Dragon Ball should be understood as multiple valid continuities rather than a single "canon"

[GurixDr34]

Strictly Canon must be everything made by Akira Toriyama if Super or Daima continues without him without his planned story then it is not Canon technically but i also like to see that Dragon Ball is a Multiverse i enjoy all of Dragon Ball and for me everything is Canon and with the Rumors that there will be a Daima sequel with Daima being part of its own Universe different from Super the idea of ​​a Multiverse sounds more credible

[LoganForkHands73]

I like how you’ve categorised all these continuities and I find myself referring back to your post often for this personal DB themed project I’m working on — in the immortal words of Kaio-sama, very very nice.

I think there’s an argument to be made that the Super era movies should also be included in Toriyama’s film saga continuity, as well as that of the Super anime. The reason Super: Super Hero is titled the way it is is because Toriyama didn’t care for the Z/Super branding. To him, the movies were all just Dragon Ball. Aside from the several pointed references to the Tournament of Power arc, the films generally only seem concerned with maintaining continuity with each other so that audiences can follow them easily, without having seen the anime or manga.

Points in favour of this:
- Again, Toriyama didn’t care about the branding and there’s really nothing in the Super movies that outright discredits the movie tellings of Battle of Gods and Resurrection ‘F’. Toriyama still seemed to operate on the logical assumption that those were the purest versions of the stories most audiences would be familiar with, while the events of the ToP are vaguely referred to in exposition to fill the gaps and explain Freeza’s presence.
- No Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken in the movies.
- Freeza clearly has no idea about Fusion, despite having met Gotenks in the anime. Granted, a minor continuity error stemming from a filler scene that Toriyama undoubtedly had no say over.
- Both Battle of Gods and Broly clearly reference or allude to Tarble, whereas the anime entirely ignores his existence and by implication the events of the 2007 special.
- This is a small presentational detail, but it’s consistently implied that the gap between Beerus and the Saiyans’ power levels is not vast as, say, Toyotaro’s manga would later establish. It’s frequently stated that Beerus could be threatened by Goku, Vegeta and Broly at their current levels; similarly, Jiren is established to not be so far above Goku and Vegeta in strength.

One point against:
- The Super Saiyan God debacle. The two Z movies and behind-the-scenes statements insinuated that since Goku absorbed its power into himself during his battle with Beerus, then gained the so-called “Beyond God” powered-up base form, he would no longer need to go Super Saiyan God. That idea is obviously thrown out by the time of the Broly movie. For the best, if you ask me, because the red-haired form is still one of the GOATs in my eyes.

Anyway, food for thought.

[The Dark Knight]

I think Dragon Ball can be divided into 6 continuities:

1- The original manga written and drawn by Akira Toriyama.

2- The original anime run, which includes DB, Z, & GT, the 17 original movies, the 3 TV specials, and the Hatchyach OVA.

3- The modern movies, which include the 2008 Tarbel special, BOG, RF, Broly, and Superhero.

4- The first modern anime run, which includes Kai, Super 1.0, and the Heroes anime.

5- Toyotaro's manga, which can include Jaco and Minus (I know Toriyama drew those).

6- The second anime run, which includes Daima and Super 2.0.

[Saiya6Cit]

I find the canon debate to be absolutely pointless, boring and sometimes counterproductive.

Agreed.

There are many dragon balls right? pick your favorite. Accept the contradictions made by Toriyama Himself. Accept that a product that has been around for over 40 years has passed by the hands of many, whom inevitably have their own interpretation and understanding of the series and therefore they are prone to make mistakes.

I support the multiverse theory VS the canon one. There can't be canon when the author himself admitted having "forgotten" things about the series.

[Kid Buu]

For me Dragon Ball is like the Halloween franchise, there's just multiple timelines and versions.

[Zephyr]

I think it's a mistake to conflate Canon and Continuity. One significant and important way in which they diverge is that a Canon is basically a collection of works sharing a trait that has out-of-universe significance, while a Continuity is basically a collection of works sharing a trait that has in-universe significance. Dragon Ball does have something that is referred to as a Canon, and it seems to basically be "The Collection of DB Stuff Written By Toriyama". Dragon Ball having multiple Continuities is something that is as clear as day and we don't need anybody to tell us, although they have told us. I think the OP's breakdown of the various Continuities that do exist is pretty good, though maybe not exactly how I see it broken up in every instance.

The real sticking point is that some fans want to infer and piece together the definitive in-universe Continuity of "The Collection of DB Stuff Written By Toriyama". But Toriyama has 'written' several things that exist in different continuities! So it's a fool's errand. At best you could say that the Canon contains multiple Continuities, and I'm pretty sure that's the last thing that those trying to decode this are after. When people say "Dragon Ball doesn't have a canon", I'm pretty sure this is the specific bit of nuance they're meaning to capture.

[Hellspawn28]

I always felt like Dragon Ball has multiple continuities similar to how franchises like Godzilla, Halloween, etc does. With each of them having their own timeline of events.

[angeldreamZ004]

I really like this view, it's very close to my concept that two Supers exist, a Vanilla Super (movies) and a Deluxe Super (movies + anime & manga arcs), the former being more "Pure Toriyama" than the latter given what we know about his involvement.
I never realized though that Tarble and Beerus' strength were recurring elements of it, so good work in pointing them out.

The Tarble part being a bit off if you think about it, since the movies are meant to not reference the anime / manga arcs that much in order to keep things easy to follow, at the same time you have them referencing a short manga / anime story that is available in Japan only, which means that, like you said, this continuity will reference material from outside, such as the anime / manga elements (ToP / Jiren).

That said, I would also like to include a few other things, which I think may be useful for your project, or not, as a big part is just me speculating.

-The Jaco manga, as to me it's pretty clear that Toriyama also viewed it as part of this continuity, given how he decides to use the character and elements of its story (especially Minus) in the 2015 and 2018 movies as if people were already used to them, years later, you'll see panels of this same manga being used to show “Toriyama's Dragon Ball continuity” in the Genkidamatsuri event 40th Anniversary video, and obviously, the original manga, as Toriyama did not view any of the adaptations of his manga as part of his continuity, only his own manga.

Another thing, it's pretty clear that the movies are treated as the leading / forefront media in this era's storytelling, it had to address the anime (ToP) due to Freeza's return, bht the anime / manga had to strictly follow what was established by the movies, that means.

-Broly was not allowed to be used in the arcs between his movie and Super Hero since Toriyama was already working in the sequel movie for Broly. I think that while he was working on this next movie, he would let Toyotaro handle the next arc in the manga all by himself (Moro), but not allow him to use Broly.

-Goku is not supposed to use Ultra Instinct at free will, so he won't be seen using it in the movies, and this becomes very clear with the manga, where in the ToP, Goku can clearly activate UI by himself. After the pages telling that the Broly events happened, “mysteriously” we fall into the same narrative seen at the end of the anime, saying that Goku has lost access to it. I believe this was already made with the Movie in mind, but Toyotaro wasn't so aware of it, so the manga version of that narrative ends up not making much sense, he simply had to follow Toriyama's outlines, which very likely featured Goku losing UI, but not how, which maybe confused Toyotaro.

The movies also have visual mandates over the anime and manga, that means:

-Goku and Vegeta in the anime and manga start wearing the same uniforms they wear in the 2013 movie, as the Beerus saga is an adaptation of it. That repeats with their Whis Symbol uniforms in the Golden Freeza arc, which are kept for the Champ arc.

-Once the Champa arc ends, and the Zamasu arc starts, both anime and manga are free to use the designs they want, so the anime reverts back to the Battle of Gods designs for both Goku and Vegeta, while the manga does the same for Vegeta but has Goku switching back to his Androids-Boo Saga Gi.

-However, once reaching the Super Hero saga, everyone have to switch to their designs seen in the movie, that means in the manga Goku reverts back to his Freeza Saga Gi, which was very likely Toriyama's view of it post-ToP, as he also wears it in the Broly movie. Gohan also changes to his design used in the movie, and Piccolo's colors also follow the same color palette used for him in the movie (which is the same color palette he had in the original manga. In the Super colored manga, excluding the Super Hero arc, the color palette used for him is based on the anime, which were used until DBS Broly)

-In the page dedicated to DBS Broly in the Super Manga Chapter 42, you can see Goku with a symbol on his back in the art where he's fighting Broly alongside Vegeta, meaning that a hypothetical “Broly Saga” in the manga would also have to follow the movie's design and you can see this with the flashbacks of the movie in a few future chapters (though it seems that Toyotaro forgot to use it in the Bonus Story, as Goku appears with the Androids-Boo Saga Gi instead)

I think it's also interesting to address the production part, for example, this is just an hypothesis, but you mentioned the case involving SSJ God.

I think it's very likely that we see it in DBS Broly because keeping the red form was a decision made by Toriyama prior to any of the new arcs in Super.
What I mean is that Toriyama actually retconned the entire “Saiyan Beyond God” idea for the arc retellings of Battle of Gods and Fukkatsu no F, meaning that the arc version of the former would keep the Red Form, while arc version of the latter would exclude the “Saiyan Beyond God” form.

The problem is that this didn't make into the anime version of Super initially, as Toei for the Beerus Arc still decided to follow the same concept from the movie's script for some reason, which is something that Akio Iyoku decided to repeat in the Super remaster / remake, as he himself said that he decided to stay closer to the “original script” and not the new one that Toriyama made.

This tells me that Super was intended to retcon the Super Saiyan God from the beginning, and we only got to see this successfully working with consistency in the manga, where Goku keeps the red form. I believe this is how Toriyama viewed it, he intended for the arc version of that movie’s story to retcon that idea, which is why we see SSJG in DBS Broly. In the anime, we only start to witness the retcon in the Golden Freeza arc, where there's no Saiyan Beyond God, only Base form straight up to SSJB.

(It makes me wonder, if it wasn’t for the anime, would DBS Broly use SSJG at all? Or it would be thanks to the manga? Similarly to how it’s done to Vegeta? Though I don’t think Vegeta using the form in the movie is necessarily because of the manga)

There’s also the detail regarding Vegeta’s outfit. We know that Super Hero started being made before the Broly movie was even released.
In that movie, Vegeta switches to his Boo Saga outfit. In the Granola saga, we can see that he does that in the middle of the arc, which could lead to many speculate that the change in Vegeta's outfit in the movie was made with the Granola saga in mind.
But Vegeta's design for the movie was very likely already decided prior to the Granola arc. So it's actually the opposite, the change in Vegeta's outfit in the Granola arc was made because of the movie.

Now, the manga in the latest arcs, created a little problem. It introduced new forms for 3 important characters in the movies, which are Black Freeza, Ultra Ego Vegeta and Controlled SSJ Broly, and there's no anime equivalent for that (yet), meaning that if these new forms were to appear in a potential next movie, references to the arcs where they debut would be necessary, the same way references to the ToP are made in Broly and Super Hero to explain why Freeza's alive.

So Vanilla Super would have to once again address events exclusive to Deluxe Super.
But this time it was more complicated, as the arcs where the new forms debut were made after the latest Movie, and there was also no anime for more casual fans to follow and understand the story.

This could actually be a possible reason why they decided to retell Super Hero in the manga, in order to erase this problem, unify the two Super storylines, making it more linear, so potential new movies wouldn't see the need of facing that problem again. The anime would eventually catch up to those stories (something we'll be expecting with the start of Super anime 2.0)

I agree, and there were even specific scenarios where Toriyama himself showed that he wasn't really bothered about setting the continuity for the production he was working on. So for example Daima, is it supposed to be in the same continuity as Super? No one knows, it's supposed to take place after the Boo Saga, that's all, which is the same idea behind Super. There's also the detail that Toriyama got involved in pretty much “3 different continuities” for Super, all of them with their own particular traits, but also following the same roots, so all of them are supposed to consider the Jaco manga (DBMinus), but only one of them reference the Tarble OVA / Manga.

One thing I think it's bizarre is that a lot of people consider Minus / Super Bardock as the one and only version of the character by Toriyama, “Toriyama's Bardock” basically, as if he retconned the TV special from 1990, to “Make Bardock canon”. When in reality, Toriyama already had his version of Bardock back then in the original manga, which was visually identical to the TV special. So what Toriyama “retconned” was his own view of Bardock present in his original manga, and still, this is exclusive to the Jaco manga and Super, which are a separate continuity. So a “Bardock was never canon prior to Minus” scenario never actually existed!
(Obviously, a lot of people like to hate on Minus / Super Bardock, so they ignore these details and treat it as if it was Toriyama's only version of the character, so they can say that Toriyama ruined the character and his story. But it being good or not is not my point, I only brought this up because I genuinely saw many people ignoring this detail)

[Grimlock]

• Gregory appears in Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return (OVA version).

Gregory appears in the manga too.

5. The Super Manga Continuity – (...)

• Includes the Toei design of Yardrats and a design based off the Dragon Ball Online design of Yardrats.
• Olibu is included in a cameo despite aspects of The Other World saga (Frieza breaking out of Hell) not being possible in this continuity.

Vegeta has bangs here.

8. Manga Side Projects Continuities – These include the events of Neko Majin, [/i]Neko Majin Z, Jaco: The Galactic Patrol Man, and Dragon Ball Minus. These are spinoffs, light continuations, or retroactively inserted material that doesn’t contradict the Dragon Ball (manga) series.

Neko Majin, Jaco, the Galactic Patrolman and Dragon Ball Minus, all contradict the original manga.

• Neko Majin has Vegeta working for Freeza.
• Both Jaco, the Galactic Patrolman and Dragon Ball Minus contain age problems through Bulma and Goku, respectively.
• In Jaco, the Galactic Patrolman, Bulma already graduated from university. In the original manga, she is on summer vacation and later mentions skipping school because it was dull.
• In Dragon Ball Minus, Goku was sent to Earth to survive. In the original manga, he was sent to conquer Earth.

Dishonorable mention: (not a contradiction per se, but still something that does not add up)

• In Dragon Ball Minus, Freeza mentions Super Saiyan God. In the original manga, he goes his entire saga without uttering its name.

- The franchise has no clear canon like Star Wars and already operates as an informal multiverse.

- Maybe the fanbase has been applying Western pop culture sensibilities onto this franchise.

Both of these statements are as accurate, precise and correct as they can be.

[LoganForkHands73]

Stuff

A lot of interesting observations here! Thanks for expanding on these points.

I agree that referencing Tarble is strange and possibly quite alienating for international audiences, though I doubt Toriyama knew or cared if the special was localised or not. I doubt that even many Japanese viewers are aware of him. Some might even assume that Vegeta's mysterious brother is some kind of Chekhov's gun waiting to be fired, when it's obvious to fans that he's a nothingburger character, lol.

I think the Jaco manga, despite its obvious contradictions to some parts of the original manga, can quite easily slot into any given Toriyama continuity, and he certainly wrote it as an official prequel.

Ultra Instinct is a strange beast. For a while, some fans would declare it entirely "non-canon" to Toriyama's "pure" vision of Dragon Ball Super, but that feels ridiculous when it plays such a pivotal role in almost every version of the story, and was even subtly referenced in Super: Broly (though like many things in the movies, it was an additional flourish from the animation team). But the circumstances behind its creation are more complex than, say, Super Saiyan Blue, which was entirely Toriyama's idea, as far as we know. The Toei Animation team pushed for a new transformation in the Universe Survival arc, and Toriyama cobbled it together with a silver palette swap of SS God with more emphasis on Whis's teachings. I've noticed that it never seemed to be at the forefront of Toriyama's mind despite its significance to the ongoing story, can't remember seeing any interviews of him talking about it, and it never appeared in the movies. The idea that Goku can or can't access it at certain points of the story is nothing more than a cheap handwave to justify why Goku doesn’t use it all the time. Toriyama probably enforced that Goku and Vegeta would not transform at all in Super Hero to skirt around the issue entirely.

Re: Outfit changes, I believe it's only about brand synergy and convenience. Unlike in the original series, outfit changes seem largely arbitrary without any particular symbolism about where the characters are in life. It's funny how Vegeta suddenly starts wearing his Buu arc training outfit halfway through the Granolah saga without explanation, conveniently around the time the Super Hero movie was set to give him that same look. As for Goku, I fully believe that Toyotaro generally doesn't bother with the kanji or thin belt for the exact same reason Toriyama gradually removed them: it's less effort to draw. He only drew Goku in his Freeza arc outfit for that arc to keep it consistent with the movie.

Re: Super Saiyan God and "Beyond God". I personally think the issue was always overblown, but I don't know if Toriyama ever planned to remove Beyond God from subsequent retellings of the Golden Freeza arc. Despite what the pamphlets say, how I make sense of it is quite simple: Beyond God is merely Goku tapping into a large fraction of the full power of Super Saiyan God, not all of it. Toriyama was never too concerned with power levels anyway. The fact that he can use some of that power in what looks like his base form shows how far he came from when he last fought Freeza and his base form couldn't hope to match the tyrant's Final Form. I believe that was the only thematic point of the form, it served its purpose, so SS God was free to return after that. It’s just that Toei didn’t get the message until the Universe Survival arc, so we had many strange scenes of Goku and Vegeta using overpowered base forms. Also, it followed up nicely from Battle of Gods, when Goku absorbed some of SS God's power into his standard Super Saiyan form.

In terms of how this all ties into my mysterious project, I was always planning to have separate profiles for characters in their manga, anime, movie, etc. continuity presentations, but when it comes to Beerus, Whis, the SS God transformations, etc. shit gets complicated real fast, lol.

[angeldreamZ004]

I think the Jaco manga, despite its obvious contradictions to some parts of the original manga, can quite easily slot into any given Toriyama continuity, and he certainly wrote it as an official prequel.

I forgot to say that this affected the anime and manga as well, as we see Tights in both and again, they act as if people were already used to those characters. Sp I think it shows even more how the arcs of Super being a "deluxe version" of the series as it goes even further in the references to the Jaco manga that even the anime decided to do despite we never getting a animated adaptation of that manga.

Ultra Instinct is a strange beast. For a while, some fans would declare it entirely "non-canon" to Toriyama's "pure" vision of Dragon Ball Super, but that feels ridiculous when it plays such a pivotal role in almost every version of the story, and was even subtly referenced in Super: Broly (though like many things in the movies, it was an additional flourish from the animation team). But the circumstances behind its creation are more complex than, say, Super Saiyan Blue, which was entirely Toriyama's idea, as far as we know. The Toei Animation team pushed for a new transformation in the Universe Survival arc, and Toriyama cobbled it together with a silver palette swap of SS God with more emphasis on Whis's teachings. I've noticed that it never seemed to be at the forefront of Toriyama's mind despite its significance to the ongoing story, can't remember seeing any interviews of him talking about it, and it never appeared in the movies. The idea that Goku can or can't access it at certain points of the story is nothing more than a cheap handwave to justify why Goku doesn’t use it all the time. Toriyama probably enforced that Goku and Vegeta would not transform at all in Super Hero to skirt around the issue entirely.

You're right, and I think when it comes to how Toei worked with the form in the anime, you can parallel it with Toyotaro's output in the manga, which becomes clear when revisiting his commentaries on the Moro and Granolah arcs. Toriyama indeed didn't care that much about it.

Re: Outfit changes, I believe it's only about brand synergy and convenience. Unlike in the original series, outfit changes seem largely arbitrary without any particular symbolism about where the characters are in life. It's funny how Vegeta suddenly starts wearing his Buu arc training outfit halfway through the Granolah saga without explanation, conveniently around the time the Super Hero movie was set to give him that same look. As for Goku, I fully believe that Toyotaro generally doesn't bother with the kanji or thin belt for the exact same reason Toriyama gradually removed them: it's less effort to draw. He only drew Goku in his Freeza arc outfit for that arc to keep it consistent with the movie.

Makes sense too, it seems that starting from Broly, they've been trying to distance themselves more and more and more from the designs and colors that everyone got used to because of the anime. They're pushing for more manga accurate colors and designs + the redesigns that Toriyama made from 2012 onwards, which is why Bulma always has blue hair since the start of the revival era, as opposed to the purple that Tori made more prevalent back then. Broly adopts Bardock's new design and the manga colors for Freeza (but Toriyama changed King Cold for some reason). Super Hero goes even further with it, as even Piccolo was recolored, Kuririn gets his white eyeballs, and finally there's Daima.
There seems to be inconsistencies though, as Kid Trunks was originally meant to appear in BoG with blue hair, which is the color Toriyama views for him in the revival era, but that didn't make into the final movie, as they decided to keep it lilac, and remained that way all throughout animated Super and DBS Broly, while the manga was always accurate to Toriyama's blue. Super Hero decided to adopt the blue hair for him, but then in Daima we are once again back to the lilac.

Re: Super Saiyan God and "Beyond God". I personally think the issue was always overblown, but I don't know if Toriyama ever planned to remove Beyond God from subsequent retellings of the Golden Freeza arc. Despite what the pamphlets say, how I make sense of it is quite simple: Beyond God is merely Goku tapping into a large fraction of the full power of Super Saiyan God, not all of it. Toriyama was never too concerned with power levels anyway. The fact that he can use some of that power in what looks like his base form shows how far he came from when he last fought Freeza and his base form couldn't hope to match the tyrant's Final Form. I believe that was the only thematic point of the form, it served its purpose, so SS God was free to return after that. It’s just that Toei didn’t get the message until the Universe Survival arc, so we had many strange scenes of Goku and Vegeta using overpowered base forms. Also, it followed up nicely from Battle of Gods, when Goku absorbed some of SS God's power into his standard Super Saiyan form.

I see, the reason I think there was a retcon is because somehow the manga made things different from the very beginning. But it was never actually something they made clear for us, like, we don't know if the absence of SSJ1 + SSJG power absorbed in the manga is a Toyotaro thing. There was no Golden Freeza arc retelling in the manga, so we don't know if the absence of Saiyan Beyond God was a Toei thing or not, we only know that the anime version of the story made "Base Form Goku" not outmatch Final Form Freeza like he does in the movie.
So we only absolutely see the change starting from the Champa arc, with the anime ToP being a response to that.

In terms of how this all ties into my mysterious project, I was always planning to have separate profiles for characters in their manga, anime, movie, etc. continuity presentations, but when it comes to Beerus, Whis, the SS God transformations, etc. shit gets complicated real fast, lol.

It's indeed complicated, separating them I think is wisest decision, as you can provide different descriptions per media for the same characters and stuff. Something I think is cool and I believe you'll be doing in your project is connecting in-universe details that at first seem to have no logic behind, with decisions we know from the behind the scenes / out-universe / production (example: in the Broly movie, we see him using a third transformation, which is the green haired one. But everytime the manga had a flashback of the movie's events, it shows Broly stopping at his 2nd transformation which is the yellow haired form. This can be connected to what was said by Naohiro Shintani, when he revealed that the Green hair form was his idea, while Toriyama only designed up until the forms where he's wearing the armor, and the last form we see him with armor is the yellow haired one)
Good luck!

[The Dark Knight]

Strictly Canon must be everything made by Akira Toriyama.

I have seen this idea come up a number of times, and to that I say, what counts as "made by Akria Toriyama" ? Obviously, we have the original manga that was written and drawn by him, which is what everything this franchises is based off of, but we also have:

Filler in DB & Z that was suggested by him, as well as characters he designed for said filler like Gregory.

The plots of the old movies that he went over and approved, as well as the villains he design for each movie.

GT, although not written by him from the ground up, was still based on his suggestion to set it after the original manga.

Dragon Ball Evolution, where he provided the team at Fox with...suggestions they didn't follow; we can ignore this one.

the 2008 Tarble special, as well as the 4 new movies that he wrote, but to which extent is unknown.

The Super anime and manga, like the above, that he worked on to an extent we don't know.

Daima, which he was involved in the most, but again, we don't know what that means exactly.

As you can see, outside the original manga, we just don't know exactly how involved he was with any of these parts of the franchise to make an accurate determination of where they stand compared to his original manga.