Reminder that Dragon Ball has no official canon

Reminder that Dragon Ball has no official canon.

The manga is canon and everything else isn’t.

Only the first Broly movie, Dragon Ball AF and UHG animation videos are canon
fight me

>The manga is canon and everything else isn’t.

Nobody who officially works on Dragon Ball has said that, so no. There is no official canon until someone who actually works on Dragon Ball says so.

Fuck no

But that's still your own personal interpretation of what the canon should be. No-one behind the franchise has come out and officially stated that the manga itself, and itself exclusively, is and should be the canonical basis for all considerations for all time so be it the end seriously.

Bojack is "official" -- he was created by the staff legally allowed to be responsible for the franchise (and was even designed by the original author). Is he canonical? Yes, he's canonical to the movie he's in. Perhaps he's canonical to the TV adaptation. He does not appear to be canonical to the original manga.

Bardock is also "official" -- he was created by Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru and refined by Akira Toriyama. He was included in a legitimate TV special for the TV series. He's canonical to the TV adaptation. He's also canonical to the manga, since he was included after-the-fact.

But what does it matter? It only matters when you want to argue with someone else over who could beat who in the fight, for the most part. That's what discussions over "canon" boil down to the overwhelming majority of the time with this franchise. If you're going to argue with someone who has a completely different ideology about the canon of the series, then your discussion is pretty much DOA.

No-one responsible for creating the franchise has ever stepped up and said, "Here is a detailed list of what we consider to be the pure canon for the Dragon World." They just haven't. Any definition of and restrictions on canon is up to the individual fan to decide for themselves in terms of what to accept, what not to accept, what to accept over what else, what contradictions to ignore, etc.

Except super it will never be canon

God doesn’t decide what’s canon, the church does.

You make it sound like anyone other than Toriyama has any say in what is and isn't canon in his own universe. At best, Toei can only control the canon within their own creations like GT. They can't just add to Toriyama's vision by themselves unless he incorporates it into his own story or says it's canon. If some dude at Toei tried to lay out the "true" canon of Dragon Ball, it would be just as irrelevant as some random dude on the internet doing it.

What Toriyama writes and says is his, the original creator's, vision. That's what people mean when they say things like Broly isn't canon, because Broly was never part of Toriyama's vision for the story. Sure, we can say he's "anime" canon, but that canon holds no priority over Toriyama's.

It's canon that I want to shove my dick into sixteen year old Bulma's pretty pink anus.

is the manga worth reading? I remember playing some games and watching a few episodes of the anime when I was a kid but I never really got into the overarching story

Absolutely. DB >>> DBZ

Does it even matter? Isn't it just a stupid manga/anime where they just fight and nothing is basically happening? Power levels is the only thing that matters I think

>Reminder that Dragon Ball has no official canon.
It may have no official canon, but it has a Special Beam Cannon.

only Gohan is canon.

>Nobody who officially works on Dragon Ball has said that
It's the source material. The source is what is canon unless overwritten.
For example, the main Dragon Ball canon would be
>Dragon Ball
>Dragon Ball Super outline
>Jaco and DB Minus
>Parts of DBO that weren't overwritten by Super or Jaco
Arguably, Bojack can be canon as it is of little consequence and isn't overwritten by source material, unlike other movies which make the official source awkward.
Meanwhile, we have what we'll call the 'Anime Canon'
This is comprised of all of the original DB and Z airing, including filler, the Garlic Jr movie, arguably Bojack,the Bardock and Trunks specials and the Super anime series.
There's also GT canon, which is the above, but switch Super with GT.
Then there is movie canon, which is where the canon is based purely on interpretation. Parts of DB and Z are canon unless the movies make a change, so majority of the original Dragon Ball anime is made non-canon by the original movies, and they are made somewhat non-canon by Path to Power. It's confusing.
This canon also writes out majority of the Buu arc, where Super Buu is never made and they lead into Battle of Gods.
Following that, there is Xenoverse canon, which is every canon because Time Patrol bullshit. Toyo's manga is left out though.
Finally, we have the video game What If? canon, which is basically Xenoverse canon, but the garbage bin for the alternate scenarios in Budokai 1-3, Tenkaichi 1-3, Shin Budokai, etc.

Read it from the beginning though don't just start on Z

Read the manga. Pirate it, if you like it, buy either the singles or the Vizbig if you want good quality paper. There's also the generic 3-in-1s, which are on cheap paper and make me regret my FMA manga purchase.
After that, all the movies are good. The original DB movies try to retell the story in their own unique ways and are always worth a watch, especially the third one and Path to Power.
The Z movies are also good, the only real bad one is Bio Broly.
The original DB anime is also good enough to watch over the manga, as the filler in it is top tier. The Z anime is okay. The original dub and most of the following ones are horrendous and change too much of the characters and the story. It's on the level of Yu-Gi-Oh but isn't as funny. The first arc has some God tier filler, the second arc has Nardo-tier filler, the third arc has God-tier filler and the fourth arc is best watched in its Kai adaptation.
Super is shit, read the manga, watch it only for Nozawa's Goku Black and Episode 95 (or 96), 109, 110 and everything from 123 onwards.
Video games are great, best ones are
>the Budokai trilogy
>Super DBZ (Arcade fighter)
>Xenoverse 2
>FighterZ
The GBA and DS games are also good.

should I bother with the last 5 episodes of Dragon Ball? they're all filler apparently and I might just wanna move onto Z if they're not worth it.

part of me likes the completionist aspect of it though ;_;
I haven't watched DB in years and I almost feel guilty skipping it

>I might just wanna move onto Z
If you can't handle 5 episodes of DB, how are you going to handle all the Z filler

I'm not saying I can't handle it, but I'm pretty anxious to move onto Z as well and this seems like the most dense filler from Dragon Ball yet.

I mean, the series is technically over at this point but clearly they needed a few more episodes to fill out the season or something.

I’m the biggest Dragon Ball fan on Earth and even I don’t give enough of a shit about it to watch Goku save Chichi’s wedding dress or whatever bullshit happens in those episodes. If you can’t read the manga then just go ahead and start Kai.

I've been skipping through them, there's actually a few good parts but overall they're definitely not noteworthy, unless you count my new waifu Annin of course.

but I'm gonna go through the original DBZ next and then I'll probably watch Kai with the english dub for old time sake... then I'm watching Super subbed and dubbed.

then... I can finally die.

I'd suggest watching the Kai version of the Freeza arc, as the filler in that for Z is unbearable. I think Kai shortens it down to 30 episodes, which is about half the length of Z's Freeza battle starting from the Porunga wish

yeah, I've seen DB/DBZ/GT in its entirety years ago, so I do recall on some level how awful the filler in Z is, but I wanna watch the original sub in its entirety.

The filler outside of Freeza is fine, it's just that there's a lot of questionable character.
The first filler episode was great, did some world building, made Freeza's forces seem more intimidating, and they follow that up with a godawful mini arc and shove shit like Bulma fighting crabs and Bulma's frog adventures in.
Saiya-jin arc and Cell arc has God Tier filler though, it's honestly perfect. The Gohan training episodes and the 10 days filler is great.