Timetraveller wrote:Disliking the GT opening is almost entirely based on your music preference. You probably prefer the more orchestral/classical music and there's nothing wrong with that. I like to compare it to those old folk who grew up in the 1940's bebop era or the 19060's Beatles era and don't understand this "hip hop" genre we have today. I'm no music expert but I do listen to a lot of hip-hop. Lyrically, the GT rap opening flowed well and had some decent rhyme.
I have very broad musical taste. I listen to jazz and blues and such dating back to the '20s, I listen to classical stuff, I listen to progressive rock and metal, I listen to pop, I listen to hip-hop... Basically, I'll listen to almost anything. I generally tend to mostly go for progressive rock at the moment, and I don't listen to all that much hip-hop/rap stuff, but as long as it's good, I'll basically give anything a try.
Thing is, I don't think the GT replacement score works in GT at all. And the lyrics to the opening rap are really cheesy, and the actual in-series score is a little generic-sounding, and massively unfitting to the tone of the show.
Mark Menza isn't a bad musician, but his music simply doesn't fit in GT.
Honestly, the idea of a Dragon Ball series deliberately designed to have hip-hop music in its score, and thus one designed with a tone that would benefit that sounds pretty kick-ass to me. But retrofitting GT to do that didn't work, was never going to work, and was just a poorly-conceived idea thought up to try to pander to a specific part of their audience while massively disrespecting the show they were doing this to.
Thing is, Tokunaga's score for GT was already in place, and is already IMO the best score a piece of Dragon Ball media has ever had. So in addition to the replacement score being unfitting and a bit of a mixed bag to begin with, it's in place of some truly incredible stuff composed for the Japanese version, so... I'm in a similar position in this regard to people like KaiserNeko, who holds a massive grudge(Well, perhaps grudge isn't the right word, but you know what I mean) against the Faulconer score for replacing the Kikuchi score, which he has a great love for.
Bullza wrote:I suppose it would be better to watch the series with the original Japanese score as well right?
I've just noticed I've been watching it with the American score which isn't awful but it ain't very good either
Honestly, watching the Funi dub with the Japanese score makes it worse, becuase it becomes even more jarring, despite the fact it's astounding music that's leaps and bounds ahead of the crap Funi put together for the replacement score.
But, watching it with the actually good Blue Water dub, or the proper, original Japanese audio track, it really works, and you get to hear some of the best music in the Dragon Ball franchise.
Rakurai wrote:I dont give a shit about Wikipedia reception unless it's factual. And hey look guess what.
"The average audience TV rating in Japan was 5.6% (Kanto region). The maximum audience rating was 8.4% (Episode 47) and the lowest rating was 3.5% (Episodes 109-110).[59] These are the lowest TV ratings on average, maximum, and minimum per series that the franchise has ever received.
Star Trek: The Original Series consistently received some of the worst ratings of the channel it originally aired in. However, it was very well liked. Plus, while I hesitate to pull this card, ratings numbers are often highly inaccurate. The reason Star Trek came back with its movies, and the animated series is because later evidence showed the viewership was actually rather enormous.
I'm not saying GT is as good as Star Trek, or that there was a secret undercurrent of GT lovers in Japan who were wronged by its cancellation, I'm just saying... Ratings aren't all that meaningful to the actual quality of the show, especially when the ratings in Z had already been dropping off at a tremendous rate, with it all coming to a head when GT episode 1 aired, with massively reduced ratings from even the drop-off point of Z. That doesn't speak to the quality of the show, it speaks to the franchise fatigue people were having. If no one watched the show, no one would know how good it was, so saying the maximum and average ratings were low actually kind of aids the idea that maybe the reason it was cancelled wasn't because people didn't like it...
Rakurai wrote:In the Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary book, Akira Toriyama criticized the quality of series, stating "...and now I’m complaining about the quality of the new TV anime."[76]"
Nice complete lack of context there.
Besides, Toriyama has gone on record previously stating the fact he likes GT. That famous "gt is a side-story so its non canon lol" quote is often taken entirely out of context from
the original writing, which was clearly intended to show an appreciation of it.
Rakurai wrote:These things have been added to the DBS reception. I'm okay with these things because they're not just some randomass critics.
A critic is someone who understands the medium they're discussing, and is able to go in-depth into why and how various things do or do not work. A critic is far more qualified to tell you whether something has artistic merit than some inaccurate ratings numbers, or some nonsensical out of context quote from the guy who created the comics the show was based on.
Geekdom did
a pretty great breakdown of GT and its history, which goes into the ratings stuff in rather great detail, and explains the real reasons why GT was cancelled. I suggest watching that before spreading further misinformation.
The point of Dragon Ball is to enjoy it. Never lose sight of that.
