Dragon Ball Daima introduced some major retcons to Akira Toriyama’s long running franchise with its new anime, but one of its retcons also means that Dragon Ball GT’s biggest saga can never be an official part of the story. One of the coolest element of Dragon Ball’s later years so far has been seeing how formerly non-canon characters and stories have been brought into the official timeline for the series. Characters like Broly had been given a whole new take from Toriyama himself, and Dragon Ball Daima continued this with even more elements brought it from Dragon Ball GT too.
Dragon Ball Daima incorporated a lot of Dragon Ball GT in terms of what it made officially part of the canon, and surprised fans with the likes of Super Saiayn 4 Goku becoming official too. But with all of these changes bringing Dragon Ball GT more into the official timeline of the series, one of the changes to how Shenron’s wishes work on Earth also means that we won’t be able to see the Shadow Dragons saga ever become an official part of the anime’s future.
Dragon Ball’s Shadow Dragons Might Be Impossible Now
With Dragon Ball Daima’s creative team making a conscious effort to parallel Dragon Ball GT as much as possible, it explained why so many of the new anime’s elements seem to callback to that classic anime series. Dragon Ball GT was in a rough spot with fans because it was a brand new series without any input from Toriyama, and was thus deemed not to be an official part of the Dragon Ball timeline. Even though fans had loved some of the key ideas in the series like the emergence of the Shadow Dragons, which had been bred with the dark energies built within the Dragon Balls after years of use and abuse.
It was an interesting idea that reflected how much the Dragon Balls had become a crutch for Goku and the others through the franchise at that point, and offered a final boss that saw the Earth reckoning with the use of this magic all this time. But Dragon Ball Daima actually made a change to how Earth’s Dragon Balls actually worked. While it might have been considered a small joke, Shenron revealed that those who used the Dragon Balls regularly enough actually had access to more wishes than those who were using them for the first time.
What Does This Mean for the Shadow Dragons?
What this means is that Shenron himself is inviting more uses of the Dragon Balls. It’s not the version of the Dragon Balls seen in GT that broke after multiple uses, and instead revealed that Shenron is able to manipulate how much magic it uses each time. If Shenron is so in control of how much it’s used depending on who summons him, it also means that the negative energy likely won’t be building in the same way as seen in the Shadow Dragons saga.
So while Dragon Ball Daima was able to make some parts of Dragon Ball GT an official part of the Dragon Ball timeline, this cool idea will never be a part of the canon itself. It’s not going to be possible with a Shenron who is willingly offering more wishes. It’s a Shenron that’s not secretly building up with some kind of dark energy depending on how much he had been used over the years, and thus won’t be a version of Shenron that seeks to get revenge on Goku and the others.
It’s an idea that could somehow work out for Dragon Ball fans in the future with a potential for a new take on the Shadow Dragons if Dragon Ball Super ever does continue with new chapters, but that’s a big maybe. It might even be too big of a maybe with so much still lingering in the air if Dragon Ball will actually ever come back or not.
