Movies & GT are all shot out of a cannon ("Is it canon?!")

[Gaffer Tape]

Movie 6: This fits if you allow 5 to fit with the above rationalization.

Actually, it doesn't. Dende being God totally ruins any possibility of this movie existing. Otherwise, you could say that it occurs towards the end of the three year space between Trunks and the Artificial Humans. But even then, Vegeta being able to turn SSJ isn't a surprise to anyone, which would place it after #19 and #20 appear. If you place it any later than that, to make it so that Dende is God in the series, then Gohan's too young in this movie to match up with that, not to mention all the problems you list with movie 8 would apply here as well.

(Still don't know how or why Toei managed to make Dende Earth's God before Toriyama ever did!)

[Hellspawn28]

The movies most likely take place in AU. Battle of Gods to me is the only one that I feel like that fits into the manga since AT came up with the story for it unlike the other movies that he had nothing to do with them other doing character designs.

[DemonRin]

Yeah, I forgot about that one. Tho, Vegeta being Super Saiyan isn't a plothole here because when he appears, he ONLY Interacts with Son and Coola, never with any of the other good guys. So, their surprise seeing him change during the fight with 19 is still fine provided Son told nobody he could do that.

[RandomGuy96]

Movie 5: This COULD Work as being a camping trip they go on before training to fight the Cyborgs, if Piccolo not being with them in the beginning and Son not being able to go Super Saiyan on command is ignored. I personally don't count it as Canon for this reason. Son told Trunks when they spoke that he could now go SS on command.

I don't think that it was clear that he couldn't use Super Saiyan, I just thought it was plot induced stupidity and/or Goku knowing that a Freeza-level opponent by this point can be dealt with with just kaio-ken (Goku got a lot stronger from Yardrat and the android training), not expecting Cooler to be that strong. I mean, otherwise, no movie ever can ever work. Because in, for example, Movie 9, the one you say fits without problems, Trunks (maybe some others, haven't watched it in a while) waits until he gets the crapped kick out of him in base form before he gets really pissed off and goes Super Saiyan. Other than that one very minor thing, the movie seems to fit fine maybe a year after Trunks arrives. Also, Goku already has started training, Roshi says as much at the beginning of the movie.

It's purely dramatic effect. Really, it's a recurring theme in the movies. In Movie 7, the androids kick the crap out of the saiyans in base form, then rather than transform they just sit there and take it. Then, right as they're about to be finished off, THEN they go Super Saiyan. In Movie 10, Gohan shows up to fight Broly in base, and similar to Movie 7, he doesn't go Super Saiyan until he's about to die. In the former case, Goku doesn't even use kaio-ken. Though that's more of a problem with Movie 5's climax in general; I like the suggestion Gonstead made in the "If you could change the course/result of a fight..." thread:

Basically, Cooler would already be powerful enough to fend of Goku in the beginning without trying like he did when he transformed. Goku goes over the edge and turns SSJ to which he lands a beatdown upon Cooler. After that, Cooler would then announce that he had a form beyond the one he is seen in and proceed to transform.

After that, Cooler and Goku would fight with each other, each almost the same in power though Cooler is slightly more powerful, giving him an advantage over Goku.

The fight would go on for a while until they both step back, Goku is exhausted while Cooler looks perfectly fine. He describes his disappointment in the Super Saiyan and throws a ki blast at Goku, who blocks it which fills his vision with smoke. Cooler creates a Death Ball.

The rest is basically what was seen in the movie.

[Xeogran]

Movie 8: Gohan can go Super Saiyan, Son is still alive, Son and Gohan spend a portion of the movie not in their Super Saiyan Forms. Nobody seems the least bit worried about the Cyborg

Chichi forced them to turn back for a certain period of time?

Movie 5: This COULD Work as being a camping trip they go on before training to fight the Cyborgs, if Piccolo not being with them in the beginning and Son not being able to go Super Saiyan on command is ignored. I personally don't count it as Canon for this reason. Son told Trunks when they spoke that he could now go SS on command.

You forgot that Gohan's hair was wrong in the movie, and that for magical reasons he had a tail again.

[RandomGuy96]

There was a three year gap between Trunks' arrival and the android attack. Gohan couldn't have changed hair styles in that time? Also, couldn't he have simply grown and removed his tail again?

[Gaffer Tape]

You forgot that Gohan's hair was wrong in the movie, and that for magical reasons he had a tail again.

Which also magically disappeared by the end.

[Sani]

I don't think that this is a good question. We have an "original story" the Dragon Ball manga and everything else is an adaptation from the original story. An old question: "GT is canon?"... In this logic: DBZ is canon?

[valfranx]

the best explanation to explain what is canon or not canon, and create levels of canon.

After all both the films and anime Akira had a stake in the project, and akira also says he wanted to do the serialization of the series.

soon dbz anime/movies has its own canon.

just facts of anime / movies, may be used only in the anime/movies. Akira even said that movies were an alternate universe (like trunks of future), with its own chronology.

manga and the highest level of canon and ovas/anime/movies secondaries level.

do not understand why so much discussion about what is canon or non-canon, and in versus debates, most debaters do not bother to use feats ​​canon or non-canon, so no one has the right to ban anyone from use the anime or movies in your personal canon, after all there is no official canon, more level of canon. dbz is. the problem of discussing this question of canon and because is ideological. for many db just comes down to manga, and for others, db and more than a manga, is a entertainment is focused on several production lines, as games, movies, anime and manga, where everyone has their own canon.

[Insertclevername]

I like to imagine Movie 5 takes place in the original timeline before the Artificial Humans. In the fight against Freeza and Cold, Gokuu doesn't blow up the ship they arrived in (at least in the same time Trunks did). A solider in there contacts Coola and that's how he gets word.

When Trunks kills Freeza & Cold in the main timeline, he blows up the ship before any distress call is made. Thus, the fight with Coola doesn't happen in that era.

Just an idea.

[Hellspawn28]

I think knowing what's canon and not canon helps in debates since we can know what fits. Not to mention in vs debates people who have been known to wank stuff that never appear in the manga (like Vegeta blowing up a Planet and Buu supposedly destroying a galaxy) which makes power scaling more confusing to use.

[DemonRin]

I don't think that it was clear that he couldn't use Super Saiyan, I just thought it was plot induced stupidity and/or Goku knowing that a Freeza-level opponent by this point can be dealt with with just kaio-ken (Goku got a lot stronger from Yardrat and the android training), not expecting Cooler to be that strong. I mean, otherwise, no movie ever can ever work.

Honestly, Toei never seems to have considered the storyline when making the Pre-BoG movies. Pretty much all of the movies are big "What Ifs" and it really feels like no effort was made at all to make them fit into continuity. For the few that work (9 and 13) it doesn't come off as "We slavishly tried to make sure this movie makes sense in the timeline" so much as "It wasn't hard to get things wrong setting a movie during those time periods"

I said in my post that Movie 5 works, but ONLY if you make big jumps in logic. IE: You have to rationalize why Piccolo is nowhere to be seen during the beginning of the movie when he's supposed to be training with Son and Gohan. In fact, you need to rationalize why nobody seems the least bit worried about training to fight the Cyborgs during this movie period. Then you have to rationalize why it appears Son can't go Super Saiyan on command, when he said when he met Trunks that it was easy for him at that point. It was clearly done for drama. The Coola fight is basically a recreation of the Freeza fight, so they wanted it to have that dramatic "first time becoming SS" vibe the Freeza fight had.

It's why I said movie 5 CAN work rather than saying it definitely can't like I did for most others... because... it CAN, it just requires you consider that all of the logical inconsistencies are plot dumb for the sake of the story.

[RandomGuy96]

Well, the thing is, they were training for three years. It doesn't require a big jump of logic to assume that Piccolo, Gohan, and Goku all weren't training together at the same location doing nothing but that every minute of every day. And Roshi states at the beginning that Goku has been training harder than ever, so there's that. And unlike say Movie 7, the cyborgs are not an immediate threat at this time; they're a few years away, so no one has to reference them every few minutes. They'd probably be more concerned about that powerful alien attacking them right now.

Yes, the way the transformation was handled was done for drama. But that doesn't mean that he couldn't do it on command; like I said, this happens in every movie, even the ones that you said would have no problem fitting in canon, like Movie 9. There's really only one logical inconsistency, and it's one that's prolific throughout all of the movies and, in general, the series (fighter A didn't beat fighter B with Y technique immediately for the sake of drama).

I think it's kind of dumb. Like I said earlier, if I could change that fight, I wouldn't have him wait to the end to go SS for the sake of drama, rather I'd have him go SS earlier and still lose, then take out Cooler with one last desperation attack. But still, the movie itself contradicts nothing.