Revisiting the Day Gohan First Went Super Saiyan 2 Against the Cell Juniors

In Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Gohan once again unlocked his potential and became a real beast of a warrior. So let's go back to Dragon Ball Z and look at Gohan's absolute dominance the moment he first transformed against Cell and his children.

If you want to follow along, open up your books or pop in your DVD and head to Dragon Ball Z episode 185. If you are reading the manga, that moment correlates to Dragon Ball chapter 408, Son Gohan Explodes. As I explain further down, there is even a famous animation mistake in this episode that made it to air.

This Gohan is not Teen Gohan, because he is only 11 at most

I know a lot of people refer to this version of the character as Teen Gohan, because Dragon Ball Z Budokai 1 calls him that. But he is not a teen. He is either 9, 10 or 11 years old, depending on which translation you follow and whether you believe his time in the Room of Spirit and Time counts as him aging up a year.

So at the oldest he is 11, and there is no such thing as eleventeen. As far as I am concerned, Teen Gohan does not exist, at least not until the Buu arc. That said, this Gohan would be more than happy to take on anybody from age 11 all the way up to 80 if they threaten his family or the Earth. We saw that side of him again in Super Hero, but this was when we really saw him unleash.

The manga version of Gohan's rampage is even more graphic than the anime

I saw the anime version of this literally years before I saw the manga version. This is one of the few times where, even though the Dragon Ball Z anime was far more violent and gory than modern Dragon Ball, the manga is gorier still. And if you only ever saw this on Toonami, you saw an even more homogenized and censored version of these events.

The episode opens with Gohan finishing his transformation. Some have asked whether he does it over again because the people who animated this episode did not work on the previous one, and the answer is yes, that is exactly why. It still looks cool, though. It takes longer for Gohan to power up, and it feels much more like a traditional Z transformation, whereas the previous one was more like the manga.

Gohan's Super Saiyan 2 makes its first full appearance

When the dust clears, we get the first official, final appearance of the form, even though there was some foreshadowing before it. It went by another name at the time, and in the Buu arc it would be renamed Super Saiyan 2, the Super Saiyan beyond Super Saiyan.

I am not going to use the whole "ascended" label here, because that gets confusing for a lot of people. Instead I am calling it what it is actually called, and that is SS2.

Gohan snatches the senzu beans right out of Cell's hand

Then comes the first truly alpha moment. There are very few kids who are actually alpha, and I will admit that in some ways this is not really alpha, but Gohan does a lot of alpha things. The first one is walking straight up to Cell, the embodiment of perfection who just beat his dad, beat Vegeta before that, beat Trunks and beat everybody, and taking the senzu beans out of his hands.

He does it the way your mom snatched the controller away when you were misbehaving with your Nintendo as a kid. Cell does not even know what happened, which shows how fast Gohan's hands were. Gohan took that bag because he knew Cell was not going to give those beans to his children. They did not belong to Cell. They belonged to Gohan and his friends.

Gohan slaughters the Cell Juniors one by one, like the hero who returns home to the suitors

Then the massacre begins, in what I can only describe as the Dragon Ball Z version of the classic story where the hero returns home and slaughters all of the suitors who embarrassed his son and went after his wife. Gohan does his version of this, taking the Cell Juniors one by one and slaughtering them ruthlessly and callously.

We see decapitations and bodies being split in half, and in the manga it is even gorier, with guts coming out. If you have not read the manga, you should at least check out this chapter. If you have only seen it in English or on Toonami, they would just cut to the puff of smoke rather than show you the head being lopped off or the body being split in half. I love the one that holds Krillin hostage, pushing out its little fingernails and trying to scare Gohan into backing off like a bank robber facing a cop. That is not going to fly in this neighborhood.

Take a look at the power scaling here. These Cell Juniors were overpowering all of the Z Fighters, not just Tien and Yamcha, but Goku, Vegeta and Trunks too. You would think Vegeta and Trunks could hold their own, and maybe with a bit more time they could have. But Gohan, with multiple times their speed and power, goes in there humiliating each and every one of them with single blows, without hesitation.

Tadayoshi Yamamuro deserves credit for this episode

Credit where credit is due. I have to give credit to a very controversial figure, Tadayoshi Yamamuro. "I know everybody hates modern yamamuro," but he was the lead key animator and animation supervisor for this episode, and he did a great job.

The episode's director also did another great job.

The senzu bag trick is pure Harlem Globetrotters

My other favorite part of this episode is when the Cell Juniors decide they need to use their strength in numbers, so they surround Gohan. Gohan throws the bag of senzu beans up in the air, knocks each of the four Cell Juniors down, and then catches the bag again.

That is Harlem Globetrotters stuff. That is David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear in the 90s. It is a magic show right out of Vegas, and Gohan does it without breaking a sweat.

Nothing the Cell Juniors try can hurt Gohan

Rather than doing the smart thing and running away, or even trying to blow themselves up, the Cell Juniors try to use the other Z Fighters' techniques on Gohan. I think of the Cell Juniors as kind of like Cybermen, so why not just blow yourself up and see how it goes?

It does not matter either way, because Gohan's strength at this point is so far beyond any of them that nothing hurts him and nothing gets through. It is literally a waste of time. And keep in mind he is still a kid, so he gets tired of playing with these miniature Cell toys and decides to put the finishing blow on the last remaining Cell Juniors.

Gohan kills eight Cell Juniors instead of seven in the original anime

A lot of folks have talked about this for many years, and it is worth mentioning here. Yes, there is an error in the original Dragon Ball Z anime, not Kai, not any of the other versions, and not the manga. Gohan does indeed kill eight Cell Juniors instead of seven.

It was an animation mistake. Even though Yamamuro did a good job with the episode, it is funny that this actually made air and that the directors and showrunners did not catch it. That has always been cool to me, and honestly, more destruction and payback against Cell is something I am all for.

Cell crushing Android 16 was the last straw for Gohan

After disposing of all of his children, Gohan goes face to face with Cell, and Cell realizes Gohan has changed and that he is now in for the fight of his existence. It is all his own doing, because he kept pushing Gohan, and then he stepped on 16 after 16 told Gohan to stop holding back and let it out. That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

A lot of folks have asked whether Gohan really cares about 16. For me it is not so much about Gohan's connection to 16. It is that what 16 said resonates with Gohan because he is an Earthling, and half human. Unlike Goku and Vegeta, whose thrill is mostly enjoying competition, Gohan actually cares about what 16 said, and that is what pushed him.

Gohan saw that Cell stepped on 16, and both of them had the same creator, so in a weird way 16 and Cell are kind of like brothers. Think about it from that perspective. Gohan knew he had to take Cell out now, but even then he still toyed with him, and that is a story I will leave for another time. Next time you are feeling down, go back to this episode of Dragon Ball Z or read the manga, because it is really violent.

Does Gohan's anger here come from caring about Android 16 himself, or from what 16 said to him?