Did Dragon Ball Super Sneakily Introduce a New Android?

Dragon Ball Super manga chapter 51 sees the evil Moro truly step into his newfound power. While Goku and Vegeta are busy working with the Galactic Patrol to come up with a strategy for stopping Moro, the evil sorcerer is erstwhile busy living up to the nickname of "Planet-Eater."

After springing his fellow convicts from the Galactic Patrol Prison and giving them a magical upgrade, Moro uses his gang to search out new planets for Moro to feed on. In exchange, Moro's gang gets to loot the planets in advance, with the new manga offering scenes that allow us to get to know some of these convicts better - including a possible new evil android in the bunch!

We first singled out this member of Moro's gang as being the possible Universe 7 twin of Hit, the top assassin from Universe 6 - but Dragon Ball Super chapter 51 may reveal a different identity for this deadly convict!

There are several clues that have been dropped, suggesting that this Hit lookalike member of Moro's gang, "7-3" is actually an android:

• His name is a number designation that could arguably be interpreted as "Android 73" in its full designation.
• While Eye lasers are not at all unique to Dragon Ball androids, the "Bionic Punisher" eye blast attack is a major signature of Dr. Gero and his androids.
• "73" is stoic, silent and emotionless, which could be a major hint that he's a machine.
• Even his movements (in battle and flight) seem stiff and clinical, the same way other android characters like No. 17 are drawn.

So far, the only real unique and fully-realized character in Moro's gang is the evil sorcerer's new right-hand henchman, SaganBo. These other gang members (even with speaking lines) are just kind of fodder material - but still, it does feel like Toyotaro and Toriyama are sort of having fun with fans, dropping just enough Easter eggish similarities between Moro's gang and other characters from the franchise, to keep fans closely inspecting the artwork and making connections.

Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonamiprogramming block on Saturday evenings, and is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese-language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. The manga has chapters that can currently be read for free thanks to Viz Media, and Dragon Ball Super's big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.