Canon Discontinuity in anime and manga.
- The last hundred or so pages of Battle Angel Alita are ignored by the renewed Battle Angel Alita: Last Order; originally intended as an adaptation of the last level of the game of the comic, it has spiraled into a second story longer than the original that is still ongoing. Note that in this case, the original ending was a then-extremely ill Yukito Kishiro's effort to avoid Dying During Production; since he managed to recover instead, he decided to do it right.
- Blue Exorcist Overtook the Manga in its first season, and its final nine episodes really aren't compatible with the source material. Season two thus ignores everything after episode 17, along with the anime-only scenes from episodes 16-17, and picks up with the Kyoto Saga from the manga.
- Both the live-action and animated adaptations of Bunny Drop ignore the infamous timeskip, where Rin falls for what is essentially her adopted father, in favor of a more familial approach.
- Cyborg009 has at least three stories that Shotaro Ishinomori stated that he personally didn't see as applying to the canon, and that fans would be better off ignoring: "Empty War" (which was rewritten and redrawn as "A New Type of Bomb"), "The Man with the Expensive Castle", and a retconned version of the team's origin that acted as a prologue to the Underground Empire arc. The first story is considered old shame by Ishinomori as he had a better idea and revised it, while the latter two incorporated the Executive Meddling-induced change of having 007 be a kid (in order to tie into the then-recent 1966 animated film adaptation of the manga). To make things confusing or perhaps for a completist measure, Tokyopop included both "Empty War" and "A New Type of Bomb" alongside each other in their U.S. release of the manga, as well as placing "The Man with the Expensive Castle" before the Vietnam arc (when it was originally published after the Mythos arc), leading to a confusing lapse in continuity.
- The second Digimon Tamers movie is mostly about a Digimon attacking on Rika's birthday and mind-controlling her with a song she used to sing with her father. It also seemed to latch on to the idea planted in the final episode that the Tamers could use the portal Takato found in Guilmon's house to reunite with their partners. It was written and produced without the input of the head writers, however, and a CD drama released later reveals that the kids had yet to reunite with their partners even a year later, and revolved around them sending messages to the Digital World that their partners might stumble upon one day. (One of the writers speaks highly of the movie on his website, however, and the drama has a scene of Rika humming the song from the movie.)
- Dragon Ball:
- Dragon Ball GT was for quite some time in limbo regarding its canonicity to Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. Not only did GT disappoint quite a few fans, but Akira Toriyama had little to do with it. If the films Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' (the first films in the franchise to be Canon) somehow didn't do it, the new series Dragon Ball Super, the first Dragon Ball show covering new material since GT, hit the last nail in the coffin regarding GT's place in canon — or lack thereof. Super and the canon movies take place during the Time Skip between the Buu Saga and the Distant Finale, while GT takes place 5 years after the epilogue. However, various details prevent GT from following Super: Kibitoshin/Kibito Kai remains fused in GT while Super has him wish on the Dragon Balls to separate back into Shin and Kibito, and the Pilaf Gang are children in Super due to a Dragon Ball wish while GT shows them visibly aged. Goku and Vegeta's power boosts and friends in high places would foil the plots of Baby, Dr. Myuu and the Shadow Dragons. At the very least, the video game series Dragon Ball Xenoverse proclaimed that it's an Alternate Timeline. So it did happen, just not in the main verse. Heck, the GT verse makes an appearance in a DLC of Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 when Future Trunks of Super is calling for energy of the timelines to power up his sword and finish Zamasu.
- The majority of movies for Z also get hit with this - the only ones that don't get hit with this are Bojack Unbound and Wrath of the Dragon (which are non-serial) and Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F', which are canon. As for the rest of the movies:
- Dead Zone is implied to take place before the series, and is Broad Strokes in the original Z; however, Krillin meets Gohan, despite the first episode of Z showing him meeting Gohan for the first time, and both Goku and Piccolo talk about using weighted clothes. In spite of these discrepancies, the anime still managed to create a 5 episode filler arc involving Garlic Jr..
- The World's Strongest, The Tree of Might, and Lord Slug all reference each other, and due to Goku's Gi indicating that it's after he trained with King Kai, but before Goku leaves for Namek...were it not for the fact that a), Piccolo is alive, despite the fact that until he's revived by the Namekian Dragon Balls, he's dead, and when he's revived, he's immediately brought to Namek, b), as none of the cast know Instant Transmission at this point, there would be no way for them to suddenly warp back to Earth, and c), Gohan and Krillin are both shown on Earth in all 3 movies, but they immediately went to Namek after the Saiyans attacked. Tree of Might lacks Vegeta, meaning it can't take place in the time skip where Trunks is born. In the case of Lord Slug, King Kai states that Frieza Can't defeat Slug, as opposed to couldn't, indicating that Frieza is still alive, thus preventing it from taking place during the same timeskip.
- Cooler's Revenge can't be canon since Gohan still looks the same as he did when he was on Namek, at the time it would take place, Goku hasn't returned to Earth yet, Vegeta is nowhere to be seen (despite the fact that, were this movie canon, this should actually and the cast in general is a late Saiyan Saga. And as for Return of Cooler, while the biggest issue (namely, Cooler's Revenge needing to happen) could be overlooked, if one was to do that, it's still non-canon because Goku doesn't use Instant Transmission, Gohan can't go Super Saiyan, and Future Trunks is completely absent.
- Super Android 13! would take place between the death of Gero and the appearance of Cell...except 16, 17, and 18 are nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that the plot of Z was focused around the hunt for those 3; additionally, Goku should still be incapacitated by his heart virus.
- Broly is an interesting case. His trilogy of movies was originally seen as non-serial just like all the others, since they can't fit within the manga timelinenote , but then Dragon Ball Super came along and re-introduced the concept of the Legendary Super Saiyan via Kale, Broly's Distaff Counterpart from Universe 6. Then after Super we got the movie Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which introduces a new version of the character created by Akira Toriyama himself; while this does make Broly (and his father Paragus) canon, it means the versions from the original trilogy aren't, since this movie contradicts them in every way.
- Fusion Reborn would take place during the period of time after Goten and Trunks learn fusion, but before they fight Buu...but Buu's absense, as well as the absence of Ultimate Gohan, prevent this movie from being canon. Additionally, there is a cameo by villains from nearly every previous Dragon Ball Z movie, so those would have to be canon for this to be canon.
- Gundam:
- Gaia Gear is a novel written by franchise creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, set 110 years after Char's Counterattack. The later Gundam F91 and Victory Gundam, also written by Tomino, push Gaia Gear into discontinuity by contradicting elements of its backstory. On top of that, we have Tomino's Reconqista in G (AKA G-Reko), which purportedly takes place in the future of the Universal Century timeline.
- G-Saviour is in a strange place with regards to continuity. Sunrise has never said it's non-canonical, but have also admitted that they do not like to talk about it and generally pretend the movie doesn't exist. Which is why the G-Saviour's brief cameo in Gundam Build Fighters came as such a surprise to the fanbase.
- The one-shot manga side story Stampede: The Story of Professor Minovsky, published in 1990, based its timeline on A.D. 1969 being retroactively made UC 0001, and included the then-recent Chernobyl disaster as part of Dr. Minovsky's backstory. These details, and a number of others, are contradicted by other works; in particular, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn establishes that UC 0001 is the year the first space colonies are completed and opened to emigration, while Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin includes a different version of Minovsky's story.
- Macross II is the only Macross entry to be officially shunted off into its own private universe (in contrast, both the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series and the movie Do You Remember Love? are taken in Broad Strokes in later Macross series, despite contradicting each other on multiple points). A good portion of this stems from how Macross II was not a Studio Nue production — Bandai wanted something for a tenth-anniversary celebration in 1992, and when it seemed that Shoji Kawamori's cooperation was not forthcoming, came up with the story themselves. Of the original production staff, only Haruhiko Mikimoto actually worked on Macross II.
- Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water's director Hideaki Anno created a compilation of the series called "The Nautilus Story", with the conspicuous absence of 11 infamously poor quality filler episodes nicknamed the "Island Arc". All that remains of these filler episodes are twelve minutes, using mostly clips from episodes 23, 28, 30, and 31. A brief shot from episode 32 where the companions look down from the Gratan substitutes the title card for episode 35.
- One Piece Film: Z was originally supposed to be canonical, but Eiichiro Oda decided against it due to the numerous discrepancies between it and the One Piece manga. Though most agree that, if anything, villain Z should be a part of the canon.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Two episodes of the Best Wishes saga involving Team Rocket fighting Team Plasma that were cancelled due to the 2011 tsunami and earthquake became non-canonical come the Episode N arc, which treats things as if Ash and co. and Team Rocket never met Team Plasma before their actual debut episode.
- The 20th movie, I Choose You, is effectively this in regards to the rest of the series, as it makes several changes to Ash's journey through Kanto. Notable examples include Brock and Misty not traveling with him, Erika being the third Gym Leader he faced rather than the fifth, Charmander's original trainer being a new character named Cross rather than Damien, and Ash seeing 4th and 7th Generation Pokémon. In short, this should be seen as an Alternate Continuity to the Kanto saga.
- Sgt. Frog:
- In a story of the 2nd year of the anime, Fuyuki, Keroro, Kululu and Tamama visit various famous ancient locations around the world, trying to find signs of alien artifacts. They turn out to be either toys or domestic utensils built by ancient aliens, completely useless for the invasion. However, later manga chapters, TV episodes, and movies presented completely different origins and functions for those locations, ignoring that episode.
- An episode details elementary-school Momoka's original Crash-Into Hello with Fuyuki, who didn't see her coming as he was busy reading a book... wait... wasn't he the Bratty Half-Pint at this time?
- Nothing from the Sun Wukong arc of Shamo has been mentioned once in subsequent chapters. The arc that followed it was a flashback arc that followed a different character, and when the series finally came back to protagonist Ryo Narushima he had become a washed-up prize fighter, as opposed to the near demi-god he was at the end of the Sun Wukong arc.
- An interesting deal for Tenchi Muyo!: the OVA special "Space Police Mihoshi's Space Adventure", which introduced Mihoshi's partner Kiyone (and Pretty Sammy, but that was because of Mihoshi's story) was made non-canonical by the series' creator, yet it was used as a canonical point for another creator's stories using the Tenchi cast.
- Not only was Episode 4 of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann cut out of the manga, but the Episode 5 Opening Narration even refrained from using clips from that episode! The Compilation Movie also skipped over the events of Episode 4, only showing them as part of a travel montage (which makes Kamina questioning who Kittan is later doubly hilarious, as they met in that episode).
- The animated version of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- contains a discontinuity with the "Tokyo Revelations" OAVs ignoring the last filler arc from the broadcast series and picking up right after the escape from the Rekort library.
- World Trigger: The Fugitive Arc is a training arc that the anime inserts into the plot by postponing Round 4 of the Rank Wars, and thus the entire schedule, by one week. Season 3 of the anime proceeds as if the filler arc never happened by sticking with the original schedule outlined in the manga, where a postponement never happens.
