Cell Quotes

The insult is also the arc's structure, stated by the villain. The Cell saga is built as a relay of Saiyans, each run in to replace the last: Vegeta beaten, Trunks stepping in here to save him, then Goku at the Cell Games, then Gohan. For the escalation to work, every Saiyan needs another behind him, and Cell is the first character to notice the conveyor belt. The joke has a second layer he has already told against himself. A few episodes earlier he reminded Vegeta that his cells were woven into Cell's own body, which makes the exterminator partly one of the insects. The saga also lets the last cockroach out of the wall be a child, which is the one sequence the comparison could not predict.

The villain delivers the arc's sharpest criticism of its hero, and the show lets him be right. Goku has just stepped out of the ring and named his son as the fighter who can win, then argued that it would not be fair for Gohan to beat Cell while Cell was worn out. Cell's aside a moment earlier is the honest reading: the only thing Goku has managed is to ensure his son's demise. The compliment to Gohan is an accusation against the father, phrased politely because Cell has better manners than anyone else in the scene. The standard reading treats this as sneering. It is closer to the truth than anything the heroes say that day. Goku is proven right about his son's power and wrong about nearly everything else: Gohan does not want to fight, is badly hurt before he finds the strength, and the father pays for the plan with his own life.