Yeah, he was still quite intelligent in base form, he just spoke like a Hulk Speak brute at least in the dub. After absorbing Piccolo his voice and eloquence basically becomes like a rude version of Perfect Cell.
I don't know if it was a dub thing only, or beneath that an anime thing only, but I love how he repeated Piccolo's "That hurt, didn't it, Gohan? Facing your fears would have been far less painful.
" line after absorbing him, to unsettle Gohan further.
You know, I was pretty sad that Gohan didn't get to be the main character in the Buu saga...at first. But I think I'm beginning to realize why Toriyama felt Gohan wasn't a suitable character. To be honest, Gohan is a deconstruction of a warrior character. Let's see...he starts off as a normal kid, until his heartless uncle came calling. He gets put through hard training because he has untapped power. Despite this, he never seems to do anything right.
- He freezes up like a deer in the headlights at the worst times.
- He tries to help his father when he should have been trying to get a wounded Piccolo off Namek.
- He achieves Super Saiyan 2...but then makes the big mistake of toying with his opponent. That mistake cost him his father and his arm.
- He neglects his training for years, so when the threat of Majin Buu pops up, he's not in the shape he needs to be in to fight.
- He gets powered up to his maximum fighting level...but then he makes the big mistake of toying with his opponent, again.
No wonder Toriyama had Goku save the day in the end instead of Gohan!
Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!
To be honest I'm glad Gohan got his ass kicked by Super Buu in the the end because it exposed him for the arrogant, lousy, incompetent fighter I always thought he was. You'd think after toying with his enemy the last time he had a major fight (Cell), he would have learned never to do something like that again...but NOPE...he does it again to Super Buu, essentially insulting the sacrifice that Goku made when he screwed up the first time again Cell and coming back to bite him in the ass in the WORST way and unlike Goku, Vegeta or Piccolo, Gohan NEVER contemplates for a Plan B if thing goes south
edited 4th Jul '13 3:44:46 PM by FireShadow
He doesn't know what an hour is but he's able to learn very quickly just by examining the sand, at least.
It's a shame that he didn't ask Frieza how long an hour is. Then Trunks and Gohan would have had like three milennia to train.
edited 4th Jul '13 4:56:16 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!"Frieza has no sense of time" is one of my favorite jokes here, up there with Yamcha's patheticness.
Buu: What's an hour? How long is it?
Frieza: An hour is this long!
*Generates a large stack of 12-month calendars*
edited 5th Jul '13 2:49:26 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!Yeah, it's funny how Freezer claims that Namek has five minutes before it explodes, and then the fight goes on for around 30 half-hour episodes.
My personal theory there is that Freezer and Goku were fighting each other so fast that for them it was less than five minutes, but for us it was way longer than that.
Oh, Equestria, we stand on guard for thee!
That's one that I've heard before.
Most don't buy and just say the anime really dicked around on that one.
One Strip! One Strip!My other theory is that Freezer and Goku are actually aware that Talking Is a Free Action, and that they deliberately kept talking because they knew it would keep pausing the countdown towards the explosion.
...Or you could go with the explanation that the anime simply drew out the fight a lot longer than the manga did.
There's also that one time when Goku teleported Cell to King Kai's planet. The anime had Goku talking for at least one minute before Cell blew up. This caused people to wonder why Goku doesn't just grab the inhabitants and teleport out of there. Thankfully, Dragonball Z Kai fixed that by just having Cell blow up shortly after he got teleported there.
He was kinda the first real 100% villain though.
Well, okay, Tao pai pai did it before even Piccolo, but he was still a bit silly(his method of Transportation).
King Piccolo put the Cerebus in Cerebus Syndrome.
And I just now caught the joke that he's not even a Z villain.
Man, I'm stupid.
edited 7th Jul '13 9:58:52 AM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!Nah, it's cool. :)
I guess I liked Cell best of the three Z Big Bads. But man, Kai really redeemed Freeza. He's still not a great character but he's no longer the complete joke I once knew.
I think, generally, that Cell is the most popular Z villain among us "Dubbies." Linda Young bless her and the Season 3 script did not endear Freeza to us. Cell meanwhile was voiced by Dameon Clarke being a Super Large Ham and he had some really awesome music.
One could argue the large gap in quality from the dub Freeza Saga to the Dub Cell Saga is why things like Gohan going SSJ 2 and the Kamehameha Wave battle with Cell stand out as being more "epic" than Goku going SSJ or fighting Frreza.
edited 7th Jul '13 10:53:46 AM by NIkkolas
Taopaipai set an unbreakable record for Badass Decay; you can pinpoint the exact moment where it occurs. When Goku kicks the grenade back at him, and his eyes bug out? That's when you know he's gone from being the darkest antagonist in the series up to that point to a Looney Tunes character.
As for King Piccolo, a carrier of Cerebus Syndrome he may have been, but I thought he was handled extremely well. Krillin goes off-panel for what, less than a page in the manga? And, in one scream, he's dead. No Final Speech, no Died in Your Arms Tonight, just dead.
edited 7th Jul '13 11:56:24 PM by Robotnik
About the music in the Dragonball anime, I have complicated feelings about the music across every version.
- The music in the original Japanese version is...strange to me. I just find myself sitting there and thinking, "What are those instruments being played? I don't think I've heard anything like it!"
- The music in the Ocean dub is dead average. Very little about it stands out.
- The music in the Funimation dub with Bruce Faulconer is interesting to listen to. How well does it flow and fit in with the story is debatable, however.
- The music in the Kai dub is perfect, if you ask me. It flows with the scenes and has awesomeness written all over it! I know some people say it's corny, but this work dates back to the later 80s and early 90s. I guess it's all a matter of taste.
Oh, and I think Freezer's best theme was "Only A Chilling Elegy":

He was already smart too(even if he wasn't obvious), but yeah, he did seem to jump a bit in IQ points once he absorbed Piccolo.
Though it did help that Gohan's always kinda been a fuck up.
One Strip! One Strip!