Unlike their Future Trunks timeline counterparts, Android 17 and Android 18 haven’t gone bad. Here’s why it doesn’t make sense.
Unlike their counterparts in the Future Trunks timeline, Android 17 and Android 18 never went bad in the dragonball Z lively. Both characters were introduced as villains during Dragon Ball Z Cell Saga, but are now counted as allies of the Z-Warriors. 18 married Krillin after Cell was defeated and stayed on as a supporting character, while 17 was brought back towards the end of Dragon Ball Super as a park warden dedicated to the protection of wildlife.
The lives led by the two androids stand in stark contrast to what was originally expected of them in the franchise. After arriving in the present, Future Trunks warned Goku of their upcoming battle with Android 17 and Android 18. In his timeline, the pair of bloodthirsty androids had ruthlessly murdered Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta, Krillin, Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotzu. Thanks to Trunks’ warning, as well as other complications, mainline events ended up playing out differently. It was Cell who proved to be their greatest threat, and although the Z-Warriors eventually fought off the troublesome androids, they did not remain antagonists and never killed anyone.
Android 17 and Android 18 were never the villains Future Trunks promised them. Why the two characters are so different from the two mass murderers who threw Earth into chaos in Trunks’ timeline has never been properly addressed in the anime, and neither of the possible explanations really work. A common assumption is that the heroic turns of 17 and 18 were positive consequences of the alternations made to the timeline, but nothing Future Trunks has set in motion captures those particular differences.
Android 17 and 18’s Personality Changes in Dragon Ball Z Explained
Many changes have been made to the timeline as a result of Trunks’ time travel, and not all of them have obvious reasons behind them. Some, like Android 16’s activation, can be attributed to the Butterfly Effect, as the Z-Warriors may have tricked the Androids into waking him up just by being in Doctor Gero’s lab. However, the same reasoning does not apply to the inexplicable personality differences of 17 and 18 year olds. They’re just not the same characters that slaughtered the Z-Warriors in the Future Trunks timeline. This reality was impressed by Trunks when he met 18 Dragon Ball Super.
Over the years, many have tried to figure out why 17 and 18 have very little in common with the androids of the future. A popular theory posits that Android 16 was responsible for the change. It has been argued that his peaceful nature influenced their decision-making, but there are no scenes in Dragon Ball Z who support the idea that 16 somehow put them on better paths. After all, neither had a strong relationship with him, which is why it’s unlikely that 16 (or any other character, for that matter) had anything to do with why they weren’t. not bad guys. This is a timeline change that seemingly came out of nowhere.
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