Canon and Dragonball

[TheMikado]

Just my two cents, but I feel that all works based on the Dragonball characters should be considered canon until such a point where it cannot fit into the greater continuity of the overall story. It I.E. If it fits into the stories preceding and following it without gross discrepancy then it should be considered part of the main timeline and story. Just my opinion but this would place all the Anime and most of the movies in the same storyline. Anything outside of that should be considered a what if scenario.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Of course, that leads questions such as "why is it important to you that there's an easy-to-follow proper timeline of events with no contradictions?" and that's just more opinions. The conversation seems to always eventually lead to a nihilistic rabbit hole. "Why don't these things fit?" -> "Why does it matter if it fits?" -> "Why does anything matter?"

It creates a pretty strong disconnect between different kinds of fans. The meta-franchise conscious can accept the notion of no canon, because they watch how the series is produced and can reasonably conclude that none of the rights holders care, but to a story-centric fan, who rightfully wants to series to stay coherent and enjoys putting the problematic pieces together, that can come off as not caring.

VegettoEX once posited that power level discussions get so heated because some of the people having them see it as a question of "hard math", rather than speculative conclusions drawn from a haphazard collection of information and assumptions. One fan might propose power numbers, another fan will disagree purely from intuition, and the first fan might say "But, the numbers the are right here! This isn't an interpretive thing!" The canon and consistency questions are similar.

[sintzu]

What's undefined is things that are retconned. The ending of the manga was changed, so which version is "canon", they were both written by Toriyama.

Just because Toriyama writes something doesn't make it "canon".

And the Champa arc is a sequel to the Resurection F arc, not the movie. The latter was mostly written by Toriyama, but the former wasn't. Should we still consider an arc "canon" if it continues part of a story that was loosely written by the creator ?

I'm not saying Super isn't canon, but how can we say where it stands if parts are canon and others aren't?

And they're both the exact same ending, changing minor details isn't enough to say we have 2 endings.

After the battle with Buu in the Kanzenban version we get a new panel of Vegeta getting up which wasn't in the original version so does that mean there are 2 versions of the Kid Buu battle ?

Toriyama is the original author so if he says something like BOG is part of his story then it's part of his story regardless of how that something came to be.

They're not different enough to say one is canon and the other isn't cause they have the exact same plot points.

Spoiler:

Goku and Vegeta train with Whis.

Freeza gets resurrected.

Freeza trains for 4 months and gains a new form.

He goes to earth with 1000 men who fight the Z fighters.

Goku and Vegeta fight Freeza.

Freeza blows up the earth after loosing to Vegeta.

Whis rewinds time and Goku kills Freeza.

What parts of Super aren't canon ? the main plot being written by Toriyama makes it canon by default.

[ekrolo2]

What's undefined is things that are retconned. The ending of the manga was changed, so which version is "canon", they were both written by Toriyama.

Just because Toriyama writes something doesn't make it "canon".

And the Champa arc is a sequel to the Resurection F arc, not the movie. The latter was mostly written by Toriyama, but the former wasn't. Should we still consider an arc "canon" if it continues part of a story that was loosely written by the creator ?

I'm not saying Super isn't canon, but how can we say where it stands if parts are canon and others aren't?

And they're both the exact same ending, changing minor details isn't enough to say we have 2 endings.

After the battle with Buu in the Kanzenban version we get a new panel of Vegeta getting up which wasn't in the original version so does that mean there are 2 versions of the Kid Buu battle ?

Toriyama is the original author so if he says something like BOG is part of his story then it's part of his story regardless of how that something came to be.

They're not different enough to say one is canon and the other isn't cause they have the exact same plot points.

Spoiler:

Goku and Vegeta train with Whis.

Freeza gets resurrected.

Freeza trains for 4 months and gains a new form.

He goes to earth with 1000 men who fight the Z fighters.

Goku and Vegeta fight Freeza.

Freeza blows up the earth after loosing to Vegeta.

Whis rewinds time and Goku kills Freeza.

What parts of Super aren't canon ? the main plot being written by Toriyama makes it canon by default.

Timeline issues, Vegeta knowing about Oob, Goku even caring about Oob anymore with fighters leaps and bounds better than he'll ever be already present. The last one is a particular problem because the manga ending acts like Kid Boo is the strongest guy Goku ever fought and the last 10 year have had nothing of interest happen. Maybe there's another re-write of EoZ happening and I do consider the new material to count more than say GT but to say it doesn't fit particularly well with the manga is an understatement.

The safest & best answer for all canon questions is this: the original 42 volumes are definitive canon, everything else can either come or go as you please.

[Kuririn Fan]

Freeza trains for 4 months and fights and dominates Gods. What will happen if Boo's reincarnation trained? People tend to forget that it's all about POTENTIAL. Manga's ending stays, that is the definitive Dragon Ball canon, everything else is arguable.

[Luke Groundwalker]

Just my two cents, but I feel that all works based on the Dragonball characters should be considered canon until such a point where it cannot fit into the greater continuity of the overall story. It I.E. If it fits into the stories preceding and following it without gross discrepancy then it should be considered part of the main timeline and story. Just my opinion but this would place all the Anime and most of the movies in the same storyline. Anything outside of that should be considered a what if scenario.

My general idea of the Dragonball franchise is by and large everything that isn't an outright adaptation (such as Dragonball Evolution) can all fit generally into one universe. Aka there won't ever be two different designs for something like SSJ4, hence why the SSJGod line was ever introduced as a power up in the first place. So basically, everything we see takes place in a single universe (Universe 7 to be specific) but it takes place in different continuities and alternate realities. There will always be one Broli, one Freeza, and etc. We won't ever see Toriyama outright attempting to rewrite anything that's already been established.