I can't say I enjoyed Season 3 of Dragon Ball Kai (comprising the Android & Imperfect Cell arcs) half as much as I did Seasons 1 and 2, but that was never going to happen, it would have been impossible. Even so, Dragon Ball Kai has continued to roundly knock my socks off and in one fell swoop I've come to appreciate the Cell Saga in ways I never have before. I scoffed at it for a good while, but now I can proudly say that the Cell Saga is an incredible piece of work and every bit as worthy of being a part of Dragon Ball Kai as the Saiyan and Namek arcs are. It'll never be half as good as the first two seasons for me personally, but I finally understand why so many people... probably even the majority of people, consider this the best part of DBZ.
See, it occurred to me how much of my distaste for the Android-related arcs is more personal than perceptive.
By the time I got to this part of Z originally, I was a moody & depressed tween, unable to give myself fully to the show. Plus it was no longer something being shared with my brothers, so watching it was less fun and had less meaning. I also held a grudge against the Cell Saga because it begins with an utter emasculation of the Freezer Fight: reducing both Freezer, and Goku's transformation into the Super Saiyan, into hum-drum, garden variety fodder. This still pisses me off and it's still my least favorite part of DBZ and DBK.
But the biggest thing that kept me from enjoying this material the first time I saw it, is the fact that everything had been spoiled for me already. And looking at the Android arcs objectively today, I can see how.... butt-fucking unbelievable this storyline is. Are you kidding me? These plot twists are out of this world. I can't believe a show as generally straight forward as DBZ was able to pull off this many sleight of hands consecutively, I feel like I'm looking into my scouter and saying "It's a malfunction!" Hell, the number of times they spoiled the "hey kids, don't forget about the Super Saiyan thing! That's gonna become important later on" EVEN in Kai, I really wouldn't have thought DBZ/Kai could have done this but they really did.
First you have Freezer come to Earth, pretty straight forward story arc there. Now we'll repeat the pattern we see so often: everybody has to keep the enemy at bay while we wait for Goku to arrive. Nope! Somebody new is here to kill Freezer in an instant! Then he sets up a new arc: two impossibly strong androids are coming in 3 years. So everything goes according to plan, they train and the two androids aren't tough to beat. But, wait! Trunks comes back and those weren't the right androids. The real androids are way too strong to beat, but they're not pure evil... so what's going on here? How will this be resolved? Well, something ELSE has come back from the future and it's a freaking monster! Aaah! So here, finally, is the primary antagonist. But wait, Vegeta has him vastly outclassed, surely he will destroy him! Well, I wish he would have, but he doesn't.... yet another twist! While it doesn't form as good of an arc overall (the perfection of the Freezer Saga can't be beat), I'd have to say that strictly in terms of complexity this is the best-written portion of Kai by far. It's also great to see Piccolo be the strongest person on Earth again, even if only briefly, and the artificial humans are pretty cool characters.
Other things that annoyed me as a kid also make more sense as an adult. For one thing, Bulma & Vegeta's relationship makes a lot more sense. You see Bulma contemplate on Namek about how she really missed the boat not going for Goku when she had the chance, and choosing the perennial loser Yamucha instead. It only makes sense that Bulma would immediately jump on the only other Saiyan around, and the second most powerful person in the universe (at the time). I also used to decry the Cell Saga for having such a low body count -- I mean Future Trunks deserved to die (Freezer's Revenge), and #16 was a machine, basically a talking toaster. Freezer and Vegeta killed much more impressive people than that. But then I realized, since they unfortunately felt the need to remove the caveat in the dragon balls that meant you can only come back to life once, death has lost all meaning anyway. So why bog Cell down with a meaningless body count? It's just plain not necessary.
My only real complaint, here were some continuity issues that perturbed me. Generally I'm not quite such a nit-picking fanboy, but part of Dragon Ball Kai's purpose was to remove the glaring plotholes and give DBZ a flawless storyline. Dragon Ball Kai is indeed so close to being flawless that the few issues which do arrive, just seem so unfortunate.
Happily, a lot of the issues I had as a kid turned out to just be teen angst. Like, I used to think introducing the Room of Spirit and Time was dumb, 'cause why hadn't they used it before? Well, they couldn't have used it before, Goku and Kami were the only ones who knew about it. In fact, it *explains* the rather odd lack of training that Kami gave the Z warriors back in season 1. He probably brought them up there to see if they would be able to handle the Room of Spirit and Time, but none of them made the cut.
However still, there were a small few continuity issues that Kai probably could have resolved but didn't. The biggest, most jarring one is how Yamucha was wished back to life and was transported right to where everyone was, at Bulma's estate. Rather inconvenient how when it doesn't have any ramifications, people can just be transported anywhere. But Yamucha was at Kaio-sama's dwelling. Remember when Goku had to travel Snake Way, then be brought back by Kami to Kami's palace, and then travel to where the Saiyans were? Same dragon, same wish, what allowed Yamucha to be transported back and not Goku? Is Shen Long sadistic?
But those are minor things compared to the immensity of Kai's greatness. Silly me, I made the mistake of thinking I wouldn't want to watch the last season. I mean sure, the Cell Games isn't my favorite but how could I stop right in the middle of the storyline like this? Alas, I'll have to wait another week to watch the fourth season.
But now's a good a time as any to put a cap on my Kai review. I have to say, it's amazing... I came in this thing lamenting the fact that DBZ had aged incredibly poorly while pretty much everything else I watched as a kid had gotten 10x better. But Dragon Ball Kai really achieved what it set out to do, it brought Dragon Ball Z to its proper greatness. It's not just a good show, it's done me a huge favor in giving me back the Dragon Ball Z that DBZ deserves to be, and I can restore it to my pantheon.
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