I’ll be answering what does canon mean in anime.

What Does Canon Mean In Anime

Canon in anime is whatever story that follows the official material. An important point of emphasis that has to be made when determining if a story is indeed canon is if the story’s confirmed to have happen by the author. One anime that has the conundrum of being canon vs non canon but is yet still appreciated by fans across the board is Fullmetal Alchemist.

Canon Is Considered The Official Story

A story that’s canon means that it’s confirmed by the author to be an official version.

This applies to all forms of fiction.

To be more specific, the fans of whatever body of work that was created agree that the story actually happened in the fictional universe.

It’s actually a concept that was introduced to me when I started watching DragonBall Super.

Biblical Examples

There’s even been claims where historians argue that there are stories in the Bible that never happened (which would actually make it non-canon.

Of course, this is dependent on if you believe in the book.

That’s another story (defending the Bible), but still a strong example of a scenario where determining if what’s in a story is true.

Fullmetal Alchemist Example

In the anime and manga for the Fullmetal Alchemist series, it had a stint in where the original Fullmetal started off canon but later strayed away from how it was supposed to end.

Because of this we can say that some parts of the anime were non-canon.

At that point we as an audience was greeted with Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.

Is Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Canon?

Despite what you may have been told about this version, it is indeed canon.

Because the manga was being updated around the same the time that the anime was being made, it was difficult to keep up with the original story.

With that issue, it got resolved by making Brotherhood which has the intended ending that the author planned for.

Popular Non-Canon Stories

One of the first stories that came to mind when thinking of non canon stories in anime are a few of the DBZ movies that I’ve discussed before.

If you’ve been following over the past month then you’ll know about the moments I mention when Gogeta and Broly became canon.

The term canon was somewhat new for me actually until Dragon Ball Super got hot, but die-hard fans seemed to always be aware.

Obviously the popularity of non-canon shows extend beyond Dragon Ball, but I just wanted to give a personal favorite example that I’ve used before.

Final Thoughts

This was a fun discussion about the canon term and I appreciate you taking the time to read.

Do me a favor, check out my anime forum page to explore other animes you may like on the site.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on the next post (maybe).