Fillers in Dragon Ball Super

[Alkiser]

Contrary to what you might think, whether a Super series contains fillers is not so obvious because the anime is not based on the manga, as the two are two separate things. The anime does not have to wait for the manga material, and produce fillers at that time because both creations go their own ways and one does not have to wait for the other. In that case, can the looser episodes in a TV series also be called filler?

After all, this is how episodes that are not based on the manga are most often referred to, and happen mostly between manga arcs.

[VegettoEX]

"Filler", in the specific context of anime, has historically meant "material that is added to a television series adaptation that was not present in the original underlying comic [for the purpose of padding / "filling time" in order for the source material to move ahead / provide more content]".

I've seen this elsewhere, and I would agree: one of the great word crimes of newer anime fans has been repositioning the word "filler" to mean "literally anything that doesn't specifically address and move ahead the exact main plot points of the respective story arc".

(Insert here: old-man-yells-at-cloud.jpg)

Per the actual/original meaning of the word, no, there is absolutely no "filler" in Dragon Ball Super.

I wouldn't call the Arale episode filler. I wouldn't call the Hit assassination recruitment filler. I wouldn't call the Universe 7 team recruitment filler. Them "filling time" between the events that certain people want to watch more so than other material doesn't magically bestow that historical meaning of the word "filler" upon them.

One could MAYBE argue the Potaufeu arc of the television series, because it's an actual unrelated, self-contained, multi-episode story arc that is original to that one medium and we more or less know (by way of exclusion) that it did not come from a Toriyama-penned story outline.

But I don't know that I would die on that hill. I don't think it's necessary, and I actually think it's super unhealthy to start tossing that word around with its new-age contextual meaning here, because that inherently just devolves into reductionist arguments and hand-wave dismissals.

I know words change. Language evolves. Resist this one, though. Let Super be the weird-ass oddity it is. It's so much more interesting (and worthwhile) to have a long-form conversation about how weird it is than to scream "NOPE. FILLER." at each other.

[Grimlock]

When old information is replaced by the latest information, that's called "retcon". But what do we call when old information must prevail over the new one?

Truth is, we're on uncharted territory. We don't have names/nouns for the strange things we have been witnessing nowadays. I am all in favor of using the correct words, with their correct meanings under the correct context, but we don't have a word for "Toei-exclusive" stories they made for Dragon Ball Super (for reasons already stated). So my stance on this is that we have to make temporary (?) exceptions. I don't think calling them "filler" is an issue under this specific circumstance. Just like I don't think it's an issue like calling old information replacing the new one "retcon" either. Again, until we get a proper name for these kind of situations. If we got, then we should not call them "filler" and "retcon" anymore. It would be outright wrong.

If anyone's bothered by it, then it's just like I said in that other discussion, you may want to come up with a new name so we can all sleep better at night. I will start using whatever you came up with.


Guess we don't have a better "lack of a better term" situation than this.

[GreatSaiyaman123]

I've been thinking about making a thread very similar to this, only it's about comparing the anime and manga to see what they have in common and what could be considered "filler" (in a very broad sense of the word). I think it would be an interesting experiment in trying to see what AT imagines Super to be, since he only has some very broad strokes in mind when he's writing new material.

I've seen this elsewhere, and I would agree: one of the great word crimes of newer anime fans has been repositioning the word "filler" to mean "literally anything that doesn't specifically address and move ahead the exact main plot points of the respective story arc".

I think these two are treated like they're two separate words, but still overlapping between each other: The term "filler" does come from the anime community, but when a certain subplot is inserted in a western story, or when lesser tracks are smacked in a LP, it's easy to say they're just filling in time... which is sort of what anime filler does anyway, only the concept of "canonicity" always comes into play in these discussions as well. Filler is a very broad term with anime filler and it's discussions being a "genre" of it, so it's easy to mix them up.

As far as Super goes, the only things I would call filler would be the slice of life episodes (as good as they may be) and extended fight sequences like Black pulling that Scythe and tearing a hole in reality, which only exists to get the episode up to 20 minutes and keeping Merged Zamasu for the next episode. Now that's filler. But anything else? It's just part of the series. I wouldn't call it filler by either definition; they're not trying to "fill in" for anything, and they weren't trying to stay behind the manga by any means.

[Mr Baggins]

I would actually contend that when the word "filler" is used synonymously with padding or filling in plot-time to make it feel wider in scope than its more substantive elements would entail, it's incorporating the original literary use of the word. Using it to refer to exclusive content in some TV adaptation of a comic is, in fact, the new-age definition to my knowledge. Both uses are relevant to discussions about anime, which is why there's sometimes confusion whenever it's brought up.

I'm partial to the original definition because I don't care whether something is "canon" or whatever and would rather just engage in subjective literary critique. When I say there's a lot of filler in a story arc, I think I'm generally pretty clear about what I'm referring to. With that said, I agree that we shouldn't be typing "filler" (with no further elaboration) as shorthand to dismiss things we don't like. We need to elucidate.

To OP's question, you can totally say that everything in the DBS anime "happened" in that specific continuity, so there's no filler per se in the sense I assume you're referring to. But in my own usage? Shit's brimming, yo.

[Luso Saiyan]

I would call filler anything that was created to fill time for the development of the story arcs that Toriyama provided, which is the only source material for Super.

[LoganForkHands73]

I would actually contend that when the word "filler" is used synonymously with padding or filling in plot-time to make it feel wider in scope than its more substantive elements would entail, it's incorporating the original literary use of the word. Using it to refer to exclusive content in some TV adaptation of a comic is, in fact, the new-age definition to my knowledge. Both uses are relevant to discussions about anime, which is why there's sometimes confusion whenever it's brought up.

I'm partial to the original definition because I don't care whether something is "canon" or whatever and would rather just engage in subjective literary critique. When I say there's a lot of filler in a story arc, I think I'm generally pretty clear about what I'm referring to. With that said, I agree that we shouldn't be typing "filler" (with no further elaboration) as shorthand to dismiss things we don't like. We need to elucidate.

To OP's question, you can totally say that everything in the DBS anime "happened" in that specific continuity, so there's no filler per se in the sense I assume you're referring to. But in my own usage? Shit's brimming, yo.

Yeah, this. *I had the below written out earlier but didn't have a chance to post*

There's plenty of historical context across many mediums where filler is pretty much used synonymously with padding, though I do usually use the latter term when discussing anime and manga to prevent confusions like this. I'll mainly use padding in a more micro sense of scenes that are unnecessarily stretched yet hard to avoid, e.g. constant exposition of characters explaining what's going on right in front of us, whereas filler often encompasses whole episodes, chapters or segments of a larger story that can be safely skipped without losing anything important. Jhonen Vasquez made a joke of the concept with his rushed, low-effort Fillerbunny which, as the name implies, was just there to fill space in his main comic strips (it ironically ended up popular enough to hold its own limited series).

With this in mind, almost any serialised story can have filler, regardless of whether it has source material to draw from. The Dragon Ball Super manga arguably has filler in the subjective literary sense -- how's that for an UNO reverse card?

When it comes to the relatively new otaku definition of the word, filler is very objective and defined. Goku fought a guy named Paikuhan in the anime, but didn't in the manga. That's just factual. Using it with Super is trickier and more subjective because of the lack of clear source material, but I think most fans have been able to draw a consensus based on a number of factors, namely the shared story elements across the various mediums. Nobody really gets up in arms if you call the Copy-Vegeta, Arale or Barry Khan stuff filler. They don't happen in the manga, they're all completely irrelevant to the main arcs, there's barely any progression but any that can be found is either ignored or reversed later on... what's the expression? If looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, might as well be a duck.

[Cipher]

Not to split hairs with VegettoEX, but I think “filler” in the broader TV landscape as meaning “inconsequential, episodic story in the midst of a season arc” has more storied history than the narrow anime-fan redifining as “added, original material around a manga adaptation.”

Regardless, though, what’s operative here for Super? It certainly has “filler” in that first sense, but then it also has between-storyline episodes that appear by any amount of reasonable guesswork to be anime original stories not contained within Toriyama’s drafts, so … kind of in the latter sense too? Do they happen in the world of the show? Sure; just like many of the anime-original elements of Z were held to have happened throughout it and were rereferenced in later arcs and GT. (And even Super, weirdly, in the case of the Ginyu-frog; that’s a whole separate bag of worms.)

Are those elements and episodes subject to be contradicted by new Toriyama material, which was one of the reasons older filler material was often singled out in conversation? Who’s to say! In some ways, they appear to already have been, vis a vis things like Pan’s flight via Super Hero. But that’s stretchable, so the jury’s out! (I’m going to toss Freeza apparently never having seen Gotenks in here too.)

In what context are you looking to single out this material and to what extent does it matter? That’s up to you!

[Trouser]

Both Super's versions and GT are filler free.

[jjbgood]

Both Super's versions and GT are filler free.

Not true.
Of course there is no additional anime filler like before, when they tried not to catch up with the manga, but there are story fillers in Super - and not only a few. There are many examples for episodes, that only exists to stretch time before the next arc begins. Also there are parts in the arcs that fills some time to stretch the story (especially in the tournament of power arc). Yeah, no traditional fillers, but still fillers.