Thread by @Herms98

August, Age 764: thanks to his new Yardrat skills, Goku makes it back in time to save Earth from Freeza and his dad Cold. He finishes off the unrepentant villains for good, but dies of natural causes sometime later. Yes, we’re at the start of a pretty big downer… #HistoryofEver

Wait wait, let’s try this again…August, Age 764: Freeza and Cold arrive on Earth, and Goku’s spaceship is still three hours away. Just as he’s about to use his new Yardrat skills to teleport the rest of the way, somebody steps in and solves his problem for him…

This mysterious stranger slices and dices Freeza, leaving him incapacitated but technically still alive, before finally incinerating the remaining pieces with a ki blast. The world is saved, but who is this guy?! He ain’t telling nobody but Goku (and any big-eared eavesdroppers)

Meanwhile, Gero’s spy robot is still hard at work. This time it collects cells from Freeza and Cold, but stops short of taking any from this “Trunks” guy. We don’t want to make things too Saiyan-centric, after all.

(Cell’s explanation implies that Trunks was the one who killed Freeza/Cold even in Cell’s own timeline, which must surely be wrong, but damned if I’m gonna get into that can of worms right now)

Trunks steps in against Freeza because Goku’s ship is still three hours away and he’s unaware that Goku can teleport. The implication is that in Trunks’ own timeline Goku teleported in, leaving his empty ship to crash down three hours later. Apparently Future Bulma left this out.

The big plot hole here of course is that Trunks specifically warns Goku of Androids 19 and 20, then later has no clue who they are. The anime fixes this by having Trunks not specify any numbers, but in the manga this remains unchanged in all editions thus far.

As you may know, this is a legacy of the arc’s bumpy writing process. Toriyama originally planned 19+20 as the big bads, but his former editor Torishima found the pair less than impressive and pressured Toriyama to swap them out for 17+18, then Cell. kanzenshuu.com/translations/d…

After the post-Namek wishing wraps up (a period of 260 days), in the manga the narrator says that “since then about a year has passed”, at which point Freeza and Cold attack Earth. That would seem to be a total of one year, 260 days between the Namek arc and Trunks’ appearance.

On the other hand, in the anime the narrator says that about a year passes between Goku’s battle with Freeza and Trunks’ appearance, seeming to ignore the extra 260 days (or possibly taking “since then a year has passed” to mean “since Namek” rather than “since the final wish”)

The Daizenshuu 7 timeline uses 1 year, 260 days and so places Trunks’ appearance in “sometime in August, Age 764”. Since the Namek arc is in late December 762, the anime’s gap of only about a year can still fit within 764, if we just assume it’s sometime earlier than August.

Long story short: the Namek arc is very late in 762, Trunks shows up and warns of the androids sometime in 764, and the androids show up three years later in 767.

Another manga/anime difference: in both the manga and anime, Trunks says Goku dies “not long” after returning to Earth, while his own birth is in 2.5 years. In the Trunks special though, Goku’s death is moved to after Trunks’ birth, half a year before the androids attack.

As far as dramatic opening scenes go, having baby Trunks present at Goku’s deathbed clearly seems like the right choice. Also note that by extension Trunks is about half a year old when the androids attack, but more on the timing of his birth later.

In DBS ep.60, Trunks describes Goku as dying from his heart virus before he was born, in keeping with the manga rather than the Trunks TV special.

Resurrection “F” shows Shenlong revive Freeza in countless tiny pieces, which Sorbet and co have to stick back together again. The implication is that his “marvelous life-force” kept him alive when Trunks sliced and diced him, and only the final ki blast truly finished him off.

Tomorrow: love is in the air!