Should Kai be considered as canon

[SaintEvolution]

Before Jaco and DB-, it would have been incredibly reasonable to say "Toriyama takes the Bardock TV Special into account", and yet look at how that turned out. Super contradicts BoG, but Toriyama is largely responsible for both. Which one does he take account?

It would have been reasonable to say "Battle of Gods is canon, look at everything Toriyama's doing!", but now, Super is throwing Battle of Gods out the window, and telling a different version of the story. Which version is canon? Is it Super, since that's what Toriyama is most recently telling? How long before that gets over-written by something else done by Toriyama? Is it Battle of Gods, since it came first? Should we then just take all of this new material for granted since it "didn't come first?"

This is why this topic is commonly labelled as a futile one.

Super will use BOG's plot as an arc. One doesn't contradicts the other.

[VegettoEX]

Super will use BOG's plot as an arc. One doesn't contradicts the other.

They already do contradict each other, however: Beerus "should be" asleep right now according to the Battle of Gods story, but is clearly up and about during Super.

[xmysticgohanx]

I dont think it has to be very complicated. didnt one of the daizenshuus say the movies just took place in different dimensions or something to that affect? Seeing as how Toriyama sees GT as a side story and ignores it in his own stories i would say that it can likely fit in that same category. The main continuity/timeline being Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, the original 42 book series of dragon ball/z, and now Super. Everything else can just be seen as having happened in a different timeline or whatever you want to call it. It makes sense from an in universe and business perspective to have it that way. Of course they arent going to try to sell you something they are telling you "doesnt count". And it fits just fine to imagine that in different dimensions/timelines the movies/GT legitimately occur.

That's "easy" enough to say now, but you're not putting this in perspective. Look again at what Zephyr said.

Before _______, the canon was ________. But then ________ came along, and so now we guess it's __________. But then _________ came along and overwrote that, so maybe now it's ___________. But then _________ came along and expanded upon __________ and is overwriting _________, so maybe now it's ____________?

That's precisely why I'm saying it's rather futile to have the conversation these days. We're in a period of time where it's basically every single year that we're being told "that's not how it happened; here's how it happened"... and that's ignoring Q&A/interview stuff.

That's like saying Star Wars shouldn't have a canon because retcons are a normal thing. Who cares if they're normal things, what matters is what's currently canon because it won't change for a good while if at all. I'm not going to tell my friends to treat Path to Power as canon just because it could be one day.

[DoomieDoomie911]

I'm going to quote myself from another thread...

I really don't understand why people debate this. Anyone can consider anything canon; it's totally up to the individual fan.

There is no "official" canon for any series. Most people just go with the general consensus of the fandom; but that doesn't mean someone can't go outside of that...

[DemonRin]

Manga should still be considered Primary Canon.

However, I don't think Kai is necessarily something you CAN'T take as Canon. If you're looking for the "Most Canon" DBZ Anime material, Kai is the closest we have as it removes a good majority of the filler.

IMO, Anime filler and the like is fine as long as it doesn't OUTRIGHT contradict canon or is intrusive in such a way that if you remove it, the Canon material no longer works on its own.

Gregory isn't and never will be a problem in my eyes to include in any Dragonball Medium as long as he's relegated to a tertiary character who does nothing really but hang out and have the occasional throwaway line. His most intrusive point in the plot is the added requirement that Goku catch him in order to train at Kaio's planet. It's a very minor change however it IS a change, but as long as Super doesn't directly reference it I don't think that disqualifies Super from being canon to the Manga. For example, there's nothing in Super thus far to say Gregory isn't just a friend of Kaio's that showed up in his realm and hasn't left. Or he's a creature who has been off panel, but on Kaio's planet all along and it got blown up and took him out with the rest of them.

Mr. Satan's assistants are even less of an issue since they're just Background characters that have thus far had no real lines in their appearances in Super. They're basically Easter Eggs and nothing more. There's nothing in the manga that says Satan CAN'T have an assistant/disciple that looks like that for example.

A good example of an anime-only thing that ACTUALLY messes with Canon would be Kaio's original explanation of how planet Vegeta was destroyed, or Piccolo Destroying Goku's space pod during the Gohan training filler. That stuff is bad because it OUTRIGHT contradicts facts we later learned and just went on without making any attempt to correct them.

EDIT: Maybe a good way to do it would be the old pre-Disney Star Wars method where there are different levels of "Canon" and anything that happens in them can be considered canon as long as it doesn't contradict something that happens in a higher up form of Canon?

Like, you do it like this:

Manga > DB Kai > DB Super > JSAT Special > BoG & FnF Movies > DBZ TV Specials (Burdock, Trunks) > DB/DBZ Anime > DBGT > Pre-BoG Movies > The Rest (Episode of Burdock, PTEtS(S), Crossovers with One Piece)

If something pops up in a lower tier that you question it's canonicity, just refer to a higher tier of canon. If something in a higher tier contradicts it, it's not canon, otherwise it can count.

Then there's always personal preference at the end of the day. For example, my personal head canon is that the Anime version of History of Trunks is the canon one and the Manga version isn't..... I just think the Anime version is way better. I like that Gohan's death is the thing that makes Trunks go SS rather than him just be able to do it right off the Bat.

[Lord Beerus]

Kai can be considered whatever you want it to be. Non-canon or canon, it really shouldn't matter. The main focus of Dragon Ball should be on enjoying and/or criticizing the plot, music or animation when it sees fit. Not putting yourself through unnecessary stress over whether Movie 12 and Movie 6 can still fit into your imaginary timeline because of what happened Episode 80 or some other TV special.

Besides, if there is one true canon of the franchise; it's the manga. That's it.

[irreality]

Are people even aware of what "retcon" means? I'm seeing it used incorrectly all over. It means "retroactive continuity" -- like the examples VegettoEX gave. Basically, a new detail is shoehorned in as "always having happened", as long as it doesn't completely contradict a detail of the original or is given a plausible explanation, even though none of the original writings assume that event has happened.

Super including characters from Kai is not a retcon. They are not assuming those characters were in the manga all along and we just didn't see them. Like, Super isn't implying that Gregory was hiding but was always in King Kai's planet with Bubbles. They are just following the DB Anime/DB Kai/DB Super continuity, where those characters have always existed.

Super retelling BoG or RoF is also not a retcon -- they are not in the same "continuity" and we are not expected to try to shoehorn the details of BoG and RoF with Super. They are just straight out retelling, and telling us that they are not in the Super continuity.

If Super changes a detail that contradicts EoZ, that is not a retcon. That is just a contradiction. If they rewrite EoZ (like they did in the Kanzenban), that is not a retcon, that is a rewrite.

"Jaco: The Galactic Patrolman" is a retcon if you want to put it in the manga continuity: Tights has been Bulma's sister all along, just not hanging around CC, Bulma was taking summer vacation from college or grad school in the begining of DB, Goku was slightly older when he landed on earth, but we couldn't tell because Saiyans age weirdly, and Jaco has been patrolling the universe comically and staying out of the way of Freeza's army all along.

This is separate than the debate of canonicity. DB canon is the manga. But you can establish several non-contradicting continuities from there, such as the anime series continuity (with either Kai or Z), or a DBZ/BOG/Jaco/ROF continuty, or the DBZ/GT continuity (you can probably even fit in Movie 13 in there). All the material cannot be reconciled into one continuity. Pick the ones you like and don't contradict in your mind and go with that.

[shinmaru]

Is the line of Pure Boo being the strongest Boo still there? If so, then no.

Pure Buu is the strongest Buu without any absorption

Anime is retcon of the manga lol

[Zephyr]

That's like saying Star Wars shouldn't have a canon because retcons are a normal thing. Who cares if they're normal things, what matters is what's currently canon because it won't change for a good while if at all. I'm not going to tell my friends to treat Path to Power as canon just because it could be one day.

Not really. Star Wars actually has an officially outlined canon. Dragon Ball does not. What are you forced to do, if you want a canon, when there is no officially outlined canon? Speculate. Even if you come up with a set of things that seem appropriately canon, things will inevitably come out that throw a wrench in that (as the Kanzenban ending did to the original manga ending, as Jaco did to the Bardock TV Special, as Super is doing to Battle of Gods, etc). You'll arrive at a temporary speculative canon at best. Even if you reach your goal, which is figuring out what is canon via speculation, you're likely to have your work pulled out from under from you, forcing you to start over again. You're never going to be truly done, the effort is futile.

That's not going to happen with Star Wars, since you don't even have that goal. There's no work to be pulled out from under you, there's no going back to step one; there's no step one. The work's all done for you already.

[bleed0range]

I've revised my "head canon" after Super became a thing and I think what I've decided works for me makes the most sense.

MANGA
The original manga by Akira Toriyama is the series bible. It is the only truly canon work. Why? Because EVERYTHING else is just derived from the chapters of the manga run. So I now feel like this is the only true story and everything else is just an idea that's expanding on what was told here.

MOVIES
For me, all movies (NOW, including BOG and ROF) are like alternate timeline/what if stories. Different then their anime series counterparts. Movies 1-13 never really worked in the anime (except maybe 13) and now with the re imagining of BOG/ROF in Super, they also too could be considered to not work in the anime timeline. I see BOG/ROF sort of like the 10th anniversary special, in that they are similar stories but told differently.
So the movies, all of them... are just their own thing.

ANIME
Now for the animated series. What makes the most sense to me is... DB/DBZ and GT are their own thing. Since Kai is a re-edited/re-imagined version of DBZ it could be considered it's own thing with Super being the logical follow-up. Super, with the events of BOG/ROF sort of make GT not work. So the way to make all of this work is to say Kai and it's follow up Super are their own thing and DB/DBZ/GT are their own thing (the original anime run).
So...

DB -> DBZ -> DBGT

And

Kai -> Super


This is the only way I can make it all make sense and not go mad.

[Hellspawn28]

The biggest issue with people saying that there is no official canon does not mean anything fit if you want it too. We don't need a official canon to know what will fit in the continuity. You can't say that Tree of Might or Fusion Reborn are canon because we know that they don't fit anywhere. The anime is adaption of the manga, so it should not be view as canon to the manga. After all, you never see people say that the Lord of the Rings & Hobbit movies are canon to the books or the Naruto anime is canon to the manga. It seems like when it comes to the anime and manga, if it's not created by the original creator then it's not view as canon unless stated otherwise. Fans of Tenchi Muyo consider the manga of Tenchi Muyo not canon because it was written by a different author and the anime came out first.

[mogi67]

What's the difference at this point, honestly?

[Hellspawn28]

I think Movie 9 is the only DBZ movie that can fit into the timeline now. Movie 13 can't fit into the timeline now given how Super is set 6 months after Buu and they use the DB's 4 months later after Kid Buu died to erase the memories of Majin Buu. Meaning that Super is set 2 months after the memories of Majin Buu where erased. There's no way that they can use the Dragon Balls in a such short time again for Hoi to release Tapion out of the box. In the past, you could say that Movie 13 is set a year after Buu and three years before BOG seeing it allows more time for them to use the Dragon Balls again.

[Deathbringer]

Before BoG and RoF none of the movies were considered canon surely, I always thought it was so blooming obvious that they aren't canon that it didn't need mentioning, surely people were able to figure it out for themselves at the time that the plots of the movies don't fit in with the manga so they didn't really happen?

I say this because there was that one quote I saw in someone's signature that said "what's the point of having a canon if you aren't going to do anything with it?" which is strange because the movies, dragon ball heroes, most of the "what if?" scenarios in the games, ALL OF THOSE THINGS are taking place outside of canon and that's why they exist the way they are, because no one is trying to force the story to fit around things that actually happened, therefore they're able to make up whatever they want.

And why why WHY do people act like the word canon means "the stuff that doesn't suck ass", there are canon things that split opinion, like DB Minus, but it's still canon.

On a side note, to me, the manga is the main canon, then it's followed by DB/Z anime filler that doesn't contradict the manga (this includes the expanded story elements to the history of Trunks special) (acting out of character can also be seen as contradictory to the manga, as well as extending the length of a power up just to pad out an episode) aaaand that's it. No really, that's it. Just because something isn't canon doesn't mean that I'm not opening to loving it because of course I love all things Dragon Ball, if something isn't canon I'm not gonna push it aside and pretend it doesn't exist. Dragon Ball Super is looking like it will fall into canon and that BoG and RoF will be replaced with the DBS version of their stories, unless there's about to be some huge contradiction somewhere down the pipeline I can see Super becoming the continuation of the story in the manga, in fact if Super was a manga by Toriyama instead of an anime series I bet people would already be calling it 100% canon.

DBKai is an adaptation just like the DB/Z anime shows, it really really isn't worth debating to yourself if it's canon or not because it's so close to the manga that it doesn't matter if it's canon or not, however if there is any content in Kai which contradicts the canon (like some of the filler they've left in the majin boo saga of the villains in hell) then that part of the show is non canon. Simple as that really.


tl;dr GT, the films, the games and heroes aren't trying to be canon so stop forcing them to be,they have more creative freedom from not having to follow canon, my idea of the canon is Manga + non-contradictory filler + DBSuper, Kai is an adaptation and it's not worth debating if it's canon but if it contradicts canon then the contradictory part is not canon.

[SpiritBombTriumphant]

Super will use BOG's plot as an arc. One doesn't contradicts the other.

They already do contradict each other, however: Beerus "should be" asleep right now according to the Battle of Gods story, but is clearly up and about during Super.

Did they ever truly say when exactly Beerus woke up? I figured that one could assume the scene where he wakes up and then goes on to do other things just has a big time gap between it. They did say that BoG takes place 2 years (IIRC) after Buu's defeat, but as far as I know nothing truly said it in the film. I imagine it going something like this:

1. Beerus wakes up
2. Goes around doing what he does in Super
3. After a bath (another one), he talks with Whis about Frieza and is told of the SSJ God.
4. BoG happens.

While I haven't heard anything about it, someone on the first page mentioned Bulma's party being on a boat this time. If that's so then I suppose it's whatever.

[ZodaEX]

Before BoG and RoF none of the movies were considered canon surely, I always thought it was so blooming obvious that they aren't canon that it didn't need mentioning, surely people were able to figure it out for themselves at the time that the plots of the movies don't fit in with the manga so they didn't really happen?

I say this because there was that one quote I saw in someone's signature that said "what's the point of having a canon if you aren't going to do anything with it?" which is strange because the movies, dragon ball heroes, most of the "what if?" scenarios in the games, ALL OF THOSE THINGS are taking place outside of canon and that's why they exist the way they are, because no one is trying to force the story to fit around things that actually happened, therefore they're able to make up whatever they want.

And why why WHY do people act like the word canon means "the stuff that doesn't suck ass", there are canon things that split opinion, like DB Minus, but it's still canon.

On a side note, to me, the manga is the main canon, then it's followed by DB/Z anime filler that doesn't contradict the manga (this includes the expanded story elements to the history of Trunks special) (acting out of character can also be seen as contradictory to the manga, as well as extending the length of a power up just to pad out an episode) aaaand that's it. No really, that's it. Just because something isn't canon doesn't mean that I'm not opening to loving it because of course I love all things Dragon Ball, if something isn't canon I'm not gonna push it aside and pretend it doesn't exist. Dragon Ball Super is looking like it will fall into canon and that BoG and RoF will be replaced with the DBS version of their stories, unless there's about to be some huge contradiction somewhere down the pipeline I can see Super becoming the continuation of the story in the manga, in fact if Super was a manga by Toriyama instead of an anime series I bet people would already be calling it 100% canon.

DBKai is an adaptation just like the DB/Z anime shows, it really really isn't worth debating to yourself if it's canon or not because it's so close to the manga that it doesn't matter if it's canon or not, however if there is any content in Kai which contradicts the canon (like some of the filler they've left in the majin boo saga of the villains in hell) then that part of the show is non canon. Simple as that really.


tl;dr GT, the films, the games and heroes aren't trying to be canon so stop forcing them to be,they have more creative freedom from not having to follow canon, my idea of the canon is Manga + non-contradictory filler + DBSuper, Kai is an adaptation and it's not worth debating if it's canon but if it contradicts canon then the contradictory part is not canon.

It might not matter to you if Kai if considered cannon, but I know for a fact that it matters to other people. The world doesn't revolve around you sorry. Some people do care, so it matters to them even though you think otherwise.

[ShaneisMC]

Before BoG and RoF none of the movies were considered canon surely, I always thought it was so blooming obvious that they aren't canon that it didn't need mentioning, surely people were able to figure it out for themselves at the time that the plots of the movies don't fit in with the manga so they didn't really happen?

I say this because there was that one quote I saw in someone's signature that said "what's the point of having a canon if you aren't going to do anything with it?" which is strange because the movies, dragon ball heroes, most of the "what if?" scenarios in the games, ALL OF THOSE THINGS are taking place outside of canon and that's why they exist the way they are, because no one is trying to force the story to fit around things that actually happened, therefore they're able to make up whatever they want.

And why why WHY do people act like the word canon means "the stuff that doesn't suck ass", there are canon things that split opinion, like DB Minus, but it's still canon.

On a side note, to me, the manga is the main canon, then it's followed by DB/Z anime filler that doesn't contradict the manga (this includes the expanded story elements to the history of Trunks special) (acting out of character can also be seen as contradictory to the manga, as well as extending the length of a power up just to pad out an episode) aaaand that's it. No really, that's it. Just because something isn't canon doesn't mean that I'm not opening to loving it because of course I love all things Dragon Ball, if something isn't canon I'm not gonna push it aside and pretend it doesn't exist. Dragon Ball Super is looking like it will fall into canon and that BoG and RoF will be replaced with the DBS version of their stories, unless there's about to be some huge contradiction somewhere down the pipeline I can see Super becoming the continuation of the story in the manga, in fact if Super was a manga by Toriyama instead of an anime series I bet people would already be calling it 100% canon.

DBKai is an adaptation just like the DB/Z anime shows, it really really isn't worth debating to yourself if it's canon or not because it's so close to the manga that it doesn't matter if it's canon or not, however if there is any content in Kai which contradicts the canon (like some of the filler they've left in the majin boo saga of the villains in hell) then that part of the show is non canon. Simple as that really.


tl;dr GT, the films, the games and heroes aren't trying to be canon so stop forcing them to be,they have more creative freedom from not having to follow canon, my idea of the canon is Manga + non-contradictory filler + DBSuper, Kai is an adaptation and it's not worth debating if it's canon but if it contradicts canon then the contradictory part is not canon.

10 points to Gryffindor. Thats more or less how i see the situation myself.

[DoomieDoomie911]

tl;dr GT, the films, the games and heroes aren't trying to be canon so stop forcing them to be,they have more creative freedom from not having to follow canon, my idea of the canon is Manga + non-contradictory filler + DBSuper, Kai is an adaptation and it's not worth debating if it's canon but if it contradicts canon then the contradictory part is not canon.

But canon is made up anyway. There is no "official" canon. None whatsoever.

EDIT: Let me clarify what I mean by this... If Toriyama went out tomorrow and declared Dragon Ball Minus to be "officially" canon, there would be many, many people who wouldn't agree. That's what I mean. There can never be an "official" canon because not every fan would agree with it.

I don't think that the GT special is canon to the series; but there are many fans that would disagree. If Toriyama came out and said that was canon, would I be wrong? I don't think so. That's all I'm trying to say.

[ABED]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but as I recall, canon refers to what happens in the story as opposed to things like fanfiction. In that case, Toriyama's story is canon. What would it mean to say there's no canon?

[Kamiccolo9]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but as I recall, canon refers to what happens in the story as opposed to things like fanfiction. In that case, Toriyama's story is canon. What would it mean to say there's no canon?

A canon is a collection of official works. So yes, by that definition fanfiction is "noncanon."