Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.
“It's like I said. What you're detecting is impossible. Your sensors are going to have to be recalibrated and that's all there is to it. No one is as strong as I am.”
2 quotes from Dragon Ball Z, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
“It's like I said. What you're detecting is impossible. Your sensors are going to have to be recalibrated and that's all there is to it. No one is as strong as I am.”
“Fine. I'll make you tell us where he is. Now, how's that sound? Bad move, but at least you're not boring. After all, I'd rather enjoy not adhering to logic.”
Piccolo answers the invitation to surrender Goku by saying that the people of Earth have rubbed off on him. Android 17 then welcomes the refusal as a way to avoid boredom. That response changes the meaning of the supposedly logical offer he has just made: disclose the target and escape unharmed. The offer calculates only Piccolo's immediate survival. Loyalty has no place in that calculation, but entertainment immediately acquires a place in 17's own. He is willing to continue a fight because he enjoys it, while presenting his opponent's reason to continue as an irrational obstacle. The scene does not need Piccolo to defeat an abstract argument about reason. It lets 17 expose the preferences his argument leaves out. His acknowledgment that he enjoys departing from logic is candid, but it also withdraws the neutral authority of the recommendation. What sounded like the only sensible course was the course that would make another person cooperate with his mission. Once that person refuses, amusement supplies a different standard.
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Android 18 asks whether the changing power belongs to the fighter Android 16 compared with 17. He confirms that it does. 17 announces what recalibration must produce without identifying a fault beyond the unwelcome reading. His own supremacy has become the standard against which the instrument is judged, so a contrary reading counts as damage to the measuring device. This is weak confidence because it cannot describe evidence that would count against it. A faulty sensor is possible, but 17 supplies no fault beyond its failure to confirm his preferred ranking. The later episode "The Monster is Coming" gives him a less convenient report: he says Piccolo beat him and admits that he must have miscalculated. That admission does not establish the final result of their continuing fight. It does show him capable of naming an error in himself. The earlier boast deserves less credit because correction was already possible; he simply demanded that the messenger carry it instead.