Episode 86 of Dragon Ball Super, first broadcast in Japan on April 16, 2017 and titled First Time Exchanging Blows! Android 17 vs. Goku!! in Funimation's dub, fills a gap more than twenty years long: Goku and Android 17 meet for the very first time. The android built to kill him has become a wildlife ranger, a family man and a formidable fighter. The two test each other, but persuading him to fight for the universe is another matter.
Summary
Dende detaches his Lookout from the pole that anchors it and steers it toward a southern island where Android 17 lives. On the way he tells Goku how the android has changed: he has a wife and children, protects the island's animals single-handedly and has never stopped training. He also mentions a child with extraordinary talent living in a nearby village: the reincarnation of the evil Majin Buu, whom Goku might someday teach to use his strength.
On the island, Goku cannot sense 17's energy, but an explosion leads him there: the android is taking down a group of armed men. Goku recognizes him by his eyes, identical to his sister's, and helps him with the second wave. They are poachers, Android 17 explains, hunting the Minotaurus, a once-gentle creature driven nearly extinct for its valuable horns: the one on the island may be the last of its kind.
Goku wants to gauge the android's power and challenges him. He starts as a Super Saiyan, but 17 keeps pace; when Goku switches to Super Saiyan Blue, the android reveals he was holding back too. They rise into the sky to spare the forest, the Saiyan's Kamehameha breaks against the android's barrier, and when they crash into the sea near the shore it is 17 who calls it off to protect the island. Each believes the other still had power in reserve.
By a campfire, 17 shows a photo of his wife and three children, two of them adopted, and admits that without the Dragon Balls he would have none of it. When Goku tells him about the tournament, though, he declines: the job pays well, he does not care about prize money and the poachers could come back. Even the truth about the universe's erasure does not move him: if everyone disappears together, so be it. At Capsule Corporation, meanwhile, Beerus eats and sleeps as if it were his last chance, and a ship full of space poachers heads for Earth.
Our take
The meeting between Goku and Android 17 is one of those moments fans had been waiting for without knowing it: back in the Android saga, 17 was absorbed by Cell before ever reaching his target. The series plays that lack of shared history nicely, with two characters sizing each other up out of curiosity rather than resentment. 17 is still wry and aloof, but his world is now made of concrete responsibilities, and his indifference to the end of the universe rings true for someone already living a second life.
The fight is clean and shows an android who has nothing to envy the Saiyans. The mention of young Uub, never shown on screen, is a neat bridge toward the ending of Dragon Ball Z.
Trivia
- Written by Toshio Yoshitaka and directed by Takao Iwai, with Paul Añonuevo, Joey Calangian and Naoki Tate as animation directors. It drew a 5.0% TV rating in Japan.
- In the manga, 17 mistakes Goku for a poacher and attacks him, and Goku fights in base form, Super Saiyan 2 and Super Saiyan 3.
- The manga also shows Uub walking through a village with his little brother on his back; in the anime he is only mentioned, and not by name.
- The space poachers do not exist in the manga.
Did you know? Android 17 already knows Goku's voice and a lot about him: Dr. Gero programmed him specifically to eliminate the Saiyan.