What's Canon ? We Finally Have an Answer

[PhantomSaiyan]

I mean canon is what you want it to be, isn't it? I think that's a pretty agreeable statement.

Although I have to say based on some of the story decisions that Toriyama certainly appeared to have an idea of a canon. Not one without continuity errors, he's a forgetful old man and things slipped past him like we see in Daima with Kibitokai and the Potara mechanics being different or more minor stuff like Goku not going SS4 against Beerus or how Super's existence negates Bulma's "We haven't seen you in 5 years" comment. But it definitely looked like he viewed the DB manga, Super (especially the manga and movies BoG, RoF, Broly, Super Hero), and Daima as HIS body of work and that the Z movies and GT are elseworld type deals that he doesn't consider his.

I don't think those details slipped past him at all. He simply didn't care. He needed Shin defused because his siblings were in the story so he defused him without second thoughts.
They needed a new transformation for a new show because that's how modern Dragon Ball is usually handled, so they made Goku turn into a SSJ4.
Those aren't continuity errors since Daima and Super clearly aren't meant to be linked. They share common elements and lore but that's about it.

Some of the stuff he did more recently, particularly Broly and Daima, consisted of him taking ideas from Broly, Fusion Reborn, Dragon Ball GT, and re-appropriating them into his own timeline. Daima is kind of Toriyama doing his own version of GT between the "everyone is kids again" premise and of course SS4 Goku at the end. It's not like Toriyama is JUST doing fanservice and having the Broly we know and love show up in a new movie, it's a complete re-imagining of the character, it's his own version of Broly. Dragon Ball Minus is his own version of the Bardock story.

Bringing back Broly, Gogeta, SSJ4, and other older elments can be attributed more to Akio Iyoku and his nostalgia driven brand of Dragon Ball and not to Toriyama. They usually just proposed ideas to him, and he accepted them and put his own spin to them, but he most definitely did not choose to bring those characters and concepts back himself.

Like if Toriyama was alive and Super kept going I think they probably would have tried to introduce Daima elements like the tertian oculus or the demon world into it at some point, but now that Toriyama is not here to be the guiding hand Toyble might possibly leave Daima alone. Of course, Toyble knew Toriyama personally, so I could just be wrong. That's just how I'm currently seeing things.

I agree they most definitely would have introduced Daima elements into Super just like Super elements were introduced in Daima. Still different continuity though.
I can't see them trying to convince people that the two stories happened in the same continuity of events, especially considering how fractured the franchise is at this point, Daima and Super pretty much represent the two factions of the rights war making their own Dragon Ball, Akio Iyoku with Daima, and Shueisha with Super.
I always saw the continuity errors between the two as emblematic of the power struggle going on at the current moment with the franchise's rights

[JulieYBM]

I'm such a broken record on the subject, but I think canon and battle power fetishization is a huge problem in modern fandoms in general and get away from the root of good storytelling and character writing being the focus of how we approach art. I think Dragon Ball as a franchise really highlights this with how little Toriyama ever really cared about consistent details across all the projects that he had a bigger hand in.

I always said canon, at least how it pertains to Dragon Ball, is only useful when needing to explain why certain things are outright discarded or contradicted. Stuff like “If Piccolo told Vegeta he would lose his body in hell so he could be cleansed and reborn why did all the villains still have their bodies in hell in the Otherworld Tournament arc?” or “Why did the all seeing Kaio tell Goku that Planet Vegeta’s Kami-sama destroyed the planet with a meteor shower when he would know it’s Freeza?” At the end of the day it doesn’t mean anything beyond that and a lot of of fans are doing disservice by refusing to watch anything that’s “non-canon” at which point they might as well just read the manga and ignore the animation entirely.

Yeah, it's like, very nuch something that I think we need to just shrug our shoulders over most times. Star Trek is more anal about canon, for example, but for Dragon Ball, it's very much a case of, "What’s more interesting to do" for stories, which I think is a good thing.

[funrush]

I mean canon is what you want it to be, isn't it? I think that's a pretty agreeable statement.

Although I have to say based on some of the story decisions that Toriyama certainly appeared to have an idea of a canon. Not one without continuity errors, he's a forgetful old man and things slipped past him like we see in Daima with Kibitokai and the Potara mechanics being different or more minor stuff like Goku not going SS4 against Beerus or how Super's existence negates Bulma's "We haven't seen you in 5 years" comment. But it definitely looked like he viewed the DB manga, Super (especially the manga and movies BoG, RoF, Broly, Super Hero), and Daima as HIS body of work and that the Z movies and GT are elseworld type deals that he doesn't consider his.

I don't think those details slipped past him at all. He simply didn't care. He needed Shin defused because his siblings were in the story so he defused him without second thoughts.
They needed a new transformation for a new show because that's how modern Dragon Ball is usually handled, so they made Goku turn into a SSJ4.
Those aren't continuity errors since Daima and Super clearly aren't meant to be linked. They share common elements and lore but that's about it.

I think I've read a few times that Toriyama was not good at keeping track of continuity and had to be reminded about things by his editors. So that makes me wonder if perhaps Daima's Kibitokai lore comes down to a situation like Toriyama writes the outlines, he dies, and if he hadn't died they would have been like "Hey we should come up with a different explanation for this part" but since he wasn't around anymore they just went with what he wrote errors and all. I would not say it's "clearly" supposed to be separate from Super considering most of the differences aside from the Kibitokai thing are either ignorable or easy to explain in away in future Super chapters. Continuity errors like "Goku uses SS3 against Beerus and says it's his final form" are the kinds of errors that we're trained to believe are small enough to be swept under the rug anyway because we already have to disregard Bulma in EoZ saying "We haven't seen you in 5 years" for Super to even be able to work in the first place unless you're one of the few that believes EoZ is not canon in the Super timeline. It's really only the Kibitokai thing that sticks out like a sore thumb for Daima/Super compatibility because that's not just a character saying something wrong, it's a thing that's physically impossible.

BUT at the same time I could also totally buy that Toriyama meant for Daima to be its own thing not in line with Super. Because of the Kibitokai thing but also because why would you say the creator of the universe is someone that's not Zeno? Surely he wouldn't have forgotten a somewhat major character like Zeno and probably either meant for the Rymus line to indicate Daima is a separate timeline from Super or perhaps was setting up a plotline to explore further in new chapters of Super. And it would explain Toyotaro's statement about "Choose your own canon" if Toriyama himself was approaching the sequels as a "choose your own adventure" sort of deal. In which case the only thing that's truly "canon" is the original manga because that's the base work that all these new things are sequels to.

[JulieYBM]

Toriyama forgot that Super Saiyan 2 existed and thought that Super Saiyan 3 was 'Super Saiyan 2' during the production of Battle of Gods, so he's definitely prone to forgetting stuff. While I, personally, as a writer would be more anal about that sort of thing, I also really don't blame him for not caring because of a change in attitude.

[Grimlock]

we already have to disregard Bulma in EoZ saying "We haven't seen you in 5 years" for Super to even be able to work in the first place

You keep bringing this up, but when was the last time Bulma saw Goku really? And which year do you think that happened?

Continuity errors like "Goku uses SS3 against Beerus and says it's his final form" are the kinds of errors that we're trained to believe are small enough to be swept under the rug anyway

Goku not using "Super Saiyan 4" against Beerus (as well as Vegeta not using Super Saiyan 3) is just a wild contradiction as the Kibitoshin thing. Why are people willing to be so lenient about that? There is no workaround here, no sugarcoating, no sweeping under the rug. They are both contradictory enough to set Dragon Ball Daima and Dragon Ball Super in different continuities.
(And that's fine, really. More content for Multiverse. Now we can have four different Gokus to interact with each other. Goku from the movies/GT, Goku from the manga, Goku from Dragon Ball Super and Goku from Dragon Ball Daima... Two of them have similar "Super Saiyan 4" as their ultimate forms, but I guess it's still possible for that scenario to be interesting).

[funrush]

Bulma is in the Broly movie. That movie and the ToP take place after Bra is born so a safe bet would be that it takes place 2-3 years before EoZ.

I don't think Goku not using SS4 against Beerus is as wild as the Kibitokai thing. We know Goku is coy about forms sometimes. He purposely doesn't show Vegeta SS3 in the Buu arc. At the end of Daima we see that he'd been hiding Super Saiyan 4 from Vegeta as well. So I don't think it's out of character that he'd save it as a last resort when he's fighting Beerus on King Kai's world, although that opens an additional question of why Goku wants to try out this Super Saiyan God thing instead of trying out SS4 on him later on, but maybe he knew already that SS4 wouldn't be enough.

[Yellow Flower King]

I know without a source this might as well be a "TRUST ME BRO" statement, but Toriyama said in an interview he REALLY doesnt care if his new ideas create inconsistencies, because when he tried to care he realized he would never do anything new with the franchise.

[Grimlock]

Bulma is in the Broly movie. That movie and the ToP take place after Bra is born so a safe bet would be that it takes place 2-3 years before EoZ.

Bra's birth year is AGE 780 and we actually get to see her birth, which can only mean Universe Survival saga takes place in AGE 780. There's no reason to assume Dragon Ball Super Broly occurs that much later after the tournament, so you are safe to place it in the same year. That's four years before "end of Z". So is Bulma's statement really contradicted when there's something called "rounding up" that can still be used?

We know Goku is coy about forms sometimes. He purposely doesn't show Vegeta SS3 in the Buu arc.

For a reason, Super Saiyan 3 would drain his time limit. There was absolutely no reason to hide "Super Saiyan 4" from Beerus. In fact, Goku was presenting his transformations to him, stating their names and all. This is even made more absurd in the Dragon Ball Super manga continuity, where in that warming-up tournament, Whis says Goku has five transformations and he was asked to show them all.

If anything, there's more evidence pointing to the fact that Goku isn't "coy" about this at all. He showed Super Saiyan Grade 2 and 3 to Gohan, he showed Super Saiyan 3 to Goten and Trunks, he showed Super Saiyan 3 to Trunks, he showed Super Saiyan 3 to Caulifla. He only "hides" a form if he needs to, which only happened one time. That and the apparent fact that Goku loves to cycle through his transformations, as he has done that thrice now.

At the end of Daima we see that he'd been hiding Super Saiyan 4 from Vegeta as well.

Nothing happened between Buu and the Daima villain, so no reason to show anything. Also, Goku says he wasn't sure it would work, which suggests that was the very first time Goku transformed into it. If he hid something, then it was that he was training to surpass Super Saiyan 3, not that he hid the form itself.

[WittyUsername]

Since we brought up Bulma, let’s not forget that an important plot point in the Broly movie is that Bulma wants to use the Dragon Balls to make herself younger and Super Hero shows that she essentially uses the Dragon Balls for cosmetics. That doesn’t really jibe with the anti-aging bugs in Daima. Of course, it also doesn’t jibe with the fact that Bulma has visibly aged in the epilogue of the manga.

[JulieYBM]

Since we brought up Bulma, let’s not forget that an important plot point in the Broly movie is that Bulma wants to use the Dragon Balls to make herself younger and Super Hero shows that she essentially uses the Dragon Balls for cosmetics. That doesn’t really jibe with the anti-aging bugs in Daima. Of course, it also doesn’t jibe with the fact that Bulma has visibly aged in the epilogue of the manga.

The bugs just go to show a pattern for Blooma's behavior.

Also, like, girl...just have a skincare routine! It does wonder for your skin, especially for a rich bitch who can afford rhe best products!

(This is how you know women have no input on this script)

[Scsigs]

I'm such a broken record on the subject, but I think canon and battle power fetishization is a huge problem in modern fandoms in general and get away from the root of good storytelling and character writing being the focus of how we approach art. I think Dragon Ball as a franchise really highlights this with how little Toriyama ever really cared about consistent details across all the projects that he had a bigger hand in.

I always said canon, at least how it pertains to Dragon Ball, is only useful when needing to explain why certain things are outright discarded or contradicted. Stuff like “If Piccolo told Vegeta he would lose his body in hell so he could be cleansed and reborn why did all the villains still have their bodies in hell in the Otherworld Tournament arc?” or “Why did the all seeing Kaio tell Goku that Planet Vegeta’s Kami-sama destroyed the planet with a meteor shower when he would know it’s Freeza?” At the end of the day it doesn’t mean anything beyond that and a lot of of fans are doing disservice by refusing to watch anything that’s “non-canon” at which point they might as well just read the manga and ignore the animation entirely.

The first one's more of the anime staff adapting the scenes from the manga straight without caring for their OWN continuity from the anime as established in prior filler, then adding a scene that contradicts the line episodes later during the Goku VS Kid Buu fight. Z's filler is outright bad for mainly the contradictory elements like that. It's why Kai (if The Final Chapters was more cut down in the later half) is the better thing to watch. Whether you enjoy the objectively better filler moments or not, when it's contradictory, it's bad.

[MasenkoHA]

I'm such a broken record on the subject, but I think canon and battle power fetishization is a huge problem in modern fandoms in general and get away from the root of good storytelling and character writing being the focus of how we approach art. I think Dragon Ball as a franchise really highlights this with how little Toriyama ever really cared about consistent details across all the projects that he had a bigger hand in.

I always said canon, at least how it pertains to Dragon Ball, is only useful when needing to explain why certain things are outright discarded or contradicted. Stuff like “If Piccolo told Vegeta he would lose his body in hell so he could be cleansed and reborn why did all the villains still have their bodies in hell in the Otherworld Tournament arc?” or “Why did the all seeing Kaio tell Goku that Planet Vegeta’s Kami-sama destroyed the planet with a meteor shower when he would know it’s Freeza?” At the end of the day it doesn’t mean anything beyond that and a lot of of fans are doing disservice by refusing to watch anything that’s “non-canon” at which point they might as well just read the manga and ignore the animation entirely.

The first one's more of the anime staff adapting the scenes from the manga straight without caring for their OWN continuity from the anime as established in prior filler, then adding a scene that contradicts the line episodes later during the Goku VS Kid Buu fight. Z's filler is outright bad for mainly the contradictory elements like that. It's why Kai (if The Final Chapters was more cut down in the later half) is the better thing to watch. Whether you enjoy the objectively better filler moments or not, when it's contradictory, it's bad.

Kai failed to live up to its own premise in the literal first second and the official most accessible version has a horrendous representation of Kikuchi’s work. I don’t know if I would call it the better thing to watch. It’s just shorter.

And that’s before we get in the trainwreck that was The Final Chapters

[JulieYBM]

I always said canon, at least how it pertains to Dragon Ball, is only useful when needing to explain why certain things are outright discarded or contradicted. Stuff like “If Piccolo told Vegeta he would lose his body in hell so he could be cleansed and reborn why did all the villains still have their bodies in hell in the Otherworld Tournament arc?” or “Why did the all seeing Kaio tell Goku that Planet Vegeta’s Kami-sama destroyed the planet with a meteor shower when he would know it’s Freeza?” At the end of the day it doesn’t mean anything beyond that and a lot of of fans are doing disservice by refusing to watch anything that’s “non-canon” at which point they might as well just read the manga and ignore the animation entirely.

The first one's more of the anime staff adapting the scenes from the manga straight without caring for their OWN continuity from the anime as established in prior filler, then adding a scene that contradicts the line episodes later during the Goku VS Kid Buu fight. Z's filler is outright bad for mainly the contradictory elements like that. It's why Kai (if The Final Chapters was more cut down in the later half) is the better thing to watch. Whether you enjoy the objectively better filler moments or not, when it's contradictory, it's bad.

Kai failed to live up to its own premise in the literal first second and the official most accessible version has a horrendous representation of Kikuchi’s work. I don’t know if I would call it the better thing to watch. It’s just shorter.

And that’s before we get in the trainwreck that was The Final Chapters

I would definitely say that they're both bad adaptions in general, which is why I propose so often the merits of a new animated adaption ofthe Dragon Ball comic. You can, in fact, create something easier to digest than either Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Kai, they simply need to hire a series director with an actual vision and the benefit of hindsight.

[WittyUsername]

Regarding Kai, the fact that it opens with showing us Goku’s backstory and the destruction of Planet Vegeta always came across like a baffling decision to me. I get them opening the series with a recap of the pre-Raditz stuff so new viewers wouldn’t be completely lost, but why did they feel the need to tell us that Goku is an alien and that Freeza is a thing at the very start of the series? Those were both presented as big reveals in their original context.

All in all, I think Kai is fairly pointless. I see it less as a more faithful adaptation of the manga and more as a condensed version of the old anime. The only worthwhile thing to come out of its existence is a better English dub.

[BernardoCairo]

I don't see the problem with saying that the manga is the "main" story and that all subsequent series build upon it. This doesn't detract from the anime adaptations, it's just a fact. Sure, the anime introduced many iconic elements to the Dragon Ball world (especially the sound design and music), but it still goes out of its way to follow the manga, which is the original work.

[JulieYBM]

Dragon Ball Kai is clearly a producer-driven work, rather than a creator-drive work, and that's why it feels very organized to keep an audience's attention with that prologue scene, rather than tell a story, which is what a proper series director would have just done. Dragon Ball Kai cheaply filled a timeslot and helped sell some new merchandise, which is exactly what was asked of it.

[BernardoCairo]

In this regard, it did a good job. I know many people who started to watch Dragon Ball because of Kai, even if it's a flawed product.

[jjgp1112]

Regarding Kai, the fact that it opens with showing us Goku’s backstory and the destruction of Planet Vegeta always came across like a baffling decision to me. I get them opening the series with a recap of the pre-Raditz stuff so new viewers wouldn’t be completely lost, but why did they feel the need to tell us that Goku is an alien and that Freeza is a thing at the very start of the series? Those were both presented as big reveals in their original context.

All in all, I think Kai is fairly pointless. I see it less as a more faithful adaptation of the manga and more as a condensed version of the old anime. The only worthwhile thing to come out of its existence is a better English dub.

It was primarily a nostalgia product, so they were probably not thinking too hard about new audiences.

[Yellow Flower King]

Regarding Kai, the fact that it opens with showing us Goku’s backstory and the destruction of Planet Vegeta always came across like a baffling decision to me. I get them opening the series with a recap of the pre-Raditz stuff so new viewers wouldn’t be completely lost, but why did they feel the need to tell us that Goku is an alien and that Freeza is a thing at the very start of the series? Those were both presented as big reveals in their original context.

All in all, I think Kai is fairly pointless. I see it less as a more faithful adaptation of the manga and more as a condensed version of the old anime. The only worthwhile thing to come out of its existence is a better English dub.

It was primarily a nostalgia product, so they were probably not thinking too hard about new audiences.

Ironically that's mostly who consumed it, it was a hit with newcomers but with a fraction of what was done the first time.

[MasenkoHA]

Regarding Kai, the fact that it opens with showing us Goku’s backstory and the destruction of Planet Vegeta always came across like a baffling decision to me. I get them opening the series with a recap of the pre-Raditz stuff so new viewers wouldn’t be completely lost, but why did they feel the need to tell us that Goku is an alien and that Freeza is a thing at the very start of the series? Those were both presented as big reveals in their original context.

That too for sure.

Opening up your alleged “Manga only cut” with footage from an an anime exclusive tv special is itself a baffling decision, and if I remember right over half of Kai episode 1 is still anime filler, but also it ruins the build up. There is no “Who is Kakarot? What does this alien have to do with Goku?” ….what Goku is an alien?!?. It’s just laid all up front. It also gives the impression the pre-Raditz material doesn’t matter. “So this Goku is an alien sent to earth and his planet was destroyed and some stuff happened while he grew up but yada yada the story actually begins when he finds out he’s an alien”

All in all, I think Kai is fairly pointless. I see it less as a more faithful adaptation of the manga and more as a condensed version of the old anime. The only worthwhile thing to come out of its existence is a better English dub.

Bingo on both accounts. It advertises itself as the Akira Toriyama cut but it’s just a truncated edition of the Z anime with censorship