What made the SSJ2 Gohan transformation scene work so well despite all of the bad writing surrounding it?

Gohan will fight and to be honest is a maestro at fighting. Just can't do the whole bestest martial arts thing and is full on foot in ass brutal strength and flying brick with occasional crazy ass high level demon school technique.

He's basically Jiren if he was born in a universe without the dragon balls.

Anyway.
He doesn't sprout a foot of wood for fighting and is willing to throw everythign away for a good scrap like goku.
He's a down to earth normie who'll do what needs to be done and doesn't fight unless he has too or he's pushed then goes full berserker.

He has a distate for fighting and is peaceful when you compare him to Goku.
That's about it.
And to tell you the truth...Gohan has quite honestly had the worst childhood of any person in DB.
Including Vegeta and Broly. Him not wanting to fight and being a relatively well adjusted dude is to be honest quite extraordinary.

The entire point is that 16 is a machine with nothing more than killing Goku mindset. Him sacrifice himself like that is much sadder than Goku or Piccolo death, especially since both of them already died before. Plus Goku also sacrificed himself to teleport Cell away like what you want

Sadder to who?
Gohan doesn't even know 16 and the last he saw of the fucking androids they were beating his friends and family and green dad half to death and this one was going to kill his "father".
Him being all upset is dumb.

He never saw #16 do anything bad other than saying he was designed to kill Goku.

He saw all of the androids fuck everyone else up.
Why in the fuck would he see another android that was designed to kill his dad as a good guy?
Some random as fuck android he's never met or talked too before saying all of this shit too him as if he fucking knew him his entire life?

It makes no sense and only works because we the audience knew android 16.

Gohan only saw 19 and Gero do anything. He never met or even saw the other androids until the Cell games. When he did meet 16 he was explicitly told that he was no longer programmed to kill Goku. I agree that him being upset at 16's death enough to trigger SSJ2 is a bit contrived since they never really bonded or interacted at all until that moment.