When I was in middle school, I used to watch Dragon Ball Z every single day. I’ve seen all 291 episodes of the series and without a doubt can say that my favorite story arc begins with the arrival of future Trunks until the end of the Cell Games. Why? Because the villains are awesome, of course (sorry, Frieza)! Everyone loves Cell and the attractive-but-deadly android siblings, known as Numbers 17 and 18.
Speaking of the androids, Akira Toriyama, the author of Dragon Ball, has recently released an interesting bit of trivia for the first time ever – Number 17 and 18’s true names! Even cooler is how their names combine to create something new. Do you have any guesses?
Anyone who’s a Dragon Ball fan should be familiar with how Trunks travels back in time to warn Goku about the android siblings that will create chaos on Earth shortly thereafter. Android 17 is the brother, and Android 18 is his cute but dangerous sister. Until now, all that was really known about their back story was that they were regular teenagers who were abducted by Dr. Gero against their will. He performed scientific experiments on them to turn them into cyborgs with superhuman strength and program them for one mission: to kill Goku. But as we know, things didn’t quite turn out as he had planned…
▼Android 18 is a fan-favorite and plays a part later in the series as well. And who can forget her battle against Vegeta, proving that girls can kick some serious butt?
It’s been over 20 years since those episodes first aired in Japan. But those people who bought the sixth volume of the full color Dragon Ball comic series that was just released on May 2 (you can view it on Amazon here) were pleasantly surprised to learn a new piece of trivia about the Androids after all of these years- their original human names!
▼The sixth volume (Androids and Cell sagas)
In a special Q&A section in the book, Toriyama revealed that Android 17’s human name was Lapis, while Android 18’s name was Lazuli.
▼The secret revealed
In typical Toriyama fashion, their names create a pun when combined. “Lapis lazuli” is the name of a rich blue, semi-precious stone. Perhaps the connection has something to do with their eye color?
▼Lapis lazuli stone in real life
Toriyama-sensei seems to be in a nostalgic mood lately, since he also just published a special one-shot story introducing Goku’s mother to the world for the first time. Who knows what interesting background details will be revealed next!
Sources/Images: My Game News Flash, Wikipedia, Amazon