Dragon Ball GT: A Personal Assessment (20 Year Anniversary)

[lancerman]

It's a sound strategy, but the execution was off imo. If they formulated the plan and it was:

Goku: this guys tough, we don't have the power to beat him, we need way more than we could ever do on our own.
Vegeta: Well remember how we beat Boo, we don't need to use only our power.
Goku: Good idea. King Kai, help out with this.

Instead Goku just comes out of the abyss with it and then casually mentions that he did the exact same thing and then even more quickly gets the power from the rest of the universe. In the Boo arc it was actually a process and an ordeal. In GT it was "oh they are doing this again". And it was also the only time the finish to a major arc fight was both a repeat and formulated off screen.

Also in context it was Goku fighting a foe who absorbed other beings to gain more power, him and Vegeta fusing and getting cocky and not finishing the job, then the genki dama. It was very similar and not done with the same care as the Boo arc.

Disagree on all counts. Do you just want a direct copy? So what if it was done off screen? It was a welcome surprise and not a deus ex machina.

Gogeta getting cocky wasn't the same. The big difference is that in the Buu arc, he wasn't cocky. He was confident. He was intentionally wasting time so he could get absorbed.

there is so much potential with all these past villains coming back and having them all be essentially one shotted. Nappa had such a strong tie to Vegeta and was the main source of destruction in the Saiyan battle that you would think he'd at least get a line of dialogue.

There really wasn't much potential. They were all villains that had long since been surpassed, with the exception of Rildo. If I recall, Nappa did get a line, but he didn't have much of a strong connection to Vegeta. Vegeta killed him without a second thought when he felt he was useless. I wish people would stop judging things mostly by comparison to some vague ideas of what they think could've or should've happened.

1. When it comes out of nowhere it's just retread. There's no substance behind it. It's literally the exact same strategy used against Boo except it's done off screen so the audience doesn't see it. In the Boo arc it had meaning because we saw the formation of it and how hard it was to execute the plan. In the Shadow Dragon arc it was just borderline patchwork designed to figure out a way to beat Omega. Literally about 6 minutes pass from the big reveal to the destruction of Omega. It's not particularly welcome or clever, it's a redo and something they quite easily could have done with any villain in GT, it's just they set up the heroes in an unwinnable scenario and then needed to re use an old set up to get them out.

2. You're hanging on semantics on this one. Okay Gogeta was cocky and Vegito was just acting cocky. Gotenks was cocky for that matter. It was still a similar set up of an unbeatable regenerating villain who the heroes are having a hard time putting down, a fusion used to turn the tide but ultimately failing, then a last ditch genki dama that was created by using the spare energy of the world (or in this case universe) to finally end things. It wasn't a particular original or inspired final battle.

3. As far as Nappa and the villains you are thinking purely in terms of fighting. These villains all had characters that could have been utilized in some form or fashion beyond just being old designs with no real substance behind them getting mostly one shotted by the heroes. A good chunk of these villains would have never engaged in open combat against foes they were that outmatched by. Nappa fine because he was always not the brightest bulb. There was so much more potential than a bunch of characterless false obstacles for the heroes until the real fight started. This was the penultimate arc and you just gave yourself an excuse to revisit the old hits of the franchise before the series ended and it just amounted to a whole lot of nothing kills.

[ABED]

1. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. And not out of nowhere as we've seen him use the same strategy before. Why draw it out when we saw the scenario play out before? Which do you want, the scene to play out like the Buu arc or to be different? Plus, considering that the past couple episodes had been spent seeing Goku getting the crap kicked out of him and basically did die, nothing about the fight was easy.

2. Not semantics, it's a big difference. One is intentionally drawing things out as a strategy, the other isn't being serious. When you get hung up on a few details, things will look remarkably similar, but it wasn't. It's not like Toriyama didn't rehash many ideas, but by all means, lets pile on to GT for using things that worked before.

3. They had their time. I'm not just thinking about fighting. There is no logic in bringing them back only to have the heroes spend so much time, including screen time, sending them back to Hell. "it just amounted to a whole lot of nothing kills." And? The point was that something odd was happening and our heroes and the audience didn't know what exactly or why. It was the first sign of something more ominous. No need to draw it out beyond an episode. What potential are you referring to?

But like someone else mentioned, the idea is cute. At this point the show is wrapping up, so throwing every major villain at the characters is sort of like a look back at how far the heroes have come in regards to everybody they defeated, from Commander Red to Cell, before you introduce the Shadow Dragons as the final boss of the franchise.

I'm growing to hate "potential" and how people are using it instead of judging something on its own merits. Potential is so damn vague that pretty much anything can be seen as coming up short in comparison. I liked GT brining back the old henchmen. It was a good way of reminding the audience of the past and pushing the story forward.

[Bebi Hatchiyack]

I read the first post made by Lord Beerus

My only deception but it's just me are:

• Pilaf Gang reaching Kami's Lookout
• Goku being a kid again
• Pan and Trunks characterization they could have handled better
• I would have loved more Gohan being choose as main host for Baby
• The Death of Piccolo pointless for me
• The whole garbage of the Super Android 17 arc
• Certains Devil Dragon Design questionnable
• The lack of action of certains characters at some point in diffrent arc
• Ledgic and Uub wasted potential

Aside from that I have a niptick of the color choice of the SSJ4 I like the concept but not the aesthetic choice, either Golden or Brown furr would have been nice Hell if brown/dark furr we would have been able to see Goku and Vegeta stack a Super Saiya-jin to this form and heck why not make it permanent like an true biological Evolution of Saiyan nature.

Dragon Ball GT have so much good but with wasted potential IMO.

[OmegaZenki]

I read the first post made by Lord Beerus

My only deception but it's just me are:

• Pilaf Gang reaching Kami's Lookout
• Goku being a kid again
• Pan and Trunks characterization they could have handled better
• I would have loved more Gohan being choose as main host for Baby
• The Death of Piccolo pointless for me
• The whole garbage of the Super Android 17 arc
• Certains Devil Dragon Design questionnable
• The lack of action of certains characters at some point in diffrent arc
• Ledgic and Uub wasted potential

Aside from that I have a niptick of the color choice of the SSJ4 I like the concept but not the aesthetic choice, either Golden or Brown furr would have been nice Hell if brown/dark furr we would have been able to see Goku and Vegeta stack a Super Saiya-jin to this form and heck why not make it permanent like an true biological Evolution of Saiyan nature.

Dragon Ball GT have so much good but with wasted potential IMO.

Agreed. It's a shame,wasted potential is GT in a nutshell. Great concept, poor execution. That's why I can never hate GT. It's just sad.

[ABED]

Can anyone give an example of the potential they are referring to? "Wasted potential" at this point sounds like "irreconcilable differences".

[Bebi Hatchiyack]

An exemple of Wasted potential ?

Exemple Ledgic you have a great character with original power who would have been a possible rival for either Trunks and his power developpement or Goku for his quest of battle strong opponent. And a rival who could have been a potential ally.

Frankly I defy anyone here to don't admit that they wouldn't have loved to see more of Ledgic.

[ABED]

I wouldn't have minded, but not because of the rivalry, but rather despite working for a tyrant, he does have a sense of justice and knows who the Saiyans were. He might have been an interesting ally. Goku has plenty of rivals.

[lancerman]

1. You are making a mountain out of a molehill. And not out of nowhere as we've seen him use the same strategy before. Why draw it out when we saw the scenario play out before? Which do you want, the scene to play out like the Buu arc or to be different? Plus, considering that the past couple episodes had been spent seeing Goku getting the crap kicked out of him and basically did die, nothing about the fight was easy.

2. Not semantics, it's a big difference. One is intentionally drawing things out as a strategy, the other isn't being serious. When you get hung up on a few details, things will look remarkably similar, but it wasn't. It's not like Toriyama didn't rehash many ideas, but by all means, lets pile on to GT for using things that worked before.

3. They had their time. I'm not just thinking about fighting. There is no logic in bringing them back only to have the heroes spend so much time, including screen time, sending them back to Hell. "it just amounted to a whole lot of nothing kills." And? The point was that something odd was happening and our heroes and the audience didn't know what exactly or why. It was the first sign of something more ominous. No need to draw it out beyond an episode. What potential are you referring to?

But like someone else mentioned, the idea is cute. At this point the show is wrapping up, so throwing every major villain at the characters is sort of like a look back at how far the heroes have come in regards to everybody they defeated, from Commander Red to Cell, before you introduce the Shadow Dragons as the final boss of the franchise.

I'm growing to hate "potential" and how people are using it instead of judging something on its own merits. Potential is so damn vague that pretty much anything can be seen as coming up short in comparison. I liked GT brining back the old henchmen. It was a good way of reminding the audience of the past and pushing the story forward.

It was the exact same set up. Magical being who the heroes can't beat, tried all their best attacks, he just regenerates, they use fusion and essentially goof around and it fails (whether it's Gotenks seriously messing around or Vegito fake messing around), then that chance is missed and they are forced into a no win situation where they need gather energy for the spirit bomb. Those aren't minor details. Those are the beats of the fight. You are using minor details to say it's different. In two different situations there will always be differences, the set up is the same and it's not wrong to point out that it uses the same story beats and is the only major final fight in the series which is essentially a retread of a previous final fight.

As far as the villains coming back, nobody would really care if they were just nameless monsters from hell. Then if you want to one shot them all away, who cares? And it fills it's purpose. But they used old villains that we knew for a reason and that was to make it more personal and illict an emotion from the audience.. and they essentially treated them by and large like they were nameless monsters. So they were used in a wasteful manner. When you set up a plot with the potential to use all the old pieces on the board and discard it right away, again it's not wrong to point them out. Your argument here seems to be "they had their own plot in mind, so lets ignore the waste and only focus on that".

[ABED]

The emotion is nostalgia and not every being that got released was some big character. Sergeant Metallic was memorable, but only in a single episode. Even Blue wasn't that big of a deal. He was one soldier in a big army.

the potential to use all the old pieces on the board and discard it right away, again it's not wrong to point them out. Your argument here seems to be "they had their own plot in mind, so lets ignore the waste and only focus on that".

You seem to think there's only one valid way to use them. You see it as a waste, I don't. I was fine with it. You make it sound like they were Freeza from the beginning of the Cell arc. How should it have been written?

[MR.Mark]

It has good ideas here and there, usually poorly executed, Dragon ball GT is pretty consistently mediocre from beginning to end. On top of no truly memorable gags I can think of off the top of my head, the series also contains some of the most boring and poorly staged fights in the franchise.

I'm hard pressed to think why some find this series more bold in choices than Super. Yeah sure, it continued the story...by immediately turning Goku back into a child. People accuse Super of nostalgia pandering? Say hello to HEY KIDS, REMEMBER WHEN GOKU WAS A KID?! What makes this worse is the GT staff's excuse for this decision, they couldn't think of how to make Goku stronger. I'm sorry but Goku achieving God ki is a million times better than this.

What makes it even more pointless is that not much later into the series they DID find a way to make him stronger. The oh so "fresh" SSJ4, which I guess is fresh just because he has hair on his body, makes no difference since there's a 4 slapped on to it anyway, just another SSJ variant, give me Ultra Instinct any day.

You know what would of been REALLY bold and fresh if they were so baffled with what to do with Goku? Instead of that 100 year timeskip at the end of GT, how bout one at the beginning? Have Goku be that rejected old man idea Toriyama had kicking around. Now THAT would of truly been taking a risk.

Don't get me started on Pan, Toriyama won me over so quickly at the end of the manga, and she's adorable in Super. GT Pan is a total waste with an annoying personality, now that was a brat. Pan being a lot like a female Goku is what I feel is the best way to go if Super goes EOZ and ages her up.

I like some of the music here and there, but I find GT an overall disappointment. It's a 64 episode Toei movie in my eyes, disposable entertainment.

[ABED]

They weren't out of ways to make him stronger. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Goku had gotten so strong that they were trying to put limits on him.

[MR.Mark]

Then why create SSJ4? Wasin't there a recent interview with GT staff where they were basically scratching there heads with what to do with Goku? When you have to start your series handicapping the main character, maybe you should rethink continuing the story at all.

[ABED]

I don't see why. It's not a bad idea at all to put a limit on your character, even if just a temporary one.

[MR.Mark]

Goku always had limits though, it was finding them when he faced stronger and stronger guys. I guess it comes down to whether you like the idea or not, I don't, I think making him a kid again was one of the worst decisions GT made and goes against what Toriyama would do.

It was ultimately pointless when he could grow magic pants/adult body whenever he needs to with super furry 4 anyway.

[Timetraveller]

I'm hard pressed to think why some find this series more bold in choices than Super. Yeah sure, it continued the story...by immediately turning Goku back into a child. People accuse Super of nostalgia pandering? Say hello to HEY KIDS, REMEMBER WHEN GOKU WAS A KID?! What makes this worse is the GT staff's excuse for this decision, they couldn't think of how to make Goku stronger. I'm sorry but Goku achieving God ki is a million times better than this.

Right because SS ice cream flavor of the month is truly bold. Super saiyan blue, pink, red and now black. How long did it take them to think of that?

What makes it even more pointless is that not much later into the series they DID find a way to make him stronger. The oh so "fresh" SSJ4, which I guess is fresh just because he has hair on his body, makes no difference since there's a 4 slapped on to it anyway, just another SSJ variant, give me Ultra Instinct any day.

Surely youre trolling right? It's fresh because it's not a recolor. The perfect way to tie in the super saiyan form (the iconic form of DBZ) with the original oozaru form (the iconic form of Dragonball that started it all).

Don't get me started on Pan, Toriyama won me over so quickly at the end of the manga, and she's adorable in Super. GT Pan is a total waste with an annoying personality, now that was a brat. Pan being a lot like a female Goku is what I feel is the best way to go if Super goes EOZ and ages her up.

So another Goku clone. More fan service. Damn, we're lucky fans aren't writing the show. Everyone would be Goku clones and there'd be fusions and transformations left and right. Don't we already have a game like that? Dragon ball Heroes. How about some originality? Pan didn't hit her head as a baby and wasn't raised in the woods. It wouldn't make any sense for her to be obsessed with fighting. This isn't Boruto man...

It has good ideas here and there, usually poorly executed, Dragon ball GT is pretty consistently mediocre from beginning to end. On top of no truly memorable gags I can think of off the top of my head, the series also contains some of the most boring and poorly staged fights in the franchise.

Better original ideas that fail than reusing ideas and also failing. The only original arc from Super was the Black arc and even that has been done better many times before in other shows.

[MR.Mark]

I didn't post my opinion in this topic to get into a petty debate, keep your transformations, there old hat for me. Don't get superfictionally bent out of shape over hair color, the point behind it is god ki, that's what matters. When did I say make Pan a Goku clone? Nothing wrong with having his charm and fighting spirit though. Better than her being useless, at least the Saiyan girls can put up a fight.

Super to me has the Toriyama charm to it flaws and all, if you want to turn this into "this transformation is more bad ass than that", then you win the topic, I will have no part of that nonsense. There's already a forum chock full of Super negativity, you can take your ice cream talk there.

I will keep my opinion and not step into the grand tour.

[Xeogran]

People who are keep saying that "Pan's a brat" etc never look at the circumstances and WHY is she like that, and yet jump to conclusions.

She was embarassed having a grandpa smaller than her, so it's natural she'd act bossy over him. Keep in mind that Pan is a kid who didn't like being one herself.

I'd say it was a natural progression. How many kids in real life are cute at the age of 5, then School and other real life circumstances like peer pressure come and they change their personalities?

That doesn't mean Pan's character was stagnant, she did change her attitude in the latter episodes, which was fairly nice.

[ABED]

Goku always had limits though, it was finding them when he faced stronger and stronger guys. I guess it comes down to whether you like the idea or not, I don't, I think making him a kid again was one of the worst decisions GT made and goes against what Toriyama would do.

It was ultimately pointless when he could grow magic pants/adult body whenever he needs to with super furry 4 anyway.

Those aren't really limits and just having him go up against increasingly stronger opponents isn't necessarily interesting. Goku could turn SS4 anytime he wanted, but the form does seem as though the form consumes energy rapidly (a good limit)

That doesn't mean Pan's character was stagnant, she did change her attitude in the latter episodes, which was fairly nice.

I don't find her nearly as annoying as some, but the arc could've still been better. She's not as matured by her circumstances as I think the story warranted.

[Timetraveller]

I didn't post my opinion in this topic to get into a petty debate, keep your transformations, there old hat for me. Don't get superfictionally bent out of shape over hair color, the point behind it is god ki, that's what matters. When did I say make Pan a Goku clone? Nothing wrong with having his charm and fighting spirit though. Better than her being useless, at least the Saiyan girls can put up a fight.

Super to me has the Toriyama charm to it flaws and all, if you want to turn this into "this transformation is more bad ass than that", then you win the topic, I will have no part of that nonsense. There's already a forum chock full of Super negativity, you can take your ice cream talk there.

I will keep my opinion and not step into the grand tour.

You mean God ki which we still don't understand how it works because the anime and manga used it differently and the only real distinction between god ki and regular ki being a vague comment in the BoG saga about fodder level characters not being able to sense Goku's ki? Some really memorable stuff there.

Pan did have his fighting spirit. She's not the annoying "stay in the kitchen" typical Japanese female like the other female regulars. The only problem is she's fighting Majin Buu level opponents. Maybe they should have given her a tingly back asspull to make her be able to fight SS4 Goku level opponents like how the saiyan girls got theirs to compete with SSB Goku. SS5 Ultra Instinct Major Key Alert Pan.

No argument with the DBS having that Toriyama charm to it. If you liked Toriyama's recent work like Dragonball Minus you'll probably like Super. I thought Minus was bad and hated that he retconned the anime movie.

This thread is part of that forum. I was responding specifically to your negative GT comment. No problems with you liking Super over GT though. Personal preference after all

[MR.Mark]

So pulling Goku's tail back out of his ass with plyers is superior to the mystery of divine ki? Ok then.

18 has been fighting in the TOP, no being a housewife for her, and we have Kale and Califlya too. Pan is Gohan's daughter for crying out loud, that alone should make her right up there with her father or stronger. GT if anything was showing bias because she is female if anything.

Minus is meh, but then it's barely a story, I wouldn't compare it to Super in the slightest.

SSJ has been a joke since the Buu arc, atleast the tingly back gives the power up some bases in martial arts. No different than Goku and Piccolo suddenly being explained as aliens.

I guess I'm one of the few fans that doesn't have nostalgia bias.