I've been waiting to say that to someone because most people haven't even heard that term.
Hm... this is beginning to remind me of discussions about "decimate" in about 3 different ways.
The most prominent of those being that I shouldn't be doing this.
I will say I'm amused by things like Star Wars's astromech 'droids, which don't even look human, let alone male. But what do I know about long-away galaxy slang?
edited 22nd Aug '14 6:53:23 PM by Enlong
I have a message from another time...To be fully pedantic, "android" means "similar to but not quite a man". Andro- is a prefix meaning masculine or male as applied to the human species, while -oid is a suffix meaning "similar to but not quite the same" (metalloids, meteoroids, insectoid, ect).
So Piccolo is technically an android since he resembles a human male but is neither. Being a robot is not a prerequisite for being an android.
Colloquially, it's used to refer to robots and other such artificial life that resembles a human, though many people do point out that a female-based android should properly be called a gynoid. Or both should be called anthroids.
So in a sense, it is technically incorrect to call 17, 18, and arguably 20 androids since they are in fact humans (16 and 19 are androids though), but that is their given name and is clearly using the colloquial sense of the word "android".
Oh, and regarding the word "man" being used to apply to homo sapiens as a whole, that's actually because it was originally a gender-neutral term for the human species. "Man" didn't come to mean human male until later.
edited 22nd Aug '14 6:58:14 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!I'll say that I mostly only can recall DBZ as an exmple of "Android" and "Cyborg" being conflated. "Android" and "Robot", sure, but most things use "cyborg" if they have cyborgs.
Yeah, it originally would refer to a lot of not-quite-men, whether that be undead, golems, or automotons. That last one stuck particularly well, it seems.
edit: Hm... given names. Did Gero ever call 'em androids in DBZA? I can only recall a few of his lines, but just of him yelling at 19 (and only saying "19!", with no titles).
Cell seems to imply that, within the Gero "family", they're named "cyborg [Number]"
edited 22nd Aug '14 7:01:07 PM by Enlong
I have a message from another time...Did you mean "before Dragon Ball as a series" or "before the Z-era, when Goku was still a child"? Because only Roshi and Krillin knew the Kamehameha then, IIRC.
I figure, whether Abridged or not, Gero refers to 17 and 18 as androids just for consistency's sake. They're formally named "Android 17" and "Android 18" even though they're cyborgs.
So does Gero count as a cyborg? He's a human brain in a robot body, after all, so even if it is a bit disproportionately skewed toward machine he still has organic parts.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!But doesn't Goku say that after Cell has already eaten a bunch of cities to bolster his power? And isn't the reason Cell ate those cities in the first place because he wasn't strong enough to take the androids when he first arrived?
Just double checked, and yeah - according to Cell himself right after escaping Piccolo at Ginger Town that at that point he hadn't "surpassed" 17 and 18 yet. Though when he hides from Vegeta he doesn't actually say anything about Vegeta's power in relation to his own - so I'm mistaken there - just that Vegeta is more powerful than he was expecting and he couldn't afford a fight at the moment.
Though, yeah. Team Four Star can easily ignore that if they want to - and they seem to be doing so - so in the end whatevs.
edited 22nd Aug '14 11:12:06 PM by KnownUnknown
