Dragon Ball Daima: Episode 20 - Official Discussion Thread

[BootyCheeksJohnson]

This is the first time in 3 decades that something makes me not want to be a fan of the series anymore.

After all the crap they put out with Super on a weekly basis, this is where you draw the line in the sand ?

I think people should stop seeing a work of art as an obligation and only engage with the art that they enjoy and have a fun time with. We should not feel obbligated to continually subject ourselves to art that is no fun to engage with. There is no sunk cost fallacy worth sinking further into frustration for.

I don't understand why some of the people on these weekly forums who hated Daima didn't just stop watching. I'm not trying to invalidate their feelings, but after awhile I don't understand why someone continues to engage with something that they know they won't enjoy.
There were multiple points during Super where I just dropped the series because I knew I wasn't liking it. Wait for the current season/story arc/series to end then come back to view opinions and if enough opinions line up with your previous disappointment you can just save your time to put towards something you can enjoy more.

[Vegard Aune]

As someone who is well aware that Dragon Ball has never been very consistent and who already thought Super had rendered the end of the manga implausible at best...

...I mean I still like for there to be a coherent through line across different entries of the story. If Daima wanted to be its own thing then fair enough, but the fact that the way it's written legit doesn't even allow for Super or GT to happen after it... is annoying. The fact that we have three (or potentially even five, if you want to separate Battle of Gods from Super's TV- and manga-adaptations of those events) contradictory timelines that all spin off from the defeat of Majin Boo, and that all on some level or another reach back into the manga for backstory material, retconning in new elements into it such as Arinsu having been present at Vegeta's Kamikaze attack, or Cranberi the Freeza soldier having been revived on Namek and run off to do his own thing until he eventually got imprisoned by the Galactic Patrol and met Moro in prison... It kinda messes with the illusion of the Dragon Ball world being a real place. It obviously isn't, but it's hard to even pretend when in one story sanctioned by the original author Kaioshin and Kibito defuse by making a wish upon the Namekian Dragon Balls, in another also sanctioned by him they defuse by having Boo swallow them and spit them back out, and in yet another that the original author admittedly was not part of but which was still treated as the "official" sequel for like 15 years they never defused at all.

[theherodjl]

Tbh, DB Daima felt like an excuse by Toriyama to lore dump the demon realm/extended multiverse in the form of an anime rather than just another interview or guidebook section, and you know what? I'm all for it.
DB has never been a masterpiece in storytelling or something that required a deep interpretation to understand. If Toriyama wanted more fights & gags while also paying homage to concepts from GT/Super, is there something seriously wrong with that?

On a particular note, I actually really like how the fusion bugs were a red herring in the end, and that Goku would incapacitate the villain with SSJ4 rather than fuse with Vegeta. After all, did we need to see fusion be a potential solution again not long after it was introduced & used against Majin Boo, in-universe? The arcs of DB tend to introduce something new in each arc, and while it was not explained so well, SSJ4 did serve to fulfill that purpose,

[MCDaveG]

I believe that Daima would work quite well even without the SSJ4 and it's inclusion feels pointless and stupid, as it's glaring fan service.

I was never happy with Broly and Bardock being re-written for the modern material because I always believed that they were utilized to their full potential in Z's 8th movie and 1st TV special. Ssj4 is by far one of the coolest designs to come out of this franchise, yet it didn't get a single memorable fight in GT. Whenever the conversation about "what should be canonized next" comes up, I always say to leave the past behind and do something new. Ssj4 is the one exception I'll make for the simple fact that it never got to truly shine in GT. Daima has finally given it not one, but two really well choreographed and animated fights that show just how amazing the form really is.

You can't keep writing off canon. It's clearly important to the fandom (and to maintaining good stories in general).

The problem with an established canon is that it prioritizes certain material over others, which in turn can end up costing the rights holders $$$. If they were to come out and say that Daima is the new canon moving forward, then chances are they'll lose money on Super's products due to fans no longer being interested in something that "doesn't count". Every part of the franchise brings in a lot of money for the companies involved with it, be it GT, the old movies, Super, etc..., so it would be counterproductive to come out and say "this and this count, while that and the other don't".

On that I quite disagree, as SSJ4 in GT had some cool techniques, that were actually named and Episode 57 actually surprised me on recent rewatch with great fighting and actually suprisingly superb writing and felt like watching a wuxia/Kung Fu movie, complete with dialogues and everything, killing off two villains and quite cool intro for the One Star Dragon...

While Daima was animated pretty well and had the best production a weekly DB series ever had, to me it felt shallow and uninspiring, mainly talking about the climax fight. It was just well animated punching.

While I agree on bringing back and rewriting Broly and Bardock as uninspiring, Broly to me is an exception, because Movie 8 actually felt the same way to me as the Daima fight in discussion... punching bags. In Daima, everyone gets pummeled by the boring villain until one last hit from attack. That magic fist was actually more interesting, as it was super weird and not just a kame hame ha
With Bardock, I am not a fan of that Superman rip-off parts, but I did enjoy the Granolah arc part with him.
And Broly actually got compelling character and the dynamic of abusive father and son was interesting to me in the movie.

I have enjoyed the parts of Daima with more characters and when it was trying to tell some story, it fell apart with fights, as they felt uninspiring in comparison to the original series run. I have seen this before already. Many times...
I'd like some new fighting techniques and creative Ki attacks over another transformation. More of the ''figuring it out'' dynamic, than just punching till it breaks... Gomah and everything around him was super dumb, except for taking the GT idea of turning the characters back to kids.

Opinions 100 people, 100 tastes. I am happy that you did enjoy Daima, I did not in the end. I wouldn't call it a bad series at all, it was fun for what it is, but I guess I am oversaturated with all the Dragon Ball content in general and besides Daima expanding on some lore, it's just there with everything else.
After so many years of consuming tons of stuff, watching the show on TV when I was 11 and now hitting 36, I guess it's hard to impress me with same things over and over or with superficial fan servicey stuff.

[JulieYBM]

After all the crap they put out with Super on a weekly basis, this is where you draw the line in the sand ?

I think people should stop seeing a work of art as an obligation and only engage with the art that they enjoy and have a fun time with. We should not feel obbligated to continually subject ourselves to art that is no fun to engage with. There is no sunk cost fallacy worth sinking further into frustration for.

I don't understand why some of the people on these weekly forums who hated Daima didn't just stop watching. I'm not trying to invalidate their feelings, but after awhile I don't understand why someone continues to engage with something that they know they won't enjoy.
There were multiple points during Super where I just dropped the series because I knew I wasn't liking it. Wait for the current season/story arc/series to end then come back to view opinions and if enough opinions line up with your previous disappointment you can just save your time to put towards something you can enjoy more.

Internet culture now is so built around controversy and having a big, shocking, angry opinion that I think it's basically taken over how a lot of loud people engage with the arts. I think that's pretty shitty, but it's kind of how things just are.

I mostly stuck around to see what my favorite animators were doing and to see if the story maybe turned around, but I also knew not to get all that emotionally invested in the potential for the series to suddenly be justifiable. I got more fun from the shared experience of being part of the zeigeist of people watching Daima then from Daima itself. I think that Dragon Ball Super was more fun to watch week-to-week, but that show looked like it was on its deathbed all the time, too, so that kind of fucked up the fun lol.

I think it's important that we keep in mind that we're not obligated to subject ourselves to shit that just isn't fun to watch or discuss, which is mostly why I'm glad that once Daima isn't The Big Thing anymore we can all go back to shitting our pants over blue-haired Saiyans with pronouns or whatever.

[fadeddreams5]

There's another plot hole at the very last scene nobody mentions. Bulma found a way to de-age her skin 10 years, and we see her use the dragon balls for cosmetics a lot lately too. However, in EoZ, Goku himself points out that she's aged a lot, and it's claimed she hadn't seen Goku for 5 years, which you know won't be true in Super.

Why can't these people just reveal infinite timelines? Sick of this "canon" argument. Only the manga should be canon, with the DBZ movies and some filler arcs being branching paths within it, and stuff like Super, Daima, and GT being branching paths after it.

[MCDaveG]

There's another plot hole at the very last scene nobody mentions. Bulma found a way to de-age her skin 10 years, and we see her use the dragon balls for cosmetics a lot lately too. However, in EoZ, Goku himself points out that she's aged a lot, and it's claimed she hadn't seen Goku for 5 years, which you know won't be true in Super.

Why can't these people just reveal infinite timelines? Sick of this "canon" argument. Only the manga should be canon, with the DBZ movies and some filler arcs being branching paths within it, and stuff like Super, Daima, and GT being branching paths after it.

I actually think to myself that it is like that. The original story has beginning and end and these are basically gaidens - sidestories to it.
Each works in it's respective story and timeframe, branching of the original, but they are not consistent or true to each other.

[Black Hawk]

Agreed with Mr Baggins on all points. (I've enjoyed lurking to follow his posts on various topics.) I have nothing objective to add, so I can only speak subjectively.

Daima is everything I could have ever hoped for in a Dragon Ball sequel: Following up my favorite arc, adding substantially to its lore, feeling like a JRPG in animated format, overflowing with Toriyama's humor and enthusiasm, demonstrating a distinct lack of fanservice that does not service the narrative (Think Yamcha and others getting brief spotlights in the Moro Arc.), disregarding the idea of going out of its way to maintain a continuity with any past work apart from the original manga, and, as Baggins described it, being GT done right.

(Following up on the Moro Arc bit, I'm probably the one Gohan fan who isn't displeased with his absence, especially if his inclusion would not have contributed to the story, whether his or Daima's.)

I was one of the early folks to watch GT around the time Dragon Ball was first entering the western world, and, while I adore GT for the nostalgia, later rewatches just did not feel like Toriyama's Dragon Ball the older I got and the more I understood narrative, character arcs, etc. GT will always hold a special place in my heart as my first anime, but I had longed to see it or something like it written like it was truly Dragon Ball, and Toriyama's final gift was just that.

That gift coming to a close on the one year anniversary of his having to leave us causes it to hit all the harder that this final gift is just that. Final. I will watch for updates on Dragon Ball as time goes on, but I doubt that anything will particularly interest me without Toriyama's pen behind it; Dragon Ball, then, has effectively concluded for me. (I've not played a Dragon Ball video game in my entire life and have no interest in doing so.)

These past four months of following Daima have been among the most enjoyable of my life in that regard. If Daima ends here, then I can lay Dragon Ball to rest with its creator and carry forth the lessons both have taught me.

I'll never forget Toriyama and how his work changed my life for the better. That alone is worth briefly reviving this account after nearly seven years to say so today.

"Keep moving forward." - Monty Oum

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I will watch for updates on Dragon Ball as time goes on, but I doubt that anything will particularly interest me without Toriyama's pen behind it; Dragon Ball, then, has effectively concluded for me.

This is where I stand as well. It was just revealed that Toriyama wasn't enthusiastic about working on Dragon Ball after Battle of Gods, which explains so much about why the modern era took such a nose dive after that movie. Daima was different, he was involved in everything from the story, designs, to even approving the scripts. Toriyama allowed GT to be set after the original manga in order to provide the new team of writers the chance to take the story anywhere they wanted; they failed. Toriyama agreed to supervise Super despite not being that keen on working on it; they failed as well. If GT and Super are the best Toei can do without Toriyama directly standing over their heads and going over every single detail, then I believe Dragon Ball has indeed concluded for me as well.

[fadeddreams5]

I will watch for updates on Dragon Ball as time goes on, but I doubt that anything will particularly interest me without Toriyama's pen behind it; Dragon Ball, then, has effectively concluded for me.

This is where I stand as well. It was just revealed that Toriyama wasn't enthusiastic about working on Dragon Ball after Battle of Gods, which explains so much about why the modern era took such a nose dive after that movie. Daima was different, he was involved in everything from the story, designs, to even approving the scripts. Toriyama allowed GT to be set after the original manga in order to provide the new team of writers the chance to take the story anywhere they wanted; they failed. Toriyama agreed to supervise Super despite not being that keen on working on it; they failed as well. If GT and Super are the best Toei can do without Toriyama directly standing over their heads and going over every single detail, then I believe Dragon Ball has indeed concluded for me as well.

The two best stories in franchise history, imo, were created without Toriyama's direct involvement: Bardock - Father of Goku and History of Trunks. If anything, Toriyama straight up butchered the former. Wrath of the Dragon and Fusion Reborn are also very good movies.

idk who was in charge of these stories, but there's hope, especially when we consider that the Moro arc was more Toyotaro's vision than Toriyama's.

[Mr Baggins]

Agreed with Mr Baggins on all points. (I've enjoyed lurking to follow his posts on various topics.)

Hey, I appreciate it! I'm glad you and a few others enjoy my contributions. Y'all are my motivation for posting them.

(Although with Toriyama gone, I can't imagine I'll be posting frequently for much longer. I'll probably live out the rest of my semi-retired Kanzenshuu days on the Video Games subforum, maaaybe the Super subforum in the unlikely event that Toyotaro continues his manga and I'm interested in whatever he's writing.)

[Vegeta th3 4th]

The two best stories in franchise history, imo, were created without Toriyama's direct involvement: Bardock - Father of Goku and History of Trunks. If anything, Toriyama straight up butchered the former. Wrath of the Dragon and Fusion Reborn are also very good movies. idk who was in charge of these stories, but there's hope, especially when we consider that the Moro arc was more Toyotaro's vision than Toriyama's.

Takao Koyama was in charge of all 13 Z movies and those 2 TV specials. He completely knocked it out of the park with those 2 specials, and the two movies you mentioned were really good. The other movies however, despite me enjoying them, were very generic. Bad guy shows up, Goku fights him, the end. That's fine for a 45-60 minute movie intended to be a side project, but not a long running series.

I personally believe that there are talented writers out there who can continue Dragon Ball in a meaningful way that respects the legacy of Toriyama, as well as bring something new to the table. I'll keep an open mind and give whatever they come up with a fair chance, I'm just not getting my hopes up.

[Scsigs]

Yes, there was.

Prove it. Show me an interview or video of an official person attached to Dragon Ball saying product A and B are canon, while product C and D are not.

Dragon Ball clearly has a "Canon" hinging on Toriyama's involvement:

By the way, Gogeta doesn’t appear in the original Dragon Ball manga; like Broli, he’s a movie-only character!! In other words, original author Toriyama-sensei‘s rewriting is an attempt at adding Broli and Gogeta to the Dragon Ball official history!!

The phrase translated here is 正史 (seishi), literally meaning “authentic” or “official” or “true history”; this same phrasing was used in a 2012 Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods press release. We have gone with “official history” here to match said previous translation; alternatively, this could be and has been translated as “canon”.

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations ... ll-report/

A new story in the official history of Dragon Ball is born, neither a spin-off nor a side-story, one that can be enjoyed by both children and parents, manga fans and anime fans.

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/2012/09/26/t ... l-z-movie/

The phrasing of BoG not being "a spin-off nor a side-story" is distinguishing it from a series like GT, which lacked the substantial amount of Toriyama's creative input to be considered "Canon" and he himself described as a "side-story"

Dragon Ball GT is a grand side-story of the original Dragon Ball, and it’ll make me happy for us to watch and enjoy it together.

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations ... ama-intro/

Thank you very much, Son Wukong.

Yeah there’s a canon. At this point it sadly is not that important regarding discussions, considering how every story from now on will not really be canonical.

But it’s clear Toriyama got so dissatisfied with Super that he took the chance to re-start the official continuation to his manga with Daima, thereby making it the new canon supplanting Super and related movies.

The fact he went so out of his way to really make it clear that this is not in the same continuity speaks volumes. And by logic, being this his last work, and being canon only one, Daima is the true one.

Of course it’s likely he wanted to reboot Super. He still took some elements from it and it wouldn’t have surprised me to see a new series with him being as involved as in Daima, retelling Super, or borrowing inspiration from it, from Battle of Gods but following Daima’s events.

Like, I don’t think he would have let go of Beerus and Whis in his canon, but unless he left out some more stories, they now are (if we don’t want to assume that BoG still happens quite similarly but with Super Saiyan 4 Goku, Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta etcetera).

This is a very simplistic &, frankly, wrong approach to looking at how Toriyama saw Super in the last year of his life. It also doesn't make any sense. Think about this for a second. He got involved in writing what would become Battle of Gods over a decade ago because the way Evolution turned out & how he was treated by Fox pissed him off enough that he wanted to show them how him being more involved or listened to would've turned out a much better final product. Which it did. He then produced Resurrection F, which you can definitely tell was rushed out the door to cash in on the hype BOG generated, especially because we only got Kai because Toei wanted to do another DB anime, but Toriyama wasn't interested at the time, so they'd want to capitalize on it ASAP. Then, Super was commissioned both by them & Shueisha & Toriyama started thinking up ideas for new arcs, which then became his plot outlines for them. After the show was done, he made 2 more movies that clearly had a lot of effort & passion put into them. He clearly didn't hate Super. Hell, he wasn't even gonna be involved much with Daima before he started helping out with writing it. He grew a new passion for Dragon Ball. Hell, he made the Jaco manga as a spin-off prequel to it as well.

Dragon Ball clearly has a "Canon" hinging on Toriyama's involvement:

Toriyama was involved in literally everything Dragon Ball related, be it manga, anime, games, etc... Toriyama wrote the Saiyan-Tsufurian was back story that was used in the Saiyan arc, then later for GT's Baby arc. Is that "canon"?

He was involved with GT to the extent that he provided some character designs & signed off on some of the early story stuff. Other than that, he was very hands-off because he'd just finished the DB manga & wanted to move on to other things.

So, I assume he contributed to the Tsufurian backstory, but let's be honest, he didn't do so for GT. Literally, it all comes from filler in Z where the anime staff wanted to expand upon backstories for filler purposes. Not a lot is actually said in the manga about them. I think they easily could've expanded upon it a bit in Super by having the Universe 7 Saiyans tell the U6 ones what happened to their Sadala at some point, but that's left ambiguous. So, the Toei writers took what was already established for their filler in Z & used it for a plot in GT that they pivoted to after they wrote a whole bunch of episodes for more one-off adventures in the first arc of GT, but realized they weren't writing much good. So, they crafted Baby from that. I have no problems with them doing that, but assuming Toriyama was directly involved writing more than he actually did for GT is just being blatantly wrong, sorry, man.

Yeah there’s a canon.

Great; which one is it? Super or Daima? Both were written by Toriyama, and both were written as continuations of the Buu arc.

To add to that, is the DBZ movie, Battle of Gods, the canon one, or the retelling in Super? And which Super is the canon one, the anime or manga, as things happen very differently in both?

The movie. Minus a few moments being different, where Bulma's party takes place, & what not, they're exactly the same in terms of plot, but the movie's better written & paced.

You asked for:

An interview or video of an official person attached to Dragon Ball saying product A and B are canon, while product C and D are not.

And I provided it to you. An official source calling DBS Broly part of Dragon Ball's "official history" and in turn excluding the Toei movies from being part of that "official history"

Now you're just moving goalposts, why ask for something if you never intended to budge on your initial viewpoint in the first place?

Toriyama was involved in literally everything Dragon Ball related

Please read posts properly before responding to them, you'd see that I provided further clarification on what I meant:

distinguishing it from a series like GT, which lacked the substantial amount of Toriyama's creative input to be considered "Canon"

Substantial being the key word.

Toriyama called Super a "casual continuation" of his original manga, which goes back to my original point that the original manga is on top, while everything else is equally below it.

And yet he didn't describe GT as being any kind of continuation of his original manga, he called it a "side-story".

Thank you.

-snip-

No. Don't ask me anymore questions until you engage with the official source you asked for:

By the way, Gogeta doesn’t appear in the original Dragon Ball manga; like Broli, he’s a movie-only character!! In other words, original author Toriyama-sensei‘s rewriting is an attempt at adding Broli and Gogeta to the Dragon Ball official history!!

The phrase translated here is 正史 (seishi), literally meaning “authentic” or “official” or “true history”; this same phrasing was used in a 2012 Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods press release. We have gone with “official history” here to match said previous translation; alternatively, this could be and has been translated as “canon”.

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/translations ... ll-report/

Are you really so stubborn that you're going to ignore it because it doesn't suit your agenda?

Yes. Yes he is.

You can't keep writing off canon. It's clearly important to the fandom (and to maintaining good stories in general)

How cool is it when you see Arinsu in the background of the Buu saga taking a piece of Buu? Or when Vegeta gets Super Saiyan 3 (I know these aren't great examples but was struggling to think on the spot).

The Vegeta example actually works out well. We've had SSJ3 Vegeta for like 15 years now. No one really cared or talked about it much because it wasn't canon. Now look at the hype around it. Vegeta finally got the form he's been missing all this time. It's the reason that smirk Vegeta gave when trunks asked about in hit so hard.

All prior story events make the moments so much more meaningful. The worst part is it's not even that hard to maintain canon. One person reading over the script could point out a few minor flaws and get them corrected.

Just one of those photos in the end credits could have been supreme kai and kibito accidentally eating a fusion bug. Would have been funny and solved heaps of issues. A line like Goku saying he doesn't have UI anymore at the end of Super also would have gone a long way.

Canon does matter, it's the reason half these threads mention it. Sure 50% might be on each side, but 50% is a big amount.

This is my point. Saying "Dragon Ball has no canon" is really dumb considering that if it has no canon like it's the fucking Simpsons or Spongebob or something, nothing matters at all in the series & the writers can pick & choose what matters, fuck the consequences of sticking to a coherent timeline of events. If there's no canon, then why are there movies whose set-ups & events are totally incompatible with the events of the series? Why are there 2 Brolys? Why are there 2 distinctly different versions of Hell portrayed in the franchise? Why can GT no longer take place in the main timeline of the manga (even though it couldn't in the first place, but whatever) because of Super? Does Path to Power happen? If there's no distinct canon of events, then nothing that happens matters & anything can happen at any time for any reason, fuck the history of events.

I believe that Daima would work quite well even without the SSJ4 and it's inclusion feels pointless and stupid, as it's glaring fan service.

I was never happy with Broly and Bardock being re-written for the modern material because I always believed that they were utilized to their full potential in Z's 8th movie and 1st TV special. Ssj4 is by far one of the coolest designs to come out of this franchise, yet it didn't get a single memorable fight in GT. Whenever the conversation about "what should be canonized next" comes up, I always say to leave the past behind and do something new. Ssj4 is the one exception I'll make for the simple fact that it never got to truly shine in GT. Daima has finally given it not one, but two really well choreographed and animated fights that show just how amazing the form really is.

Bardock was a needless retcon. His original special was already pretty great & Toriyama referenced it in the manga, with Bardock's original look. I think everyone acknowledges that.
Broly...um...he was a raging hulk in his original trilogy. His motivation for hating Goku is either so non-existent that it requires explanation of what the writers might have intended with him, which isn't even remotely explained in the original movie, leading to the joke that he was angry at Goku still for making him cry as a baby, which lead to the Saiyans overlooking the nursery to make fun of him. Which...to imply he'd remember that almost 30 years later is a stretch considering he was a literal newborn baby. He then let his anger issues get so out of hand that he unleashed his full power, killed his father, & spent the rest of the movie beating the shit out of the characters until Goku fisted his guts hard enough to kill him after a power-up. It's not exactly great storytelling.
Then his 2nd & 3rd movies came around for some reason & Broly was nothing more than a screaming hulk who lost any semblance of a personality, then became a giant blob monster made of brown cum. But, you only said the 8th movie.
Toriyama rebooting Broly into the main timeline & making him a tragic character the way he did was decently refreshing, especially since he improved upon the original character substantially, though that wasn't hard to do, tbh. That was the first instance of that actually happening after Bardock & in a way that a lot of people actually liked.

You can't keep writing off canon. It's clearly important to the fandom (and to maintaining good stories in general).

The problem with an established canon is that it prioritizes certain material over others, which in turn can end up costing the rights holders $$$. If they were to come out and say that Daima is the new canon moving forward, then chances are they'll lose money on Super's products due to fans no longer being interested in something that "doesn't count". Every part of the franchise brings in a lot of money for the companies involved with it, be it GT, the old movies, Super, etc..., so it would be counterproductive to come out and say "this and this count, while that and the other don't".

The fuck are you talking about? Merch popularity isn't usually dictated by what does & doesn't matter. What sells merch is if people want it & if the material it's based on is good to some extent. I mean, people still buy shit relating to GT & the old movies even though they don't matter anymore. This isn't hard to figure out. You really don't know anything about how merchandise works.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

There's another plot hole at the very last scene nobody mentions. Bulma found a way to de-age her skin 10 years, and we see her use the dragon balls for cosmetics a lot lately too. However, in EoZ, Goku himself points out that she's aged a lot, and it's claimed she hadn't seen Goku for 5 years, which you know won't be true in Super.

This has a potential easy fix, the de-age skin bugs turn out to be a scam.

[Dbzfan94]

I said it in the other thread but I think at this point we have to accept that in Toriyama's mind, the only true "canon" was the original manga he drew from 1984-95 and everything before and after that wasn't stated in the text is whatever you want it to be. GT, Super, Battle of Gods, Daima, etc are all just toys in a wide open sandbox of creativity.

The fandom would be better off if this were more widely understood. "This is canon!" "This isnt canon!"
Who cares? Everything is canon in its own continuity.

Exactly. Of course, Dragon Ball has a canon. Actually, it even exists on two different levels.

Overarching canon (established collection of works by the author Shueisha)
This includes everything officially approved and published by Shueisha.
Whether it's the manga, anime, movies, spin-offs, or games, they are all part of the franchise and fall under Shueisha's ownership.
From a legal and copyright standpoint, everything is "official Dragon Ball."

Storyline canon (different timelines)
Within the franchise, different storylines connect to form coherent timelines:
1. The main manga timeline (Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Super manga by Toriyama & Toyotarou).
2. The main anime timeline (Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball Super anime, including filler and adaptation differences). Overseen by Toriyama.
3. Standalone works like Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Heroes, and older movies that don’t align with the main storyline.

Keeping a story consistent within its own timeline is the foundation of storytelling—it gives meaning and logic to a sequence of events.
Right now, that logic is completely missing from the main anime timeline.

If Daima is part of the main anime timeline, then we already have three major inconsistencies: SSJ3 Vegeta, SSJ4 Goku and the defusion of Kibito and Shin. Either these inconsistencies will be addressed in a future arc after Daima (or in Daima Season 2) to align the storyline with Super. Or they won’t be explained at all—which would be astronomically lazy writing (even by Dragon Ball’s standards, where inconsistencies aren’t uncommon). Or Daima will establish an entirely new, separate anime timeline. But creating yet another timeline makes little sense when everything could easily fit within the main anime timeline with just a bit of extra explanation.

Claiming that Dragon Ball has no canon, and justify that as an argument for these major inconsistencies, is essentially saying that the story in itself doesn’t matter.

Super itself has multiple continuities. Why does everything have fit into Super? Further, which version of Super?

GT, Daima, and Super's various branches are all their own thing.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

He was involved with GT to the extent that he provided some character designs & signed off on some of the early story stuff.

How do you dictate what's canon and what isn't when Toriyama was involved with everything ? What's the criteria of Toriyama's involvement for us to say A is canon while B isn't ?

Merch popularity isn't usually dictated by what does & doesn't matter.

Key word is usually, not always. If they came out and said "this no longer matters", then chances are sales of certain things will go down. Even if it's not by a big percent, every dollar counts for these companies, which is why no one official has ever established a definitive canon.

People still buy shit relating to GT & the old movies even though they don't matter anymore.

Who said they don't matter ? All the companies involved promote them every chance they get alongside everything else.

You really don't know anything about how merchandise works.

I may not know how merchandise works, but I do know how fans think. Are you seriously going to tell me you don't think sales would be impacted at all, even slightly, if Toei came out and said something was no longer canon ?

There's another plot hole at the very last scene nobody mentions. Bulma found a way to de-age her skin 10 years, However, in EoZ, Goku himself points out that she's aged a lot.

This has a potential easy fix, the de-age skin bugs turn out to be a scam.

The woman selling them is over 1000 years old, yet she looks no older than 50. They're the most legitimate product to ever be put on the market.

[BernardoCairo]

Ssj4 is by far one of the coolest designs to come out of this franchise, yet it didn't get a single memorable fight in GT.

In my opinion, the Goku Super Saiyajin 4 vs. Baby fight was a solid one for GT standards. The problem is that GT, overall, is pretty underwhelming in this regard.
The fight against Gomah stands out as having the best choreography of any Super Saiyajin 4 battle by far.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

The Goku Super Saiyajin 4 vs. Baby fight was a solid one for GT standards. The problem is that GT, overall, is pretty underwhelming in this regard.

The fight started out well enough while Baby was still in his normal body, the problem was that we were stuck with him as a giant ape for 4 episodes with 0 choreography. The Super 17 fight was just Goku spamming Ki blasts, something he never did. The fights with the shadow dragons were as generic as fights could get. Dragon Ball at its core is a series about fighting, yet GT had no good fights. I don't get it. I give Super a lot of crap, but at least they had the sense enough to give us actual choreographed fights.

[Shineman]

Assuming there's no follow-up to Daima, I think the best approach for this kind of thing (as evident from various statements and interviews regarding the Dragon Ball franchise as a whole and their terminology of official history) is that everything is canon, and separate things as continuities instead.

I think it’s rather fine to consider Daima, Super, GT, Neko Majin as different branches of the original manga that could happen. Similar how the Dragon Ball films pre-Battle of Gods are alternate history for the series.

In addition, you have Legends, Xenoverse and Heroes which served as a sequel to Super and GT respectively (Heroes treating GT as an alternate history compared to Super). World Mission and Victory Mission is seemingly a direct sequel to GT. Dunno if it’s appropriate to consider Online as anything since it really didn’t get much traction and got repurposed for other things after it went defunct.

Basically, the manga is the “main story” which can branch out to different sequels, and some of those sequels can branch out even further (i.e. Victory Mission being a stealth GT sequel). Yet to see be seen regarding the future of Dragon Ball, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another “sequel” of Dragon Ball thrown in there down the line!

[BernardoCairo]

The Super 17 fight was just Goku spamming Ki blasts, something he never did.

Goku was REALLY stupid here. He wasted his time powering up Super 17 for no reason. He never spammed his Ki blasts like that, only against the one opponent who was immune to them