Where Dragon Ball Super Really Takes Place On The Timeline

In case you didn't know, it's a great time to be a "Dragon Ball" fan. With a new "Dragon Ball Super" movie currently on the way and more memorabilia and media out than ever before, it seems as if the iconic anime and manga series is once again reaching new heights. 

Just like the "Dragon Ball" iterations before it, "Dragon Ball Super" has offers viewers advanced visuals and character arcs that not only thrust the popular Japanese franchise into the future, but also help guide fans even further down the "Dragon Ball" timeline. In 2018, the series got its first film, "Dragon Ball Super: Broly," which is set after the Universal Survival saga from the "Dragon Ball Super" anime. It features Goku, Vegeta, Frieza, and other classic characters from years past. On April 22, the second movie in the series, "Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero," will officially be released, with it taking place after "Broly."

Now, it's easy to get lost in the "Dragon Ball" universe when trying to figure out exactly when events take place. Below, we discuss precisely where along the "Dragon Ball" timeline that "Dragon Ball Super" takes place, along with what is going on before the series' start.

As most diehard fans likely already know, "Dragon Ball Super" takes place four years after the final events of the Majin Buu saga in "Dragon Ball Z." Anime and fan sites like Dragon Ball Guru and Anime Hunch specifically place "Super" in Age 778 of the series, with Majin Buu being defeated in Age 774. 

But here's the catch: while "Dragon Ball Super" is set after the defeat of Buu, the entire story technically goes down before the final episode or epilogue of "Dragon Ball Z," which sees Goku and the other characters all grown up and "old," as creator and showrunner Akira Toriyama put it in a 2013 interview. "I chose this period [for 'Dragon Ball Super'] because everyone had got to maximum strength," Toriyama told the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine (via Kanzenshuu). Explaining the reasoning in an earlier statement, Toriyama said, "I thought, 'Man, I really made everyone old' ... I even gave Vegeta a mustache." 

While the timeline placement may be a surprise to some, a lot of fans online are already aware and have accepted the use of "Dragon Ball Super" to fill in the holes of Toriyama's 10-year time gap between Buu's defeat and the "Dragon Ball Z" epilogue. Some even think that "Super" will ultimately erase the final episode from canon altogether. "Most fans have accepted that 'Dragon Ball Super' probably retcons that last episode of 'DBZ,'" said Redditor u/gecko-chan in a "Super" discussion thread. "End of z is obviously de-canonized by super and I don't know why we constantly have to talk about this lol," added u/generalscalez.