Yeah, yeah. Dragon Ball as a whole just makes my entire set of principles as a writer go yahoohoohooey with how poorly it and its spinoffs handle continuity. Minus especially makes me go "No, no, wait, this can't be right," because it was just bad, especially when compared to the non-canon Bardock special.
Like I said during the whole "does canon exist" debate, the entire series is wrecked by the fact that the whole thing's an unpolished first draft, backtracking things that work with things that really don't, and when it's the other way around, it's still incredibly sloppy and leaves a ton of scar tissue, such as deliberate and extremely obvious Take Thats (which is what I firmly believe the "pilaf gang is now kids" thing was).
"It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — Ultimatepheer
And that's why I've been saying for so long that this franchise needs a motherfuckin reboot. The Dragon Ball franchise suffers so much from lack of consistency, that it needs to be addressed or else the fandom, especially the most recent, will have less understanding of what's going on. I know we'll probably never get a full blown reboot, but one can dream.
edited 23rd Jun '14 5:54:11 PM by FireShadow
You know what's canon for me?
With all the complications about what counts and what doesn't, I've decided to just keep the stuff I like and say fuck it.
One Strip! One Strip!![]()
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...I, unfortunately, disagree.
I do not think that the purpose of stories should be to have any sort of coherent continuity. Not that stories that do so are necessarily always bad, there are some that are able to use world-building and consistency of setting to great effect, but failure to do so in no case makes a bad story.
What's important, I'd say, is that stories hit the right emotional beats. That they provoke some response in the audience. That they deliver their messages. Especially in serialized, episodic, independent narratives, which is what Dragon Ball has mostly been. What with being released on a chapterly basis in Shonen Jump. Because, I mean, the average audience isn't going to give a fuck about the continuity. Really, they aren't. That is not what they're there for.
edited 23rd Jun '14 6:23:39 PM by unnoun
Yeah, but keeping continuity provides a much better framework to do that with. Dragon Ball got lucky — stories without continuity are very much a Sturgeon's Law category.
edited 23rd Jun '14 6:25:13 PM by BaffleBlend
"It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — Ultimatepheer
Yeah, I'm in a much better frame of mind to discuss this now than I was.
I think there are things that can be poorly-written? And just being lazy or throwing things together will probably not result in a good story. It's good to care. It's good for writers to try.
But.
If a writer spent more time on making their world believable, and getting good continuity across all entries? Or, if the writer set out for what they were intending to do, consistently, whether that was big dumb fight scenes, mediocre emotional friendship/family moments and perverted comedy? Want me to choose between the two options?
I mean, I don't think continuity inherently makes it better either. If I could have both, I wouldn't prefer it. It's a non-issue to me. If it has it, whatever, if it doesn't, whatever also.
I think world-building sorta works with like political allegory, and explorations of technology and science things. Like what Asimov did.
I think if Dragon Ball made any sort of sense I wouldn't like it as much as I do.
But then, Dragon Ball is sorta unique in some ways.
I mean, I'm pretty sure it was the eighties.
In my stories, I kinda prefer emotional moments, themes, characters and stuff.
And if there are fight sequences, cool ones with explosions.
Comedy doesn't hurt either.
edited 23rd Jun '14 6:33:15 PM by unnoun
I see what you mean now. Dragon Ball is the very definition of "stupid fun" — we loved it because it was awesome and nothing else. It's also why a lot of diehard anime fans hate it so much.
The current issue is more feeling betrayed by a piss-poor substitute for something we already had. But since any future projects will take that into account and not what we liked, we have to accept it. When it was just the Bardock special, we accepted it as a side story that didn't really affect the story. When Minus came out, though, we felt like he was spitting in our faces.
edited 23rd Jun '14 6:35:09 PM by BaffleBlend
"It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — Ultimatepheer...And I have to admit to liking the anime a little better than the Manga anyway.
But, there are emphasis in the manga, and in things like Jaco and Minus that put things in a new light, that help me see things in a different way. Not in the sense of continuity or whatever, but.
I don't really care that much about which of them "happened" really. They all serve different purposes. Whether Goku was naked when he hit his head or wearing armor. Whether Bardock tried to fight Frieza or traveled in time and became the first Super Saiyan or was married to Gine or whatever. That's not really my concern, I guess.
I mean, the reveal in Jaco of what Jaco was on Earth for and who he wanted to kill? That was, I think, genuinely kinda cool. And the fact that it made a joke about the inconsistencies of Goku's aging? That was cool too.
Whether or not Goku was a naked baby and hit his head like in the Bardock TV Special, or if he was a child in armor being rude to Gohan like Jaco and Minus, I think they both reveal something and have something to say about Goku, and either way I think that it's neat.
edited 23rd Jun '14 6:43:00 PM by unnoun
It's mostly Gine I have a problem with, I admit. The whole thing about Saiyans is that they're a Blood Knight race with a natural, unquenchable thirst for battle. That's their whole thing. And the first female Saiyan in the main timeline is a freaking 1950s housewife.
"It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — UltimatepheerI could write an essay about the inherent sexism in Japanese culture compared to our own which doesn't even get it right most of the time. But we already have a forum topic for that.
I would've given her a chance if he didn't outright say she couldn't fight. I even woulda accepted the lunch lady thing because Saiyans collectively share a monstrous metabolism. Hell, I even like her design. Saiyan women are attractive (even that one with the knife in the anime flashback), and nothing wrong with just attractiveness. But no, he had to make that one statement that screwed over any possible chance of making her a balanced character. That statement just turns her into a clone of every other stereotyped helpless girl.
edited 23rd Jun '14 7:21:55 PM by BaffleBlend
"It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — UltimatepheerI'm painfully aware of the almost casual sexism that goes on in anime, and in Japan.
Lately, I've been trying not to bring it up because I was wondering if it was fair to call out Japan on such things when even Mainstream American Comic books are plenty capable of being sexist on their own.
One Strip! One Strip!En'garde. The question was: did Toriyama say anything?
Dragonball Online involves time travelers messing with actual events and leaving them unresolved. Bardock gets pulled out of time and becomes evil. The player fights alongside Goku and etc. Recoome and Oozaru!Gohan get possessed. And if I want to get nitpicky, the power levels shown in the game don't match up with the source material.
And mind, the game was cancelled.
I guess what irks me is that I often hear "Toriyama contributed to this more" which doesn't say much to me. I don't know on what level, or what designs. There are fans that claim he did nothing for GT, and others that say he wrote the first arc, and others that say he just did a design for 1 character, vs apparently designing the "entirety of Dragonball Online". Everyone says he contributed, thus, this work matters more, but no one ever provides legitimate proof of anything the man says or thinks. It always comes down to "he did more here than there, so obviously he cares more." Its always second-hand evidence.
There was a huge discussion here awhile ago about how Minus and Jaco contradict things and how it shouldn't be asserted it as primary canon.
EDIT: But in that same discussion, I also confessed preferring the anime fill-ins to the post-manga fill-ins, and ignoring most of the late additions to the universe out of preference. So, my headcanon admittedly won't ever jive with "SSG is real, Goku wasn't sent to Earth as a baby, some Saiyans are actually really nice, Goku wasn't born with a dismal power level of 2, etc."
edited 23rd Jun '14 10:53:00 PM by FOFD
Tobias, I just made a wall of text in response to the last thing you addressed to me, but after hitting the final two paragraphs I think you had the wrong idea of what I was trying to say.
I didn't mean that the results/winners of battles or even performance are used to show who is stronger, both I and the series itself are aware of the multitude of other factors that effect the outcome of the battle. The fact that Vegeta and Pure Boo lost doesn't make them weaker than what killed them.
What I did mean was that it can clearly be shown, and often is, who is stronger in battle, regardless of who the actual winner is. Despite Kuririn's good performances it's made clear in those battles that he's at the disadvantage in power, etc. Going back to the Nappa and Fat Boo comparison, both of them had their power clearly established in moments that don't rely on other factors so it's very easy to say Fat Boo is stronger than Nappa even while ignoring things like people talking about how strong their ki is and whatnot.
edited 24th Jun '14 1:43:49 AM by Saiga
Gine being a lunch lady that couldn't fight is bullshit and reeks of sexism. But the whole "some Saiyans just can't fight" thing goes hand-in-hand, regardless of gender, if you take into account Tarble. I mean he's Vegeta's freaking brother but apparently he couldn't throw a punch if his life depended on it and ended up being booted off his planet to become a more aggressive fighter and instead he ends up marrying a robot and arguably becoming even more of a pacifist.
Gine and Tarble's soft nature and unwillingness to fight is probably an illusion to the Super Saiyan God transformation itself because it needs pure hearted to activate it, so there's every chance they are descendants of two of the six pure hearted Saiyans that aided in activating the transformation for the first time all those years ago and that inherently good nature passed on to Goku and Vegeta. I mean they are Goku's mother and Vegeta's brother respectively. But of course this is all just a theory.
edited 24th Jun '14 8:06:57 AM by FireShadow
Krillin holding the Dragonballs in gameplay? Huh.
That red-haired Saiyan looks like a jackass. He's like 5 characters rolled into one. Classic Vegeta with scouter, Goku's hair, SSG hair color, Trunk's uniform, and Piccolo's cape.
Excited to see Time Patrol Trunks though. If they're both time travelers... then this could be a very interesting storym ode.
edited 24th Jun '14 8:09:42 AM by Soble
I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!He just keeps looking less and less interesting to me, personally.
"It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — Ultimatepheer![]()
Looks like its Gohan head with SSG hair.

Dragon Ball Online flat out ignores what happens in GT. The timeline of Online and GT contradict each other on several occasions and Toriyama significantly contributed much more to the plot of DBO
then people realize.
Then there's Battle Of Gods which pretty much tells you "Dragon Ball GT never existed". By having the Pilaf Gang become children when they were old people at the beginning of GT. And Toriyama contributed much more
to the movie than people realize.
Of course whether Battle Of Gods can be considered canon was up for debate for a while but then it was pretty confirmed that the events of Battle Of Gods did happen with the huge Hand Wave that Dragon Ball Minus, the official prologue of Goku's life written by Toriyama himself, gave towards the movie by confirming that the Super Saiyan God, which was at the time a movie exclusive transformation and significant plot point, actually exists in-universe within the main timeline.
Then Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, another work penned by Toriyama himself, essentially tells you, "What happened in Dragon Ball Minus really did happen
◊".
And there you have it, GT is officially non-canon. The author doesn't have to come out and directly say it when you take into account that least two different Dragon Ball works, both of which Toriyama wrote himself, act as if GT never happened.
The canon Dragon Ball timeline is this:
That's how it is.
edited 23rd Jun '14 5:44:22 PM by FireShadow