bjh13 wrote:
Actually, that's exactly how the term canon works. To give an example, the Roman Catholic Church considers the Book of Sirach canonical, the Southern Baptist Convention does not.
Not at all. What you are describing is just a case akin to having more than one official word regarding canon, just like I talked about in my previous post. That's not what fadeddreams5 was talking about.
What fadeddreams5 was describing is a case where there is just one official word regarding canon and where certain parts of the manga are considered non-canon by that official word, but, despite that, fadeddreams5 argued that those parts would still form a canon regarding the rest of the manga.
Considering no one officially involved with Dragon Ball has made any statements regarding canon, that would mean there is no canon.
That is my point, yes.
Generally, for simplicity sake, most people consider the manga canon, but for all all we know Toei may consider the television shows and movies all canon despite the continuity problems.
People generally confuse their certainty that the manga and all its parts would be considered canon by an official source with it actually being canon. In other words, they confuse expectation with what actually is. As I've demonstrated, even parts of the manga can be easily be left out of canon.
fadeddreams5 wrote:
Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "canon." My point is the manga has its own self-contained timeline, as does GT. When we discuss what is canon, we are looking at the franchise as a whole and seeing what connects with what (i.e. Super to GT) to form an official timeline. Something non-canon is excluded from this timeline--it never happened within it.
In the case of DB, since the manga is the original source material, that is what we use to base what is canon and what is not by default; people want to know what is canon to THAT story. I'm not disagreeing that they can retcon the manga or even remove it from the canon altogether. I'm just saying that is incredibly stupid and wouldn't make sense since it's that timeline fans care about in the first place.
Yes, I agree that the manga forms its own continuity, but anything can form its own continuity, basically. And yes, it probably would be stupid.
My original point was that Toriyama saying random nonsense in interviews doesn't change what actually occurred in the original manga. It's already there, and Toei and Shueisha have the higher authority.
My Stan Lee example wasn't about my personal opinion of retcons. If it's official, then it's official. What I meant was that Stan Lee stating something does not make it official. He's one man. A pioneer and legend, but he does not hold the rights to Spider-Man just because he created the hero.
He might be just one man, but he is arguably the man with most moral authority over the character, as well as having certain legal rights to him. That makes him an official source. If he actually introduced those changes seriously, not as a joke or just a thought, and no other official source contradicted that, all we can really say is that we don't like the changes. We can always have our own fan canon, but that would be irrelevant for the actual canon.