Alternate Continuity / Anime & Manga

• A lot of Go Nagai's works have been revised for quite a while. Among these are the three Getter Robo OVAs (Armageddon, Shin vs. Neo, and New), the Mazinkaiser OVAs, Kotetsushin Jeeg, Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu and Shin Mazinger.
• A television series of Ah! My Goddess (which had been made into a 5-episode OVA in the early-middle 1990s) premiered in Japan in January 2005. The first episode alone makes it clear that it is an alternate continuity.
• Ai Yori Aoshi started as a manga (now concluded after 17 volumes) that became the anime. The anime rearranged the order and details of some events, but maintained much of the same storyline. It ran for two seasons, but ended before the manga, leaving unresolved the primary Story Arc of whether Kaoru and Aoi will ever be able to publicly get together. Very roughly speaking, the anime covers much of the events from volumes 1 to 12 of the manga.
• Black Butler has two different continuities: the ongoing manga and the 24-episode anime. The anime not only featured a few differences in the plotlines it took from the manga (such as certain key characters appearing earlier than they were supposed to), but had new plotlines, supporting characters, and main villains when it Overtook the Manga after the 6th episode. Even the supporting characters that had originally appeared in the manga had their long-term roles (Soma and Agni being recurring characters in the manga as opposed to simply disappearing at the end of their arc in the anime) and appearances (Aberline) and personality (both, in the case of Queen Victoria) changed in the anime.
• The various versions of the series starting with the Blood: The Last Vampire OVA. There were several manga adaptions of the original concept, each with varying storylines, then the Blood+ anime took some of the basic character templates and ideas and made a series that bears only a slight resemblance to the original. This again also has several manga adaptions that take different paths. Six years later after Blood +, another TV series, Blood-C, was aired which has similar concept with the OVA but Bloodier and Gorier and it also spanned two manga adaptations and a movie which is a sequel to the show.
• The anime adaptation of Blue Dragon all but ignores the plot of the game it was based on, only keeping the most basic elements of it intact.
• Bubblegum Crisis does this with its sequel Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040. Ironically, while the initial hardsuit designs were more or less lifted directly off the end of The Original Series, of the characters, only Big Bad Brian J. Mason has any resemblance to his OVA counterpart. This was done for legal reasons: the team making 2040 had the rights to the hardsuit designs, but not the character designs.
• CLANNAD: The TV anime follows the game's True End: Nagisa wins and she and Ushio both do not die, and two OVA productions featuring the two most popular girls winning (Tomoyo's OVA and the OVA for Kyou) exist, as well as the Toei movie leaves Nagisa dead and instead focuses on Tomoya's post-traumatic-stress-disorder and his relationship with Ushio.
• The three manga adaptations of Code Geass are all Alternate Continuities of varying degrees. Lelouch of the Rebellion is mostly a straight adaptation of the show, but with no Humongous Mecha and a greater focus on humor. Suzaku of the Counterattack focuses on the Forgotten Childhood Friend to the point of combining three of the Anime's characters into a single new one to better suit the plot. Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally is a completely alternate take where The Hero's Delicate and Sickly little sister becomes a super-powered Magical Girl with a mystical mecha fighting other super-powered girls with mystical mecha. The fourth manga is even more bizarre. Lelouch leads the Shinsengumi and the "Black Revolutionaries" in the midst of the Bakamatsu and Geass is the power to summon Knightmare Frames.
  • Interestingly enough, at the end of Nightmare of Nunnally, Nunnally says that while touching Heaven's Door as part of Charles' god-killing ritual, she saw several different realities. One of these realities is the anime continuity, and a montage of Euphemia killing the Japanese, Suzaku in his standoff with Lelouch at the end of R1, and Lelouch's death are shown, none of which happen in Nightmare of Nunnally.
  • Let's not forget Super Robot Wars Z2, wherein, with enough Zero points, you're given the options of keeping Shirley safe and retaining the Black Knights' faith.
  • Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection is in the continuity of the recap movies, where among other things, Shirley is alive, Lelouch is revived because of C.C.'s inability to cope, and characters like Mao never appeared.
• For Cutey Honey, we have Shin Cutey Honey (a Cyberpunk version set in the future), Cutey Honey Flash! (a more Magical Girl Warrior take), Re: Cutie Honey (a Retro Universe version), and Cutie Honey Universe (adding new forms to Honey's repotoire), as well as a few live action continuities in THE LIVE and Tears.
• The Death Note live-action films eventually veer away from the plot as seen in the Manga and Anime versions. The American film takes place in a completely new continuity from the Japanese versions altogether. That's not even counting the original one-shot, which doesn't feature Light as a Death Note wielder at all.
  • The 2015 live-action series has a completely different setup from the manga, anime and film series. Instead of Light being a Sociopath and Villain Protagonist, he's just a troubled guy, coping with the faulty justice system and living without his mother.
• For Devilman, these are only a few of the alternate versions:
  • The '70s anime: Akira never meets Ryou, Amon is the dominant personality since Akira dies in their first encounter, and Miki survives.
  • Devilman Grimoire: Miki gets a Devilman form of her own, among other upsets.
  • Devilman Lady: The Devilman powers go instead to Jun Fudo, while Lan Asuka serves as Ryou's and Satan's counterpart.
  • Violence Jack: Not entirely, but Devilman characters do appear. Surprisingly takes place after the typical apocalypse scenario in other Devilman series, with "Jack" (an amnesiac Akira) going off the deep end.
  • DEVILMAN crybaby: Twice the gore, twice the sex, and more characters introduced to the core cast like Miko.
• The Digimon series had at least six continuities.
  • While Digimon Adventure and Adventure 02 shared a continuity, one of the minor characters from 02, Ryou Akiyama, is also a prominent character in Digimon Tamers, which does not share a continuity with the two Adventure seasons. The continuity disconnect is not addressed in the English dub or even in the anime, but it is somewhat explained in the video games made for the Wonderswan in Japan (which never made their way stateside).
  • The Digimon franchise has five mangas, and one of them, V-Tamer has crossover specials with Adventure 02, Frontier and Ryo of the Digimon games.
  • There are also a (Japan-only) three-part novelization of the first series which, although co-written by Hiroyuki Kakudo (the Adventure director) and Masaki Hiro (a main writer), has several episodes' events play out differently than depicted in the anime.
• Dragon Ball has quite a few. First, there's the manga itself (considered the "core" or "actual" continuity), followed by the anime continuity, which covers the manga's events and includes additional material (such as Filler, new bit-part characters, slightly different fights and some character-building moments). Each of these has its own continuation of the franchise that can actually be taken as their own continuity, to boot: the anime has Dragon Ball GT (often considered a "splinter timeline" that could occur), while the manga has the recent Dragon Ball Online, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', and Dragon Ball Super. There's also the Dragon Ball movies that predate Battle of Gods, which are very much an "alternate reality" affair and fall into Non-Serial Movie territory.
• El-Hazard: The Magnificent World was an OVA series that became El-Hazard: Wanderers on TV. In the process, most of the relationships Makoto had with the women in his life were altered dramatically, with his primary romantic interest shifting from Ifurita (who has only an In Name Only counterpart in the TV continuity) to Princess Rune Venus (who's significantly younger than in the OVA so as to match Makoto's age). Later, a second OVA series based on the first was produced that continued the plot, but introduced several new characters and a new "ultimate weapon of doom". That success was then followed with a 12-episode TV series which pulled an Or Was It a Dream? at the end. A final special was released for the TV series, the required Beach Episode.
• The adaptations of Fate/stay night go all over the place with this. The first anime adaptation followed the Fate route, with some elements of the other routes haphazardly mashed in. An anime movie for Unlimited Blade Works was also produced, but it rushed through the story at lightning speed. Thankfully, the 2014 Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] adaptation gave the UBW route a proper adaptation. The final route of the game, Heaven's Feel, was adapted into the a theatrical trilogy by the same studio.
• The Fullmetal Alchemist manga and Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) start off fairly similar, but begin to diverge more and more as they progress. Do not ask people which one is better. There is also a second anime adaptation called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which follows the manga's continuity much more faithfully than the first.
• Futakoi and the second TV series, Futakoi Alternative are a quite obvious example. The first being a fairly normal harem-type anime, while the second was much more madcap comedy.
• GeGeGe no Kitarō started in the 60's as a rather gritty rental manga, but circa 1965 it got retooled into a Lighter and Softer serialized version to appeal more to children. This version gets a new anime adaptation every decade, each with a Setting Update, different continuity and versions of the main characters. As of the year 2018, it has six anime series (four of them with anime films of their own) plus Hakaba Kitarō (a way Darker and Edgier anime version more akin to the original rental manga), and two live-action films.
• Ghost in the Shell has four alternate continuities: the original manga; the first movie and its sequel; the Stand Alone Complex television series and its sequel movie; and the Arise OVA / Alternative Architecture TV series and its sequel movie. (If you count the Hollywood live-action adaptation film starring Scarlett Johansson, there's five.)
• Gravitation has some major differences between the manga (that came first) and the anime adaptation. Because the anime series was only 13 episodes long, one character (Maiko) is completely written out. Also, in the anime, Shuichi is already out of high school and signed to NG when he meets Eiri, but in the manga he is still a high school student whose talents are undiscovered.
• Gundam tends to spawn a lot of these, given how many versions of the same story they have (TV series, movie trilogy, manga, novel, video game...) in addition to the seven different Alternate Universes the franchise has created.
• Hanaukyō Maid Team. The first and second series cover slightly different ground.
• Haou Airen: The CD drama, where Hakuron survives. Apparently, had he lived, he and Kurumi would've been Happily Married and had a daughter.
• Hell Girl is most famous as an anime, but there's also a manga and a short-lived live-action show. The manga can more or less coexist with the anime, but the live-action show definitely can't — Hajime and Tsugumi have a different backstory and a very different ending to their storyline.
• Though not as broken up as some others, Hellsing began as a manga and was made into a TV series. This ran for thirteen episodes and was a victim of Overtook the Manga, so the plot began just as the Manga's did, but halfway through a new Big Bad was introduced and half the characters of the original plot never got animated. (It ended on with a Cliffhanger and left a lot of loose ends.) The OVAs, on the other hand, follow the manga very closely. (And there might be an live-action adaption planned from Amazon.)
• The iDOLM@STER:
  • The anime is based mostly on a modified version of the plot for the iDOLM@STER 2 game, but it uses several elements of the other games too. It later becomes a Shared Universe with the adaptations of Cinderella Girls and SideM.
  • Idolmaster: Xenoglossia happens to be quite different from the games, instead involving the characters piloting Humongous Mecha in a setting 107 years after the moon exploded.
• Kimba the White Lion has the 2009 TV special, which takes place in a future where man has screwed up the world's ecosystems to the point where people had to make an artificial environment for animals.
• Kujibiki♡Unbalance has the OVAs included in Genshiken (consisting of episodes 1, 21, and 25 of an imaginary TV series); a radio drama based on this series; and a TV reimagining of the concept, which features very different character designs.
  • The mangaka gave a nod to this difference in the manga, in which the original Kujibiki Unbalance is discussed as though it were also a manga. The changes made in the Kujibiki Unbalance TV series is discussed by the characters in the manga as though it were the first adaptation of "Kuji-an" to video, rather than the second, as it is in our world.
• When Kyoto Animation adapted the light novel Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! into an anime, the resulting adaptation is practically this towards the original, as it adds several new characters and differs from the novels' plot in a few ways.
• Lyrical Nanoha is an alternate continuity of the game and OVA Triangle Heart where her brother and sister are ninja-like bodyguards battling a terrorist group that killed their father (who is alive in Nanoha). The Nanoha franchise had since gained several of its own Alternate Continuities, such as The Movie continuity, The Movie manga continuity (which started like mere supplementary material until it veered off in its own direction), the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable continuity (an Alternate Timeline based on Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's having a different conclusion), and the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT continuity (A completely different setting where instead of fighting with magic, Nanoha and friends challenge each other to a Card Battle Game).
• The Macross franchise does this in a really confusing manner:
  • Super Dimension Fortress Macross has its movie, Macross: Do You Remember Love?. The movie tells basically the same story but with some major differences from the original, along with redesigning the look of many things in the series. Later stories take elements from both versions as canon. Word of God is that both the series and the movie are after-the-fact retellings, and the true story of what happened was somewhere in between them; the details are unimportant, only the major events should be considered when speaking of the backstory.
  • Macross Frontier adds itself to the list when it went from series to movies. The movies retell the story but the plot diverges heavily with the second film, leading to an entirely different concluding act (although the conclusion itself is quite similar between the two versions). It mainly gets confusing as to who survived the events (Mikhail Blanc and Grace O'Connor die in the series but survive the movies, while Brera Sterne gets the opposite treatment).
  • And finally, there is Macross II, a distant sequel that had no input from the original writers. Despite this, most fans feel it isn't a bad film, though not particularly outstanding either (it gets more attention in America because it was one of the few Macross products actually released there). Officially, the writers have declared it alternate continuity.
• The first half of the Magic Knight Rayearth anime and manga are almost identical (barring a couple of Schrodinger's Cats.) The second halves for each follow the same basic premise, but diverge wildly by the inclusion of a Big Bad to the TV series, and the elimination of a minor character's true form.
  • However, the Rayearth OVA, is an entirely separate continuity: the characters are all (mostly) there, and a few of the relationships survived, but aside from their names, their Elemental Powers, and the existence of Cephiro and Rune Gods, the OVA has nothing to do with The Original Series. Not even the protagonists' personalities are the same.
• Mazinger Z: It started as a manga. Then it was adapted into an anime. Then it got another manga at the same time the first manga and the anime were being published and aired respectively. Then both manga versions and the anime version got sequels, each one developping its own continuity and in some cases adding more backstory to the characters. Then more manga and anime were made, each one telling the story its way until the last iterations Mazinkaiser and Shin Mazinger.
• My Hero, which takes place in a much different world than the manga it would eventually be retooled into. While there are still heroes and villains running around, it's more of a fight against monsters than other powered individuals.
• Negima! has six separate continuities: the main manga Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Negima! (first TV series), Negima!? (second season) (the second TV series), Negima!! (the live-action TV series), Negima!? neo (manga which combines the first manga and the second TV series), and Negima (Ito) Bun (Spin-Off Babies manga that has Negi as a young man teacher and the girls as his kindergarten class).
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion's last episode, Shinji has a vision of his life as a typical high school comedy anime (except, you know, it still has Humongous Mecha) during a Mind Rape. This concept was so popular as to spawn several Dating Sim games and the manga Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days, which is one of the longest-running spin-offs.
  • Another Alternate Continuity titled Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse goes way further in its differences: NERV is a Catholic boarding school; EVAs are actually unique conventional weapons (i.e., Asuka wields a whip while Shinji has a handgun, etc.); Angels are instead disembodied consciousnesses which can kill and take over any body they choose; and the motivation for killing the Angels is to collect their Cores so Yggdrasil won't collapse, destroying all realities.
  • Then there's Evangelion ANIMA, published in Hobby Japan Magazine and specifically made out of Anno's desire to do a "Gundam-style" Alternate Continuity. In it, NERV made peace with the JSSDF and fought off SEELE, with the story picking up three years later and dealing with things like multiple Rei clones, space-use Evas, and other fun oddities.
  • Like Angelic Days, Episode 26 inspired the shounen ecchi comedy Shinji Ikari Raising Project, which is the other longest running spin-off and follows this routine, with a very Tsundere Asuka and a very Moe Rei competing for Shinji's affections.
  • In addition, both the manga adaptation of the original anime and the Rebuild of Evangelion movie series are standard alternate continuities that retain the core elements of the story, but change a number of significant details along the way. Especially the latter which goes completely Off the Rails a bit into the story.
• Patlabor was planned from the beginning to be a "media mix" of multiple continuities, initally a manga, Mobile Police Patlabor, and an OVA series, Mobile Police Patlabor: The Early Days. The OVAs were followed by the better-known film series, and also spawned a third continuity in Patlabor: The TV Series which ran in parallel. The three main timelines share the same characters and concepts but follow different storylines, although some events show up in multiple continuities.
• The 20th Pokémon movie, Pokémon: I Choose You!, is an alternate retelling of the first season of the anime, with several key differences: Ash has a slightly different outfit, he has two different travelling companions, he has closer ties to Ho-Oh, and meets Pokémon from all generations a lot sooner than he does in the main anime. Two sequels would follow, confirming it to be a Continuity Reboot for the films after the last two beforehand bombed.
• The only connection between the visual novel and anime versions of Popotan is its cast, and some of the game characters were dropped for the transition (including the protagonist), while others were added.
• Pretty Cure has over 17 series with 15 distinct continuities, and there's the occasional Bat Family Crossover (the Pretty Cure All Stars films, HuGtto! Pretty Cure's crossover event). Each one follows the same basic plot, but changes up a few elements (besides using different characters and settings) each time. Most apparently, the exact nature of being a Pretty Cure varies subtly between seasons, with some relying on Wonder Twin Powers (such as Futari wa Pretty Cure and Maho Girls Pretty Cure!) and others having a larger ensemble team. Either way, The Power of Friendship remains a universal constant.
• Project A-Ko has two continuities; the main set of OVAs, and the "Vs." OVAs, which take place in some sort of parallel dimension. In "Vs.", A-ko and B-ko are best friends instead of being arch-enemies, A-ko outright dislikes C-ko after meeting her (rather than being childhood friends), and they are both space mercenaries/treasure hunters instead of being an "ordinary" girl and a Psycho Lesbian rich genius.
• RahXephon also made the leap to a movie from TV, attempting to cram its extensive and complex storyline into less than 2 hours while at the same time providing new Back Story. In the process, one character was completely eliminated, and several others rewritten dramatically (including putting one to sleep for most of the film).
• Record of Lodoss War has three alternate continuities: the original novel series, the anime OVA, and the manga version of Chronicles of Heroic Knights. While the anime OVA compresses the material down and is usually suggested to be treated as if it ended about halfway in, it contains numerous continuity errors with the original novel and the manga adaptation of that part of the story. Most other manga fit into the core timeline, along with the anime series of Chronicles of Heroic Knights. The manga of Chronicles, however, inexplicably rewrites the second half of the plot completely, reaching a separate but equal Moment of Awesome, and is notable for developing secondary characters much more than the series. It's still a separate canon though. Rune Soldier Louie, since it is set on a separate continent and features no returning characters, disregards the differences between the alternate continuities. As for Legend Of Crystania, it fits into the core timeline (non-OVA), but since it came out when most people in the west didn't know of any other Lodoss continuities than the OVA, it propagated the confusion with its differences.
• The TV series Revolutionary Girl Utena was turned into a movie, Adolescence of Utena, which attempted to retell the 39-episode story in 100 minutes by filtering it through the hindbrain of Salvador Dalí and lacing it with LSD. To a lesser extent, the manga serves this purpose as well. Although it follows the anime closer than the movie, it also introduces several of its own plot points, especially in the final volume. It's worth noting, though, that while the manga, show and movie are separate canons, they can be strung together to tell a story that symbolically carries over between continuities. And then the movie has its own manga version, with slightly differing plot elements particularly in who nearly drowned.
• Robotech began as an alternate continuity to the original Japanese Macross series (as well as Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA). It spawned its own Expanded Universe of comics, novels, video games, and aborted attempts at animated sequels before 2007 with the release of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. As early as 1986, the little known disaster that was Robotech The Movie The Untold Story (a Macekre of Megazone 23 and Southern Cross) was quickly declared by Macek himself that it was an alternate continuity. In 2006, prior to the release of Shadow Chronicles, Harmony Gold declared that only the original 85 episode series was canon with everything else being secondary continuity. If the planned live action movie ever gets out of Development Hell, this will definitely be an alternate continuity due to the Zeerust Canon nature of the original series where the majority of the action began in 2009.
  • Eternity Comics' Invid War: Aftermath series would have been a different continuity from the Jack Mckinney novel End of The Circle. And Wildstorm's prequel comics were alternate continuity to Eternity's Prelude to Macross as well as Comico's Robotech The Graphic Novel.
  • Other comics that clearly take place in Alternate Continuities
    • Antarctic Press (1997-98)
    • Dynamite Press (Robotech/Voltron crossover) (2013-2015)
    • Titan Comics (2017-)
• RWBY: Ice Queendom is a Compressed Adaptation of RWBY Volume 1 that takes place from the perspective of Weiss Schnee. Most of the events of the original Volume 1 are over by the end of the third episode, and then the anime takes its own direction.
• Sailor Moon - The Queen of the Continuities! With a manga series, a 200-episode anime series, a live-action series, and twenty-five stage productions, with only 3 occurring in the same continuity! That makes twenty-five separate continuities! And that's not counting the video games or the possible splits within the same continuities, or the 2014 anime. The idea of a Sailor Moon "canon" has become humorous to some folks.
• Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas started as a prequel to Saint Seiya, but later would be superseded canonically by Next Dimension, which still used some plot points and characters from Lost Canvas.
• Sands of Destruction started production as a video game, but was given an animated adaptation as a promotional boost. Aside from living in a world where Sand Is Water and beastmen rule over humans, little is shared between them; even character personalities and alignments are shifted (male characters are more consistent in their characterization across continuities, while the two female leads change dramatically). Murao Minoru was later asked to create a manga, which also shares little in common with the other two continuities. As no sequels have ever been produced, fans are left to assume that all continuities are equal in terms of canonicity, though most favor the game.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: Subverted/parodied in the first episode of season 2. The episode initially sets itself up as an Alternate Continuity, but switches right back to normal half way through the episode.
• The SHUFFLE! TV anime, which ended with the winning girl being Asa Shigure, and the manga, Shuffle!: Days in the Bloom, which had Sia as the winning girl.
  • While sequel games have been made following paths of if Nerine or Kaede won out. And the Kaede-centric game further snarls itself up, by showing Asa with long hair, which implies her ending being canon anyway for that branch.
• The Slayers franchise is right up there with Tenchi Muyo in its own right. It originated as a 15-book Light Novel series, which has over 30 prequel novels (Slayers Special/Smash/Delicious). From there...
  • 1. A 5-season anime series: The first two are based on the first eight novels, the remaining three are original stories. Tends to heavily contradict itself, especially considering that the fourth and fifth seasons came eleven years after the third.
  • 2. The Non-Serial Movies, all based on the Slayers Special novels. While the first four (chronicling the protagonists' early adventures with a flaky sorceress who just so happens to be the long lost sister of one of her later allies) is a plausible start before the anime, the fifth is problematic, as it involves the four main characters from the tv series set in a way that could be after seasons 2 or 3.
  • 3. Most of the manga made are of their own continuity; Super Explosive Demon Story is its own interpretation of the first 8 novels/seasons 1 and 2, and there is an alternative manga to the fifth Non-Serial Movie (Slayers Premium). In addition to these, there are wholly different mangas set elsewhere, such as Slayers Light Magic (set in the future) and The Hourglass of Falces, which is the only manga featuring all six core characters (mainstays Lina and Gourry, Zelgadis and Amelia from the first novel arc, and Luke and Millina from the second novel arc) together.
  • 4. Five video games, all their own stories and officially non-canon.
• Space Battleship Yamato: There is the original 1974 series and its 1977 movie compilation (which has two endings; one has the crew reach Iscandar and find out that Queen Starsha has died but left a recorded message. But either way, the Earth is still saved but one ending leaves no room for the events of New Voyage, Starsha's daughter Sasha, or Mamoru's later role). Then you have Arrivederci Yamato and its 1978 TV expanded version with alternate ending (allowing a logical continuation). The Yamato III series may or may not have taken place in 2205, according to some printed sources. Either way, Final Yamato takes place in 2203 so that means that the Yamato III events have either been eliminated or, given that Galman and Bolar get a brief mention in Final, the events of Yamato III might have happened in a condensed version. There are two continuations that are clearly alternate realities: the aborted Yamato 2520 and the later Yamato Ressurection. We also have manga versions of the story soley by co-creator Leiji Matsumoto that are strictly Leijiverse; Yamato freely interacts with Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999. Matsumoto has rights to the name Yamato and all of the visual design elements while the Yoshinobu Nishizaki estate has rights to the name Yamato, established characters and established storylines. It's anyone's guess where the forgotten OVA Dai Yamato Zero lies in terms of continuity, given its setting in the year 3199, but neither Matsumoto or Nishizaki did appear to have been involved in its production. Last but not least, we have reboot Space Battleship Yamato 2199, and as an honorary mention, it is worth counting the Westernized version of the original series.
• Stitch! is often said to take place in a different continuity from the Lilo & Stitch movies and first TV series. The events do sorta still occur in the anime, only Stitch goes back to his old ways when he feels abandoned by Lilo as she grew older.
• Tenchi Muyo! is perhaps the king of alternate continuities, with at least eight different alternate "worlds" (some, such as Pretty Sammy, have more than one continuity themselves). Oddly enough, the Tenchi movies are not separate continuities in and of themselves, but dovetail into one or the other of the TV series. A few of the spinoffs of the original OVA are canon to the series, including Tenchi Muyo GXP and Tenchi Muyo: War on Geminar. Dual! is the first real alternate universe to the OVA series. For bonus fun, one of the Pretty Sammy series has a minor character who is a cousin on Nanami and Jinnai from El-Hazard linking both meta-series together. Mr. Fujisawa from the same series also happens to be the teacher of Tenchi's class in Tenchi in Tokyo.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has a set of movies that follow the plotline similarly, with different ways of major events happening. There are also a set of Parallel Works that have all the main characters in entirely different situations and plotlines.
  • Also, there is a high school version of the series, with all the same characters in a situation as if the series were originally a normal, high school series and not a mech anime.
  • Then there's the fan-made comic series DOUBLE K, which uses said cast and puts them into a parody of Buddy Cop Shows.
  • There's also the continuity made by the original story team specifically for Super Robot Wars Z2 - Saisei-Hen, which diverges from the anime post-Time Skip.
• The Ultima manga feature new characters and settings inspired by the main games, along with different character interpretations and personalities.
• The Uma Musume game has alternate continuities in its two mangas and its anime. The Starting Gate! manga is the only adaptation to have a direct counterpart (it shares an introduction with the 2018 anime), though they diverge when Special Week takes a detour to watch a race rather than go straight to school.
• X/1999 was released first as a movie, then again as a TV series five years later. The movie, for reasons of length and limited information, had an extremely simplified plotline. Also, both were finished before the manga, and all three killed different characters and resolved the plot in different ways.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!, consists of the original manga continuity which includes a Side Story Yu-Gi-Oh! R (which is of disputed canon); the Toei series continuity; the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters and GX continuity; and an alternate manga retelling of GX. There are also two Non Serial Movies (one for each anime) and the non-canonical Capsule Monsters mini-series. Then there is 5D's, which might be an Alternate Universe.
  • The Tenth Anniversary special places 5Ds 20 Minutes into the Future of GX, but the plot involves the villain trying to make a Split Timeline, so...
• Zoids has at least nine different continuities:
  • The Battle Story. The original story, featured exclusively on the boxes of the Zoids model kits.
  • The Chaotic Century anime. A loose adaption of the Battle Story. Includes distant Sequel Series New Century.
    • The Chaotic Century manga, which went in a wildly different direction than either the anime or the Battle Story.
  • The Fuzors anime, which takes place in a more contemporary setting, as opposed to the usual Desert Punk setting that Zoids usually has.
  • The Genesis anime, which takes place After the End on Planet Zi.
  • The Zoids comic, also known as "Spider-Man and Zoids"^note The comic was originally published alongside reprints of old Spider-Man comics, but Spidey himself never factored into Zoids' plot, nor did any other Marvel property. or just "The UK Comic". Featured a setting and backstory unlike any other incarnation of the franchise. One of the earliest works of Grant Morrison, though he apparently doesn't like to talk about it.
  • The Z-Knights Spin-Off, which is only tangentially connected to Zoids. It involves humanity colonizing Mars and later discovering Planet Zi and its "metallic lifeforms", which are brought back to Earth and reverse engineered into humanoid Humongous Mecha called the Z-Knights.
    • The European version of the story is a much more generic "Good vs Evil" story, where the Z-Knights are warriors from video games that have been given the ability to jump into the real world via a virus.
  • The Wild sub-franchise. Announced in February 2018, stated to include a new anime, manga, and tie-in video game for the Nintendo Switch.