[The Chaos Entity]

Quote:

Originally Posted by catwhowalks

First of all, it's because Westerners are the only one who get hung up on canon at all. In most countries, the writers will ignore the established storyline in a second if they think it makes for a better story without bothing to retcon or reconciling it in any way and no one cares. Westerners tend to want a nice neat consistence storyline with no contradictions and errors. No one else really does. Even other Western countries sometimes care about it less than Americans particularly do.

But for me, my hangups are the following.

1. Consistent with the above, I don't think "True Ending" at necessarily means cannon in the Westerns sense. I'm can't think of it for sure, but I'm pretty sure Japanese stuff has been called that while being not in continuity with the original ending.

2. I REALLY hate the idea of them just stopping the series without having the ending in series. It seems wrong to me. The latest news seems to indicate that "True Ending" really means "Epilogue" here and that it will merely wrap up some thing from the series rather than leave it hanging, but I assumed that if it was the only ending, that meant the series would have to just stop without resolving anything.

3. Precedent. They have never had a movie to finish the main storyline before except for Decade. And Decade did indeed just stop without resolving anything. So I had every reason to believe that it would be one of those two things.

But I'm totally cool with a big epilogue to wrap things up.

...Whether you think it's 'canon in the western sense' or not, it explicitly is. It's been stated time and again, and has even been confirmed to take place one year after the series - both by Daichi Miura, and Toei's page for Episode 42 (or was it 41?).
Recent episode listings show that the TV series does have an ending (a final confrontation with Gamedeus Chronus) in Episode 45, but that there are loose ends - loose ends that become plot points in the movie (one such loose end being Johnny Maxima having the Gashacon BugVisor and a sample of the Gamedeus Virus).
The inconsistencies are also being slowly whittled away (Kiriya's white coat, Dan being called 'Kami', and being imprisoned), and if you check, several Japanese Toku sites are keeping track of this 'countdown' - including the Toei pages for each episode.

So... Yes, it's 100% canon, whether you like it or not - like W's, Gaim's, Drive's, and Ghost's (it just chooses to take place after the series, rather than during); but at the same time, the series doesn't end on a cliffhanger, it does have its own ending that serves as both a conclusion to the TV series, and a lead-in to the film.
Think of it like this. The TV series is the main game, and Emu and co. fulfilled the criteria to access the True Ending, so they get an extra 'Final Final Level' after the contemporary final level.
...So while I wouldn't say 'just an epilogue'...that is the easiest way to categorize it, yes.