Understanding the Timeline - Dragon Ball Dissection: The Baby Arc Part 4

It's the final installment of Dragon Ball Dissection December. I love a good topic, and everyone's been asking about it, so here we go. How many years have passed before Dragon Ball GT? Where do differing opinions come from? How old are new characters? Does any of this make sense? It's a surprisingly deep dive into the show, its guidebooks, and even '90s fandom!
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Special thanks to:
VegettoEX, Cipher, kanzenshuu.com, Curtis H. Hoffmann
Some material used with the permission of Curtis H. Hoffmann/TSOJ

[@rjd-kh8et]

Based on his designs, I assume Toriyama didn't know himself how long the gap between Z and GT is. It likely wasn't even decided until after he drew them.

[@leaffinite2001]

That makes sense, right? Its just handled so awfully all around tho

[@SsjkidsSaveCosmo08]

Thats my new head canon

[@StevenJones851]

I'll headcanon this

[@austinraymond9136]

Please don’t stop making Dragon Ball content Mistare. You’re definitely the most analytical and thoughtful Dragon Ball researcher on this site

[@MistareFusion]

That's very kind of you. Thank you.

[@ieatvirgins]

The bar for "analytical and thoughtful Dragon Ball" content is very low. It would be even lower if Mistare's heroic efforts weren't single-handedly propping it up.

[@gorade1901]

I missed the word don't and read this as "Please stop making Dragon Ball content, you're the most analytical and thoughtful". Just thought that was amusing.

[@ieatvirgins]

@@gorade1901 "Please stop making Dragon Ball content, you've peaked"

[@mechaocean170]

I think the GT 10 years thing is also mentioned by Funimation in the GT Season Set booklets and maybe even the GT Single DVD special feature character description menu

[@leafbladie]

I remember as a kid wondering who Bra (well I knew her as Bulla then) was, and wondering where this 16 year old girl came from. Learning everything afterwards was a weird kind of mortifying.

[@cloudsombrero]

i agree 6 year old me was ayyy and 25 year old me is like nuuuuuu

[@Jose-se9pu]

She is barely in Z. While in the anime at least she has ONE line, in the manga they just state that Vegeta and Bulma had a girl, and that's it, then she is in the background in some panels. You wont be blamed for forgetting about her.

[@pokebot451gonbow5]

Did bra marry gotten or something just wierd bloodlines where the sayian jrs are

[@MagillanicaLouM]

Well if it makes you feel better, especially from this video, really, there is no definitive span of time between z and gt so she pretty much is as old as you're comfortable assuming she is essentially lol

[@BubblesChika]

@@pokebot451gonbow5 Oh, heck no. There's a good 12 years age gap between them

[@LSMMIKE]

Thanks for another year of great content, Lance. I’m looking forward to seeing even more in 2023.

[@gibbeynator]

No one: Toriyama: Did you know that the androids are named Lapis and Lazuli, and that 16 is Gero's son? Everyone: That's nice. Why is Bra so much older in GT if it's only been 5 years? Toriyama: *crickets*

[@Powoga]

What if she spent some time in the Room of Spirit and Time? Wait, that just raises more questions.

[@R0-83-RT]

Toriyama: You expect me to know, I didn't write GT?

[@ThexDynastxQueen]

Toriyama: GT was 5 years? Oh, interesting *_chuckles_* Real talk tho I don't think he knew the timeframe Toei was gonna use, he just drew what his heart wanted and lets hope that it was a teenage girl...which isn't that much better but 🤷🏿‍♀

[@EmeralBookwise]

@@ThexDynastxQueen: Toriyama's design sketches for GT don't seem to be drawn to any consistent scale, so I think the anime staff just too their own liberties when deciding how old Bra looked.

[@imfsresidentotaku9699]

Because anime plays fast and loose with age, especially in correlation with the appearance of the characters, and any sensible, self-respecting viewer just accepts it and moves on.

[@shmikex]

10 years make the most sense thematically to draw the lines closer to the original Dragon Ball hunt. Plus it makes a lot of things with Pan and Bra grosser at certain points if they were barely 10-11 years old.

[@chriscannon8144]

Ever since I found out about Pan & Bra’s actual ages on here, I’m just now realizing how short they are compared to the others, especially Pan.

[@meganinten0078]

I mean, Bra is Vegeta's daughter and we know Vegeta is a short man xD

[@ieatvirgins]

@@meganinten0078 King of the Manlets

[@mechajay3358]

@@meganinten0078 And then there's Krillin, short people do exist in Dragon Ball.

[@GleeChan]

Scary thought: If Lance dives into Dragonball Multiverse after this, we might see a nervous breakdown.

[@tonycorona8501]

He will never do it, so don't worry.

[@slifer875]

I always liked the character of bra in GT, she is cute, salagir ruined everything about that comic with his fnaboysm towards certain characters, asura deserves to draw a better comic.....

[@chriscannon8144]

I wish, that’d be hilarious. If he were to get into fanfics, I’d love to see him touch up on Elsewhere.

[@felixwilson2917]

Christ Id pay to see that

[@EmeralBookwise]

In the highly unlikely event he ever covers fanfiction, I'd think he'd more likely cover AF, specifically the version of AF created by the same guy currently doing the DBS manga, since that at least gives it a tenuous connection to official media. If nothing else, it could make for an amusing one-off episode some April 1st.

[@averagewhiteguy2]

I'm very grateful for this series. I can't believe it has been 10 years of DBD December. This has got to be the most in-depth video series about a manga/anime out there. Honestly, DBD could have been some series made in Japanese on NND and never be known in the West, but I'm grateful that the English speaking world has content like this about a foreign franchise.

[@alvarostockle]

It's been as many years of DBD as years between the end of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT, right?

[@danielquinlan2457]

10:36 Oh that's definitely true. I've seen tons of people claim that Pan, Bra, and/or Oob were GT original characters because they conflated the events of the 28th Tenkaichi Budokai as being part of GT (I also suspect the visual similarity between Goku's "10 years later" gi and his GT gi probably doesn't help things).

[@randomfox12245]

I've also known people to assert definitively that Beerus and Whis are DB Super characters. Despite them originating in a Dragon Ball Z movie which predates any kind of Super branding by years. Because people love to just make stuff up and then insist it is fact.

[@danielquinlan2457]

@@randomfox12245 I think that's a bit more forgivable. The movies they debuted in may not technically be Dragon Ball Super, but they were part of the same revival movement.

[@BagOfMagicFood]

​@@danielquinlan2457 Yeah, I'd definitely call them "Super era" inventions along with Jaco, despite there being other Galactic Patrolman manga preceding Jaco.

[@21quepasa]

@@randomfox12245 I still count those as DBS characters

[@danielquinlan2457]

@@21quepasa Same. To me, it's kinda like how people consider Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to be a Ghibli movie, even though it predates the studio's founding by a year.

[@aokhoinguyenang3992]

The fact that Bra(the way she acts & look) was 8-11 in GT, will always be funny to me

[@MagillanicaLouM]

Well the point of all this is to say, we don't know how old she or anyone is in GT lol. There's practically no agreement on the amount of years passed, just enough for drastic physical aging to happen across the cast

[@thefunnyultra7guy237]

@@MagillanicaLouM not to mention toriyama has always been pretty lax on what is and isn't Canon anyway

[@MagillanicaLouM]

@@thefunnyultra7guy237 yup

[@MADKapo]

I think that fans remembered 10 years happening between Buu's defeat and the tournament, but when GT came around and didn't state how many years had gone by, everyone just assumed it was either the same 10 years timeskip or another 10 years more. Edit: Happy New Years, Lance!

[@BertoPlease]

That's what I've been thinking

[@Genya2008]

In he german dub the Narrator said 5 years so i wondered where this 10 year thing had come too.

[@MagillanicaLouM]

Hoo boy. Well this was a huge discussion after all. I still personally just go with "it really doesn't matter how many years passed, it's enough time for physical aging and Pan to become a spunky... Older young person than in Z". That's all that matters

[@TheFatestPat]

I bet when Toriyama when drawing Bra, he basically decided to have her look like Bulma did back during the original DB arc. Problem is that Bulma was 15, where as Bra is supposed to be somewhere around 10. Oops.

[@jonmahashintina]

shes unfathomably rich and the lineage of the prince of saiyans. shes gonna dress like that.

[@PrimeroJinJusuke]

Bulma was 16.

[@SonicmaniaVideos]

These "topic-focused" videos are always some of my favorite.

[@marsf6080]

From the designs alone I would not at all be surprised if early in the creation of the show the plan WAS for a 10 year old gap and that got changed in writing later. They all just feel they've aged more than just 5 years since the end of the manga

[@zaja2418]

That would make sense, to be honest... were not for Goten's and Trunks' GT designs. Goten, save for his hair, does not look much different than his late teen self at the end of Z. Trunks, meanwhile, even looks younger than his EoZ self in certain scenes of GT. Also, Pan does look and act more like a ten-year-old, in my opinion, than as fourteen-year-old.

[@TheInfiniteAmo]

Yeah, Pan's behavior in the first episode was more similar to a 14-15 year old than a 9-10 year old. I assume the original production intent was to do 10 years, preproduction material was developed, but the concept was re-written close to the end of preproduction when the first episode would have already been largely scripted.

[@marsf6080]

@@zaja2418 I think purely design-wise, Dragonball tends to show aging more on puberty than afterwards- Goku looks the same for ages, even Bulma looks the same age for a long while. So I've always had no issue reading Goten and Trunks as just "yeah they're probably older now, after all Pan clearly is some 14 years old now"

[@ultimateshadeofwar]

9:16 Fun fact, i never heard about GT taking place 10 years later originally, i just assume because of Pan's physical changes that 10 years had pass... Then i enter the fandom and keep hearing that, so i was like "Wow how accurate did i get". Now by this point im not surprise at this kind stuff...

[@TyroneTG3]

Goku fighting Freeza on Christmas Eve is hilarious to me for some reason!

[@jaybee27D]

you mean the Eve of Freeza Day, no?

[@NataliaNeeSama]

Personally I think the fault just lies simply on the fact that Toriyama is not good at aging his characters because he is so inconsistent with it. He even made up a rule that Saiyans "take longer to age" at the end of the series just so he don't need to redesign Goku to look like an old man.

[@brandonlyon730]

Yeah Krillin is not that much older then the other male characters introduced since OG dragon ball and he looks like he is 20 years older then any of them.

[@crystalfire7x]

That is sadly true.

[@SuperSaiyanGuyver]

If a design works, use it. Kid Goku is anywhere from 5 to 15, adult Goku is either 18 or about 40. Meantime you can take a picture of Gohan and know exactly what point in the series he came from. I prefer the latter but from a marketing/ merchandising standpoint, the former has some merits.

[@esperderek5383]

@@brandonlyon730 What I find amusing about the K-Man is that, appearance aside, they basically 'reset' his age as the story goes on. He grows up with Goku through the early arcs, but because he ends up partnered with 5-year-old Gohan through so much of the Saiyan and Freeza arcs that the story and characters begin to treat him closer to Gohan's age, or at least like Gohan's older, wiser brother. Then the Android arc happens and his whole thing with 18 is almost like a teenager crushing on the bad girl in school, rather than a man in his early thirties leering over a girl who is, like, at best ten years younger than him.

[@lusupongo]

@@esperderek5383 damn you're spot on. I kinda mentally adjusted my expectations and assumptions on his age according to the situation much more than with other characters... I feel like I should've been wiser, but now his relationship with 18 feels much worse 💀

[@ndep93]

I refuse to accept a child of Vegeta being younger and taller than a child with Ox King and Mr. Satan's genetics in her.

[@SSJ2Phenom]

My God I love Dragon Ball Dissection. The majority of this video is simply discussing where the idea of GT beginning after a 10-year time skip came from and I couldn't be happier. I've argued with people for years; family, friends, and people online about where the 10-year GT time skip came from and like Mistare Fusion I remembered seeing it around the time that I was 10 or 11 years old. Which would have been 1998 or 1999. Years before the Funimation dub debuted. My only problem was that I couldn't remember where I'd seen it. I thought that I had seen it on the Planet Namek website. Oh those were the days. I just didn't have a way of confirming it. I too had episode and manga synopsis printed off that I'd take and read at school. I just haven't had the time nor the inclination to dig them out. This is absolute gold.

[@Guitarnetter]

This is one of the bigger reasons for why I love Dragon Ball Dissection! I've always taken the time gap between Z and GT with a grain of salt, and/or just not thought about it too much. But seeing a whole video trying to outline the timeline, going back to Curtis Hoffman himself, and showing inconsistent info from "official" sources.... Love it! Hope you're having a great Christmas, and all the best for the new year!

[@crystalfire7x]

Thanks for taking this topic with enough depth when it comes to the time skip issue.

[@MistareFusion]

I'm glad you liked it!

[@BalmungHH0]

I love this type of digging into decade's-old fandom perceptions with a lost history. Great stuff.

[@PhantomDusclops92]

Came back here because I found out that Italian marketing for Dragon Ball GT also followed the "10 years" theory. There were commercials for the VHS release of the show that began with the tagline "Dragon Ball GT: it's Goku, 10 years from now!"

[@kontakonta5360]

I never knew this mixups with Bra's age! It had surprised me when in Super she had turned out to be younger then Pan and I guess now I know why!

[@rhysjonsmusic]

Yea when I watched GT growing up I definitely remembered atleast thinking that Bra had to be a teenager of sorts. The way she dresses and the scene where she gets catcalled by some hothead men would just feel wrong for a character that is supposedly a pre-teen.

[@ThexDynastxQueen]

0:42 Lol I was actually about to ask when is Fashion Extravaganza gonna return as I love the drip in GT but figured you'd wait until Ep. 7 to ball out (puns...). As for the timeline, very fun seeing a little lore of pre-00s internet and so cool Hoffman responded! I had minimal access via school in the mid 90s so Geocities fansites via Anipike like Temple of Trunks were my my go to as I was 8, I just wanted pretty pictures which is how I fell in love with GT in the first place lol. Time is a flat circle. Anywho Happy New Years and 10th anniversary of DBDD, Lance! 🎊🎊🎊

[@rosiemcdamsel]

For the sake of my own sanity, I've decided that Dragon Ball GT is secretly a soap opera, subjecting it to that genre's weird phenomenon where child characters magically and abruptly age up for the sake of the story, with nobody being bothered by the bizarre implications.

[@imfsresidentotaku9699]

There's no need to do that. Anime plays fast and loose with age, especially in correlation with the appearance of the characters, who aren't "bothered by the bizarre implications" because said implications don't exist in a fictional, animated, fantasy world like this. In other words, none of that even matters at all and is nothing worth getting worked up over.

[@rosiemcdamsel]

@@imfsresidentotaku9699 Then why do you sound so worked up about it, bro

[@BubblesChika]

I always assumed the 10 misconception thing was a dub exclusive in an attempt to make sense of Bra and Pan's shocking portrayals at young ages, particularly Bra being treated as though she's a sex thing with older guys driving by her and Vegeta and proceeding to hit on her... It's refreshing to learn the dub isn't to be blamed here

[@jamesr6959]

Timelines, Fashion, GT Bra? In my DBD December? 😍😍

[@Okamikurainya]

When people say "there IS a movie", are they not just referring to A Hero's Legacy? It was marketed as a movie in the West, similar to how the Sonic the Hedgehog OVA was marketed as a movie in the West, while just being two OVA glued together.

[@olserknam]

I think there's a much more obvious explanation. Most fans probably don't intuitively take into account the fact that there are two timeskips in such close proximity. They remember that the ending of Dragon Ball takes place 10 years in the future and subconsciously extrapolate that to mean GT takes place 10 years in the future as well, either forgetting about its own timeskip altogether or kind of equating it with the original timeskip. UPD: Oh, you said it yourself! Nice.

[@Saiya6CIT]

Excellent research about the 5-10 years gap. I might post about this at kanzenshuu or my deviantart but until now it is you who has let me know this, up until today: So it was Curtis Hoffman, a fan who made the DB summary. I got a DB summary (a printed magazine, very low quality black and white with a future trunks on the cover) it was several pages, in spanish in the year of 1998 which was super famous. Every DB hardcore fan had it and had read it. We all attribuited it to "DOMO" a japanese and manga magazine of the time, since their logo was on the cover, but now I am convinced someone just translated it from the very Hoffman version you just mentioned. Hence in lantinamerica, Spain and mainly mexico we all were under the believe that it was 10 years. Personally I am pretty sure 15 years happened since end of Buu Saga and GT. It is 5 years from end of buu Saga til end of DBZ and then 10 years until GT. Simply because Gohan and Video were studying highschool so they waited to be parents until gohan finished his carrier. But Bra was born before Pan. The problem happened in DBS , they made Bra to be born after Pan because in battle of the gods they shouLd have used Bra instead of Pan in videl's womb for the ritual.

[@blur7491]

I feel like in my eyes, why *I* thought it was 10 years is because at the start of Episode 1, Goku mentions that it's been "3-4 years" since he saw Chichi, and how mad she probably is. This implies that Goku just ditched his family to train Uub. The issue here comes with the SSJ4 transformation scene. Goku gets a flashback of the extended Son Fam having a grand old time at the beach, which includes a Pan who has clearly aged up several years by this point. So these two events didn't make sense to me under a 5 year time period. Anyways, happy new year everybody!

[@felixwilson2917]

Lance thank you for always covering topics other people won’t cover. This fandom often makes me lose my mind and u help center me and remind me why I love this tale in the first place. Many wishes to you in you’re new year

[@MeatSnax]

I think a big part of it is that as a kid growing up in the 2000s, I know I conflated the end of Z's 10 years with GT. It doesn't help that Goku and Uub come out of the hyperbolic time chamber at the beginning, with Uub looking like he only aged the 2 or 3 years that you get in the chamber. Pan and Bra are a giveaway, but it's so inconsistent that it really seems like it's been a couple months since that last tournament. Nowadays with Super, people don't really see GT as the automatic followup that it used to be, so there's more separation between end of Z and beginning of GT.

[@MistareFusion]

To be fair, GT never shows Goku and Oob in the Room of Spirit and Time. There's nothing to suggest there's any artificial boost to their ages.

[@skarzaa]

In later episodes of GT the 31th Tenkaichi Budokai takes place, the tournament at the end of DBZ was the 28th. Shortest time gap between the championships in DB was always about 3 years, so it seems almost unlogical to organize two more Budokais in only 5 year gap. Ten year gap still seems more accurate with that.

[@EmeralBookwise]

That tournament happens midway through GT, which according to the official timeline is an additional year since the start of the series. It's unprecedented, but it's not unreasonable to believe that after the 28th tournament the next events were held in 2-year intervals, which after 6 years would bring us to the 31st. That or the anime staff just miscounted, and it was supposed to be the 30th.

[@olserknam]

Can't believe you've been doing this for more than 10 years. Congratulations!

[@jamesarnold7253]

10 years of this is awesome! Congratulations

[@Mewzard]

Nothing quite like timeline arguments, always a blast to be sure. At least Dragon Ball doesn't reboot to the level comics do, or this would take several full videos to cover, lol.

[@adama.7735]

I don’t understand why people seem to think that Pan’s GT design makes her look older than a 9-10 year old. She looks pretty believable for that age to me. Sure, the show does some pretty creepy things with her that would be a bit less uncomfortable if she were older, but in terms of her design alone, she most definitely does not resemble a teenager. She looks about the same age as Gohan when he fought Cell. As for Bra, yeah, I don’t know what Toriyama was thinking when he did her GT design. Did he not know how old the character he had recently created was supposed to be?

[@jonmahashintina]

"She looks about the same age as Gohan when he fought Cell. " im not sure that works for an analogy when that gohan is often called 'teen gohan'.

[@prometheusmodelow8322]

@@jonmahashintina Which is wrong, anyway, Gohan is a teen during the buu arc, in cell, he's a preteen.

[@jonmahashintina]

@@prometheusmodelow8322 i know its wrong. i saw a youtuber the other day say teen gohan was their favourite, while grabbing an art piece of cell games gohan. (facepalm)

[@prometheusmodelow8322]

@@jonmahashintina lmao

[@EmeralBookwise]

Having a nine-year-old niece myself, I very much agree that Pan looks and acts about the same age.

[@blogsanjay1031]

I think one of the first Toonami trailers for GT said it took place 10 years later if im remembering correctly

[@xerxBreak]

I figure Bra beeing an overt superslut was a bit of a callback to Bulma back in the day, as well as facilitating amusingly different overprotective father dynamics from Vegeta for his gap moe But it is kinda amusing how its just so blatant and yeah early lol Then again between her, Pan, Gohan and the general practice of sending kids to conquer planets (although thats so asinine i welcome any signs of retconning it), it seems almost par for the course for saiyan kids

[@tylercoon1791]

‘Do you WANT me to spend 2 episodes on episode 2!?’ .....well, I wouldn’t be _opposed_ to it....

[@grapes9h5]

This is why I love these videos. I knew too that Funi didn’t start this. I was on websites in the days when Funi was still doing the Androids and talking about GT being 10 years after Z.

[@buko1988]

I'm from the UK, I don't recall our dub saying anything about a 10 yr time gap but I remember the promotional material on toonami saying "...10 years after Z..."

[@Powoga]

9:18 I'm sorry, can we all just appreciate this line: You can explain his youthful looks by his great physical shape *and his many years spent dead* That's certainly one weird trick.

[@TheIndigoBros92]

Happy New Year Lance, the big takeaway of this whole timeline discussion is... writers can't do math. Always love your series (Dragon Ball Dissection, Mighty Morphin Zyurangers, DK Dissection, etc.).

[@samwill7259]

Oh boy, timeline discussions! I look forward to losing my mind over the next 19 minutes

[@Salnax]

“Will I cover just a single episode again. No, I can go even lower.” Love your stuff

[@HeyFella]

Just finished rewatching the Baby Arc and it’s a lot better than I remember. I genuinely dig most of the space adventure stuff besides the few episodes that retread the Oolong introduction story. Episode 15 was a real highlight for me. Everything with Baby felt really organically set up. His motivation and origin are pretty interesting and there’s some decent thematic stuff going on. The major problem is just how contrived the whole Black Star Dragon Balls thing is and how it kicks off the plot and concludes it. They had a perfect thing going with the overuse of the dragon balls being set up towards the end of Z with the elder kaioshin’s warnings and what would later become the shadow dragon arc. They could have easily had the black star dragon balls just be the regular ones being corrupted from overuse. The dragon could still be red, the stars black, and they get sent off to space and that could all be justified by the fact they’re corrupted rather than inventing a new set out of nowhere. That major grievance aside, it’s a fun little story.

[@Jose-se9pu]

In recent years, GT had gained a lot of apreciation, because not, so many years later, people understand what they were going for...also, the comparision with Super, which is so devoided of any heart and soul.

[@brandonlyon730]

Piccolo should’ve also been more involved in the plot, considering these are his Dragon balls and he barely appears in the first half of the series only to make a pointless sacrifice.

[@mray4784]

@@Jose-se9pu At least Super use other characters like Gohan and Piccolo.

[@schemar17]

@@mray4784 and give them bs power ups

[@slifer875]

@@mray4784 That doesnt mean anything when everything about DBS feels like a cheap commercial for a happy meal toy.....

[@Laekith]

I always thought Bra was older than 11 when I was a kid, but I honestly never questioned if she was younger or older than Pan. She could've just been taller, and outfits in anime can be crazy

[@MarisaReset]

I feel like by the time I first saw some GT fansubs around '00-'01, I had already gotten most of my information about the series from random fansites around the web. I definitely remember going into the series believing that Pan was 14 years old, and this was a few years before the FUNimation dub. I don't remember ever seeing the Curtis Hoffman summaries, but it seems very likely that his summary information would have spread around by that point.

[@jaredlord4009]

Man I need more Useless Dende jokes.

[@MattyJBass]

Dude your videos are truly insightfully amazing. Dragon ball means so much to me, both English and Japanese sides of it. And the information you dig up is truly amazing and fascinating. Personally, I think the passing of time takes place between 5-10 years and not such a black and white ten or five. But I’m also not going to argue with a official guide book. Either way, great video and I look forward to the next one! Happy New Years and cheers!

[@VICTORZITOSS]

Thank you for all the work you do each year. I remember that in Spain we used to have an official (sort of) dragon ball magazine and, tbh, it kinda holds up and it was an incredibly good product given it was a children's magazine based on DB during the 90s. Actually interesting breakdown of techniques, translation of interviews... That being said, even there i couldn't find information on who Bra was, even there haha. I learnt it years later when i finally got to watch the OG ending.

[@sonicsaiyan07]

If you think the discourse between where GT takes place in relation to Z is bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet. There are still people out there who think Super begins only MONTHS after the end of the Buu Saga despite literally EVERYTHING from outside statements, in series events, and hell even video games stating otherwise.

[@BagOfMagicFood]

Taken together with a 10-year gap before Dragon Ball GT, maybe the Pan of GT is just a feisty little 20-year-old!

[@Ruldolphmaker]

I have an even better proposal. DBGT was supposed to take place at some _ambiguous point_ in the future so it didn't actually matter. Toriyama's drawing prompt may have just been "at some point in the near future" so he designed characters to be as old as they needed to be, the alleged later timeline be damned. Goten and Trunks can reasonably be anywhere from 22 to 28. I believe that a timeline for GT was cobbled together at a later point to appease fans asking when it took place not really accounting for how old some of the younger characters look. Of course these details came out after the series ended. The intention would have been to go in fresh with details from the end of Z as nebulous as possible to market the series as something new but with the characters they fans love free of any continuity baggage to be nitpicked apart by fans. When the series ended it served (or failed to serve) it's purpose, and fans wanted databooks and details. The lack of a press kit for the "when" of GT confirms this for me. I firmly believe the "when" would have gotten in the way of their marketing at the time. That or pedophiles "getting it" to pictures of Gyūmaō's daughter took over the fashion industry and decided that 9 year olds needed to dress as scantily clad as possible - I dunno.

[@otaking3582]

Watching this just reminds me of all the crazy "__ time ago" from All-Star Crazy Steve and Dick Grayson Age 12, to which I have to ask *"What TIME is it?!"*

[@RadusMalestrazza]

This 5 or 10 years gap between the end of DB and DBGT starting has been a thing in the french community too. We had DB French broadcaster covering DBGT’s premise in magazines in 1996-1997, and those previews mentioned a 10 years gap. But the kids show meant to broadcast DBGT (it had been announced on air) was cancelled altogether. France had VHS-released dubbed version in the late 1990s (we had the end of DBZ released that way too), and « french-Goku » had a line in episode 1 stating « Il est tard, je vais rentrer moi aussi (…) ça fait dix ans que je suis parti. Vous connaissez ma femme, elle va me passer un de ces savons ! », which could be roughly translated in « I’m going home too (…) It’s been ten years since I left. You know my wife, I’m up for a bad time! » It took years for us froggies to discover we had been wrong for years on that topic, and the confusing designes still do not help. :) Thanks for those lenghthy analysis!

[@FN64Productions]

I love that people on the INTERNET are telling you were to find the 10 years part of GT and are wrong. It's not like they could use...the INTERNET to check to see if they're correct. Lmao

[@crazyconan28]

Thank you for another amazing video in the Dragon Ball Dissection! It's always a joy learning about the series I grew up with good and bad, theories and facts, and overall impact between all fans! To the new year!

[@johnsmith-jt9dv]

wow i cant wait for the next 60 episodes of GT being dissected

[@manjiimortal]

Thinking about it, while Dragon Ball and DBZ were always very clear regarding their time skips (eight months between Goku starting training with Mutenroshi and the first Budokai, then 3 years each between the first and second, and the second and third Budokai, then 5 years between the 3rd Budokai and the Saiyan arc, then around an year until the saiyans arriving, then 3 years between Trunks showing up the androids, then 7 years between the Cell and the Buu arcs, and finally 10 years between the Buu arc and the epilogue), but I can't recall every reading or knowing about how long had passed between the ending of Dragon Ball and the start of GT (and I don't recall our dub mentioning it), so that's a bit of information I never knew about. And you still managed to squeeze and entire video out of it! Kudos to you.

[@SnowWolfAlpha]

It might also be because of the Blue Water English dub, which aired in March 2003 in the UK along with Canada and Australia, predating the Funimation dub by more than half a year. While that script is more faithful, Toonami UK did an ad that said 10 years. Word of mouth did the rest. Funimation may have also taken a cue from it. Can't find the ad by itself, but DBZimran did a vid on "Dragon Ball Z in the UK" where the ad is played at 36:04 - kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5mkaH2amdWDp7c

[@creategreatness8823]

I always thought the misconception came down to people confusing it with the 10 year gap at the end of Z.

[@Badbufon]

BRUH!, This makes Bra the ultimate jailbait

[@crystalfire7x]

As well as the ultimate FBI Open Up meme insert.

[@flying.emu6223]

I've been watching all of Dragonball dissection over the course of weeks and I finally finished it and I don't know what to do with my life now. I loved every second of it

[@MistareFusion]

So glad you've been enjoying it! I appreciate you watching all of them. If it makes you feel any better, a new episode came out for patrons earlier today!

[@ntm4]

Those guidebooks are something, lol. I think the most ridiculous timeline mistake is the fact that Daizenshuu 7 has the Red Ribbon Arc start 8 months after the end of the Quest for the Dragon Balls Arc. So the *very* first time the Dragon Balls recharge, violates the 1 year rule established after the first wish.

[@BagOfMagicFood]

Wasn't it the manga itself that said the tournament was only 9 months away?

[@meganinten0078]

@@BagOfMagicFood Yep. Toriyama made a plot hole Classic Toriyama xD

[@EmeralBookwise]

I'm baffled whenever I hear people say Pan acts more like a teenage, especially having a nine-year old niece myself whose attitudes and demeanor are pretty much in line with Pan. Now Bra, on the other hand, yeah, I can perfectly understand why people would assume she's a teenager, but Pan is pretty unambiguously a kid. Even Pans frequent instances that she not a kid tends to come across more as the whining petulance of a kid trying to emulate "maturity" rather than genuine indignation.

[@colemacgrath3755]

I agree, Pan makes perfect sense for her age, and i'm pretty sure Toriyama believed Bra was older than Pan when he first designed her for GT (unclear if he had that intention in the final DB chapters, but she does seem less toddler-ish than Pan for sure). Also, 9 year old Gohan from the start of the Cell arc is also much taller than Goku when he was 12 at the beginning of the series, so i don't see why Pan wouldn't grow at the same rate as her dad.

[@SsjkidsSaveCosmo08]

I think the 10 years later thing was just a guess for people who don't know I aways just assumed it was 10 years because that's what it looks like especially bra's design

[@monsieurpanda4451]

Maybe the ten year get to the french version, we have Dragon ball GT way before the english dub.

[@kuribo04]

cool that this ended up connecting to your childhood

[@Tokumastu1]

For young me it was the new character designs everyone got that made me believe it was 10 years. Then again that's always been an issue with anime where characters tend to look either older than they are or younger.

[@g1xrider13]

I distinctly remember the 10 year thing but if it wasn’t in the dub explicitly it might have been in voiceover promos ran on toonami at the time because I definitely didn’t go on dragon ball websites at the time so I couldn’t have seen it there. Or maybe it was in the original dub run first episode that cut together the flashback from episode 1 and started in the baby arc.

[@MegaFeeso]

Honestly, I thought the 10 years thing came from funimation’s old site but I said “ dub” to simplify, but I had no idea Hoffman started it. Good to see someone get to the bottom of it.

[@jamesr6959]

I vaguely remember TV adverts (UK) for GT that *might* have mentioned 10 years? By extension, perhaps the Blue Ocean dub?

[@SmashBros2009]

This 5 or 10 years GT debacle is quite interesting....🤔

[@R0-83-RT]

Turns out in reality it was always intended to be 7.5 years, but no one got the memo. *JK*

[@dreamcore7]

Five years is more logical age gap. Uub in GT clearly looked like someone in his teens. Pan looked like a small child.

[@McGomezAddams]

One of the most important Dragon Ball channels

[@themilkman5004]

I always assumed the 10 years was a Mandela effect of people misinterpreting the end of Z 10 years and applying it to GT

[@goldenarms36]

im just picturing you sitting through that "awesome" GT Rap 🤣

[@R0-83-RT]

Imagine if Lance actually dropped a Dragonball Dissection opening for GT, and it was the rap of all things 🤣. On a side note I don't think anyone would be willing to do a copyright strike on that song.

[@BagOfMagicFood]

Lance should write and perform his own rap

[@OurKindofEntertainment]

I still have all of those Beckett magazines that used to come out when I was a kid that covered A LOT of anime. Shoot, I have a couple of boxes full of Dragon Ball and Pokemon issues of Beckett. I used to read them all of the time in school during lunch and I recall seeing the '10 year time jump' mentioned in a couple of them.

[@ThexDynastxQueen]

Can you find them and check? I still have a few of my DB ones but not the 1st issue as it was stolen when I took it to school as children...are evil 😣. I know Anime Insider magazine used 10 years but that was an interview directly with Funimation staff.

[@OurKindofEntertainment]

@@ThexDynastxQueen i would but they're in storage

[@Puppet_Doctor]

Happy New Year! Thank you for over 10ths of amazing content.

[@dankwaifu2093]

The only thing I can think of from the dub alone that lends itself to the 10 year argument is a single line of dialogue from episode 27. After Vegeta crashes the pick-up guys' car and Bulla waves them off, he annoyedly snorts "teenagers".

[@kikihideout4966]

It all comes down to, "No one took the time to think trough for more then 5 seconds"

[@Trxpamvs]

In the German dub the narrator states 10 years have passed since Goku started training uub

[@creategreatness8823]

I'm going to stick with 10 years purely for the aesthetics of characters like Bra and Pan.

[@EmeralBookwise]

Bra I get, but having a nine-year-old niece myself there's just no way I can see Pan as a teenager.

[@randomfox12245]

I love needing to do extensive research on a subject, particularly to disprove a negative, and walking away by the end with net zero new information.

[@anotherfandom]

Merry Christmas, Lance. Thanks for all this insight and detail.

[@saalthorjrundelius1368]

Maybe Bra spent some time in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and that's why she looks older?

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

Now that you have said it, it must be cannon.

[@dexstewart862]

When i was little, I had tapes of GT's English dub that were edited for tv, and some lines were altered. When I got older and saw the uncut dvd version and learned about how DB was localized, I was surprised they were still using "HFIL" by the time GT was being worked on.

[@sir0x99]

team 10 years 😤😤😤, it just makes way more sense to me

[@hwate8]

12:00 In context, the last (canon) time Pilaf is seen in Dragon Ball is in the King Piccolo Arc, Age 753. Given that the Buu Arc takes place in 774, already 20 years, and the 28th World Tournament takes place in 784, Dragon Ball GT has given Pilaf at least thirty years since his last appearance to research the Black Star Dragon Balls. Ignoring their wish for youth during Super's Frieza-Android gap (and what the Wiki credits to Daizenshuu 7), this sadly doesn't really help to nail down a specific time period of 'decades'. Edit: The only logical series of events I can see supporting the 10+ years is: whether or not they made Super's wish for youth, they all still die when the planet explodes during the Buu Arc (assuming Buu's Assault Rain: Extinction didn't do the job first), came back to life with everyone else (which in hindsight, doesn't explain why they were exempt from the 'don't bring back the bad people' clause), possibly in their original/'mature' bodies in the GT Timeline specifically, and decided that the 'basic' Dragon Balls clearly weren't strong enough for whatever their purpose was (they probably re/collected them and failed to wish for Goku's death, conquering the world, or ensuring it would be safe from monsters on Buu's level in the future), so Pilaf -decided to- accidentally wished for something even stronger that _could_ grant at *least* one of those wishes, which led to the relevant knowledge and them taking their time to follow up on Pilaf's Shenron-granted knowledge. I don't see any other logical throughput for his actions. (inb4 'trying to assign logic to Dragon Ball GT having even-stronger Dragon Balls that neither Piccolo nor Popo let Dende know about, and that none of them tried to use prior to the end of the Buu Arc'.)

[@colemacgrath3755]

That also doesn't work because Pilaf got his memory erased with the rest of the world's population, so the Majin Buu attack couldn't have been his motivation for looking for the stronger set of balls, and he couldn't have used the normal dragon balls to make this wish you speak of before the memory erasure as it is stated that the dragon team used the balls right when they were recharged after granting the wish to revive those killed by Vegeta.

[@Rationalific]

An 18-minute tangent, but I was interested the entire way through! It would be cool to look into other contested ideas in DBGT as well as other Dragon Ball shows...

[@jakewilliams1344]

I know the dub has its flaws but those American voice actors will always be what I envision when I think of those characters. I love the dub flaws and all. I totally respect how anybody else wants to watch or enjoy dragon ball. Thanks for the awesome content I've been binging your videos as I'm rewatching the entire series and keeping up from episode to episode to hear your commentary!

[@Billyblue98]

Couldn't edit my comment for some reason so I reloaded the page and now I can't find it (Maybe I did something wrong and it got removed?) Anyway - 12:20 Pilaf hasn't been seen since Dragon Ball, and there is no reason whatsoever for him to only have since Goku started training Uub to start researching for the Black Star Dragonballs. Logically at most he'd have since Piccolo and Kami re-fused. . . . And that gives him: 5 years since End of Z, 10 years before that is Buu, and 7 years before that is the Androids, so that gives Pilaf 22 years in total, which would in fact be decades. Though really there is a chance he could have found out about them even before they re-awoke, thus giving him the wide time span of Gohan's entire life to be researching. . . which only adds about 10 more years, actually.

[@R0-83-RT]

Did you put a link in, sometimes KZbin auto deletes my comments if they have links, and sometimes it they don't?

[@andrewbittner729]

I do feel personally 10 years makes more sense to me mostly due to Bra's outfit and atempt to copy Bulma. But also the fact that Trunks basically runs Capsule Corp at that time.

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

The Recommending Ones & Zeros apologizes for the devastating and overwhelming distress that must have happened while waiting on our blessing.

[@MistareFusion]

It was rough going for a bit. Now I am relieved.