Welcome back to another edition of your weekly dose of pure, unprotected villainy. I of course, and it’s been a few weeks so it feels great to say this, am Arthur Harkness, your beautifully malicious purveyor of the obscene. On my drive to work today, I was thinking about some good old fashioned Dragonball Z, which I haven’t thought about or watched in a while, and figured I would search through my mental database and bring up some fond memories of my years long obsession with that show. To say I loved it would be putting it lightly. I was having a personal debate on who would be considered that series’ greatest villain, and after some fiddling and tinkering, it came down to two of them for me; Cell and Buu. I know what you may be asking, which is why I didn’t include Frieza, and that’s because he is in his own class. Granted, Cell and Buu are technically waaaaay more powerful than Frieza, but there is no way to deny that Frieza was literally one of the series’ most amazing villains. He’ll get his own post someday. So after the tinkering and the stinkering, my brain came down to the conclusion that although both of them were fucking hardasses, the one that takes the cake for me will have to be Cell. I’ll tell you why.

Okay so for those who are not entirely familiar with the story of DBZ, I’ll put it as shortly as possible. The most powerful people in the universe fight the other most powerful people in the universe, and train and train and train to fight more super powerful guys. It’s fucking awesome. I also may have reduced a 500+ episode show into two lines. Range! The fact of the matter is that both Cell and Buu have come the closest to completely destroying Earth, with Buu coming the closest to succeeding. The thing with Buu is that he is more of a creature of impulse rather than a creature of pure maliciousness (at first) created by a piece of shit sorcerer who seriously needed to get punched in the fucking face. Cell, however, is a completely different story. Cell is an android, but not like the previous ones we meet in the show. They were bad, but convertible whereas Cell is just a being of pure evil who wants nothing more than to absorb the life force of every person he can get his hands (and tail) on. This leads to him killing off a large chunk of the population before the heroes even find him. So brutal. Imagine how pissed the Z fighters were when they found out that this guy was out there killing people the whole time? The search concludes after Cell absorbs his other androids brethren and becomes what is easily one of the most badass characters in all of animation; Perfect Cell.

Guys, there is something you need to know about me right now. I get boners…..like all the time for things like this. Super powerful characters going nuts and murdering everything is Arthur’s favorite, however, super powered maniacs forming a tournament to see who is the strongest is like adding an additional boner to my already impressive specimen. It’s going to cause issues with blood flow. Cell sets up a tournament and pretty much makes our heroes look like kids, which ironically is what it takes to stop him. A kid, and by kid I mean motherfucking Gohan. Look him up and see what the deal is. Cell takes it to everyone in very stylish fashion, even copying some moves from them because that is what he was made to be. Someone who can absorb and replicate the powers and abilities of those he fights. It almost renders anyone fighting him useless because they’re best moves were grafted into Cell’s …..cells? Does that count? Of course it does. He does what he needs to do, and is giving everyone a run for their money. Shit goes down, and Cell is about to blow up the entire planet by going nuclear, but Goku stops him in the nick of time by teleporting to another plane of existence and letting Cell blow up there. Such a sad end for an awesome villain, or was it?

Cell gives a giant middle finger to death and comes back super perfect and complete. At this point, Gohan is forced to step up and finally unleash some ultra powerful moves and finally put an end to the menace that is Cell. It was such a glorious and climactic battle. I didn’t even mind the way it went down, mainly because Goku was the end all be all of the DBZ universe, and it was nice to see him take a back seat to someone else. It also brought a proper end to the half way point of the series. I guess I could also say to the 2/3’s part of the series? The Buu saga is pretty long, so I am making that part the last 1/3 of the series. If you want to get down even further, this could be seen as the last quarter of the series, but now we’re just getting into unnecessary numbers games. It was crazy because when I was a kid watching this, there was no Netflix and streaming, so that meant I had to wait for them on tv, or buy the super expensive VHS tapes which would run about $30 for 3 episodes…..not really too conducive to my childhood budget. I just loved this series so much that the better part of my childhood was devoted to it. I even remember yelling at my father for taking me out one night because I missed the battle between Piccolo and android 17, which is hands down my favorite battle of the whole series. They didn’t waste any time powering up or talking, they just got right down to business.

The reason I chose Cell should be pretty clear, but I just want to say that I loved Buu as well. That was an amazing season and when Vegeta goes Majin…..boner fucking city. It’s crazy. The series also gave a nice resurgence to anime being broadcast in America because it was so popular. I still get shivers rolling down my spine when I think of how many episodes and how many nights I spent dreaming of being a Z warrior. I still do now to be honest. I would give anything to have that kind of ability, but at the same time, it also seems like a lot of freaking work. If I could just have access to that hyperbolic chamber for just a couple days……

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