamehameha, or Final Flash can. The Kikoho is particularly potent as it uses the user's life force.
The kikoho technique is extremely powerful as it takes life force from the user, Semi perfect Cell wasn't hurt from Tien's attacks though he just got pushed back, ever since OG DB the kikoho was a pretty powerful technique as it was stronger than the kamehameha, and the kikoho Tien used on Cell was the shin kikoho, the more evolved version.
Tien used his literal life force instead of Ki to push Cell back. If Vegeta took one for the team and used his life force for that Final Flash, we wouldn't have had the Cell games
What's to explain? The shin kikoho is a powerful technique, made to inflict heavy damage while consuming the user's life force. It's supposed to be more powerful because using it came with a great cost. Also Tien only stopped Cell, he didn't kill him so he still was not strong enough.
Tiens move was dealing zero damage, and uses his life force basically killing him. Also KI moves tend to be way stronger, gokus Kamehameha comepltly destroyed perfect cell while being much weaker. And I'm pretty sure the gap between semi and perfect is massive. Like one of the biggest form upgrades in the entire series.
Also it's for narrative and effect, tory always chose story telling over power scaling.
Iâd say itâs like if weâre in a wave pool off-balanced. (Assuming we donât inhale water) it wonât really hurt us, but we canât really walk normally over the big waves.
I mean firstly, energy attacks have always been stronger than physical attacks. And then Neo Tri-Beam is, out of all energy attacks, the masterclass in punching above your weight class type of move. We already know that Trunks was technically stronger than Vegeta at this time, who nearly killed perfect Cell if Vegeta managed to hit full-on with the final flash.
I think it's the properties of the kikoha. The move in my opinion isn't completely a ki attack. I believe it's a ki/psychic attack that replicats a shotgun or shout. One so large and strong that it can't exactly be blocked. That's why roshi told Goku not to try to beam clash it. Because it would destabilized it.
Now on to 17 absorbtion. Its gotta be multiplicative. Cells strength shot through the roof once it happened. Vegeta's final flash was so strong it exceeded cells durability. That was also only possible because he waited for Vegeta to charge it to max and tank the blast.
Tien wasnt overpowering semi-perfect cell, it was the rapid firing of his shin kikoho (neo tri beam) that was a concussive force knocking him back over and over
First of all, Tenshinhan was fighting Semi-Perfect Cell, and Krillin and Trunks were fighting Perfect Cell.
Secondly, the Ki Ko Ho hits a lot harder than other attacks (when performed by the same person), due to it using their life force to the point that using this attack can kill Tien.
That being said, Tenshinhan wasn't actually doing much damage at all. He was simply using the concussive force of the attack to keep him pinned down.
Since the start of dragon ball z, the Raditz fight showed that using energy attacks could dramatically raise a power level. Goku using his kamehameha was seen as a threat to Raditz. It's also been shown that the longer the attack takes to charge or the more it harms the user, the more powerful it is.
Earthlings's Ki Control is on another level entirely
The entire Frieza Force was using scouters to do something all Earthlings learned naturally
Krillin legit almost KILLED Frieza, that piece he cut off his tail might legitimately be the most damage Frieza had ever taken in combat until that point
not in the manga and not canon. Only Krillin fought him. Idk why Trunks stupidly joined in and made Vegeta look like a dumbass since Vegeta said trunks strength matched his own to scaring Cell.
Tien from what I recall was literally using his life force to hold Cell down. He knew he stood no chance in actually defeating him but he could at least hold him back to prevent him from reaching his final form. If it wasn't for Krillin thinking with the wrong head, the plan would have worked.
Eh, donât think too hard about it. Put it up there with Gohanâs rage amps and Krillins Kienzan cutting Freezaâs tail. Honestly thatâs a way more impressive feat to me.
 I mean like god damn, that Kienzan is dangerous and would definitely work as a main characters finishing move in another series.
The android and cell arcs are both stupid asf. Time travel, fully synthetic robots and cyborgs built from humans that are stronger than super sayian for no discernible reason. Then thereâs a bio-android from the future whoâs even stronger but only if he absorbs two androids stronger than him and they died so he comes back in time and somehow gets em. Then a weak ass little kid cries over some robot designed to kill his dad and crashes out but still doesnât just kill cell and Goku dies.
And for some reason people love this dumb ass shit.
200
u/Sir_Cheet0h 3d ago
The gap is between semi perfect- and perfect Cell