Dragon Ball's canon, and the thermian argument

[Shaddy]

Issue 191 of the Sonic Archie comics contains a side-story called "Invaders From Beyond", seemingly a loose prequel to Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. This is funny to me, as that game takes heavy influence from the old comics and even spurred one of the former writers into a series of lawsuits that spelled the death of the original run. But even though it was an Archie Sonic comic AND tied into Sonic Chronicles, it had no actual influence on either story, being set in the "Another Time, Another Place" alternate universe, saved only for short tie-ins to the games. This was a timeline based around adapting a game taking influence from the comics, that was itself an alternate universe in those same comics, which were adapted from a TV show based off a video game. Yet, it technically was a canon universe that existed in the series.

If you were to ask me "Is Invaders From Beyond canon?", the technical, truthful answer would be yes. Given the multiverse shenanigans that go on in that comic, technically stuff from the A.T.A.P. universe could (and possibly did, it's been a while since I read that Scourge in Prison story) interact with other universes within this one giant canon. But the answer I would actually give you is "no". Why, you ask? Well, it's because if you were to ask me questions about the canon of a 25 year-long story with tons of moving parts, saying a small alternate universe that technically exists within that canon despite being an entirely self-contained vehicle for promoting a new game every couple of years would be saying its an important and necessary part of understanding the series continuity when doing a full read of the series. And that would be a lie. Nothing in that story affects anything but itself, and possibly Sonic Chronicles the game, which has itself been decanonized from even the main games because of those same lawsuits.

To apply the thinking that anything that can justifiably be considered as existing within the multiverse and ball of intersecting timelines that is the world of a long-running story is therefore canon is to argue that the idea of in-universe justifications supersedes that of context, continuity and even creator intent to some degree. While it's normally used to defend problematic or bigoted content within a story, the use of in-universe explanations to defend something in the face of complicated criticism is all too common, and goes by the name of the thermian argument.

So why am I talking your ear off about Sonic the hedgehog and some aliens from Galaxy Quest or whatever? Well, partially it's that I like both those things, but also it's because this is how we often talk about Dragon Ball's canon, and I think it has an overall negative effect on the discussion of the series and its appeal to newcomers. When someone asks "what is canon in Dragon Ball?", they aren't asking what theoretically exists in the series. Most of the time, this question is about what a person should watch/read to get the idea of Dragon Ball's story across. It's a common question from newcomers to the series, people that see six thousand different results for Dragon Ball on whatever pirate anime site they've chosen and don't know where exactly to start. Answering "everything" is taking the context of "what matters to the main plot" away from the canon question, and using the in-universe justification of "there's a lot of time travel" to avoid giving a more informative answer. But Dragon Ball isn't real. You can't just answer this and expect any real person to say "oh okay, I guess I'll consume every piece of Dragon Ball media in existence" in response. They're more likely to (correctly) inform you that you're being a tool.

So with all this in mind, "what is canon" usually means "what fits within the main continuity". And with that...there's still some issues, especially with our two versions of Super. But if you listen to the question this way, you definitely know what not to answer. Heroes, most of the movies, Online, Xenoverse, all of these provide massive changes to the plot of Dragon Ball's manga to the degree that saying they're "canon" to a person like this would be dishonestly representing Dragon Ball's extended universe as more mainline (and better) than it obviously is to fans and most of the people producing it. If someone says "Cooler 1 and 2 aren't canon, you don't have to watch them" and you go "ah-HAHA! clearly you've been misguided, they obviously exist within the extended universe of Dragon Ball's timelines. Checkmate, liberal", you look like a ponce.

I think a lot of this comes from an inherent desire to see what is "more canon" as therefore of more worth, or vice-versa (note: I don't dislike the extended universe because I consider it non-canon, I dislike it because it is bad), and thereby treating any statement of what is canon as an attack on that. The simple fact is, saying something like "DB, Z and Super are canon" is not a precise and thorough examination on the nature of Dragon Ball's timelines, it's saying "if you want to get up to speed, these are what you should watch". Anything else is ignoring context for the sake of defending something most people would consider non-canon, or stroking your ego.

So what's my point in all this then? Mostly just that canon is currently a nebulously-defined term that doesn't help anyone, and thinking about the series in terms of continuity will much more quickly bring the discussion from "is this canon" to "is this good", and I think that's a lot more important. Because that which can fit into continuity, even things people might disagree with like Bojack or Broly 1 (I think the latter might have something that disqualifies it? I don't remember) can then give us new bits of characterization, world building and the like relative to that continuity. That which doesn't, can only really do so for itself. Because whatever happens between Freeza being defeated in episode 105 and coming back to Earth in episode 118, it's not fucking Goku fighting Cooler on Earth. That stuff still happens, but not to the original Goku we've been watching. So yes, I'm going to say that movie isn't canon.

So next time someone asks "what is canon?", you don't have to go on some philosophical diatribe about timelines and Cumber and Fu and fucking Golden Cooler. Just tell them the manga, or hell, link them DBRecut. That was certainly all I'd ever wanted when I asked that question.

We could talk about whether an alt-timeline version of someone is worth as much as the "original", or what "the original" even is, but it's 3AM and I don't want things to get any more Homestuckian here than they already are, so I'll stop here for tonight.

Feel free to respond, I welcome discussion. It would take a lot to convince me that discussing what's technically an existing hypothetical timeline is more important than what things happened to the Goku that Toriyama is currently writing new stories about, but I do want to hear your takes on this.

[ABED]

I guess my answer to the question would be to read the manga or if you just want to watch the anime, just watch the TV series DB and DBZ and you'll be up to speed on the story. You won't have missed anything. The films are optional. If you get to the end of Z, then we can talk about where you go from there as the answer of continuity gets a little more complicated.

[KBABZ]

I agree with ABED. The ultimate question I can derive here For me, the absolute easiest way to get an idea of what counts as canon towards everything else is to read the original manga. Without exception, what happens in the manga as written by Akira Toriyama at the time is taken as true for almost all other adaptations, to the point of retconning. Anime has a story on why planet Vegeta was destroyed? Manga overrules it and the anime pretends the old story never happened. Any adaptation of Dragon Ball, be it a video game, a one-shot, or anything else, always assumes the manga events to be canon at the very least.

Everything being canon is one of the effects of a franchise having a multiverse to it, which Dragon Ball hasn't tackled in anything except Heroes. For example, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has revealed that the various dimensions aren't new spaces, but copies of the other spaces, meaning they're actually alternate universes like in Star Trek. Given that it was also established that there are infinite dimensions, this means that the Ratchet & Clank Movie and its PS4 video game are an alternate dimension that exists somewhere out there. But do you need to have seen those to understand Rift Apart? No, almost certainly not.

As for how to sort this out regarding Dragon Ball, the most important part when it comes to understanding what's important to everything else starts and ends with the manga, there's no getting around it. It's the fastest way through the story and nothing in it can be debated as canon or not to everything except the movies, Path to Power or Evolution, which is something you cannot say about the anime. You can think of the manga as the core trunk from which other tales, like Xenoverse, FighterZ, GT, Super, Eradicate the Saiyans, and what have you, branch off from.

If you want to go by the route of watching the Dragon Ball anime for this task, the answer there for me is always going to be Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Kai because it still carries that core through line of the manga but without a lot of the extras and fat added by the original Z anime, and from there you can go to GT or Super or what have you. That said, this may not be the best creative choice if you watch subbed, because the Japanese performances are more tired in Kai and in any version the music isn't up to snuff.

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As for how the Thermian Argument applies to Dragon Ball, Roshi I think provides a good example. His sexual antics added by Toei in the anime and continued in Super can easily be justified under "well he did it in the manga/has a history of it in the old show, so it only fits his character", but it's a bad justification anyway. It was grossly inappropriate then to be on a show for twelve year olds and it still is now, and I don't think there's a single user here who would kick up a fuss if Toei said they wouldn't include those scenes in future stories.

[Polyphase Avatron]

There is another group that has a different interest in what is "canon": The versus debaters/powerscalers. If there is no clear consensus on which feats, fights, statements, and power levels are 'legit' and which ones aren't, then they can't do their thing and even begin to try to answer questions like 'Which Buu is strongest', 'Who would win, Goku or Superman/Saitama/Bugs Bunny/[Insert character here]', or 'What is the multiplier for X transformation/technique/fusion'.

While some may be tempted to respond to such people with 'Who the hell cares, you nerds?', clearly a lot of people do care, and enjoy debating such things.

[KBABZ]

While some may be tempted to respond to such people with 'Who the hell cares, you nerds?', clearly a lot of people do care, and enjoy debating such things.

I think "enjoy" is too positive a word to describe those arguments.

[Matches Malone]

A lot of fans simply misunderstand what someone means by the word canon. When someone asks "what's canon", they're simply asking what the current writer of the story is taking into account while coming up with new stories. DB is too big of a franchise to tell someone "there's no canon, experience everything", that's a very unrealistic expectation to put on someone trying to get into such a franchise. For Toriyama, he's only taking his stories into account, be that the original manga or the newer ones he's currently coming up with.

With that said, that doesn't mean things will continue like that once Toriyama steps down and allows a new writer to take over. If Toyotaro takes over, he could make a 360 and say everything happened, be that Z's movies or even GT. He could make a whole chart explaining how there are 2 Brolys, or how Slug and Tullece's movies take place before the androids show up, etc.

There is another group that has a different interest in what is "canon": The versus debaters/powerscalers.

I think there are also people who are insecure about liking something that isn't being considered by the original author, so they go around saying things like "there's no canon" and "everything counts" to make themselves feel better.

I guess my answer to the question would be to read the manga and you'll be up to speed on the story. You won't have missed anything. The films are optional.

If someone were to tell me they wanted to experience DB but only had a limited amount of time to do so, I'd only recommend the following:

The original manga / its anime counterparts (with a filler list to skip).
Z's 2 TV specials.
The Battle of Gods movie.

That's not to say there's no other good content beside these, but I believe that everything worth seeing can be found in the above, especially from a story standpoint. If you've got extra time to invest in the rest of the franchise, I'd recommend putting that time and money in other anime.