The Three Laws of Robotics don't apply. When you are building a robot whose explicit purpose is to cause harm to a person or persons, the Three Laws are counterproductive to your killbot.
In fact, this is the fundamental flaw of Asimov's Three Laws in general: they assume that no robot will be built for the purpose of war.
edited 21st Dec '13 11:01:03 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Also, 16 is the only one that could be described as a "robot" (well, possibly 19). Gero, 17, 18 and the entire "Android" program were about refitting from a human base, and leaving intact human instincts. Cell is made of a hodge podge of instincts of living beings.
Since Cell can heal from a single cell and gets Zenkai, he really could've been the most powerful character in the series, given time. Also, imagine if he wasn't awoken until data on Majin Buu was collected. Or Bills.
I don't think Cell can just infinitely become stronger from Zenkai, though, or the same would be true for the Saiyans. And he can only regenerate from a single cell if that cell is a nucleus, meaning it takes a miracle for him to be reduced to that alone. He doesn't seem to get a Zenkai from anything less than that, as losing half his body didn't do anything for him.
Also, that probably wouldn't have changed a whole lot, except for the possibility of getting their abilities and godly ki. The computer turned down Trunks' DNA because it already had enough Saiyan DNA, despite Trunks being way stronger than Goku and Vegeta at the time. I don't think the current strength of the donor matters.
edited 21st Dec '13 11:21:47 PM by Saiga
Right. 17, 18, and 20 (Gero) were more accurately cyborgs, as mentioned earlier in the series.
8, 16, and 19, and probably 1-16 as a whole? Androids.
Pardon me, but is an upper limit shown for Saiyans using that?
edited 21st Dec '13 11:23:11 PM by Enlong
I have a message from another time...No, I don't mean a brain cell. I mean Cell's regenerative nucleus, which he only has one of, in his head. It's only ever referred to as "a/the nucleus".
@Enlong Possibly. The guidebooks say that for the Saiyans, the Zenkai became "infrequent/insufficient/small" (the word used can be translated multiple ways, and context doesn't help) after the battle with Freeza which could mean that there is a limit to how much benefit you can get out of them. Goku, Vegeta and Gohan all got big boosts for their last ones, so they might have exhausted the available benefit to them.
It's kind of a Ghost In The Shell grey area. Just with no soul searching and more explosions.
Cell's regenerative abilities as a whole were pretty different Piccolo's weren't they. He inherited it from Piccolo and apparently it's supposed to work like Piccolo's but he had his entire upper half destroyed and could still regenerate, and we Know Piccolo couldn't do that. And for another matter, since it was shown that Piccolo could regenerate his entire body from his head, if for some miracle reason some cells of the regenerative organ in his brain survived a massive explosion, do you think he would be able to regenerate from that like Cell did? Otherwise, that whole things turns into a very big plot hole.
Isn't that why they changed it during the dub so that he could regenerate From a Single Cell anyway?
Sometimes life just sucks. You have to learn to take the good with the bad. Why should you expect anything different in the mediums?Probably. Could also have just been a fortunate coincidence as they were trying to match up the Mouth Flaps.
edited 22nd Dec '13 1:39:31 AM by Saiga
also about the door, at the very least in the manga they only tried to knock it down with brute force once (though Krilling still gave it a useless looking push), before Picollo decided to just blast it open
but by then they were shocked to hear from the inside that 17 and 18 were already awake, all except for Vegeta who just blew the door open himself then
I like that Krillin still manages to find the lab after he gets owned.
...Don't understand though why he didn't get a hit on the counter after Gero tricks Krillin into letting him into the lab.
Also, why does Krillin keep forgetting Destructo Disc is a thing he can do?
...Granted, Gero could probably just absorb it with his remaining hand.
edited 22nd Dec '13 5:15:10 AM by unnoun
If I was Toriyama's biology instructor, I'd have given him an "F". Retroactively.

I forgot that Cell was kept in the basement. I thought it was some othe gag.