How could Dragon Ball Super lead directly into the previous sequel series, Dragon Ball GT? Akira Toriyama’s original Dragon Ball story takes Goku from his humble hut in the mountains to saving the world (again) by defeating Buu with a Spirit Bomb, and these events are chronicled in animated form in the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z series. When the original manga concluded, Toriyama was done with Saiyans, but Toei Animation sensed more money was to be made and produced the Dragon Ball GT sequel series, which is generally considered to be a resounding failure.
Toriyama came back to his most famous creation in 2013 with Battle of Gods, and this movie sparked the current Dragon Ball Super era, comprising of 2 further movies, a new manga series and an anime, all made with Toriyama’s involvement. While the anime is currently on hiatus, the manga series remains in production and more movie projects are expected after the runaway success of Dragon Ball Super: Broly. While not universally loved, general opinion suggests Dragon Ball Super is far superior to GT, and is the true canon continuation of the original, rendering Dragon Ball GT obsolete. However, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
Chronologically, the two Dragon Ball sequel series don’t overlap with each other, with the events of Super taking place years prior to where GT would fall in the franchise’s timeline. It’s the stories and character developments that truly contradict each other, however. Dragon Ball GT contains no mention of the Super Saiyan God forms that have been so prevalent in recent stories, and there’s not even a hint towards characters such as Beerus, Whis and Zen-Oh. Obviously, this is because Dragon Ball GT was written long before Super, but the discrepancies effectively mean the two sequels can’t both be considered canon.
With that said, Dragon Ball Super is hardly a sterling example of continuity, and the series doesn’t just contradict GT, but the main series also. Goku’s Saiyan origin is altered, the rules of fusion are changed and power levels become more fluid than ever before. Most significantly, Dragon Ball Super goes against the finale of Toriyama’s original Dragon Ball, which claims that Goku hadn’t seen the other Z Fighters for a long time and that the Earth experienced an era of peace following the defeat of Buu. Even the most optimistic narrator would struggle to describe the events of Dragon Ball Super as an “era of peace.”
However, the end of Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Super and Dragon Ball GT could all align into one (rough) timeline, all thanks to the angels. In Dragon Ball Super, the angels have a policy of non-interference, but Goku and his friends have breached this on more than one occasion. They’ve also been responsible for manipulating time and have irked the Gods themselves by attaining power mortals apparently shouldn’t possess. At the current rate, it wouldn’t be too surprising if, at the very end of Dragon Ball Super, the Grand Priest decreed that Goku and his friends should be stripped of their celestial knowledge. This would effectively force them to forget about God modes, other universes and the Galactic Patrol.
Firstly, this would neatly explain why everyone thinks they haven’t seen each other for years at the end of Dragon Ball Z, as well as why they think everything has been peaceful since Buu’s defeat. However, it would also pave the way for the events of Dragon Ball GT to take place, and instead of powering-up through God ki, Goku and Vegeta would simply break through the Super Saiyan levels until they unlocked Super Saiyan 4 as an alternate path to strength. Everyone would be blissfully unaware of the adventures they’d experienced and the people they had met in Dragon Ball Super, including Android 17, who would tragically become a villain.
Just because it’s possible to merge Dragon Ball Super into Dragon Ball GT, that doesn’t necessarily mean it should be done, of course. A memory wipe would certainly make for better franchise continuity, but would also undermine Dragon Ball Super in order to make the vastly inferior GT more relevant. Instead of being used to supplement the previous sequel, Dragon Ball Super should be used to erase its lesser predecessor.
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