That technically is what these alternative timelines are...
Timeliness...
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.In Dragon Ball, timelines and universes are two entirely different things. For example, there might be a timeline where Zeno didn't destroy those 6 universes.
In Jojo, timelines and universes seem to be one-in-the-same, but travelling back in time and meeting yourself is not the same as going to an alternate timeline and meeting yourself, at least according to Eyes of Heaven.
Shonen manga is weird when it comes to time and space.
edited 19th Jul '17 1:28:46 AM by Rinsankajugin
I kinda have a theory on how paradoxical annihilation occurs and why Kid Trunks and Future Trunks never met the same fate as Wekapipo and Alternate Wekapipo.
As time goes on, our bodies age, and as our bodies age, the cells within our bodies multiply and die almost infinitely. This would mean the bodies we have now are essentially not the same bodies we had as children or the bodies we will have as elders.
Wekapipo and his counterpart were the exact same age, which caused instant paradoxical death due to having two copies of the exact same person within the same timeline. Kid Trunks and Future Trunks are almost two decades apart in age, which means they essentially don't have the same bodies to cause a paradox. It's also the same reason why Joseph and Oldseph can interact with each other without blowing up.
At least, that's how I think it works...
edited 19th Jul '17 3:06:30 AM by Rinsankajugin
DBZ time travel is that you can't change the future...any attempt to alter the future branches the timeline.
Any and all paradoxes are just plotholes.
Non-branching time travel doesn't exist(outside of Xenoverse), so you can't ever cause a paradox.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.Erm, time travel in Dragon Ball isn't very weird: Travelling from the future and changing events creates a different timeline that splits from the former. Pentadimensional reality, with 3 spatial axis, a temporal one, and another axis for timelines as they split as branches of a tree.
Remember, our brains work with 4 axis for space-time: Left-right, up-down, front-back and past-future. The former 3 are interpreted as spatial, and the latter is interpreted as temporal. But spacetime is a single thing, not two, and an spatial axis can work as a temporal and viceversa For example, in this animation, the front-back and up-down axis work as spatial, while the left-right works as temporal.
◊ The right side of the head will appear later. It requires a bit of abstraction, but it is pretty much the consensus.
Think of a tree. What we percieve as space would be a slice, with its rings, while spacetime would be that tree. A slice is 2-dimensional, while the tree is 3-dimensional; traditional space is 3-D, spacetime is 4-D, and it may be up to 11-D. For time travel and branching timelines, you need at least 5 dimensions, so there is a place where they may happen.
And, for branching being complicated, take, for example, the many world interpretation, which is a somewhat phylosophical take on quantum theory, and where timelines are infinitely splitting at any given moment, or, in simplified terms, "Schrodinger's cat is alive in a timeline and dead in another, and the timelines split when the cat got in the box"... Only the cat is every single elemental particle in existence.
Here's a thing from Masako X:
Nothing much new to say here. We've already talked about Toriyama's desire to subvert what people expected, though it really seems that the reasons he did so were entirely based on his whims at the time. As for whether Goku will ever be satisfied, I'd definitely say that no, he'll always look for someone even stronger to fight, and there will always be someone even stronger to fight as well, because that's how Dragonball rolls.
Though as I've said before, for someone who claims to want to subvert audience expectations, he can sure fall into patterns.
One Strip! One Strip!Time travel in DBZ isn't that bad to understand, mostly because before Super the "alternate universe whenever you time travel" mechanic makes being consistent really easy.
The trickiest thing to get one's mind around, though mostly just because people tend to expect the protagonists to be the "prime" set, is that our heroes are not the original universe, nor is Trunks the original Trunks.
edited 19th Jul '17 8:25:17 AM by KnownUnknown
The Cell arc was really confusing to me as a child because it took me a while to realize that there were actually three - not just two - timelines: the main timeline, the timeline Trunks comes from, and the timeline Cell comes from.
I still have no idea why Toriyama didn't just have Cell come from the main timeline. It would've made things waaay easier to understand.
De Romanīs, lingua Latina gloriosa non fuī.He introduced Cell at the last minute due to his editor. Unless Cell was worked on and finished sooner than he was in the future, it'd make no sense for his modern form to be running around before Trunks' version was. And it'd be harder to justify that considering Cell would have had to incorporate Frieza's powers into his design, so he'd have to be functional within three years of that.
Technically, there's four timelines, because remember: the Trunks from Cell's timeline still went back to the past, to an unseen timeline where Cell never existed and the Androids were likely either defeated by Goku, Vegeta, or Bulma's deactivation remote, since the Trunks who went to that timeline was weak enough for Cell to kill.
edited 19th Jul '17 9:28:19 AM by PushoverMediaCritic

I mean, it was still going slower on Zamasu than when Beerus did it himself, so unless Goku tries this ability out again
Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!like on Supermanwe won't know if it's because of Goku's inexperience, Zamasu's immortality trying to fight it off, or just a side-effect of someone who isn't a God of Destruction trying to use it, like what was happening with Zamasu and Black's Potara Fusion.