Dragon Ball Z Abridged

Basically:

Cell mainly wanted to prove himself as the most powerful guy on the block, and if the process of doing so caused as much harm as possible he would do it enthusiastically. He might even go out of his way to torture people. But it was not his primary motivation.

Freeza mainly wanted to hurt people and be the ruler of the cosmos, and if that involved being the strongest... then, well, he was already the strongest (until Goku was a thing).

I look at it as Cell being a kid in a candy store, while Frieza is king of the mountain.

The former just got the keys and all the candy belongs to him, while the latter is already at the top of the hill and takes a sick joy in lording it over everyone.

Both of them like to rub their status in the faces of others however.

^^ I look at it in pretty much the exact opposite way. Cell is motivated by a desire to prove he's the greatest and rub it in for everyone else plus just some pure sadism in making people suffer for his amusement. That's it. Hurting people for funsies is all he really wants.

Freeza, on the other hand, was an emperor. He conquered and sold planets. Yeah, sometimes he blew them up or tortured people to death for fun if they got in his way but otherwise he didn't really care. It was something he did but it wasn't the driving force for his actions.

They're both terrible, obviously, but Cell is the one who derives pain from suffering as an actual primary motivation once he achieves Perfect form. So Tobias and others acting as if he's somehow more redeemable strikes me as really strange and kind of ignoring what he actually says and does.

Edit: Also, Freeza being the strongest was just something he took for granted. Someone showing up to prove that wrong was something he couldn't tolerate and therefore changed his primary goals.

Edited by Arha on Jul 18th 2018 at 7:38:07 AM

Cell states it pretty clearly that after he becomes perfect he's only out to entertain himself, and that what's most entertaining to him is seeing the fear on people's faces before he kills them. And before becoming perfect his sadism was very easy to see.

You don't make it seem like you're going to let someone go, only to slowly suck the life out of them, like he did to that guy when he first meet Piccolo unless it's something you deeply enjoy and is a part of you.

I don't think Frieza or Vegeta ever actually had anything like that, at least unprovoked.

Edited by LSBK on Jul 18th 2018 at 10:51:21 AM

"You don't make it seem like you're going to let someone go, only to slowly suck the life out of them, like he did to that guy when he first meet Piccolo unless it's something you deeply enjoy and is a part of you.

I don't think Frieza or Vegeta ever actually had anything like that, at least unprovoked."

Isn't that basically exactly what Freeza did with the Namek village that Dende was from?

No. He said he would spare them and lied, but then simply had them killed. No muss, no fuss.

That, and he had a reason to lie - he wanted to get the location of the other villages out of them.

In the original manga he even kills one of the children himself.

Actually, I think Vegeta aside all the Z villains do something where they say, let someone run and then kill them or something similar. Freeza does it to the Namekians, Cell does it to some of the people he was drinking, and Buu does it to the various people he meets (it's even a plot point that a puppy not running away from him confuses him).

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 19th 2018 at 10:22:59 AM

Allthough we should add that Frieza killing his own men all the time was a trait that only the anime added.

After the Namekians are resurrected and moved to Earth, they notice that a single village is missing and question what could have happened to them. Vegeta takes this as an opportunity to gloat and rub it in everyone's faces about how he was totally the one who killed those people, muwahahahaha.

There was really no reason for him to do that. It could have provoked an entirely unnecessary altercation. He was just being a sadistic asshole. He was rubbing his balls in the face of a people who were mourning just because he could.

And this was after he became a protagonist.

Sadism is a trait shared by all of Dragon Ball's villains. It's nothing unique to Cell, and many of those villains go on to become protagonists anyway. Pretty much any time someone in Dragon Ball feels powerful, they turn into a complete dick about it. Even Gohan is not exempt from this - though he does, at least, learn a valuable lesson from it.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 19th 2018 at 11:05:16 AM

Well, Gohan was that very, very briefly (and ended up paying a disproportionately huge price for it.)

Also, I wasn't saying that Vegeta wasn't sadistic, I was just saying I didn't remember a scene where he went out of his way to toy with someone he was about to kill. He's sadistic but also fairly straightforward (that being said, there probably is a scene where he does that, I just can't remember it off the top of my head.)

Edited by Sigilbreaker26 on Jul 19th 2018 at 5:12:54 PM

It's filler, but his dicking Arlia was pretty much a massive Yank the Dog's Chain.

He freed them, gave them a Hope Spot, and then blew up the planet just to be an ass.

Edited by Larkmarn on Jul 19th 2018 at 1:56:58 PM

The entire "lets have you fight saibamen and then Nappa" is basically sadism when he knows they know he can kill them all at any moment. He's just having them amuse him before he does so.

Vegeta clearly enjoyed what he did, but he only mentioned it because they were asking what happened to that missing village. He didn't just bring it up for kicks. Still assholish, but not with the same kick, I think.

I think the only villains who aren't sadistic are Commander Red and Goku Black / Zamasu.

The former because he's got a specific goal that isn't helped by Sadism, and the latter because what looks like Sadism (hunting down humanity 1 by 1) is actually a specific part of their overall plan (killing all mortals only, and not damaging their worlds).

There might be others though.

I think Zamasu enjoyed his job a lot pretty clearly though.

Commander Red... yeah, he's brutal, but not outright sadistic I don't think.

What about Pilaf?

Pilaf is literally trying to kill Goku and Co with a Bond-esque scheme by making them die of sunstroke in a room he has specifically built for this purpose. And he had a weather control machine to electrocute his own minions for failing him.

Edited by Ghilz on Jul 19th 2018 at 3:58:01 PM

Eh. That's still more Rule of Funny than anything else.

They were kinda phoning in the Evil Overlord thing with Pilaf, so of course he has a ridiculously complicated death trap on hand.

I mean. Given the nature of his "empire" - consisting entirely of Pilaf and his two minions - having deathtraps all around his castle makes sense.

What else do you expect him to do? Challenge Son Goku to fisticuffs? "How can I kill Goku without ever fighting him?" is a smart strategy.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 19th 2018 at 5:28:57 AM

True enough. It's not his fault the answer is YOU DON'T.

Edit: Hell even if you consider that the Goku that Pilaf nearly killed was Goku at his absolute weakest, the fact that he came so close to killing him without even so much as stepping into the same room as him (unless that one scene in the anime where he does walk into the gas filled room happened in the manga as well) is pretty impressive.

Most guys had to get their hands dirty, and didn't take a close look at what was left (looking at you Tao and Piccolo), thereby botching the job, but Pilaf literally had a fool proof plan that would have worked if not for a freak transformation that even had the Narrator going da fuc?

Edited by HandsomeRob on Jul 19th 2018 at 8:21:44 AM

Clearly the answer is poisoned bacon.

You can always just shoot him in the back.

Seems to work on everyone.

Goku Black and Zamasu have the ability to wipe out planets with the barest strain. Despite this, they decide to kill all mortals gradually and personally for no real reason other than they seem to be savoring each agonizing bit of the mortals' annihilation.

Then, when the heroes finally stand up to fight them, basically every encounter has them smearing either physical or emotional pain (or both) in their faces just to rub in how beneath them they see everyone else.

Zamasu considering himself a divinely pure being above mortal fault, but actually being a hypocritical sadistic monster, is one of his most prevailing traits.

To be fair, they are killing every mortal one by one because it's the Zero Mortals plan.

They don't want to damage the planets, that's why they do it one at a time. It's less being deliberately sadistic and more a feature of their plan that allows them to also indulge in their sadism.

Work hard and play hard really.

...but I guess that shows that they really are sadistic. So basically just Red is on the non sadistic villains list.

Pilaf doesn't actually count to me.