Complete list of plotholes/continuity issues in the manga?

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Perhaps Pan as a fetus going SSJ and helping in Goku's God transformation in BoG? (I know the topic said manga, but from reading the pages I assume we're including canon now)

No. The folks who did the ritual to the Original Super Saiyan God weren't Super Saiyan, if they were... Well... There wouldn't be the legend of the Super Saiyan. A fact that means it doesn't have to be a Super Saiyan to make one to turn into Super Saiyan God.

The good Saiyans from the past weren't Super Saiyans. They were stated to be weak Saiyans, and they got killed by Oozarus.

[Dyno]

Well, you just wrote the same thing I did, basically.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Well, you just wrote the same thing I did, basically.

Nope. You said that if Super Saiyan was required, the Super Saiyan legend would have been wiped out like the Super Saiyan God legend. I said what was stated in the movie, that the righteous Saiyans were weak, which means that it would have been impossible for them to be Super Saiyans.

[SaiyanZ]

Wait, so Super Saiyan isn't needed to do the ritual? They turned Super Saiyan for no reason then?

[Dyno]

Wait, so Super Saiyan isn't needed to do the ritual? They turned Super Saiyan for no reason then?

No. And we don't know. That actually can serve to be the very source to new theories.

[LuckyCat]

Wait, so Super Saiyan isn't needed to do the ritual? They turned Super Saiyan for no reason then?

It probably was just to make the scene look cool. After all, Shenron never said SSGod required Super Saiyans.

[One_Instance]

Wait, so Super Saiyan isn't needed to do the ritual? They turned Super Saiyan for no reason then?

It probably was just to make the scene look cool. After all, Shenron never said SSGod required Super Saiyans.

I thought it was just so they could siphon as much energy as possible to make Goku stronger/ensure that they could make him a SSJG.

[SaiyanZ]

Yeah, its strange that the form is called Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan isn't needed...I assumed that was the case all this time

[rereboy]

Yeah, its strange that the form is called Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan isn't needed...I assumed that was the case all this time

Yeah, that's why SSJG should have been called Saiyan God or something similar and SSJGSSJG should have been SSJG.

[Dayspring]

Yeah, its strange that the form is called Super Saiyan God and Super Saiyan isn't needed...I assumed that was the case all this time

Yeah, that's why SSJG should have been called Saiyan God or something similar and SSJGSSJG should have been SSJG.

I think it's more the fact that the legend of the Super Saiyan existed, whereas Super Saiyan God surpassed what the legend predicted SSJ to be in terms of power.

[dougo13]

Because it's been 20 years? Do you not think story telling quality has not evolved since then? Somethings concepts have become cliche. Some have been done to death. Story telling terms and tropes have become more apparent and recognizable. Just like how graphics evolve over time, so does the standard of story telling. Our expectations now a days are higher than they were 20 years ago. I don't think it's wrong to say we expect more from stories than we did back in the 80's or 90's.

Japanese comics as a medium of storytelling have existed for quite a bit longer than Akira Toriyama's career. While times and tastes have changed, I doubt anyone would dispute the notion that Osamu Tezuka, who started in the 1940s, was a master of the medium, and a far better storyteller than Toriyama. The things that people find interesting or plausible will of course shift with changes in society and (the general public's) scientific understanding. Once-novel plot devices become cliché and ripe for parody, while new ones take their place to repeat the cycle. Storytelling itself, however, is a timeless craft that transcends such trivial concerns.

Toriyama can of course create a ripping yarn, but he was never much concerned with things like continuity or character depth in his quest to let his readers have a good time. His longtime friend and colleague Masakazu Katsura has been merciless towards him about this (all in good fun, of course). This is even more apparent when reading through in Jump, since a number of inconsistencies get papered over in time for the collected release. (Chapter 63, for instance, was a mess of continuity mistakes.) Japanese readers even noticed things like this and wrote letters pointing them out to him after the fact (which might be why the exchange between Kuririn and Gohan in Chapter 213 was altered so drastically for the tankōbon).

Nostalgia blinds people to the fact that they were once able to enjoy something so rife with errors, when they now have much more exacting demands for consistency. The comic Dragon Ball ended 20 years ago this month. For better or worse, it seems monolithic, set in stone, rather than the product of a rather careless cartoonist working on a weekly deadline. Toriyama is not and has never been especially concerned with continuity. That everything seems to hang together as well as it does is an incredibly happy accident, but that doesn't mean it is actually more coherent, if you stop to examine things more closely. Toriyama's new material only seems glaringly "off" because people have had time to construct their own internal consistencies based on the author's own not-too-terribly-consistent work. There is nothing new under the sun.

Ever try to read old scifi from the 1930s, 40s. 50s or 60s? Comics? Not to say the works aren't enjoyable today but I really have to suspend my state of disbelief when I see people landing spacecraft on Jupiter or Venus (which have thriving populations by the way) or travelling to distant star systems in a couple hours. Read old Superman books where he is moving Earth out of orbit, lighting up dead suns with his heat vision, bathing in the sun, etc. Fun to read still though...but...

[Analytical Delusion]

Let's see...

• The Dragon Balls are turned into stones for 1 year after they are used. In the end of the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai, they were active once again. However, only 8 months had passed between the last wish & the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai.
• In the 23rd Tenkaichi Budokai, Goku uses the Super Kamehameha to kill Piccolo, and Kami with him, and says that they can bring back Kami with the Dragon Balls after that. However, he later says that if Kami dies, the DBs are gone too. He somehow forgets about this before that revelation.
• The narrator says that regular Kaio-ken doubles the power of the user. However, Goku uses Kaio-ken x2 as if it was a level above the regular Kaio-ken in the same chapter.
• When Goku blasted Vegeta with his Kaio-ken x4 Kamehameha, Vegeta was having a monologue in his head, and he says that he is the strongest in the universe. However, we later learn that there are many others much stronger than him in Freeza's forces.
• Vegeta's battle power when he got to Namek was 24.000. After getting a near-death power-up through his 1st fight with Zarbon, he obviously got stronger. However, Jheese's scouter reads Vegeta's battle power as being close to 20.000, which is obviously false. This one is fixed in a latter edition of the Kanzenban release, where his battle power is now close to 30.000, instead of 20.000.
• Freeza says that he destroyed Planet Vegeta 30 years ago. However, Planet Vegeta was actually destroyed 23 years ago.
• Freeza is surprised that a guy like Goku existed, who was stronger than Ginyu. Vegeta, Piccolo, and Gohan had surpassed Ginyu during their fight with Freeza, so Freeza shouldn't be surprised at that point.
• When Trunks came to warn Goku about the Artificial Humans, he says that the Artificial Humans from the future are #19 & #20. However, we later learn that they are actually #17 & #18, and Trunks doesn't recognize #19 & #20 when he sees them.
  
• During Cell's explanation about his identity to Piccolo, he says that Trunks' DNA during his fight with Mecha Freeza & Cold wasn't collected because they already had enough Saiyan DNA. However, Trunks never fought Mecha Freeza & Cold in his timeline, Goku was the one who killed them.
• Goku blows up Cell's upper body, and he was able to regenerate. Later, we learn that Cell won't be able to regenerate if his nucleus in his head is destroyed. Goku's attack should have destroyed the nucleus.
• Kaioshin says that Majin Boo killed the other 4 Kaioshin. However, he later says that the 2 of them weren't killed, but absorbed.
• When SS3 Goku fought Fat Boo, Boo used Vegeta's Rapid-Fire Ki Blasts, which was how Goku found out about Boo's Mimicry ability. However, Vegeta never used that technique against Boo.
• Goku says that he told Boo to wait for an opponent stronger than him (SS Gotenks), and that he looked happy about it. Goku never said that this opponent would have been stronger than him.
• When Gotenks & Boo were fighting inside the Room of Spirit and Time, Goku didn't know where they were, and he found it strange that he couldn't sense Gotenks' & Boo's ki. He should have been searching for Goten's & Trunks' ki, since the kids began fighting Boo & merged after they got inside the RoSaT, not before.

There are also strength/speed feats that are inconsistent with feats of much stronger characters in later arcs, there are small errors in the art at times, and the colors in colored pages are not always consistent (we've seen Karin in various colors, for example). Gags aren't included.

Extra - Contradictions in Toriyama's new stories:

• Toriyama said in an interview that there are 3 Kaioshins, and that they work in shifts. However, the manga shows that there are 5 Kaioshins, and they are divided into the Kaioshins of the North, East, West, and South respectively, with the Dai Kaioshin supervising them all.
• Toriyama said in an interview that Beerus destroyed Kaio's planet after losing in a car-racing video-game. However, Whis says in DBZ: Battle of Gods that Beerus destroyed the planet after losing in hide-and-seek.
• In DBZ: Battle of Gods, it is said that Vegeta has a brother in another planet (a reference to Tarble from DB: Heya! Son Goku & Friends Return!!). However, Vegeta says in the manga (when trying to figure out how Trunks was a Super Saiyan), while speaking in his head, that he, Goku, and Gohan were the only remaining Saiyans.
• In DBZ: Battle of Gods, Bulma says that she is 38 years-old, while she actually should be 45. Mai also says that she is 41, which would make her 12 years-old in her first appearance in the manga, but she looks much older than that, which makes it impossible for her to be 41.
• In DBZ: Battle of Gods, Mr. Satan doesn't know who Dende is and doesn't know that he is the Kami of Earth, while he met him & learned that he is the Kami of Earth in the manga.
• In Jaco The Galactic Patrolman, Omori says that Bulma went after the Dragon Balls after graduating the university. However, Bulma is still shown going to school in the manga.
• In the manga, Shenlong can grant 3 wishes (or 2, when one wish is used to revive lots of people). However, in DBZ: Battle of Gods, Shenlong only grants one wish (he only granted one wish when Pilaf summoned him, and also granted only one wish when Goku summoned him). Then in DBZ: Resurrection "F", he only grants 2 wishes, even though none of the wishes revived more than one person.
• In DBZ: Battle of Gods, we learn that the gods' ki like Beerus, Whis, and the Super Saiyan God can't be sensed by mortals, and in DBZ: Resurrection "F", Goku says that he can't use Shunkan Ido because he can't sense Beerus' & Whis' ki, since they are gods. However, we've seen mortals sensing the ki of gods in the manga, such as when Gohan & Piccolo could sense Kami Dende's ki, and Goku traveled to Kaio numerous times by using Shunkan Ido.
• In DBZ: Resurrection "F", Shisami was said to be equal in ability to Zarbon & Dodoria, but he could fight evenly with Piccolo 4 months later, without any explanation.

Did I miss anything?

You know, I don't know if it's a plot hole, but some of the time travel stuff is very problematic.

In addition to the comment by Cell on why they didn't collect Trunks's DNA, how does Trunks find himself in the same timeline as Cell? Because in the manga, prior to Cell's introduction, several differences between Trunks's timeline and the main timeline are mentioned, and Trunksnotesthat just his own presence shouldn't have been enough to alter things so drastically.

So if timelines branch when someone goes back in time, how did Trunks get to a timeline where Cell had already been there before him? That basically would mean Trunks traveled back before the juncture (and there isn't any logical reason for this as far as I can tell, because basically what's happening is, the two Trunkses are the same except one visits a timeline with Cell, and one visits a timeline without him, even though they come from the exact same timeline; why should Trunks be split in half between two timelines?), and forward in the specific timeline Cell was already in...but Cell was there by virtue of Trunks already having visited the main timeline.

I think this one is really, really bad unless I'm completely misunderstanding something. Most of the above can be fixed with slight dialogue changes or by assuming something happened off- or between panels, but I think this breaks the story.