Tales of the Senzu Bean : Moro VS Cell

[The Drunkard Kid]

spoilers:

Okay. I think the Cell thing was dumber, but this backfired more. Moro as he was, is apparently so far behind Ultra Instinct that Goku was right not to give a **** in a sense. Goku wasn't even stronger than cell, and at best was even with him for a time and Gohan didn't like to fight and couldn't readily access his power. He basically made completely **** calcs. His error this arc was not realizing the **** with Meerus, which.....Lead to much, much, much greater problems, on a much higher scale. As far as we can tell it's a much higher stakes blunder, but....It's an error less directly as a result of him being **** at thinking things through. If the hand wasn't there, or if Meerus had vaporized it, or if it fell into the lava, etc, this wouldn't even be a conversation. I mean, maybe Moro would still fuse with the planet, but we wouldn't be worrying about the universe being vaped. (I mean, even UI Moro was at a clear disadvantage, and is on his last legs.) So, this is a much bigger **** up because of that last bit, but on paper the Cell thing was much more stupid. Goku was never stronger than SP Cell, and was getting weaker than him by the moment, and the only person who was definitively stronger than Cell wasn't the battle loving type. I also think I feel like the Senzu thing didn't really spoil that much, having read the chapter lol. So, this wins via pure 'Oh ****' factor, even if Goku manages to fix it. It's somewhere between 'the world in danger' and 'the universe in danger' so lol. But I'm hesitant to say "Goku, you dumb ****, you didn't realize he could fuse with planets?". I mean, this is pretty out there, lol.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

In all fairness to Goku regarding Cell, he basically did the same exact mistake that Piccolo did the first time he trained Gohan: explicitly forcing himself to think of Gohan as a student rather than a child so that he wouldn't coddle him and limit his growth, then expected him to behave like every other life long martial artist they've hung out with. In Piccolo's case it didn't work because this was basically the first actual fight that the 4/5 year old Gohan had ever been in, and it was against the most powerful person they ever fought before, who had killed one of his dad's legendary friends in front of him, after 2 other of said friends also died. In Goku's case it didn't work because the plot suddenly decided that Gohan would be a pacifist out of nowhere. And even then, SSJ1 Gohan was basically only taking scratch damage from a fully recharged Perfect Cell wailing on him almost uncontested. Like, I overall like the Cell Saga, but the entire ending sequence required Goku and Gohan to both behave wildly out of character for no reason. Not regarding the whole "give Cell a senzu" thing, that was totally in character for Goku, especially after he confirmed that Gohan saw Goku's fight with Cell as the two of them playing around with each other, but reflexive berserker Gohan suddenly not wanting to splatter the guy that had murdered multiple cities by this point, then Goku deciding to have a conversation before teleporting so that he wouldn't have time to teleport back, then Goku deciding to stay dead so that his enemies wouldn't continue to attack the Earth which was never something he was concerned with, especially considering that Trunks can tell you how well Goku being dead or offworld kept his enemies from attacking Earth. As for Moro, that seems a lot more out of character since Moro wasn't a martial artist that Goku would enjoy testing himself against and Goku had specifically cited that he was trying to protect the galaxy in honor of Meerus' sacrifice, but even then the only real risk came from Moro deciding to fuse with the Earth, a power that he never hinted at before and still isn't really much of a threat since Goku knows very well where to find some non-Earth Dragon Balls if he ends up having to blow up the planet, assuming that Vegeta can't just punch the ground with Spirit Fission while Moro is distracted with Goku.

end of spoilers

[Jcogginsa]

Goku giving Moro a Senzu has more in common with him letting Frieza power up to full power than it does him giving Cell a senzu, if only just.

The reasoning behind both is the same: To show his opponent that they ain't ****.

In the case of Frieza, Goku was entirely correct: Frieza wasn't ****.

In Moro's case, Goku was mostly correct. Not for nothing, the first thing that happened after Moro got the Senzu was Moro breaking his wrist punching Goku's pecs. The only reason Moro managed to get the upper hand was because he pulled out a trick Goku didn't know about, and honestly I don't think the Senzu had that big an impact on that.

In the case of Cell, Goku wanted to show Cell that he wasn't **** compared to Gohan, and Goku was right about that part. Cell in fact was not **** compared to Gohan. Where Goku was wrong was in his assessment of Gohan's personality, and that's something he learned from.