So has GT been forgiven yet?

[FoolsGil]

GT after watching Super puts things in perspective, if nothing else.

[Kuwabara]

GT has left a bad mark on the series for a long time.

The mark Super is leaving on it is a lot worse.

GT had too many sins:

- Goku becoming a kid
Goku is a retarded idiot in Super.
- Gohan, Goten and Trunks not doing much
They alongside piccolo do a lot less in Super.
- The beginning of GT was filled with boring episodes
Super as a whole is filled with boring episodes.
- Super 17 arc was awful and nonsensical
The copy arc makes it look like gold.
- Final arc had some good ideas but was executed poorly
Super as a whole is executed poorly.
- Bra, Marron, etc. just being background
Super is putting everyone minus Vegeta in the background.

I know we're seven pages deep here, but I have to address the point about Copy Vegeta in particular, because it's too funny to me. You would be right about the whole ordeal being stupid and pointless... Were it not for Vegeta's reactions and the gag with Monaka. Those things alone are more satisfying than the dumb as shit, self serious screed GT feels like. In fact, much of Super's appeal has been its penchant for exploring themes prevalent in GT and either expanding upon them or injecting the trademark Toriyama humor, another thing sorely lacking in GT.

Copy Vegeta is a quick, one and done thing that's concluded in the most anticlimactic way possible, the perfect mockery of Toei once thinking an entire arc of this shit was ever a good idea. Super, for all of its problems, is still way more in line with what Dragon Ball's actually about than anything in GT, and you pointed out exactly why without even realizing it. Maybe I'm crazy here, but I'm going to give Toriyama and Toei the benefit of the doubt here and say you've missed the point entirely.

And on that note, I'm surprised to see some people in this thread seriously looking back on GT with rose tinted glasses. Yeah, I'm pissed about Super's production too, but that doesn't negate the show's content, which has been very solid past the movie recap sagas and has left no confusion as to whether or not we're watching a Dragon Ball series. Dragon Ball GT is a fanfic.

[dbzfan7]

Super's also guilty of a MUCH worse crime than GT ever was: shameless recycling. GT actually created quite a great deal of brand new characters, designs, concepts, and so forth. Whether or not they were any good is a whole separate discussion, but the point is it actually tried to add something genuinely new to the series. Baby's Tsufuru origin (Plan to Eradicate the Saiya-jin OVA) and much of the Super 17 mini-arc (which takes a lot from movies 7 and 12) are the only major things that spring to mind offhand that are blatant recycling of previous material (much of it movie or OVA-related than anything from the manga anyway).

Super is content to be a "greatest hits" remixing of popular character concepts & ideas from (largely) Z. That's not only boring and conservative unto itself, but its not even rehashing a lot of these things all THAT particularly well either. Its FAR more engaging when it actually brings in genuinely new ideas (Beerus & Whis, the 12 Universes concept) but those are few and far between amidst all the many more instances of things like Recolored SSJs, dragging back Freeza from the grave, and wheeling out Future Trunks in his time machine yet again to seek help from the past to fix his apocalyptic future.

I agree, but I got to add that whole thing with the whisker monster was a pretty shameless recycle of the Oolong story. It at least added a little to it, but it was pretty beat for beat close to the Oolong stuff.

Though even Toriyama actually needed toei to give him ideas apparently for the Black arc to keep him going, which is not a good thing if he's supposed to be invested in this continuation.

[SSJ Human]

I agree that if you kill off Kuririn or Piccolo, they should've gotten more screen time.

That's what I'm saying. You don't kill someone off without giving them some type of role in the plot prior to that. They did it because they knew a large portion of viewers had seen the prior two shows but even then, they did nothing in GT.

Remember when Krillin died the first two times and how it meant something? That wasn't because Dragon Balls weren't exploited to the point that death doesn't matter anymore. It was due to his character receiving attention and basically being the second main protagonist after Goku at both of those points. Like I said, right now the only characters that could logically get killed off, and by that I mean make an impact, would be either Goku or Vegeta. Trunks possibly but really those two.

[sintzu]

Vegeta's reactions and the gag with Monaka are more satisfying than the dumb as shit, self serious screed GT feels like.

Much of Super's appeal has been its penchant for exploring themes prevalent in GT and either expanding upon them or injecting the trademark Toriyama humor, another thing sorely lacking in GT.

Super, for all of its problems, is still way more in line with what Dragon Ball's actually about than anything in GT.

And you pointed out exactly why without even realizing it.

I'm going to give Toriyama and Toei the benefit of the doubt here and say you've missed the point entirely.

I'm surprised to see some people in this thread seriously looking back on GT with rose tinted glasses.

Yeah, I'm pissed about Super's production too, but that doesn't negate the show's content, which has been very solid past the movie recap sagas

and has left no confusion as to whether or not we're watching a Dragon Ball series.

Dragon Ball GT is a fanfic.

GT feels like an ending which isn't a bad thing.

Super's humor couldn't be further from the original's if it tried.

No it's not.

Which is ?

The point of what ? of why Super is the way it is ?

I'm not because some fans judge a product based on what it is and not based on who's name is on it.

Very solid ? Average is more like it.

When Goku and Vegeta are in a show then chances are it's dragon ball so I don't see why you're praising it for not confusing people.

GT isn't the one with an evil Goku and recolored Ssj forms.

[Kuwabara]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about GT feeling like an ending in comparison to Super, GT takes place in a different time and Super is an ongoing series. Whether it feels like a definitive part of the grander Dragon Ball tapestry remains to be seen, but I'll venture to say that it will.

I don't see how the humor's any different from, say, much of the Buu arc. Even it is, at least there's humor at all, unlike dreary GT. There's nothing humorous in GT apart from the Vegeta mustache thing, and how funny/bad the FUNimation dub is I guess.

Whether you like it or not, it definitely is more in line with what Dragon Ball's about pretty much by default due to Toriyama's involvememt, hate to break it to you. I'll expand on that and say that Super feels like a fun romp with some serious elements thrown in.

The point was that it was Toei poking fun at themselves for the concept of an evil/copy Vegeta and doing away with him quickly, or perhaps Toriyama remembering the concept and putting a satirical spin on it.

For you to say that I'm judging Super just on the basis of Toriyama being involved is a cheap shot, give me a break. For the record, I actually thought for the longest time that a writer mote competent than him should continue Dragon Ball if a new series were to ever be conceived, but this dynamic of Toriyama laying out the framework for Toei to expand on works better than I would have ever expected.

Your criticism of Super Saiyan recolor forms sounds a bit exaggerated to me. There's only one Super Saiyan recolor, and in this case it at least feels like a natural progression in comparison to Super Saiyan 4, which was Toei backpeddling from the idea of Goku being turned into a child in a really obtuse way. As for Black, we don't know why he looks like Goku yet. I won't disagree that elements of Super haven't been thought about by fans for years, but these concepts are finally being approached in an official capacity, by the original author. I'll take this over Toei completely taking the reins with little understanding of Toriyama's characterizations or philosophy, GT is like one long Takao Koyama movie in this way, or like what many American fans in the early 2000s probably had in mind for a sequel to Z.

[Ajay]

Sintzu, let's try and put a little more thought into our responses rather than resorting to dismissive line-by-line breakdowns. Thanks!

[ABED]

I don't see how the humor's any different from, say, much of the Buu arc. Even it is, at least there's humor at all, unlike dreary GT. There's nothing humorous in GT apart from the Vegeta mustache thing, and how funny/bad the FUNimation dub is I guess.

I completely disagree. Whether you think it's funny is one thing, but there is plenty of humor in the show. Calling it dreary implies they didn't even make attempts at humor.

[Kanassa]

I don't see how the humor's any different from, say, much of the Buu arc. Even it is, at least there's humor at all, unlike dreary GT. There's nothing humorous in GT apart from the Vegeta mustache thing, and how funny/bad the FUNimation dub is I guess.

Whether you like it or not, it definitely is more in line with what Dragon Ball's about pretty much by default due to Toriyama's involvememt, hate to break it to you. I'll expand on that and say that Super feels like a fun romp with some serious elements thrown in.

I would say that the humor is objectivly different, Toriyama's humor back in the original and Z was infinitly more sex and feicies related while Super is more child friendly. Though I wouldn't ssay that's a bad thing as the humor is pretty good so far, let's just hope that it never catches on the Cartoon Network definition of childish humor (Memes, twerking and butts all the way!). I also wouldn't say that GT is dreary, it's just tonally inconsistent, and the art style of it usually just does mesh well with the show.

Yeah, out of all three of the sequal series, Super seems to be the most Dragon Ball-y of them for me.

[ABED]

it's just tonally inconsistent,

In what way?

[TheGreatness25]

Well, Pan served as Bulma during their adventures in space (being the bossy one yelling at everyone). The interaction between Bulma, Vegeta, and Bra was humorous. The scene where Vegeta beats up random guys trying to pick up his 8 year old daughter was supposed to be comical. Other than that, yeah, it was a pretty serious show. But I wouldn't say that anything from the time the Cyborgs show up all the way through the Cell Games was humorous. The only thing is the background stuff with Roshi and Maron (for example), which is filler. Oh and maybe that thing where Kuririn hangs out with Goku, who's calm before the Cell Games. And Mister Satan. Other than that, what's so humorous about anything between the the time the Cyborgs show up all the way through Cell's defeat? Those are all tiny things; they don't really make that arc "humorous." Then, between the time that Kaioshin is introduced all the way until Goku beats kid Boo, the only humorous things are Boo and Mr. Satan's interaction, Old Kaioshin and the filler when Dabura is in Other World. But those are just humorous characters, the story itself isn't humorous. So I don't understand when people claim that GT took itself too seriously because the story in Z wasn't exactly comical. The story throughout ALL of Z, from episode one was very heavy and pretty dark to be honest. It's just that the characters lit it up a little with their own humor. Well in GT, Pan is a humorous character, Trunks has his moments, Goten with Palace is humorous, Muten Roshi is humorous, Bra is humorous, and yes, the story itself is heavy... but so was Z's. Yes, the humor itself might've not stuck as well, but that doesn't mean that the story of Z was comedy. Plus, let's not forget that Dragon Ball had almost 2.5x more opportunity to fit in all of their funny elements and Z had more than 4.5x more opportunity for that than GT.


In any event, yeah, GT had a dreary feel to it a lot of the time, but that's not for lack of trying. One of the thing I really liked about GT was that they actually took the fights out of the open fields with nobody around and put them i cities and stuff. I appreciated that. I hope Super has the same (especially with the latest arc).

[sintzu]

It definitely is more in line with what Dragon Ball's about pretty much by default due to Toriyama's involvememt.

For you to say that I'm judging Super just on the basis of Toriyama being involved is a cheap shot, give me a break.

This dynamic of Toriyama laying out the framework for Toei to expand on works better than I would have ever expected.

There's only one Super Saiyan recolor.

I'll take this over Toei completely taking the reins with little understanding of Toriyama's characterizations or philosophy.

What if GT was the show with Toriyama's name on it instead of Super ? would that make it more in line with the original ?

You just said it's more in line with the original due to Toriyama's involvement, not because of what the show itself is offering.

It's a complete mess, the production is mediocre, there are forced gags everywhere and Goku is a complete retard who has 0 personality.

Ssj red, Ssj Blue and a possible Ssj White so that's 3 recolors.

Toei's current characterizations are 10× worse in Super compared to how they were in GT.

[ABED]

I'd like to go back to the tonal inconsistency argument. I like when stories change tones.

[Kanassa]

I'd like to go back to the tonal inconsistency argument. I like when stories change tones.

I'm not saying they shouldnt, but when I say tonal inconsitency, I mean as in the tone shifting in a way that doesn't feel natural and doesn't seem to fit with the show. With GT's art stye, it seemed like it was attempting to be more darker, which makes some of comedic moments in the show seem like they shouldn't be there. I also don't think the show transitions between comedic and serious moments, making it seem as if the creators don't know what tone they want to go for; though Z suffered from this too a bit in the Buu saga (Though, I'm hoping that the whole Super Buu looking for a place to shit scenes were not in the manga...).

[ABED]

I'd like to go back to the tonal inconsistency argument. I like when stories change tones.

I'm not saying they shouldnt, but when I say tonal inconsitency, I mean as in the tone shifting in a way that doesn't feel natural and doesn't seem to fit with the show. With GT's art stye, it seemed like it was attempting to be more darker, which makes some of comedic moments in the show seem like they shouldn't be there. I also don't think the show transitions between comedic and serious moments, making it seem as if the creators don't know what tone they want to go for; though Z suffered from this too a bit in the Buu saga (Though, I'm hoping that the whole Super Buu looking for a place to shit scenes were not in the manga...).

Okay, could you give me an example? I don't see it as any different than when Dragon Ball did it. I never got the sense GT was any darker than anything that preceded it. It does take a deft hand to integrate the dark and the comedic moments, but something being darker doesn't there shouldn't be comedy, it just needs to be in the right places. "The tone" makes it sound like they should only have one. The problem with the buu arc isn't the comedy, it's when and where Toriyama placed it.

[TheMikado]

Super's also guilty of a MUCH worse crime than GT ever was: shameless recycling. GT actually created quite a great deal of brand new characters, designs, concepts, and so forth. Whether or not they were any good is a whole separate discussion, but the point is it actually tried to add something genuinely new to the series. Baby's Tsufuru origin (Plan to Eradicate the Saiya-jin OVA) and much of the Super 17 mini-arc (which takes a lot from movies 7 and 12) are the only major things that spring to mind offhand that are blatant recycling of previous material (much of it movie or OVA-related than anything from the manga anyway).

Super is content to be a "greatest hits" remixing of popular character concepts & ideas from (largely) Z. That's not only boring and conservative unto itself, but its not even rehashing a lot of these things all THAT particularly well either. Its FAR more engaging when it actually brings in genuinely new ideas (Beerus & Whis, the 12 Universes concept) but those are few and far between amidst all the many more instances of things like Recolored SSJs, dragging back Freeza from the grave, and wheeling out Future Trunks in his time machine yet again to seek help from the past to fix his apocalyptic future.

I agree, but I got to add that whole thing with the whisker monster was a pretty shameless recycle of the Oolong story. It at least added a little to it, but it was pretty beat for beat close to the Oolong stuff.

Though even Toriyama actually needed toei to give him ideas apparently for the Black arc to keep him going, which is not a good thing if he's supposed to be invested in this continuation.

Exactly this so much. I think the issue a lot of people are having is that Super doesn't ( didn't) even try to give the series the reverence most 20-30 year fans would expect after such a long hiatus. From the stories to the animation l, production to everything it's like it's a slapdash chance to make marketing and toys to play on people innocent nostalgia any I'm not sure why people wouldn't be mad when the attempt is so blantant. Especially when coming from what felt like a labor of love and art with the previous Dragonball series.

[ABED]

I can't speak to the actual plots, but isn't the animation one of the things people fell in love with in the first place? Why change the formula?

My issue, even as someone who hasn't seen it, is that even though there isn't a manga the show has to slow down to accommodate, it still seems like they are padding it out.

[Kanassa]

I'd like to go back to the tonal inconsistency argument. I like when stories change tones.

I'm not saying they shouldnt, but when I say tonal inconsitency, I mean as in the tone shifting in a way that doesn't feel natural and doesn't seem to fit with the show. With GT's art stye, it seemed like it was attempting to be more darker, which makes some of comedic moments in the show seem like they shouldn't be there. I also don't think the show transitions between comedic and serious moments, making it seem as if the creators don't know what tone they want to go for; though Z suffered from this too a bit in the Buu saga (Though, I'm hoping that the whole Super Buu looking for a place to shit scenes were not in the manga...).

Okay, could you give me an example? I don't see it as any different than when Dragon Ball did it. I never got the sense GT was any darker than anything that preceded it. It does take a deft hand to integrate the dark and the comedic moments, but something being darker doesn't there shouldn't be comedy, it just needs to be in the right places. "The tone" makes it sound like they should only have one. The problem with the buu arc isn't the comedy, it's when and where Toriyama placed it.

The lead up to the final few shenrons in the Shadow Dragon Arc are a good example, all the complete gag villains just didn't fit in with what the creators seemed to be going for, making it feel out of place when Syn shows up and straight up disintergrates the four star Dragon. There didn't seem to be any sort of good lead up to the moment, combine that with it hapen with somthing that was already going against the tone, it was a clunky mess.

If you're going for a tonal shift, or mixing elemnets of different tones together, you need to be carful that those elements don't go against each other. For a good example of a nicley done mixing of tones and shift? The kick off of the Piccolo Arc back in the original Dragonball. It had good build up, it was a natural transition. Maybe I'm a walking contradiction here though, so feel free to rip me apart

Also, I never stated that something being darker has to be humorless, it's just the type of humor and how it's exercuted can go against the dark elements. And there is only one tone they will have, it'll just shift and twist along with the story.

The problem with the buu arc isn't the comedy, it's when and where Toriyama placed it.

Did Ii say otherwise? My example of the Buu arc was how they poorly exercuted a certain scene of comedy.

[TheGreatness25]

Yes, GT was sped through and missed a lot of good opportunity to flesh out the pretty impressive story that they were on the path to making. I feel like the travels in space had to be kind of sped through; one episode per planet seems pretty decent. We're not going to spend 35 episodes on 7 planets, right? Then the Baby stuff seemed kind of to be sped up. I'm curious how much the ratings and fan reactions dictated that, though.

I think the biggest flaw GT ever made was -- if not making Goku into a child again -- keeping Goku a child after the Baby arc. While it worked the first time, the audience saw this guy grow up, so it felt like a huge leap backward.

[ABED]

The lead up to the final few shenrons in the Shadow Dragon Arc are a good example, all the complete gag villains just didn't fit in with what the creators seemed to be going for, making it feel out of place when Syn shows up and straight up disintergrates the four star Dragon. There didn't seem to be any sort of good lead up to the moment, combine that with it hapen with somthing that was already going against the tone, it was a clunky mess.

If you're going for a tonal shift, or mixing elemnets of different tones together, you need to be carful that those elements don't go against each other. For a good example of a nicley done mixing of tones and shift? The kick off of the Piccolo Arc back in the original Dragonball. It had good build up, it was a natural transition. Maybe I'm a walking contradiction here though, so feel free to rip me apart

Also, I never stated that something being darker has to be humorless, it's just the type of humor and how it's exercuted can go against the dark elements. And there is only one tone they will have, it'll just shift and twist along with the story.

What they were going for was a progression. The dragons got progressively more serious and stronger. The 3 and 4 star Dragons were both very serious and very strong.

Tones don't need to go with each other, they often can work as a nice contrast, such as if a character is having a very light hearted triumphant moment only to have their world crash down around them a second later.