Tien Quotes

His previous line is "I have forsaken my master." Earlier in the same tournament, revenge was the whole program: Tao, he told Master Shen, was slain by Goku's hand with Roshi guiding it, and Roshi should watch his pupil die in the ring, broken and publicly humiliated. Now revenge is struck off the list along with the school rivalry, and what is left is winning. That is progress of a limited kind. He has dropped every reason somebody else handed him and kept the only one that needs nobody, and it is the thinnest motive on offer. Roshi had already told him that he would never measure up as a killer because he had a conscience. This speech is what a conscience sounds like the first day it is allowed to talk and still has not found anything to say. It does not last. By the King Piccolo arc his word for what he is doing is atonement, which is a purpose that points backward, at everything he did while he was only trying to win.

Master Roshi died using the Evil Containment Wave on this same demon a few episodes earlier, dying where he stood when it failed to seal the demon in the jar, so the goodbye is meant literally. King Piccolo has also killed Chiaotzu, Tien's closest friend, and that would be the obvious motive to name. He names none of it. Launch tells him she is proud of him and he turns it down, because the account he is settling is his own: the tournament where he told Roshi he wanted to be a killer and liked it. "No better than King Piccolo" is his verdict on that year, delivered by the defendant. The line commits him to treating his own death as a fair price for that record.

Set it against the Tien of the original series, who announced at his first tournament that he fought for one purpose only, to win. Here he has abandoned winning as a category. He cannot beat Cell and says so, and the job he takes instead is to lose slowly, holding Cell in place long enough to stop him absorbing Android 18. The brag is about depth of obstruction, which is a strange thing to be proud of and exactly the right thing for him. The earlier line was a young man's purpose and this one is a veteran's. Gohan later tells him it was really cool how he stopped Cell, and that is the whole of his reward. The franchise gives its human fighters this role again and again, the speed bump in front of the real fight.