On numerous occasions, the members of Team Four Star have made several statements about the details of their projects, especially their keystone project Dragon Ball Z Abridged. Examples include:
General
- Kaiser mentioned in a podcast
that he considers all the Abridged Movies Alternate Universes where certain events from canon branched off. Cooler and Broly's debut movies, however, are seemingly set up by and edited to fit in with the main series. As for Cooler 2, however, KaiserNeko went full self-admitted Soapbox Sadie, ranting that it had too many continuity errors to even try and make it fit in the timeline. Amusingly, the concept of the movies taking place in alternate timelines is canon thanks to Xenoverse 2. - Kaiser said in the 10th anniversary marathon stream that Princess Snake is Zarbon's girlfriend.
- After Episode 55 came out, some fans interpreted the scene at the end as Chi-Chi raping Goku in order to conceive Goten; some were upset, while more disturbingly, some found that interpretation hilarious, and it got to the point where TFS had to add "rape" (and all variations thereof) to the word filter in their YouTube comments. Kaiser stepped in both online and in person at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2016 (the weekend after 55 was released) to clarify that it was not rape, that Goku knows about sex, and that everything that happened was consensual. Episode 56, released soon after, clarified it further, with Goku explaining to Krillin that he knew perfectly well that he could say no; he just can't back down from a challenge (and it feels good, and maybe Krillin should try it sometime). His real problem is that he didn't know that sex makes babies.
- After Episode 59 came out, fans complained on Reddit that TFS had gone too far in perpetuating the "Goku is a bad father" meme by having him force a reluctant Gohan to fight a recovered Perfect Cell. Kaiser went on Reddit to clarify that they don't think that Goku is a terrible father; he's just not mentally equipped to do the job properly (which is pretty much exactly what Akira Toriyama had to say on the subject).
- According to Kaiser, Mr. Satan received the lifetime supply of Hetap for "winning" the Cell Games.
- After episode 6 of the Dragon ShortZ released, Kaiser clarified on Twitter that Krillin and Lazuli are not married by the time she revealed her pregnancy to him. He also confirmed that the discussion they have about job-hunting with experiences like theirs is a subtle social commentary relating to Krillin becoming a cop in canon, and that both instances of her saying “a month” in the episode are intentionally connected to each other, heavily implying that what Roshi recorded on the Under 18 and Perfectly Legal sex tape she destroyed may in fact have been Marron’s conception.
Creator Commentary
The Creator Commentary videos contain several instances of TFS making official statements about the canon of their show. While some of them are clarifications of their authorial intent, plenty of them are clearly just headcanons and jokes they think up on the spot and take the opportunity to retroactively declare canon.
- In the Episode 41 Creator Commentary, Lani and Kaiser discuss the three most obvious locations that the Z-Fighters could have kept Goku, those being Goku's home, Kame House, and Capsule Corp. When they bring up Kami's Lookout as a potential option, Kaiser mentions the original series established that there's some sort of magic that prevented people from just flying up to the Lookout with a vehicle (which Bulma would do later in the show anyways). Lani theorizes that after Kami fused with Piccolo, the magic bubble surrounding the lookout disappeared, allowing normal humans and vehicles to fly up there (or into it) without issue, which Kaiser also accepted as part of their canon.
- Lani: (in Mr. Popo's voice) We keep getting hit by airplanes now. It's funny.
- Taka and Kaiser both agreed on the headcanon that the answer to Goku’s “When and how did you get here?” question when Vegeta shows up in the second Cooler movie is that he was always on the ship with them the whole time, just offscreen in the bathroom.
- Taka has gone on record in both his personal commentary and the team commentaries that his personal headcanon for the Bad Future that Future Trunks hails from in their version is that it can be attributed to Yamcha’s absence turning the tide against the heroes. Because Yamcha was Driven to Suicide before the androids appeared, his Cosmic Plaything status was not a factor in the battle and he wasn’t around to Draw Aggro from the androids, which would have given the other fighters a chance to beat them. The evidence he gives for this is the fact that in the main timeline, Android 19 and Gero popped out of hiding to attack Yamcha because they misidentified him as Goku.
- After The Stinger for Episode 45 shows Dr. Briefs looking over a clone fetus of his wife, the team discusses the implications. Taka suggests he's been replacing her over and over and the original one died long ago. One idea is that he uses the younger cells from the clones as material to rejuvenate the older parts and keep her young. Kaiser thinks it's either that or he's artificially aging the clones to use as a Body Backup Drive for the original's brain.
- From the perspective of the in-universe timeline, Gohan’s first transformation into a Super Saiyan at the beginning of Episode 52 happens at the same time as the advent of Perfect Cell at the end of Episode 51, despite being separated between those episodes. The team wanted to depict both moments happening in the same episode to evoke Rule of Symbolism and draw parallels between them, but ended up splitting them into their own parts to avoid undercutting each other’s impact.
- In World’s Strongest, when explaining the origins of Oolong’s shapeshifting abilities to Taka, Lani throws out the suggestion that he was originally a human boy and the pig form he has currently is a Shapeshifter Mode Lock that he never learned how to fix when he was in Transformation Kindergarten, which Kaiser adopts as his new headcanon.
- Taka’s personal headcanon for the abridged version of World’s Strongest is that after getting a new body, one of the things Dr. Wheelo did before succumbing to brain cancer was getting really high at Kame House with Master Roshi and watching movies with him. They watched the Star Wars movies in chronological order, and Roshi gave him more weed when he questioned a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
- In the Episode 54 Creator Commentary, after getting to the scene where Cell quickly shows all of the cities he has been to and noticing Penguin Village, Kaiser makes it canon that when Cell went there, he fought Arale for a minute before deciding to leave.
- Kaiser: Canonically? Penguin Village? Completely safe. [Cell] got knocked around by Arale, but he put it on the list because technically he showed up there.
- In the Episode 56 Creator Commentary, it's stated the the reason for Dende's personality change between episodes 30 and 56 is a mixture of him (sort of) living through the near-extinction of his race and him being heralded as a celebrity on Namek due to making the wish on Porunga that saved everyone by transporting them to Earth.
- The commentary also states that the ghost that threw a book at Chi-Chi was Grandpa Gohan. Lani & Taka then cracked jokes claiming that Grandpa Gohan’s ghost is bound to the house and basically Forced to Watch them having sex, so the book throwing was retaliation for that and because he’s a Papa Wolf about the sheer exhaustion Goku is going through from it.
- In the Broly movie...
- After Dr. Briefs comments on "the gay agenda" at Korin & Yajirobe’s wedding, the team decides that he not only has a blue check on Twitter / X, but that he wanted one and Elon Musk gifted him one.
- Chi-Chi was just flat out lying when she claimed to the interviewers that her mother was Jewish.
- The reason Vegeta complains about the brickwork for his castle on New Vegeta being a shitshow is because the Shamoshans deliberately did a lousy job so they could get punished for it. Kaiser also declares that all the Shamoshans we see are of age and sexual maturity for their species.
- The return of Grand Vizier Nappa in Paragus’s flashback being rendered with custom animation is reflective of the movies getting a higher budget than individual episodes of the anime get to afford an Animation Bump, which contrasts with Grand Vizier Nappa’s original appearance in Season 2 being made from existing footage of Nappa with a Jafar turban edited on very conspicuously for Stylistic Suck. Taka also jokes that the 6:00 appointment Nappa warns King Vegeta not to cancel is a meeting with Beerus.
- Kaiser emphatically denies that Paragus using the word "trigger" when describing Broly’s reaction to hearing Kakarot’s name is the team making a "triggered" joke like some thought they were, it’s simply using the accurate terminology for the phenomenon.
- The reason Piccolo was able to have a Big Damn Heroes moment and save Gohan on New Vegeta is because he was already alerted to some sort of threat to investigate after Goku popped in asking if he destroyed South Galaxy and left without elaborating.
- While the team unanimously acknowledges Paragus was a bad dad in the source material, they have different ideas on whether or not their version of Paragus counts for Abusive Parents. Lani believes that Paragus probably figured Broly could survive New Vegeta getting obliterated by Comet Camori, so him getting into a one-seat pod to leave before it hits can’t really count as an example of bad parenting, and also points to his legitimate concern when Goku keeps trying to figure out Broly’s Trauma Button. Taka considers the Complexity Addiction of the scheme to kill Vegeta and a whole planet when he could just have Broly kill him quickly an indicator of Paragus putting his own revenge above his son’s needs. Kaiser is also in the camp of their Paragus probably being a piece of shit on the grounds that Saiyans in general are Abusive Alien Parents, but refuses to elaborate further when Lani jokingly brings up the "Goku is a bad dad" rhetoric that they’ve been trying to walk back.
- For the Episode 57 commentary, Lani & Taka explain that part of Mr. Satan’s bravado when he shows up to the Cell Games despite Cell having destroyed cities is because part of his brain believes the whole event is somehow just another staged performance that some PR team cooked up to help him promote his brand, akin to Creator Clash, and it was probably Nappa who put the idea in his head that Cell’s acts of destruction are just special effects.
- Kaiser stated that Cell’s dialogue is heavily implying that he genuinely wanted a friendship with Android 16, which is why he is legitimately disappointed in having to blast him to pieces after his failed kamikaze attack. Taka & Lani then offer up a headcanon he never considered but really likes, in which part of Cell’s affection for 16 is influenced by having absorbed 17 & 18 and having access to their memories, in addition to his own sense of kinship regarding their shared origins.
- The breaking speech calling out Gohan in Episode 60 from both Cell and, later, Android 16 to push him over the edge is talked about in length during the commentary; the premise about writing them was never to treat Gohan as weak or pathetic for wishing to be pacifistic, but him refusing to accept The Call Knows Where You Live and allow Cell to beat the living shit out of him rather than accept Cell is a monster that needs to be put down due to said Moral Dilemma scaring him so much as he doesn't want to call up on his rage to fight someone he doesn't believe is deserving of it, thus it was absolutely necessary to call him out for his refusal in this adaptation to make him see reason. And sure enough, it’s only after Android 16's cutting speech here followed by Cell callously killing him off that Gohan sees Cell as truly Beyond Redemption and cuts loose to actively seek his death.
- Future Wombat was the one who called 18 a hoe-bot, prompting the barrage of energy blasts that she was unleashing when Future Trunks gets to her and 17 in the epilogue.
- After they notice a random gun inexplicably mounted on a wall next to Bulma in Plan to Eradicate Christmas, they decide it is the very same shotgun that Dr. Briefs fired at Yajirobe for raiding the “basement fridge” under Capsule Corp.
- In Kai Abridged Ⅱ.9:
- Lani confirms that the stifled laughter he gave Vegeta when commenting on being in the part of space where there’s air was something he decided to intentionally manufacture for the scene, not just a blooper that got through. He also refuses to lie about it when Kaiser says he had the opportunity to claim it slipped through unintentionally. Taka also suggests that he is in a pocket of air left over from the atmosphere of one of the many planets destroyed in the series, operating on the same video game logic that air bubbles in Sonic the Hedgehog games do.
- Gohan killing several of the Spice Boys is one of the big reasons that the main abridged series skipped the Garlic Jr. Saga, as it would have contradicted the pacifism aspect of the character that they called attention to in the finale.
- Kaiser makes sure to let everyone know that the voice actress for Carleen Morrigan did NOT say the N-word when recording the interview with Vinegar/Vinny in The Stinger, and in fact did not say anything at all underneath the space in her last line that gets a Sound-Effect Bleep, the recording of the line stops at Mister.
- From the Buu Bits:
- Lani and Kaiser admit that Gohan not knowing Krillin has hair and meeting Marron until after he becomes the Great Saiyaman makes no sense for how they write his character and state that Gohan actually does keep in touch with his friends frequently enough to have known about Marron prior to the Buu saga. Him finding out about Marron’s name for the first time was depicted they way they wrote it in the bit specifically to set up the joke about Maron.
- After talking about the creative disagreement they had behind the scenes about Goku not getting to finish talking about his Super Saiyan 3 transformation before Vegeta knocks him out, Kaiser brings up that he likes the idea that as soon as Goku started talking about it, Vegeta kinda saw coming that whatever Goku’s about to say is something he’s going to hate hearing, and so he preemptively shut him up to avoid getting pissed off.
