#oh no i'm going to get mad at piccolo for the events of dbssh again stop it me

[sonohban]

gohan is such a good character. I could rant for 30 paragraphs about this but tldr I love how he's a kind soul who, despite being gifted with some of the most potent power in the entire multiverse, chooses not to use it unless he absolutely has no other choice

a very real and palpable hero character :'T cell games is still fresh in my mind as some of gohan's best characterization because admittedly i didn't understand his hesitancy to fight for a while and then the realization hit me like a brick. i had been so used to all the adult characters' innate instinct to fight because they want to protect everything they love and defeat evil (also this is a shonen anime that's what you do blarghhgh!), so i was confused as to why gohan refused to fight despite very deeply sharing these motivations. but then i realized i made a jump in logic that all the other characters had made except android 16, which is that gohan got pulled into everything way too quickly and didn't have time or the environment to learn that sometimes you have no choice but to fight. everyone is so used to having to do this over and over that they don't think to articulate to gohan why they're doing it. and this hits twice as hard when you see how terribly conflicted that makes him! he can't stand justice not being served, has the power to do so, but also thinks fighting makes you as bad as the other person. this kid is a literal bomb waiting to happen which is demonstrated by his random spikes of power via bottled up rage throughout the series. i haven't watched mp100 but i get why so many people are fans of both series haha

but yes it's nice to see how he's accepted responsibility to fight more after cell games, he still wants to stay out of conflict and lead a more subtly ambitious life, but will rise to the occasion when necessary. a bit healthier about it now. and he likes bugs too (i could go on about how this fits him perfectly as a character)! go gohan wooo