Ret Canon / Anime & Manga

• Bleach: The first theatrical movie, Bleach: Memories of Nobody, was originally released as nothing more than a non-canon side story. That is until Ichigo references that he’s been to the movie’s signature location, The Valley of Screams, before. Since he only visited it in the movie, the events of it are retroactively made canon. The antagonist faction from the movie, the Ryōdoji family aka The Dark One, are also mentioned in the post series Light Novels, Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Emperor Pilaf's dog henchman was originally named Soba in the Dragon Ball manga. However, Akira Toriyama forgot this when the anime staff asked his name, making up the new name Shuu, which was later incorporated it into the manga.
  • Dragon Ball video games often had to invent new attacks for characters in order to flesh out their move lists. One such example is Vegetto, who only appeared briefly in DBZ, so Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout gave him the Final Kamehameha (a combination of Goku's Kamehameha and Vegeta's Final Flash) as his signature move. When Vegetto returned in the Future Trunks Saga of Dragon Ball Super, he actually used the Final Kamehameha against Fused Zamasu.
  • The Legendary Super Saiyan transformation, previously the exclusive domain of movie-only character Broly, was given to Universe 6's Kale in the Tournament of Power Saga. Her version is renamed "Super Saiyan Berserk," however. Eventually Broly himself would be adapted back into canon and receive his Legendary Super Saiyan form, albeit in a different way than his original counterpart.
  • Dragon Ball Z said that the Saiyans originated on the Planet Plant but the Dragon Ball: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans has a Tuffle scientist saying that they came from another planet and invaded Plant. Sequel Series Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball Super made this concept canon.
    • The Tuffles themselves originate in anime filler based on a memo from Toriyama, before one made an appearance fighting for Universe 2 in Dragon Ball Super's final arc.
  • Despite the Dragon Ball Super manga being advertised as a sequel to the original Dragon Ball manga, it contains elements from the animated continuity, such as Namekians having five fingers instead of four, Gregory becoming a Canon Immigrant, and Goku mentioning the anime-only name of his childhood home, Mount Paozu.
• Shortly after the Negima! alternate universe adaptation introduced Armor Nodoka's ability to split her Diarium Ejus up to read multiple minds, the Nodoka of the manga gained this ability as well (though her version actually shrinks the books based on how many splits she's used).
• A character was brought Back from the Dead in Ga-Rei because of Ga-Rei -Zero-. A lot of later flashbacks also borrowed from the anime.
• Excalibur's song in Soul Eater was something invented for the second episode about him in the anime, which was not based on anything in the manga. The next time he appeared in the manga, Excalibur started singing the song.
• After the release of the Cyborg 009 animated films in the '60s, Executive Meddling from Shotaro Ishinomori's editor forced him to change 007 into a young child in order to match his movie counterpart. Ishinomori hated having to do this, and eventually dropped this aspect in later stories.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena is an odd case. The manga began serialization first, but the show is considered the main canon, and for a time they ran simultaneously. This lead to both works influencing each other simultaneously, and it's not always possible to tell where an idea first originated. Some examples:
  • Anthy's Rose Bride dress was white in the original manga, but was changed to red to match the TV show. The movie compromised by making the dress two-tone, with the front and back being white and the sides being red.
  • Likewise, Utena's male uniform is black in the TV show, but pink in the original manga. The manga eventually had a chapter where Utena received the black uniform from the TV series after her original one was damaged. Chu-chu received his ring and tie from the show at the same time.
• In Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Exedor is shown as a weedy but otherwise normal Zentradi with red hair. In Macross: Do You Remember Love?, his appearance is instead one of slight Body Horror, with a bulging, pulsating brain under his scalp that could extrude pseudopods. When the character returned for Macross 7, the Do You Remember Love appearance became his stock appearance, the official Retcon being that he had to alter his body after the ill effects of micronizing and macronizing himself multiple times became apparent.
• The female Ranma in Ranma ½ initially had deliberately inconsistent hair color in cover pages, but after the TV show changed it to red, Rumiko Takahashi began more often coloring it as such in the manga.
• Lum originally had iridescent hair in the Urusei Yatsura manga, which fit nicely with her bizarre, inhuman appearance. However, since iridescent hair was impossible to animate on a TV budget in the 1980s, and is still very difficult to do even today, the anime adaptation gave her green hair instead. The green hair became so popular and iconic that it was soon used in some of the colored images from the manga, as well as certain covers.
• The 2003 re-release of the original Sailor Moon manga was renamed "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon" after the live-action show. The updated release also incorporated the show's habit of referring to the girls as "Guardians" instead of "Soldiers," an idea that has since been used in most of the subsequent additions to the franchise (including Viz Media's uncut English dub of the '90s anime) as well. An unnamed move Ami used early on in the manga was also changed to the "Mercury Aqua Mist" attack from the TV show.
• Naruto:
  • Gaara is described as having brown hair in early manga chapters, much like his brother Kankuro. In the anime, that was changed so that he was an Evil Redhead. Eventually, the manga made Gaara into a redhead as well.
  • Naruto and Hinata having their first meeting as children, when Naruto got beaten up while saving Hinata from a trio of bullies, was a scene created exclusively for the anime, appearing in the considerably expanded Shippuden Episode 166 as a flashback she recalled during her fight against Pain. No such scene or early meeting between them was ever hinted at in the manga itself. However, when The Last: Naruto the Movie was made to outline how they finally got together between the penultimate chapter and the Distant Finale, the very first scene of the movie^note After the opening narration and lore recap was a somewhat-modified version of this first meeting scene. Because The Last is the first Canon movie of the franchise, this retroactively canonized Naruto and Hinata's first meeting, and also officially made Hinata both the First Girl After All and First Girl Wins. While some elements were changed in the canon version of the scene—mainly that the event took place in the wintertime and Hinata was not dragged away by her bodyguard Ko after Naruto got beaten up—it's otherwise near-identical to the original Shippuden flashback.
  • Kiba originally had a red jacket and Tenten had a blue qipao in the manga. The manga canonized their anime colours — grey and pink — later on.
  • Zig-zagged with Ino's eyes. In the manga she is green eyed but in the anime she is blue eyed. Some pieces of the manga give her blue eyes, but most give her green.
• In the Fate/stay night DEEN anime adaptation, Archer strengthens his two signature swords, tripling their size and increasing their power. This was an ability he never displayed in the actual visual novel, but reportedly Kinoko Nasu liked the idea, and the "Overedge" forms of the swords have frequently made appearances in other stories and adaptations featuring Archer, including some written by Nasu himself.
• In Asteroid in Love, Keiko, the person who introduced Mai to maps, was not drawn when she was first referred to in Chapter 8. When she re-appears in Chapter 40, Quro adopted the design Doga Kobo gave her for Episode 3.

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