Has the number of Kais per universe been retconned?

[Fizzer]

Back in Z, the Dragon World had four galaxies each with its own Kai, corresponding to the four cardinal directions. We've now seen that a universe contains a very large number of galaxies, much more like the one we live in, so does each universe now have countless Kais, one per galaxy, rendering titles like "North Kai" a bit meaningless?

Or was the old Funimation dub ironically right all along when it said each Kai watches over a "quadrant" of the universe? That would be quite funny.

[Marco Polo]

Officially it's four galaxies. The pictures of DB outer space that look like they have many many galaxies in them are just artistic licence.

[ankokudaishogun]

Also, plural and singular are more often than not context-dependent in Japanese.

Saying "Kaioh of the North Galaxy" or "Kaioh of the Northern Galaxies" can very well be written the same way

[Saturnine]

Officially it's four galaxies. The pictures of DB outer space that look like they have many many galaxies in them are just artistic licence.

Pretty sure Super doesn't perpetuate this state of affairs.

[Meshack]

No... It was never established why the Seventh Universe had four and why the others don’t. Just wait for a future guidebook

[shadowfox87]

Do you mean the Kaioshins or the Kais? We have seen the Kaioshins of each universe but not the Kais. Zamasu was stated to be the North Kai of Universe 10 which means there must have been Kais for South, East, and West. The official DBZ manga mentioned that there were 5 Kaioshins in Universe 7, where North and West got killed by Buu, South and Dai Kaioshin got absorbed, leaving only East Kaioshin (Shin), to survive. Then, we found out later that there's a link between a Kaioshin and a Hakaishin, that killing one, kills the other. How this link is established is unknown especially if there are multiple Kaioshins. We know that there's only 1 Grand Kaioshin per universe.

In Future Trunks timeline, Shin got killed which killed Beerus. The Rou Dai Kaioshin sealed in the Z-sword never came out, making only 1 official Kaioshin for universe 7. I think that, the number of Kaioshins can change with a maximum of four for each quadrant of the universe with 1 Grand Kaioshin. The reason that Shin is linked to Beerus and not the Rou Dai Kaioshin / Old Kaioshin is because he's retired. When Buu absorbed the actual Dai Kaioshin, he became Fat Buu. Yet, Beerus is still alive and somehow the link between Kaioshin and Hakaishin, transferred to Shin. If this is true, then in order to kill a Hakaishin, all Kaioshins would have to be killed. To make it easier for the fans and also for the writers, I do think they retconned it to 1 Kaioshin per universe.

[Marco Polo]

Maybe there's only supposed to be one Kaioshin in each universe, but the (Grand) Kaioshin from U7 divided his role with 4 other people as additional protection for Beerus (meaning that to kill Beerus one has to defeat 5 gods instead of just 1).