Nobody programmed Cell, he's a lifeform with a brain of his own. He don't need no programming.
Also, the previous talk about Cell showing the souls of his victims made me think of something... Isn't he made from the cells of King Piccolo? And wasn't King Piccolo literally a demon? You know, with the souls of Roshi, Chaotzu and Krillin wandering in limbo while they were dead?.
Just saying, Cell might be also be a demon. Incapable of good deeds and all that jazz. Certainly explains why Kami was so willing to stop him.
edited 20th Mar '15 6:23:12 PM by JonnasN
Demon King Piccolo was literally a Namekian.
"Why didn't he program his computer to build Cell to be perfect?" then. Argh. My question was already answered and I'm still having to rephrase it.
edited 20th Mar '15 6:25:13 PM by Enlong
I have a message from another time...I thought "Demon King" was just a self-aggrandizing tile he gave himself, and that he was always a Namekian with an evil heart/mind. Like how Goku was an alien instead of a magical were-gorilla.
...well, "magic" is hard to define by our usual standards in a world where stuff like ki blasts and flying are understandable science.
edited 20th Mar '15 6:28:53 PM by Enlong
I have a message from another time...Not so much "okay" as it is "par for the course". During the Cell Saga, Toriyama appears to have come under the mistaken impression that these characters are traditionally heroic, as opposed to a gaggle of thieves, self-centered assholes, and outright murderers united solely by their shared love of testing their strength against Goku.
That is the only possible explanation why he felt a murderer whose primary objective is to increase his power and then test his strength against Goku was sufficient for the arc's Big Bad.
Well, yeah. The point is that he had no reason to plan that. It did not benefit his objectives in any conceivable way. He pulled "Kill the universe" out of his ass despite it being actively counterproductive to his intentions solely to justify still being the villain after he succeeded in his goal and ran out of villainous things to do.
No one's saying he didn't out-of-nowhere declare, "Imma kill all the things!" The point is that it was stupid.
I guess being the evil expelled from someone is a pretty good way to be a demon.
Yep. That Piccolo is a Namekian does not change the fact that he's still the physical embodiment of evil expelled from the Namekian that became God. He's an alien and a demon.
That's a good point.
Ultimately, Vegeta was an unrepentant mass murderer who got to kick back with the protagonists killing things less evil than him because he was useful and there isn't really have a high moral standard for membership in the group anyway, as evidenced by the physical embodiment of evil joining the crew roughly 1/3 of the way through the series.
They pay lip service to being champions of justice from time to time, particularly against Frieza who is the single most evil character in the entire franchise, but even Goku will gladly let murderers like Piccolo and Vegeta walk free and unaccosted because he enjoys fighting them. He probably would have been encouraging Gohan not to kill Cell if Frieza hadn't broken his mercy.
edited 20th Mar '15 8:41:46 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Nobody in his genetic makeup is an omnicidal psychopath. The people who comprise his being are galactic tyrants at worst. Only Majin Buu in his purest form has "Annihilate all life" as a character motivation, because he's a Person of Mass Destruction Gone Horribly Right, and there isn't an ounce of Buu in Cell.
edited 20th Mar '15 9:26:04 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.On a related note, do we have a trope for Genetics Equals Personality or something like that? Or is that just Generation Xerox?
edited 20th Mar '15 9:40:49 PM by KnownUnknown
Fair enough, I suppose. Still, Cell probably needed to be dealt with sooner than later, if only because using the Dragon Balls first means that he's free to kill more people without them being able to be revived.
Oh God! Natural light!Here was Cell's plan. Become Perfect. Murder and cause mayhem publicly to promote the Cell Games. Kick the asses of the Cell Games challengers to enjoy himself and make it clear to those watching via tv and stuff that no one can stop him. Kill every person on the planet one by one because he enjoys seeing the look of fear in their eyes as he is about to kill them. (Frieza genes probably gave him this trait.) Go to another populated planet and start the process all over again minus the become perfect part and so on and so on.
Cell was pretty damn evil. He made it clear upon Piccolo first meeting him that he was evil and was going to cause problems.
edited 21st Mar '15 1:53:00 AM by Envyus

"Why didn't he program him to be built as perfect?", then.
I have a message from another time...