Dragon Ball - Android 21 / Characters

WARNING! This character is a Walking Spoiler, as everything about her is shrouded in mystery until the last stretches of the game. Because of this, everything within the folders is Spoilers Off. Beware of unmarked spoilers ahead and please DO NOT add spoiler tags or edit the folders or which character the folders refer to without first inquiring with other tropers on the Discussion page!

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Android 21

Android 21 (人造人間21号, Jinzō Ningen Nijūichi-Gō)

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (Japanese), Jeannie Tirado (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/labcoat_7.png

^{Click here to see her true form.}

^{Click here to see after absorbing Cell.}

"Candy, candy, candy, candy! I'll turn you all into candy!"

An android who serves as the main antagonist of Dragon Ball Fighterz. Made up from the cells of the greatest fighters in the universe, Android 21 is an incredibly powerful and deadly menace. She is programmed to have a need to feed on strong warriors, which adds to her own power. Her goal is to capture all the Z-Warriors, turn them into a giant feast of power for herself, then explore the universe to eat in an attempt to satisfy her endless hunger. She has at least some connection to Android 16 and Dr. Gero; 21 is said to be as smart as Dr. Gero, and later events reveal that her human appearance was based off of 16's mother. She may or may not have been Dr. Gero's wife; 21 herself doesn't seem to know (but at the same time, she doesn't care).

She appears as a young woman with long, bushy hair, glasses, a shirt with a mixture of red and blue, and a labcoat. In her true form, Android 21's skin turns pink, her hair turns into a much more pale palette of pink, her ears become pointed, her eyes change to red irises with black scalera, and she gains a tail. Her attire changes to a black tube top, keeping the black arm sleeves, and also gaining white baggy pants. She most resembles Majin Buu in this form, and much like Buu, 21 can turn people into various sweets before eating them.

As a playable character, Android 21 is unique for her ability to copy abilities from her opponents with her command grab. Outside of her power-copying techniques, she also boasts a strong long-ranged game, using a combination of copied attacks and her own projectiles to wear down her enemies from a distance.

Her human form (dubbed "Android 21 (Lab Coat)") was announced as a separate DLC characer in December 2021. Unlike her true form, Lab Coat 21 is a more well-rounded character that has tools for nearly every situation, in addition to command grabs that can increase her damage output or decrease her opponent's.

All Your Powers Combined: She's the answer to the question 'what if Cell had Buu's powers as well?', making her a mashup of every major Dragon Ball villain up until the Buu Saga.
Always Someone Better:
- Her team victory line with Cell is her making fun of him for being a vastly inferior model android than her, which because of how Cell sees himself, is the absolute worst insult possible. As much as Cell is an asshole to everyone in Z and in this game, it's hard to feel bad for him.
- Anytime she eats a villain in story mode it falls into this category, as well as her effortlessly humiliating Cell in Goku's route.
Ambiguous Situation: While 21's memories are too fuzzy to be sure, it's left up in the air if 21 is a completely original being like Cell, and Gero merely based her design off of his wife, Vomi, like how he based Android 16’s design off of his son, Gevo, or if she’s actually Vomi herself, having been transformed into a Bio-Android by Gero, against her will.
Amazing Technicolor Population: Her true form turns her skin pink like Buu, though with the pointed ears, white hair, and black eyes with red irises in her evil form, she resembles a Demon or a Kai. She has Buu's cells, explaining the skin color, but after Evil 21 absorbs Cell in the Android 21 Saga, her skin turns dark purple and has patterns similar to Cell's on it.
Antagonist Abilities: Like Cell and Buu, she can assimilate others to grow stronger, copy abilities, and regenerate From a Single Cell. She also has Buu's Hungry Beam, which can transform anyone into anything she desires.
Arch-Enemy: Evil 21 Can be considered this to The Earthling Soul, as it's implied she's responsible for separating The Soul from their body and The Soul has to help defeat her before they can reclaim their body.
Awesomeness by Analysis: Like Buu, she's capable of copying Instant Transmission after only seeing it once. She does it in the first route, but it's only pointed out when her evil self does the same in the third route.
Ax-Crazy: The evil version of 21 is a violent madwoman with little motivation besides hunger and a willingness to butcher everyone she sees. The longer she goes without eating someone the farther her sanity erodes.
Badass Adorable: Evil 21 is an Ax-Crazy Sweet Tooth, yet she's still adorable and behaves more like a teenager. And she is one of the most potentially dangerous people in the franchise.
Beating A Dead Player: Her victory animation involves her turning the losing team into sweets.
Beauty Is Bad: Evil 21 is a villain who's a massive looker.
Bedlah Babe: Her costume (influenced by Majin Buu's) has many Arabian belly-dancing influences, including the baggy pants, exposed midriff, golden bracelets and necklaces, and a simple bra. In fact, she essentially looks like a cross between a Majin and Princess Jasmine.
Berserk Button: Taking her "food" from her is an absolute "do not do". Naturally, this is invoked by Frieza and Cell after they realize what she's all about, using Frieza's frighteningly fast regaining of his power to go around and wipe out all the clones she made before she can enjoy them.
Beware My Stinger Tail: Her crouching medium attacks are her using her tail as a sharp spike to burrow through the ground and stab the other player from below, similar how Kid Buu's sent his feet through the ground to attack Goku(a move he also possesses in this game).
Big Bad: While Android 21 is assumed to be the main antagonist for most of the game, the twist here is that she has a split personality, with her evil personality being the definitive main antagonist the whole time. She also serves as a thematic villain in the story as a being wrestling for control against another persona (namely her good half) on the inside.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Evil 21 puts on this act to get Krillin and Goku in the first route to believe she's harmless.
Black Eyes of Crazy: In her true form... Specifically as Evil 21. Good 21 still retains her Innocent Blue Eyes, as she's not been driven mad by her Horror Hunger like her dark side has. It's notable that she actually seems to have these eyes because of the hunger because when she willingly takes her true form when fighting Cell in 18's route, her eyes remain blue.
Cannibalism Superpower: 21 grows stronger by eating her enemies, which is noted to give her incredible leaps in power.
Canon Foreigner: She was created exclusively for FighterZ, though the game devs have hoped she be enough of a Breakout Character to become a Canon Immigrant. She has been added to other video games as DLC, and showed up in Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot as an NPC. She has yet to appear in-person in a main series or a canon entry, though her human counterpart Vomi cameos in Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.invoked
Card-Carrying Villain: She fully embraces her Horror Hunger and delights in devouring her victims, as well as showing disgust at the idea of empathy and love towards anyone.
Casting a Shadow: Her ki in her true form has a black and red coloration. Her lab coat form retains this.
Consuming Passion: Her various cravings, and desires to eat people, sounds equally like she wants to have sex with them.
Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: 21 possesses multiple firsts for the Dragon Ball franchise Big Bads, even from the video games:
- She is the first villain to be completely uninterested in fighting or violence at heart, and is not thrilled by combat or skill. She also isn't a sadist at her core. Even her evil side cares little for battle and her sadistic acts are like a primal predator who only cares about gorging on its next meal, most of the time going straight for the kill without any hesitation. Her original plan was to eat the Z Fighters while they were paralyzed by the sealing waves and therefore couldn't fight back. Her true nature is one of the few wholly pacifistic characters in the entire franchise, perhaps only beaten out by Launch's good side.
- She is the first big bad to fall into the technicality of being a Tragic Monster forced into evil by someone else, through Gero's experiments and his supercomputer continuing to work on her, implanting her with Buu's DNA into her long after Gero died. She's also the first to be sympathetic to the audience through her absolutely terrible backstory, via plenty of fears from being a Cosmic Plaything.
- She's the franchises' first big bad to pretend to not be able to fight and trick the heroes into helping her when they first encounter her.
- invoked Barring Towa, whose fanservice mostly just came from her curvy design, 21 is played up for all it's worth, complete with tropes like Erotic Eating, Double Entendre, Orgasmically Delicious and Consuming Passion. The camera also seems to like viewing her at angles that give the audience good looks at her chest and stomach, especially after she ditches her human form.
- While 21 is not the first female fighter to appear, she is one of only three female fighters in the entire franchise that is actually strong enough to face Goku and Crew and the only one to be considered a main antagonist.
Create Your Own Hero: She was in complete and total control of Android 21 the entire time, even totally suppressing her original personality, but activating the power suppressing waves weakened her and allowed Good 21 to re-surface, the final straw when Evil Android 21 callously kills Android 16, Good Android 21 finally had enough and kicked her out, resulting in the two splitting apart and the return of the Good Android 21.
Cute and Psycho: Just as cute as her good self, but the evil side of Android 21 is a rampaging, amoral lunatic who cares only about feeding her insatiable hunger.
Dark Action Girl: A very brutal fighter and the Big Bad.
Diabolus ex Machina: It's established in the third Story Mode that the link soul is the only thing that can suppress Android 21's Horror Hunger and keep her fairly normal. However after the battle with Cell, the human soul is unable to access Android 21's body and she becomes obsessed with eating Cell. 16 tries to stop her which results in Evil 21 killing him in a fit of hunger induced rage. The reason this happens is because evil 21 learned from the last time you stopped her from feasting and is purposely blocking you from linking with Android 21 in order to try and take control of her body again. Once 21 realizes what she has done, the resulting shock is so great that she is able to drive out her hunger and rage, which physically manifests into an independent entity who has none of 21's morals and heads out to consume as many people as possible.
Difficult, but Awesome: Her gameplay is based on Power Copying. Playing as 21 requires complete mastery of both versions of her Connoisseur Cut, the various abilities it can grant her, which characters give which abilities, and how to utilize each ability effectively. Once that hurdle is jumped, 21 is a versatile character with a tool for every conceivable job who can dismantle her opponents with surgical precision.
Discard and Draw: The heavy version of her Total Destruction Ball becomes bigger and more powerful the more ability she has copied. She will lose all of her absorbed abilities when she uses the heavy version of this attack, but if she does have four absorbed abilities, the damage output of her attack will be around the same as a Super Attack.
Enemy Without: After pretty much being in total control throughout the story despite her good half's re-awakening, killing Android 16 resulted in the good half finally splitting from her and the evil half taking on her own personification.
Erotic Eating: The camera loves to focus on 21 getting a little too excited about her sweets. She was biologically designed to get overexcited about eating people, so it does make sense that she gets turned on when she does this.
Evil Costume Switch: Well, she's already evil in her human disguise, but when Evil 21 changes into her Majin-like form for battle, she discards the dress, leggings, and heels for a traditional Majin outfit, though it lacks the typical symbol.
Evil Feels Good: The reason 21 finds her Horror Hunger so hard to resist is because she was biologically programmed to receive extreme pleasure feedback from the act of consuming her victims. This is why Evil 21 is actually more gluttonous than Majin Buu, who absorbed people only when he sensed their assimilated power was worthwhile (as with the Supreme Kai). When she's essentially starving herself in the third route, at times she seems like an addict denied her fix.
Evil Genius: She's a villain who rivals Gero in intellect. Subverted when you get the full grasp of the situation in 18's route. She's being driven mad by her Horror Hunger and genuinely doesn't want to hurt or eat people, but is undergoing severe sanity slippage. She only appears to be an Evil Genius in the earlier routes because her evil personality was already in control of the body by the time she showed up.
Evil Laugh: Evil 21 pulls off some pretty creepy laughs throughout the story. She also performs a maniacal one in her evil form when she unleashes a Kamehameha during a fight.
Evil Versus Evil: The whole setup of the Enemy Warriors Arc. The player character is linked with Frieza, who teams up with Cell in order to fight 21. Since you're playing as a villain, 21 is portrayed as more monstrous with no hints of her good side compared in the other arcs to make taking her down more fitting.
Extreme Omnivore: While she prefers to eat her opponents, she still felt the best way to get rid the wave machine was to swallow it whole. She remarks afterwards that it tasted horrible, though.
Fantastic Racism: Evil 21 seems to hold this towards non-androids, calling them 'bio scum' whose only purpose is to satiate her hunger. When 21 is fighting against her hunger in the third route, she briefly loses control when Krillin appears, and Evil 21 takes the reins briefly, remarking that she finds the ideas of love and family to be nonsense that androids don't need, in contrast to her good self, who dearly wants those things.
Fashionable Asymmetry: As a result of her checkerboard color scheme, which extends to her shoes. Her left one is blue while her right is red. Does not extend to her true form. The red and blue may actually serve as Foreshadowing for her two personalities, as when in her true form, her good self retains her natural blue eyes, while her evil self has red eyes.
Fatal Flaw:
- Gluttony. Her hunger gets the better of her quite often. She intentionally doesn't kill the heroes when she has good chances to do so, because stronger fighters taste better to her. As such, she gives them the opportunities to defeat her in all three story arcs.
- Evil 21's Enemy Without form has wrath as an additional flaw. Evil 21 has no compulsion besides feeding her insatiable hunger, intending to consume entire planets. The logical conclusion of this plan never seems to enter into her mind. Even so, the fact that the heroes keep trying to stop her eventually drives Evil 21 to confront them directly, which gives the heroes the opportunity to stop Evil 21 for good.
Faux Affably Evil: Evil 21 loves to play at being nice and say lovingly sweet things to the other characters. However, this is solely because she's thinking of how tasty they'll be when she finally gets to eat them.
Final Boss: The final battle of each arc of the story mode is against her. The SNK Boss version is between the good and evil versions of her.
Flat Character: Evil 21's characterization is driven solely by her Horror Hunger. It's her motivation, the extent of her Evil Plan, and what ninety-percent of her dialogue is about. This is not necessarily a bad thing however, as it helps to drive home just how terrible the hunger is. And the lack of focus on her allows her good counterpart to be expanded on and delved into more detail without taking away the threat 21 possesses.
For Science!: Her labcoat form gives a general vibe of fighting to either learn more about herself or how to properly fight and get stronger. Her victory quotes emphasize the biology of her partners and things she wants to study about them (such as Saiyan or half-Saiyan DNA), and her opening quotes are about how much she expects to learn fighting her opponents.
Android 21: This fight of ours... It will provide useful combat data.
Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Evil 21 has a knack for manipulating others just for the sake of furthering her power-hungry (and literal-hungry) agenda.
From a Single Cell: Not so much displayed visually so much as it is by exposition, but as she evidently possesses Buu as a genetic basis in her Cell-like genetic mishmash, Android 21 likely possesses the same regeneration properties that Buu is known for, added on top of what Cell had. Cell points this out in the final scene of the Frieza story, forcing Bulma to help neutralize the power-sealing waves so that Goku, Cell and Frieza can combine their full power to wipe her out. Brought back again in the finale of 21's story, wherein Evil 21 can only be stopped by Goku giving her the ol' Kid Buu treatment of a gigantic Spirit Bomb - which she blocked, before Good 21 tackled her evil half and made them both take the brunt of the bomb.
Genius Bruiser: Undoubtedly one of the smartest characters in the Dragon Ball Universe, setting up a plan that only goes haywire due to 16's interference, and undoubtedly one of the strongest with the capability to grow even stronger through eating other people.
The Glasses Come Off: Her lab coat form can potentially lose her glasses after taking enough damage during gameplay. However, it doesn't affect 21 in any way besides a cosmetic change.
I'm a Humanitarian: She's an Android that, after changing to her true form, can turn others into candy to eat them. More so because before being turned into a Cell-esque Android, she used to be human, and can turn the human, or Human Alien, characters into edible confections.
I Need You Stronger: The downside to the machine suppressing all of the characters' powers is that lowered power levels taste worse. As such, when Evil 21 finds characters with the potential to be stronger (like Goku or Frieza), she lets them go and unlock as much power as they can so that they'll be as delicious as possible. It comes back to bite her in the ass in every scenario when they actually turn out to be stronger than her by that time.
Jabba Table Manners: Just like Buu, she noisily chews on the victims she's turned into candy, crumbs flying everywhere.
Jerkass: Just like Evil Buu and Super Buu, Evil 21 is not only 21's hunger but all the rest of her negative emotions. Fittingly, this makes her act a lot like her infamously cruel prototype, Cell.
Just Eat Him: Not just her favorite go-to method, it's practically a passionate fixation. It even is a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, Good 21 will use her airborne Meteor Attack instead if you try to eat the opponent.
Just Toying with Them: The evil personality of Android 21 really enjoys playing with her food. The second time she encounters Cell (who provides the page quote for this trope) in the first route, she casually brings up that she wasn't even at half power the last time they fought and that she'd 'actually like to try this time' before one shotting him. This backfires in Frieza's route, where the protagonists she lets go make it a point to ensure she can't eat anymore to drive her insane like an addict who can't get her fix.
Kick the Dog: Making 16, 17, and 18 fight Krillin served literally no purpose towards Evil 21's plan. She just felt like watching them suffer.
Large Ham: At each campaign's roughly midpoint wherein Evil 21 drops the Earthling appearance and goes full binge-eater, she goes from an articulated intellectual to a childlike, raging lunatic. In addition, every time she's confronted at the end of the story, she's awaiting Goku and friends' arrival in an active volcanic region looking more than a little like the exploding Namek, choosing a dramatic stage for the final confrontation. Humorously denied in that, in both Goku's story and 21's, the enemy 21 gets treated to seeing the team approach like they mean to fight— only to pop over to the Sacred World of the Kais, forcing her to chase, because they kinda want to avoid destroying the earth. The only one who fights her there is Frieza, because, well, Frieza doesn't care. She's also the hammiest in Frieza's route because Frieza decided to intentionally drive her insane by starving her.
Literal Split Personality: When Android 21 was wracked with grief over killing 16, she expelled her evil persona from her body. As a result, Evil 21 is Android 21 with none of her redeeming traits or self-restraint, intent on eating all of the warriors she comes across.
Logical Weakness: Her talk about sweets isn't just her talking about it for fun, she actually craves sweets far more than Buu ever did. She used to use her army of clones as a cheap way to get her fix, and seeks out villains and heroes alike for a more satisfying meal, but when she can't eat her clones or her targets, she begins acting more irratically than ever before, becoming much more frustrated and desperate to get anything to eat, which makes her easily manipulated and leads to her defeat.
Love Is a Weakness: When attempting to eat Krillin during the Androids arc, Evil 21 remarks that androids don't need love and family. This is a stark contrast to Good 21, whose Goal in Life is to have a loving family of her own.
Mad Libs Catchphrase: In the first two routes, she has "I'd give that one a solid X out of 100" whenever she eats someone.
Make Way for the New Villains: She hijacks the plot and takes over the Big Bad role herself once she splits away from 21, though everything that transpired up that point was her doing all along.
The Man Behind the Man: Revealed to be responsible for the one pulling the strings behind Android 21's villainy in the first two arcs. When 21's true personality forces her out, Evil 21 takes over as the Big Bad herself.
Mirror Boss: To the Good 21. However, for their final battle, she does have some exclusive tricks.
Mix-and-Match Man: Just like Cell, Android 21 has DNA from many fighters, but on top of that she also has the DNA of countless scientists and intellectuals. This makes her evil personality extremely dangerous, as her ability to scheme on top of being able to develop and use power sealing technology results in the Z Fighters and villains not being able to just go full power and blow her up for an easy win. The part of her that came from Buu resulted in her insanity and ability to split her original form into different good and evil beings.
Mood-Swinger: Even more so after she's split apart from her true self. She can jump from smug and self-satisfied to hunger-fueled Ax-Crazy (dialed up compared to how she was in the first two routes after taking over 21's body) to childish glee at the drop of a hat.
Moveset Clone: Averted! When 21's human form - dubbed Android 21 (Lab Coat) - was made a bonus DLC character, she gained a radically different moveset where even the moves she does share with her true form function very differently:
- While both true form 21 and Lab Coat 21 are Jack of All Trades characters, true form 21's kit is primarily based on her Conisseur Cut command grab allowing her to steal up to 4 special moves which vary depending on who she steals from. Lab Coat 21's version instead is an attack which allows her to steal health from her opponent and use it to heal herself. Due to not having her true form's ability-stealing techniques, Lab Coat 21 boasts more special moves that cover everything from fast beam attacks to low stomps that can open up standing opponents and even advancing moves that reflect ki blasts. Combined with the supers below, Lab Coat 21 plays her well-rounded archetype a lot straighter than her true form, who can come off as being very gimmicky by comparison.
- Lab Coat 21's version of her Super Detonation Ball is treated as a level 1 super with can also be done mid-air (one mid-air variant has her teleport directly behind an opponent to perform the move) as opposed to her true form having it as a regular special. She lacks the full-screen Photon Wave, but in its place is her fast-acting Photon Pulse command grab which drains her opponent's damage output and increases her own both by 21%. Lab Coat 21 also still maintains her Excellent Full Course Level 3, but she can perform it on the ground in addition to being in mid-air unlike the original version being restricted to a mid-air Level 3, and she trades the projectile based Sweet Tooth for a full-screen Level 3 punish called Appetizing Rush.
- Personality-wise, Lab Coat 21 is more reserved than her true form's flirtatious and brutal personality. Whatever villainous dialogue she has is kept to a minimum with very direct threats; otherwise, she acts as the Good Counterpart to true form 21, with lines that have her praise the strength of her teammates and have her state that she wants to grow stronger in order to protect those that she cares about.
Ms. Fanservice: Her true form has her wear a black tube top that exposes her midriff, not to mention that she has the one of, if not the largest bust size of all the female characters in the franchise. The camera also likes to give a lot of gratuitous close up shots of her chest at various angles.
Multiple-Choice Past: Her human counterpart may or may not have been married to Dr. Gero. 21 herself isn't sure about it, but she also doesn't particularly care.
Never Gets Fat: She is shown eating nothing but sweets and she still retains her skinny figure!
Never My Fault: When Good 21 blames Evil 21 for 16's death (which Evil 21 had caused by taking advantage of a moment of weakness to amplify 21's hunger and make her lash out in rage when she was prevented from eating, culminating in the two splitting apart), Evil 21 denies it, claiming it's Good 21's fault because they were still the same person at the time.
Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: It's revealed in the third route that she actually took over 21 completely in the backstory of the game, which is what led to her bringing back the other villains with Namek's dragon balls in order to give her more interesting snacks to eat. She also unleashed the sealing waves that were set to paralyze anyone over a certain power level, with the intent of making it an easy meal. This turned out to be a mistake, as Evil 21 hadn't anticipated the waves affecting her too, which gave 21's true personality the opportunity to resurface and work with 16 to try and eliminate her dark side and Horror Hunger completely, by activating the soul linking system that ultimately proves vital to defeating her.
No-Sell: Evil 21 adores invoking this trope, as a multitude of times throughout the story after she starts to cut loose, she takes Kamehamehas and ki blasts of all sorts and sizes in a perfectly Jiren manner, just for the sake of blowing the smoke away to reveal none of it left a scratch. During Frieza's story, he and Cell fire a barrage of blasts at her and before she's engulfed by the smoke and dust you see them sliding off of her.
"Not So Different" Remark: She fully believes Good Android 21 is this to her, and that she's just a hypocrite for refusing to indulge her Horror Hunger, but 21 doesn't give in to her urges and stays wholly sane until the end.
Omnicidal Maniac: A twist on it. She has a bit of a discerning palate, and only truly savors the powerful, a consequence of inheriting Cell's taste for biomatter and biologically programmed desire to grow stronger but as the story goes on it becomes abundantly clear her hidden depravity won't be sated until everyone everywhere ends up in her stomach. This is because unlike Cell who stopped needing to absorb people if he could absorb 17 and 18 (and his perfect form may not even be capable of absorbing at all due to retracting his tail), 21's out of control hunger comes from a nasty combination of the Saiyans and Buu's DNA that will never go away, no matter what she tries.
One-Winged Angel: When she transforms into her true form. Evil 21 then gets another form after eating Cell in the Android 21 Saga.
Orgasmically Delicious: 21 frequently lets out pleased moans and makes very satisfied faces after scarfing down fighters, especially if her food has a high power level. Her reaction to eating Frieza in Goku's route and Cell in 18's route are particularly sexual, with her facial expressions and voice basically something out of a more erotic series.
Our Demons Are Different: She is an artificial human whose true form seems like a cross between the series regular Demons and a Majin like Buu. Being a bio-android like Cell with Buu's genetic material will do that, though.
Power Copying: Downplayed in gameplay: her command grab allows her to learn one of eight techniques, all put in four groups of 2:
- ^noteA Kamehameha.
- ^noteA rapid-fire beam attack fired at a downward angle.
- ^noteA fast projectile attack fired at a downward angle.
- ^noteA very slow projectile that hones in on the opponent.
- ^noteA Solar Flare.
- ^note A new command grab that wall-bounces the opponent.
- ^note An energy-absorbing barrier.
- ^note Instant Transmission.
Power Floats: In her fight intros after unlocking her in story mode, she's seen floating in her human guise whilst enjoying a macaron. She then flips over and transforms.
Psychopathic Manchild: Despite being an adult, 21 acts like a spoiled teenaged brat who throws tantrums when things don't go her way. This is mainly the effect of her Sanity Slippage caused by her Horror Hunger, and she hates it.
Android 21: This is awesome! I feel like a kid in a candy store! Literally!
Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Goes without her glasses in her true form, hinting that she doesn't really need them.
Red and Black and Evil All Over: She red and black eyes, a black top and a black and red aura.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: The main way of telling her apart from her Good side is that this version sports red eyes with black sclera, at least until she absorbs Cell in the last route.
Sadistic Choice: She taunts Good 21 with the fact that she's either going to starve herself and never be strong enough to fight, or start eating people and abandon her moral limitations.
Scary Shiny Glasses: Her lab coat form gains these when she uses her aerial Level 3 super move, just before blasting her opponent on the ground.
Secret Character: She's unlocked in all other Game Modes once the player beats Story Mode.
Shadow Archetype: She is every personality trait that her good side fights against and denies. Just like in Jungian psychology, suppressing her for too long allowed Evil 21 to completely take control, until Good 21 was again reawakened by the Power Suppressing Waves. After the two split apart, Evil 21 tries to goad her good side into giving in to the hunger and thus become a hypocrite, but Good 21 defies her.
Skewed Priorities: In the game's backstory, she used Namek's Eternal Dragon to resurrect a number of villains from the past because she thought it would give her better-tasting snacks.
Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: Android 21 has different animations for her Meteor Attack Sweet Tooth depending on if it finishes off her opponent. If it doesn't, she's disgusted by the flavor, and throws the treat away, causing the fighter to reappear. If it does, she loves the flavor, and finishes the treat.
Signature Move: Unlike Cell, who mostly just uses variants or techniques of the Z-Fighters, 21 has a variety of signature moves of her own: Connoisseur Cut, Total Detonation Ball, Excellent Full Course and Photon Swipe.
Smug Super: As traditional for Dragon Ball villains, she believes herself to be the ultimate fighter. This still doesn't stop her from trying to knock everyone unconscious with a machine that covers the planet with waves and eat them while they are helpless.
SNK Boss: Her final battle in the Androids arc is tough by breaking the game's rules. She starts with four copied abilities, has a healing factor stronger than anything the player can get, and if her health gets too low, she uses an unblockable screen-clearing Meteor Attack that does a lot of damage while allowing her health to recover. Android 21 can't use this move anywhere else, it can't be interrupted, and it takes a few seconds to charge. The last battle which takes place immediately after that is just Good 21 against an even stronger version of Evil 21, while Good 21 has no equippable abilities (although there, the player only has to survive for 45 seconds).
Split-Personality Takeover: She took complete control over Android 21 in the backstory and suppressed her true personality. Unfortunately for her, when she activated the Power Suppressing Waves, she didn't anticipate the waves affecting her too, severely weakening her hold and allowing Good 21 to re-awaken.
Squee: A dark example. She's always loudly giddy whenever she comes across strong fighters who look like they'd make for tasty snacks. Especially Goku, whom she practically fawns over.
Statuesque Stunner: Despite her initial appearance and often looking smaller in being paired with 16 or away from the comparable scale in cutscenes, she's actually quite a bit bigger than she first appears. When she drops her Earthling facade and assumes her true Majinesque form, it becomes much more apparent as she gets more hands-on and up close with others, appearing to be around Goku's height, who historically has towered over most everyone else. And, of course, she's still very easy on the eyes. Her heels may also add a few inches to her height.
Superior Successor: She taunts Cell with the fact that she's the same type of Android with him, only with superior power and abilities. Cell, being Cell, is not happy with this revelation.
Tail Slap: Her standing and aerial medium attacks all involve her whipping the opponent with her long tail. This gives her normals much more range than the rest of the cast.
They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: In her "human" form, she looks like a normal person.
Too Powerful to Live: An android more powerful than Cell, with all of Majin Buu's abilities, and the ability to gain massive leaps in power just by eating someone? No wonder she dies in every arc.
Trademark Favorite Food: While she has a general Sweet Tooth, she seems to prefer macrons above the rest. In her intro in most battle modes, she chomps a macron before smirking.
Ultimate Life Form: Both 21s qualify, but only the evil one has an overblown ego about it and rubs it in everyone's face.
Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: Against Cell in Goku and 18's routes. He's far weaker than her even when she's distracted fighting her own urges during the battle, and he fails to even do any damage to her.
Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: The tone of the game is incredibly lighthearted and comedic, to almost classic Dragon Ball levels. Android 21's evil side is one of the most potentially destructive villains in the Dragon Ball cosmology. If it weren't for a factor she hadn't accounted for before the game began, she would've single-handedly consumed the Earth's greatest fighters with ease.
Villain Ball:
- If she hadn't fiddled around with the Power Suppression machine in order to weaken the fighters and just go out and eat them herself, her repressed true personality wouldn't have been re-awoken. Good 21 and Android 17 even call her out on how utterly convoluted her plan was. Though it's also likely that she wouldn't have been able to handle Goku and Vegeta's full power as of the Future Trunks arc.
- Because of her obsession with turning people into sweets, she constantly lets characters go who have the potential to become stronger, assured that they'll never gain enough power to be a threat to her. Justified by the intense pleasure feedback she experiences when she eats someone strong, the thought of which makes her act much dumber than she usually is. This leads to her defeat in every route barring the last one.
Villainous Breakdown: Android 21 goes through this in all three story arcs to varying degrees. Mostly, it's related to how she can't believe that the heroes are strong enough to actually stand up to her.
- In the heroes' story, Android 21 underestimates how powerful the heroes have become thanks to the Earthling Soul, thinking she could defeat them. She's proven wrong, gradually losing it as the heroes start beating her, and blasted by a Combined Energy Attack, shouting that the heroes are "cursed bio-scum!"
- In the villain story, Frieza's plan to make Android 21 angry by killing off her clones works like a charm, causing 21 to lose what little sanity she had and fly into a rage, saying she'll turn everyone into candy. She gets taken down again by the player's team all blasting her at once.
- In the Androids arc, which serves as the Omega Ending, Evil 21 is holding back Goku's Spirit Bomb, taunting everyone... Until Good 21 pulls a Heroic Sacrifice. Evil 21 is unable to understand why Good 21 would do that, but it's too late; the Spirit Bomb kills both versions of 21.
Walking Spoiler: Nearly everything about her backstory is only revealed in the last third of the game, which changes the entire perception of her character. Before that she's almost a generic Big Bad Expy of Buu.
Worthy Opponent: Despite wishing to kill and devour Goku and company, she actually respects them enough that she arranges a final showdown with them in the middle of a lava lake in two of the stories. When Goku in Android 21's story mode teleports everyone to The Sacred Planet Of The Kais and tells her to come there, she throws a temper tantrum due to her version of a final battle being denied.
Wounded Gazelle Gambit: During the first two arcs, 21 pretends to be a helpless victim at the mercy of the villain(s) when Goku and Krillin first meet her to ensure both sides will take each other out. Seeing as the framed party consists of Goku's most notorious arch-enemies, they're more amused by the act than anything, and honestly don't mind since it means they get another shot at taking Goku down.

Her True Identity

Android 21 (Good) (人造人間21号, Jinzō Ningen Nijūichi-Gō)

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (Japanese), Jeannie Tirado (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/android21.png

"I'm running out of time here...there isn't much left...We need to hurry...or I...can't stop..."

A purely good version of Android 21. She is revealed in the final arc to be the Android's "true" persona, and manages to retake control after expelling her Evil half.

'80s Hair: Sports a head of large, curly hair, which certainly fits her into the Z-era aesthetic the game is going for.
Action Mom: She is based on the mother of Dr. Gero's son Gevo, who served as a basis for Android 16.
Android 21: There was a time... before I was turned into an android... when I was a mother and had a son. Later...he became the model for 16... and all that it would achieve. When I realized that... I wanted so badly... to see him and have him by my side... After that, I repaired him and explained that... I wanted to treat him like family.
Adorable Abomination: She's an augmented human with the cells of countless fighters from across the series, many of which stand at the level of gods or beyond, including Buu, with a Horror Hunger that compels her to consume everyone. Her true self is also a sweetheart with a heart-melting smile, with a story that puts her through the wringer so much you just want to give her a hug.
Affirmative Action Girl: According to producer Tomoko Hiroki, the creative team felt a female fighter would help liven up the cast, as the Dragon Ball franchise has a reputation for not having very many women, and even fewer who are active fighters.
Amazing Technicolor Population: Her true form turns her skin pink like Buu, though with her pointed ears and white hair, she resembles a Demon or a Kaioshin. She has Buu's cells, explaining the skin color, something Buu himself notes.
Ambiguous Situation: Even with a clearer head on her shoulders and more of her memories readily available to her, it's left up in the air if 21 is a completely original being like Cell, and Gero merely based her design off of his wife, Vomi, or if she’s actually Vomi herself, having been transformed into a Bio-Android by Gero, against her will.
Ambiguously Bi: Her final Link Event with the Earthling Soul has been noted to sound quite Ship Tease-y. That said, outside of a single instance that was more than likely a translation error, the Earthling Soul is not given a canonical gender. Her first interaction with 18 in her story mode also has 21 calling 18 beautiful while having painstakingly recreated 18's original battle outfit, enthusing over how cute it is. 21 later expresses adoration for how 18 motivates herself in regards to her family, expressing that she would like to be part of a family that is cared for like 18 cares for hers (prompting 18 to ask 21 to stop swooning over her).
Anti Anti Christ: Played straight and subverted. Android 21 was originally created by Dr. Gero's supercomputer as the ultimate android to re-invigorate the Red Ribbon Army and lead it back to world domination. However, 21 was a sweetheart and wasn't interested in that, and just wanted to conduct benevolent scientific research and live with a family. However, because of her design flaw due to the Majin cells used to create her, 21 also develops an evil persona with ravenous Horror Hunger, and a one track mission to eat and consume everything in sight. Good or Evil, neither 21 is particularly interested or helpful in serving their intended purpose.
Apologetic Attacker: She does this frequently when she fights because she really is remorseful for her actions. When using her Super Attack, she can say "please rest a while!" and "don't hold this against me!"
As Long as There Is Evil: Even after the defeat of her evil half, Good Android 21 realizes the Fatal Flaw that by her design alone, her Horror Hunger will return to menace the world once again. Not willing to see others suffer because of her anymore, she runs into the path of Goku's Spirit Bomb to sacrifice herself as well as destroy the Evil 21.
The Atoner: After the death of 16 and the creation of her evil form, the new, good Android 21 makes it her mission to fix everything.
Badass Adorable: She's a sweetheart who is also leagues of power above her predecessor, Cell, and one of the most potentially dangerous people in the franchise.
Badass Bookworm: She's, allegedly, as smart as Dr. Gero. She's also strong enough to fight any of the Z Fighters.
Android 21: Witness the results of my research!
Badass Longcoat: She wears a white Red Ribbon Army lab coat. With her human form being added to FighterZ, she can now wear it into battle.
Battle Strip: She transforms into her true form by ripping her dress off. She's also seen wearing pants, however.
Be All My Sins Remembered: Though nobody blames her for the situation, Good 21 really hates herself for what she is, and is quite frankly surprised as to why anyone would bother volunteering to help her. She is very appreciative of it, though.
Beauty Equals Goodness: In comparison to her evil half, Good 21 is very pretty herself with Innocent Blue Eyes, and has the benevolent personality to match. She still has her Horror Hunger, but willfully refuses to indulge in it.
Beware the Nice Ones: Good 21 might be a sweetie, but she is still not only an Android (all of which were designed with the purpose of killing Son Goku), she is an improved version of Cell who has all of Buu's power plus the intelligence made from a combination of Earth's best scientists to back it up. Even the Good 21 is still a danger to everyone around her because has trouble holding back her biological urge to eat them all.
Big Eater: She loves sweets even if they aren't made from people and she can scarf them down like no one else. This is expected when she's genetically related to both the Saiyans and Majin Buu. In a link event, she talks about how Bulma gave her a new food she hadn't encountered before, string cheese, and she gushes about how tasty it was before admitting, embarrassed, that she ate about a hundred of them and Bulma wasn't happy about it.
Birds of a Feather: She bonds very well with Gohan, Android 18, and Krillin, due to all of them having similar motivations for fighting—protecting their families from harm.
Casting a Shadow: Her ki in her true form has a black and red coloration.
Clothing Damage: Taking too much damage while fighting in her human form will not only dirty her lab coat and dress but also cause rips in her tights and make her lose her glasses.
Combat Stilettos: She wears some rather tall high heel boots in both her forms but they're more prominent when she fights in her human form as she dials back her power. Her fighting style in her human form involves lots of kicks and leg strikes and even stepping on her opponents. In case you couldn't tell, they don't inhibit her in the slightest.
Commonality Connection: Good 21 becomes good friends with Majin Buu because of this. Buu notices that 21 looks like him, to which she responds that they're matching in pink. Buu of course doesn't know what "matching" means but 21 simply explains that it means they're friends. With both of them being big eaters, they both enthusiastically agree to have a party with lots of candy after the whole ordeal is over, which unfortunately doesn't happen.
Composite Character: She is a female android (Android 18) who gets stronger through absorbing others into her being (Cell and Majin Buu) by turning them into sweets and devouring them (Buu) and who is able to learn new techniques after observing them just once (Buu again) and splits into two halves, a good half and an evil half (Buu, yet again, though comparisons are also drawn to Piccolo). Her true form also resembles a female Majin, not dissimilar to those from Dragon Ball Xenoverse.
Confusion Fu: Much like the Majin characters she resembles, 21's normals have confusing animations. Her tail, in particular, can stretch and go underground like Kid Buu's feet. Her ability to gain four new moves out of eight different possible moves also makes her tricky, but it is easier to read what kind of moves she can get since it depends on what characters are opposing her. As she's not a fighter at heart, this seems to come more from a place of genuinely not knowing how to fight and making it up as she goes, relying on the muscle memory of those who constitute her cellular makeup, than Buu's chaotic violence.
Cool Big Sis: After expelling her repressed hunger as Evil 21, she takes this demeanor with 17 and 18, kindly and matronly supporting them, albeit with some endearing tendencies. Most apparent in a scene where 18 becomes infuriated at seeing a Frieza clone, knowing how he once killed Krillin and wants some cathartic payback for her love, 21 tries to get in on the spirit of it. Given she'd just lost 16, the two androids may be Replacement Goldfish for her somewhat.
Cosmic Plaything: To say she hasn't had an easy life is really understating it. Starting off with losing her son and being turned into a bioandroid by her husband, she's activated long after Gero's death with no memory of who she was before. Trying to make the best of things, she rebuilds 16 after hearing he's modelled after the son she had when she was human, to try and live peacefully as a family with him. Then her Horror Hunger begins getting worse, starting a long Sanity Slippage, which ultimately culminates in every route with her killing 16, either because she succumbed to her hunger and jumped off the slippery slope or if she's kept from succumbing, attacking him in hunger-induced rage. In the latter case, on realising what happened, she hits the Despair Event Horizon, driving her dark side out of herself. After that, things briefly begin looking up, her true personality is at no risk of being overwhelmed and she begins forming new friendships with the Z-fighters. However, she's still denied a happy ending, as she's still plagued by her Horror Hunger, meaning she's still a danger to people, and 21 eventually decides to make a Heroic Sacrifice to defeat Evil 21 and prevent either of them from ever being a danger to anyone ever again.
Cute Little Fangs: Has them in her true form.
Cute Monster Girl: Her true form doesn't make her any less attractive. If anything, it makes her more attractive. She's especially this when she's in her true form and still sane - which is the same appearance her good self takes - as she retains her Innocent Blue Eyes.
Darker and Edgier: 21's story is quite possibly the darkest and most depressing tale of any of the DB villains so far. Plenty of "Shaggy Dog" Story, Horror Hunger, and My God, What Have I Done? makes sure of that.
Dark Is Not Evil: Her good self keeps her Red and Black and Evil All Over aura, even after she's been split away from her evil self.
Despair Event Horizon: In 18's route, having not succumbed to her hunger as early, she kills Android 16 in a fit of hunger-induced rage. When 17 calls her out on this, she hits this hard, practically exploding, in the process splitting the persona that had been causing her Sanity Slippage and drove her to attack 16 out of her body.
Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Downplayed, but it's there. She doesn't know why she's so different from the other androids; she's not a mecha-type like 16, nor is she augmented with technology like 17 and 18. She's even different from Cell, in that while they're both composed of the cells of powerful warriors (and brilliant researchers in 21's case), she is still an augmented human as opposed to an entirely new organism. Due to her amnesia, she doesn't know what the purpose behind her creation was, and her more pressing issues with her hunger have halted her attempts to find out. She resolves to find out more once the problem has been dealt with. She never gets that chance.
Doomed by Canon: She is not mentioned in any other Dragon Ball series after her introduction in DBFZ, and she dies at the end of the story. Word of God is that while there has been a lot of fan request to add 21 into a canon Dragon Ball entry, it's all but impossible to do so in a way that would make sense.invoked
Energy Absorption: Just like Android 20 and Cell, with the added bonus of Power Copying. It's a biological compulsion for her to do it, and she hates it.
Enemy Without: She's this to her evil half. For a while, she laid dormant on the inside while the evil half took complete control and resurrected the villains. However, when Evil 21 activated the power suppressing waves, Good 21 was re-awakened, but not enough for her to get full control (Evil 21 acting as her Enemy Within, and in the first two routes, succeeding in taking control back). The final straw was when she kills Android 16 after Evil 21 takes advantage of a moment of weakness. The two split apart, and Good Android 21 returned.
Energy Weapon: Photon Ray.
Expy: 21 shares a pointed number of similarities to Arc System Works' Justice from Guilty Gear. They're red-haired, big-haired female characters with artificial bodies who serve as the first game's Final Boss, with lots of reach thanks to a tail. 21's Photon Ray works just like Justice's Imperial Ray. Moreover, her being an often-violent Omnicidal Maniac due to Sanity Slippage but having a "child" who loves nature and hates violence but is torn about his creation and his place in the world heavily mirrors the relationship between Justice and Dizzy in Guilty Gear, just with "Dizzy" (16) actually getting to interact with "Justice" (21) this time around. Furthermore, getting literally split in two, into an Evil 21 and a Good 21, is highly similar to the situation with Justice & Jack'O in Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, and 21's origin as a human woman who was extensively modified into a life-form no longer entirely human heavily mirrors the origins of Justice as revealed in full in REV.
Evil Costume Switch: When she transforms into her true form, she reveals a tube top and switches out her tights for a pair of baggy pants, leaving her abdomen bare.
Fashionable Asymmetry: As a result of her checkerboard color scheme, which extends to her shoes. Her left one is blue while her right is red. Does not extend to her true form. The red and blue may actually serve as Foreshadowing for her two personalities, as when in her true form, her good self retains her natural blue eyes, while her evil self has red eyes.
Failure Hero: Because of her status as a Cosmic Plaything, she shares this trait with Evil 21. Her plan to build the second 16 to hold her back using her maternal instinct almost completely failed; she caves in and kills him in all three story routes, the only benefit being that he went behind her back in two routes to stop her and in the last route, His death caused her to use Buu's power to personify and split emotions, creating an even stronger evil 21. Her plan to use the soul link system to control her hunger falls apart and isn't even a permanent fix, which means she will eventually go insane again. Plus, her good side was too scared that the Z fighters would attack her to ask for help, and had 16 kidnap 17 and 18 instead, which results in everything going much worse than it should have. And even then, her fears result in her keeping 17 and 18 in the dark, which almost leads to Krillin becoming her snack. She can't defeat the evil 21 on her own and ends up having to get herself killed to finish her by Goku's spirit bomb. It all drives home how sympathetic she is, because she really tries not to hurt anyone but reality just won't let her.
Fatal Flaw:
- Very powerful and a total sweetie, but due to her design alone, Good 21 realized her hunger will always be a part of her, and decides to sacrifice herself to stop Evil 21 and to prevent herself from hurting anyone, particularly her new friends ever again.
- Her good side's flaw is that she hides vital details from her allies, resulting in a lot of pain and suffering. While some of it is out of guilt over causing the situation in the first place, Good 21 is consistently surprised that anyone would want to help her, and so keeps quiet about vital details that may have helped solve the problems she caused faster.
Fighting from the Inside: Android 21's true personality is constantly battling with her evil persona and for the most part was losing. The battle eventually escapes into the outside when both sides split away from each other.
Flawed Prototype: Inverted along with Psycho Prototype. 21 is the finished product but suffers from extreme mental and physical instability due to Majin Buu's DNA being too beyond understanding or control. Her prototype, Cell, is a fight-happy monster who hates all life, but he works exactly as Gero intended him to.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Went from being a normal human being whose only claim to fame was being related to Androids 16 and 20 to the single most powerful and dangerous monster Gero ever created, long long after he died. And as mentioned under Gone Horribly Right, this was likely accidental.
Foil: She is one to Cell. Both were created from the genetic material of the greatest fighters, and in 21's case, researchers, but Cell is a monster without empathy while 21 is a Tragic Villain. Also while Cell is a giant narcissist and believes himself to be the ultimate lifeform, 21 has more inherent raw potential than him in terms of both power and intelligence, but is timid and hates herself for being a monster.
Gameplay and Story Integration: After Good 21 and Evil 21 become a Literal Split Personality, Good 21 tries to fight off her Horror Hunger at all costs. To this end, Good 21 can't use the Sweet Tooth Level 3 super move, since that involves turning her opponents into food and eating them.
Genetic Abomination: Android 21 is like Cell, only that she's an even bigger amalgamation of several powerful beings and intellectuals, including Cell himself. This gives her the potential to be far more powerful than Cell could ever be, access to an even bigger arsenal of tricks, and high intellect to match. However, due to her being partially made from cells originating from Majin Buu, Android 21 is in a near-constant state of hunger that she tries so hard to suppress. This makes her a threat not only to Earth, but the entire universe unless she is stopped in some way.
Genius Bruiser: 21 is so powerful that when she cuts loose and reveals her true form, she steamrolls the Z-Fighters to the point that it’s only because she wants them stronger that they walk away alive (and only gets stronger as she binges). She also has a mind that may very well be on par at the very least with the late Dr Gero’s. "Lab Coat" 21 demonstrates this, as she goes toe-to-toe with the cast while all while wearing her glasses and lab coat.
Genius Sweet Tooth: A very dark twist on this trope, she's a brilliant scientist (thanks to having the cells of a number of researchers, though she may have been this before if she was anything like her supposed husband, Dr Gero) who turns those she defeats into sweet treats in order to eat them.
Gollum Made Me Do It: After splitting, she blames Evil 21 for the death of Android 16, but Evil 21 mockingly reminds her that they were still the same person at the time. (The truth is a bit more complex, as Evil 21 had definitely manifested as a separate persona by that time.)
Gone Horribly Right: Gero set the basic blueprints for Android 21's design in motion, letting his supercomputer handle the details just as he did with Cell. Unfortunately, the supercomputer collected some of Buu's cells, combining Cell's absorption abilities with Buu's, essentially making her a Cell/Buu/Saiyan hybrid. All three of these species are ravenous eaters that even gain power from being full, with Buu's appetite being endless. This mutates her programmed compulsion to consume the cells of other creatures to fuel her regeneration into a Horror Hunger which takes such a toll on her sanity it manifests another persona that gleefully enjoys turning people into candy and eating them.
Good All Along: Goku and Frieza's arc hint but never reveal that Android 21 is actually a good person being taken over by an evil side. It isn't until the Android route that we even learn her evil side is something she fights against. Android 21 legitimately isn't an evil person; she's actually a very sweet and benevolent researcher/android who wants to help others, unfortunately she is struggling with an evil persona inside of her who is driving her insane, created from a critical design flaw that gives her Horror Hunger. Once she expels this evil from her body, Android 21's true personality comes out and makes it her personal mission to destroy the Evil 21.
Good Counterpart: Is essentially this to Cell. She's a bio-android made by Dr. Gero from the cells of others, but she doesn't want to hurt people, and is a genuinely kind and loving person when she's not being attacked by her hunger. After she splits in two, her evil half becomes the true Big Bad of the game, while she becomes the true protagonist.
- To an extent, her Lab Coat playable version is this. She does have a few lines of villainous dialogue, but overall is more focused on her research, and the dialogue she has which doesn't focus on either is full of genuine complements towards heroic characters and stating that her overall goal is to make herself strong enough to protect those important to her.
Heel–Face Turn: Android 21 enforces this, as after the death of Android 16, she finally loses it and splits away from the hungry evil within her. Unfortunately, the evil takes on its own form and becomes the Evil Android 21. Subverted however in that she was always a good person, and her evil persona is still as callous and horrible as she's ever been.
Heroic Resolve: While suffering from a particular bad pang of her hunger, she asks the Earthling soul how humans fight off their evil urges (as she doesn't remember being human and so has no experience to draw from). They can tell her that having a strong will helps, which has her resolve to strengthen her spirit to be able to overcome her urges, in an attempt to invoke this trope. Unfortunately, her dark side is still able to overcome her, which results in 16's death.
Horror Hunger:
- She physically can't stop her urge to turn people into snacks and eat them. She decides to sacrifice herself at the end of the story mode so she isn't a danger to anyone anymore.
- The official trailer for her lab coat form expands on this a bit. 21 says that she's scared of losing control of her insatiable hunger, but she's even more scared of being too weak to protect those she cares about.
Humanoid Abomination: A genetically engineered amalgamation of various powerful beings, one a certified abomination in his own right, that devours others in order to grow stronger and is terrifyingly powerful.
Human Popsicle: She's the last Android that Dr Gero worked on (that we know of). Gero died in Age 767, the game is set around 779 or 780, with her being activated some time before that. This means the time between her creation and activation is at least twelve years. Avoids being a Fish out of Temporal Water however, due to her not remembering her life when she was human, meaning she essentially had to start over.
I Cannot Self-Terminate: She rebuilt 16 partially to help her find a way to control or get rid of her hunger, partially because she wanted a sense of the family she'd had in her human life that she doesn't remember, and partially so he'll destroy her if her hunger consumes her. Sadly, she ends up destroying him instead, as he's not powerful enough.
Identity Amnesia: She doesn't remember who she previously was as a human, though she later finds out she was the mother of the man who became the model of Android 16 and so rebuilt him to try and live peacefully with him as a family. However, she doesn't remember her former life, and when talking about the scientist who made her - Dr Gero, who in all likelihood was her husband - she feels like she's about to cry but doesn't know why. 21 even mentions that she has no idea what her name was when she was human. She doesn't let her lack of memory bother her too much though.
Android 21: There's no point in getting depressed, just because I have no memories. I can easily fix that problem... by making new memories.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Good 21 doesn't remember what her past life was, but it intrigues her, and even though she is built to be the ultimate killer android, she isn't overly interested in strength and fighting and just wants to conduct benevolent research to help others as well as have a normal life with a family and friends. Unfortunately, higher ups have other ideas for her.
Innocent Blue Eyes: Not so much normally, but 21 retains her Android form's blue eyes when she assumes her true form while not consumed by her hunger, which continues into her Good self, as opposed to having red eyes with her evil side influencing her.
It's All My Fault: Says this verbatim, blaming herself for not being strong enough to prevent 16's death and the birth of her evil side. She says it again after 17 tries to reassure her that she'd done all she could, responding with it being the reason why she has to take responsibility and deal with the threat of her evil self.
Jekyll & Hyde: She is the Jekyll half of the trope, being the original, meek personality of Android 21 before her Horror Hunger began to take control. After expelling her evil half, she is temporarily freed from the Split-Personality Takeover, but knows that a new evil persona will eventually emerge.
Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: In the first two routes, she succumbs to her hunger and sadistically kills 16, her Morality Pet shackles finally loosened for her to go wild and beginning devouring everyone she pleases in one way or another. In 18's route, she doesn't do this, instead lashing out in hunger-induced rage when the dark side of personality created by her hunger takes advantage of a moment of weakness - upon realising what she'd done, 21 hits the Despair Event Horizon and her dark side splits off, who behaves similarly to the post-slippery slope iterations of herself in the other routes.
LEGO Genetics: Like Cell, she's got the cells of all of the greatest fighters to have been on Earth, up to Majin Buu at least (and possibly as recently as Golden Frieza, given her tail and the fact that no trace was left of him when Future Trunks dispatched him the first time, meaning she'd have a lot more alien cells due to the presence of the Frieza Force) and amusingly enough including Cell himself. Unlike Cell however, due to having Buu in her cellular makeup she can continue to add the power and abilities of other warriors to herself. In gameplay this manifests as her Power Copying abilities, but in terms of story this means there is potentially no limit to how much she could grow, which is part of the reason she's such a dangerous threat.
Loss of Identity: She doesn't remember anything from when she was human, even her own name. Whoever she was is dead, for all intents and purposes.
Luke, I Am Your Father: It's eventually revealed that the human Android 21 was modified from and the human that 16 was based on were son and mother, respectively, Dr. Gero's son and likely wife. After learning of their connection, 21 rebuilt 16 because she wanted them to live together as a family (although thanks to her Identity Amnesia, she has no memories of her real son), but in every route her dark side overtakes her and she ends up killing him.
Magitek: The first of the androids to play this trope completely straight. Majin Buu is more akin to an Eldritch Abomination who can morph anything into what he wants and do things that should be impossible even in Dragon Ball's world. She inherited all of it from him.
Mix-and-Match Man: She's a genetically augmented lifeform enhanced with cells taken from many successful scientists, all of the Z Fighters, Frieza, Cell, and Majin Buu.
Monster Is a Mommy: She's a biologically engineered horror beyond even Cell's capacity...and she's also Gero's amnesiac spouse, and consequently^note 16's mother, whom she loves dearly.
Mood-Swinger: Inherits this from Buu. She can switch to-and-fro from calmly assessing the situation, hunger-fuelled Ax-Crazy and childish glee. She loses this in her story when her evil side becomes an Enemy Without.
Morality Pet: She has one in the form of 16, who only manages to hold her hunger at bay in being so dear to her as, for all intents and purposes, he's her son. Tragically, in every route her hunger will eventually push her to a point where she'll kill him for getting in her way, though in the route we learn about their connection, she's far less sadistic about it.
Android 21: Above all else.... having him by my side means the entire world to me.
My God, What Have I Done?: When she kills 16 in 18's route in a hunger-induced rage - this being the route that reveals that part of the reason she rebooted him was to have a peaceful life and a family because he's based off the son she had when she was human - she has this reaction, which pushes her off of the Despair Event Horizon so hard she splits into her good and evil halves like Fat Buu did when he hit his own DEH after Mr. Satan was shot.
Nice Girl: When her dark side isn't affecting her actions and especially after they've split apart, she's a very kind and genuinely sweet person who doesn't want to hurt or eat the people around her. She doesn't view herself as this, however, expressing surprise that the Z-fighters would help someone as selfish as her, as she views taking down her evil half to be her own problem, so the others voluntarily helping her when she believes she's done nothing to earn it comes as a shock to her.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After her My God, What Have I Done? moment, 21 expels her evil half. While this does free her from the overpowering evil persona brought on by her Horror Hunger (though not freeing her from the hunger itself), it also unleashes a version of her that has no restraint or remorse whatsoever that stole most of the power she possessed before separating. This is played with however, as while 21 blames herself for Evil 21, the separation was caused by 21 hitting the Despair Event Horizon, and was not something she did intentionally.
No Name Given: Whoever she was when she was human (although likely Gero's spouse), we're never told her name, she's only ever known as Android 21. Even she doesn't remember it, and apparently found it fun imagining what her name was and what her human life was like.
No Social Skills: Android 21 really means well, but her social skills are... questionable. 21 gets embarrassed when Goku offers to have a sparring match with her, she indulges in string cheese, but gets too carried away and eats all of it and upsetting Bulma, she likes to make a game out of imagining what her past name is, and her banter with Gotenks gets Vegeta annoyed with her. The only character 21 has a reasonably comfortable time socializing with is Majin Buu.
Offing the Offspring: Being the one thing keeping her predatory nature at bay, 21's dark persona recognizes that her gentle-hearted child has got to go. No matter what story occurrence she's in, Android 21 will murder Android 16, either because she's given up resisting her hunger or because her Evil side capitalizes on a moment of weakness.
Older Than They Look: She generally strikes the air of a bookish post-doc when not transformed, if not maybe a bit younger, and in English she's acted by the bell-voiced Jeannie Tirado who was 27 at time of recording, but given how her history lines up and her relationships, she (or at least, the human she was originally) has to be closing in on one hundred years old due to having an adult son during the events of Dragon Ball, during the Super-esque timeframe of FighterZ... However, this is heavily subverted in her being a bio-android, one that was in stasis long past Cell and even Buu, so in all likelihood her physical age in no way reflects the actual length of her existence, especially given she was designed with the ability to regenerate perpetually, meaning any signs of aging past her prime would be undone and she likely would never age past that.
- Late into her link events she seemingly contradicts her earlier statements about her origins, saying that despite looking like an adult and having been provided the appropriate level of intelligence, she's less than ten years old. However, she could just be counting the time since she was activated, as she is very clear that she doesn't remember her life as a human.
Our Demons Are Different: She is an artificial human whose true form seems like a cross between the series regular Demons and a Majin-like Buu. Being a bio-android like Cell with Buu's genetic material will do that, though.
Person of Mass Destruction: She's advertised as a dangerous enemy in a setting as of the godly-power Super era. However, even in that timeframe, she stands out in a class of her own. In story, she's displayed to be a Lightning Bruiser of absolutely tanky proportions, and filled with ridiculously explosive raw power. This is due to her being a bio-android composed of genetic material from the Buu Saga and beyond, of which she's confirmed to have Cell's DNA, Buu's, the usual suspects of the Z-Fighters, and Frieza. That being said, during the game proper she only battles the cast at a time where their power is being suppressed, which is something her evil persona had done because she didn't want to bother with the fighting and was trying to skip right to the main course.
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: She's referred to as the new leader of the Red Ribbon Army—no other member of which appears aside from Android 16. It's implied that the cloned fighters make up the entirety of the new RRA, but they're mindless copies.
Power Dyes Your Hair: Her true form has pinkish-white hair. When she's in control of herself, and in her good form, her hair is instead fully white.
Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Goes without her glasses in her true form, hinting that she doesn't really need them.
Reality Warper: Like Buu due to having his cells, she's able to turn just about anything organic into candy.
Red and Black and Evil All Over: Subverted. Her aura and her energy moves, even the ones she copies (including the usually blue-white Kamehameha), are a mix of red and black coloured energy, exactly like her evil half.
Reincarnation: After her Heroic Sacrifice, Goku says he'll ask King Yemma to try and get this for her, after refusing to use the Dragon Balls because undoing her sacrifice wouldn't feel right.
Reluctant Warrior: Despite her immense strength, Android 21 really isn't into fighting as much as the other Z Fighters in addition to being rather dorky and timid, as evident from her very surprised and nervous reaction to Goku wanting to have a good sparring match with her as well as her comical interactions with Vegeta, but when someone she loves is in trouble or is confronted with evil, she will throw down the gauntlet with the best of them.
Android 21: I'm very scared of my hunger... losing control... but I'm more scared of seeing... someone I love get hurt or much worse!
Replacement Goldfish: She rebuilt Android 16 because he was programmed and modeled after her late son, and intended to treat him like her real child despite knowing it wasn't true. Unfortunately, her maternal instincts aren't enough to stop her hunger leading to her killing him on every route.
Sanity Slippage: Is revealed in 18's route to have undergone this in every route; the audience just only ever see her post-slippage before that point. She's trying to suppress her Horror Hunger, but it keeps getting worse and causing her physical pain. 16 has been trying to help her, but eventually, she's overcome by it and becomes the Ax-Crazy version seen in other routes. 16 theorizes that the hunger is a result of some of the cells constituting her body are going 'berserk', and the hunger takes on a persona, the evil side of her, opposing her true nature. In the heroes' story mode, she follows them to the Sacred World of the Kais only to find her prey now standing beside gods and goes absolutely wild and raving with rampant desire, screaming delightedly about how they all belong to her.
Secret Character: Unavailable at the start and must be unlocked through beating all three arcs of Story Mode. And even then, this version of 21 is only playable in Story Mode.
Self-Deprecation: She thinks very little of herself even after parting with her evil half. This is somewhat Justified though as it is revealed in the third route that she planned on linking a living soul, potentially forever. In other words, she selfishly tore someones soul out of their body so she could have some peace of mind. This is more a case of how desperate she'd gotten in looking for a solution to control her hunger than an act of deliberate malignance however - especially as being linked doesn't work to ease the hunger pangs like she'd initially hoped.
"Shaggy Dog" Story: The existence and struggles of Android 21 ultimately amount to absolutely nothing. Dr. Gero created her as a weapon against Goku, and aside from being driven by Horror Hunger, she has absolutely no interest in that. She herself just wanted to live with the the Android version of her son, cure her hunger, and perform benevolent research in peace. None of that gets to happen, either. Even defeating her Evil side doesn't really accomplish anything, since said Evil side never harmed or killed anyone except the clones and villains she herself created or wished Back from the Dead. She winds up dying without having any real impact whatsoever; which was, unfortunately, predictable.
Ship Tease:
- She gets tons with Goku, as her evil side constantly squeals about how delicious he looks and once the two separate, Goku immediately gives her a look-over and asks 21 for "some 1-on-1 time". Goku, of course, meant fighting, but even she didn't know what he was asking at first.
- In a conversation, Yamcha teases Krillin about having a fetish for female androids. Krillin is flustered at the accusation and staunchly denies it, but just the suggestion makes Android 18 so angry that the two of them can feel her Killing Intent without even turning to look at her.
- Has some with Android 18 as well, complimenting her on how attractive she is and how cute her original outfit was. She later gushes over the way 18 cares for her family and that she'd like to be part of a family cared for in the same way, prompting an embarrassed 18 to ask her to stop swooning over her.
- As her Link Events continue, 21 grows more and more comfortable with "you" (the Earthling Soul) and confides things in you that she's never told anyone else. It eventually concludes with her telling you how much she's glad to have met you and how much you've done for her. Hard for a player not to feel a little flutter in their heart after hearing that.
Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: After splitting into two, the Good Android 21 cannot use her Meteor Attack "Sweet Tooth", as she refuses to indulge in her Horror Hunger. If you try it, she will do a short jump to use her airborne Meteor Attack. Also, while her in-battle quotes are much more apologetic than her evil half, she still gets the same Slasher Smiles on some of her moves, like her Level 3 "Full Course" attack.
Split Personality: There are three distinct personas that exist within 21 throughout the story. In Goku's story, Frieza's story and controllable gameplay, she's in control of her actions but is still effectively a villain as she embraces her person-craving hunger. Before reaching that state where her conscious mind and predatory instinct mesh, however, there are two distinct selves. Her human soul implied to be the wife of Gero, and her hunger, gone Kid Buu levels of feral, becoming its own persona when she suppressed it so long much like Majin Buu did his own evil.
Statuesque Stunner: Despite her initial appearance and often looking smaller in being paired with 16 or away from the comparable scale in cutscenes, she's actually quite a bit bigger than she first appears. When she drops her Earthling facade and assumes her Majin form, it becomes much more apparent that she's around Goku's height, who historically has towered over most everyone else. This is easiest to see when she's around 17 and 18, making them both look tiny in comparison. Her heels may also add a few inches to her height. And, of course, she's still very easy on the eyes, especially with her blue eyes.
Superior Successor: She's this to Cell, who is implied to have been a test-bed for the cellular technology used on her. A bio-android made from all of the cells of the world's strongest warriors and smartest scientists, up to and including Majin Buu. Unfortunately, the cells from Buu are completely uncontrollable, resulting in an exceptional urge to feed.
Supporting Protagonist: In the Android Arc, the story focuses almost entirely on Android 21, but she takes a back seat to Android 18 and then Goku, respectively. Even during the final battle, Goku is the one who comes up with the plan to defeat Evil 21 and creates the Spirit Bomb to seal the deal. Good 21 simply keeps her other half too distracted to stop him or defend herself from it.
Sweet Tooth: Just like Buu, her true, Majin-like form allows her to turn people into food, it's all but directly confirmed she has Buu's cells, which may also be the source of her uncontrollable Horror Hunger. Her preferred human-candy treat is baked goods, which includes macarons, cupcakes, and doughnuts.
- After separating from her evil self, a conversation with Buu reveals she has this in general, as they plan to gather a lot of candy and have a party after the fighting is done.
Taking You with Me: Her Heroic Sacrifice involved her doing this to herself - stopping her evil half from blocking the Spirit Bomb and destroying them both so their hunger won't be a danger to anyone anymore.
Tragic Dream: Just wants to live a peaceful life and have a family. Unfortunately, the dark persona created by her hunger makes that impossible for her, as it eventually drives her to destroy what she'd been trying to build, and even after splitting her dark side away she's still plagued by her compulsion to eat people. She also intends, after the fighting against her evil self is over, to find out the reason she was made, and figure out how to cure her hunger and work out how her healing ability works in order to grant a Healing Factor to people, believing it may be of great benefit. She eventually sacrifices herself so she won't be a danger to anyone ever again, and never gets the chance to find out why she was made or use the science that made her for good.
Trademark Favorite Food: Baked goods. She also develops a massive taste for String Cheese after Bulma introduces her to it. 21 got so caught up in how much she enjoyed it that she ate about a hundred, which made Bulma rather angry at her.
Tragic Monster: After Evil 21 is expelled from her body, she's a very kind person who can't help but try to eat her new friends. She ends up pulling an Heroic Sacrifice to make sure she never hurts anyone else.
Tragic Villain: In some routes, she’s only really a villain because her Horror Hunger acted up to such a horrendous degree that she had to give in to get out. It’s made even more so when her good and evil halves split in the last route, where she’s an utter sweetheart after being freed from her Horror Hunger, and ultimately gives her life to help slay her crazed other half in order to prevent herself from spiralling back into madness and going after her new friends.
Tsurime Eyes: Something she shares with some of the other Androids.
Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Is implied to possibly have been Gero's wife when she was human (or simply based on her), though she doesn't remember it. Now look at her, and remember how Gero looked even without the cybernetics. Justified by her being kept young by the biological engineering, no one has ever seen what Gero looked like in his mid-twenties.
Ultimate Lifeform: Both 21's are this, but Evil 21 is far more aware of her power and doesn't hesitate to rub her superiority in the faces of others. Good 21 on the other hand isn't proud of who she is and is far more reluctant and timid.
Uneven Hybrid: Whoever she was before she was augmented was fully human; now she has the cells of aliens such as Saiyans, Namekians, Frieza, as well as whatever Cell counts as, and otherworldly creatures such as Majin Buu. She may also potentially have the cells of demons, Kais, and possibly even Beerus.
Unskilled, but Strong: She admits to not knowing much about fighting, but she was created with an abundance of powerful abilities as well as the capability to grow even stronger. The only reason she struggles in battle more than her evil counterpart, in fact, is because she refuses to eat anyone to grow stronger.
Walking Spoiler: The Reveal that there even is a good version of 21 drastically alters the plot of the game and turns the character from a one note expy of Buu into a Tragic Monster.
Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere: This feeling is what drove her insane before the game's plot even started; there were so many strong fighters around that she had to constantly fight to not indulge in her hunger. This resulted in her Majin ability to give her evil half its own existence, creating a Split Personality that physically splits from her body. The evil 21 becomes the true villain of the story. Even after she splits, she temporarily gains relief but it doesn't last. Horrified that she still has the instinct to eat everyone gnawing at her and knowing that she will eventually lose control again, she decides to sacrifice herself to kill the evil 21 at the end of the game.
Willfully Weak: She chooses not to eat people to get stronger, which her evil side mocks her for. Goku, however, tells her that she has the potential to be just as strong through regular training. And, judging by how even the battle between two androids at the end was, he had a point.
Wistful Amnesia: Doesn't remember her life before she was an android, but she essentially adopts Android 16 after learning he was based on her son from when she was human, feeling compelled to rebuild him. She also doesn't remember her creator, Dr Gero, who is highly implied to have been her husband. She knows he was a horrible person based on what she's found out since being reactivated, but feels like crying when talking about how he's long dead.
Worthy Opponent: Goku thinks that if she trained hard enough, she'd be able to give him a challenge at his full power. In fact, he thinks it'd be an even more fun fight than her evil side because he always enjoys a friendly fight better than a battle between good and evil. She probably would have the potential to do it too, considering that she's a mix of Saiyan, Cell and Buu DNA, all three being opponents that Goku couldn't originally defeat on his own.
Yank the Dog's Chain: She had hoped her problem would be solved after she disposed of her Split Personality, but she finds out to her horror that her hunger is still there and will eventually lead her back to square one. She decides to die instead of going through it again.
Younger Than They Look: Played with. As discussed under Older Than They Look, she could be pushing a century, however, due to her not remembering who she was as a human, she's essentially starting fresh. Her activation would essentially be the 'birth' of the person Android 21, so while she has the appearance and demeanor of a young adult woman with adult intelligence, she has only lived as the person she is for a short time, points out she's not even ten years old, and finds it weird when children call her "ma'am".
You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry: Though in this case, it's "You Won't Like Me When I'm Hungry", as the longer she's denied her urge to feed, the more she slips into a maddened Buu-reminiscent Unstoppable Rage.

Characters / Dragon Ball - Android 21

Android 21 (人造人間21号, Jinzō Ningen Nijūichi-Gō)

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (Japanese), Jeannie Tirado (English)

Android 21 (Good) (人造人間21号, Jinzō Ningen Nijūichi-Gō)

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (Japanese), Jeannie Tirado (English)

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Characters / Dragon Ball - Android 21

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Android 21 (人造人間21号, Jinzō Ningen Nijūichi-Gō)

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (Japanese), Jeannie Tirado (English)

Android 21 (Good) (人造人間21号, Jinzō Ningen Nijūichi-Gō)

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (Japanese), Jeannie Tirado (English)

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