What would Toei have done with GT if it had gone on longer?

[Robo4900]

Hello, friends.

Simple question this time; what would Toei have done with GT if it hadn't been just 64 episodes?

Probably been discussed a billion times before, and TBH, I'm kinda reaching here to see if anyone happens to have heard of any draft ideas that were thrown out when GT's run was cut short, but your own speculation is also welcome. (FWIW, I have heard that there were some draft episode scenarios planned out early on that were discarded, including something about a Prison Planet, so I do wonder if there were ideas "on the board", so to speak, for what stories Toei could tell after the Baby arc)
For all its faults (and as much as the franchise was already well past its best when GT began), I do reflect quite kindly on GT, and I do wonder what would have happened if they had got a little more time with it, and I'm curious what the Kanzenshuu lot have to say about this.

Personally, my speculation is that Super #17 wouldn't have happened at all; we'd have got an entirely different storyline after Baby, and the show would have worked towards the Evil Dragons arc slowly over a longer period of time (I've always had a pet theory that Super #17 is basically a 6-episode sprint Toei threw together to get the world to a situation where the Evil Dragons arc could take place, after they heard they were only getting 24 more episodes after Baby), and then the Evil Dragons arc would have eventually hit when it was time for the show to end; either for the purposes of them moving on to a Goku Jr-centric series, or to bring the franchise, in its initial incarnation, to a conclusion a year or two after the 1997 end we got in reality.

[Matches Malone]

In the GT perfect files, they talk about Planet Vegeta and question whether or not its the original Saiyan home world, so they might've planned on visiting that concept had it gone on longer. Despite that and other potentially good concepts, they'd all suffer the same problems that the others did, Goku time. One of the producers/writers went as far as to say that all people care about is Goku, regardless of how interesting the others may be, so he needs to be front and center of everything as much as possible. Poor Vegeta couldn't even keep Ssj4, as the anime and perfect files stated only Goku could transform at will due to him being "special". Gt was unfortunately a lost cause from the beginning due to that obsession they had with Goku.

[WittyUsername]

I could certainly buy the idea that the Super 17 arc was just thrown together as an excuse to set up the next arc. It’s easily the sloppiest arc in GT, and it straight up recycles the premise of DBZ Movie 12, but it’s not nearly as fun or clever about it.

Anyway, I haven’t heard anything regarding any scrapped drafts for GT. I do remember that rumor about how the show was supposed to end after episode 40, only for its run to be extended because of Final Bout, but just like with the rumors that Toriyama intended to end the series with Freeza and/or Cell, it seems like that’s nothing but a rumor. My best guess for what Toei would’ve done if the show had gone on longer is that we would’ve gotten a fair amount of slice of life episodes.

[Robo4900]

In the GT perfect files, they talk about Planet Vegeta and question whether or not its the original Saiyan home world, so they might've planned on visiting that concept had it gone on longer.

Interesting.
Well, with the stuff about the Saiyan and Tsufurian rivalry, it would make sense.
I feel like that's such a basic seed of an idea, though, it's hard to glean anything about it. More of a lore detail than a story idea.

Despite that and other potentially good concepts, they'd all suffer the same problems that the others did, Goku time. One of the producers/writers went as far as to say that all people care about is Goku, regardless of how interesting the others may be, so he needs to be front and center of everything as much as possible. Poor Vegeta couldn't even keep Ssj4, as the anime and perfect files stated only Goku could transform at will due to him being "special". Gt was unfortunately a lost cause from the beginning due to that obsession they had with Goku.

I've always found this criticism dumb... This is literally the case with ALL of Dragon Ball from about the second half of the Freeza arc onwards, and pretty much all the movies after DB movie 3. The Goku obsession didn't ruin GT, it's an inherent flaw in how Toriyama and Toei see Dragon Ball. GT's unique set of flaws don't lie there, they mostly lie in their attempts to emulate Toriyama's style in the first 15 episodes, the poor fight choreography, and a load of duff episodes and ideas that happen here and there.
... But, can we not get into this again? I think we've all expressed our views on whether or not GT was good or not plenty, and there are far better places to do it.

I happen to like GT, and my intent with this thread is for it to be a fun thread of speculation and stuff people might have gleaned from interview hints and such. "muh gt sux" is tiring, boring, and can be found literally everywhere else.

Anyway, I haven’t heard anything regarding any scrapped drafts for GT. I do remember that rumor about how the show was supposed to end after episode 40, only for its run to be extended because of Final Bout, but just like with the rumors that Toriyama intended to end the series with Freeza and/or Cell, it seems like that’s nothing but a rumor.

My understanding was that they had an initial 40-episode order, which was then extended by 24, but I never heard any reason behind that, so IDK.

My best guess for what Toei would’ve done if the show had gone on longer is that we would’ve gotten a fair amount of slice of life episodes.

Yeah, probably. That would've been nice.

[TheGreatness25]

Hm, interesting. I didn't think that there was any evidence of what would've happened if GT wasn't canceled so early on. My guess would be that they'd take the super rushed Baby, Super 17, and evil Shenlong arcs and fleshed them out a lot better. I think that the Super 17 arc was a creative miss, but every other idea in GT looked great on paper. I think the execution is what messed it up and I assumed that was from rushing to finish the project up in 64 episodes.

[Matches Malone]

Well, with the stuff about the Saiyan and Tsufurian rivalry, it would make sense.
I feel like that's such a basic seed of an idea, though, it's hard to glean anything about it. More of a lore detail than a story idea.

They also said they wrote plenty of unused scripts for the first arc, so it's clear there's a lot of ideas that didn't get passed the planning stage. I'd love for a GT book to be released that gives us the full story on how everything came to be, what were their future plans, and why it ended when it did. I've always liked behind the scenes stories, and I think GT is a goldmine when it comes to that.

[Robo4900]

They also said they wrote plenty of unused scripts for the first arc, so it's clear there's a lot of ideas that didn't get used. I'd love for a GT book to be released that gives us the full story on how everything came to be, what were their future plans, and why it ended when it did. I've always liked behind the scenes stories, and I think GT is a goldmine when ti comes to that.

Agreed. GT's production was clearly troubled, but clearly a lot of effort was, and a lot of ideas were, poured into it. Would be great to have the full story on its production, and see some of the unused scripts and such.

I'd also be interested in seeing if there were, like, longer drafts of some of the episodes we did get. I remember there's an interview here on Kanzenshuu (I forget where exactly to find it, but it's in the press archive or translations archive, I think) with one of the writers of GT, who talked about a scripted scene where Gohan decides to put down his books and pick up his fighting gi again to join in the fight in the Super #17 or Evil Dragons arc or something.

Hm, interesting. I didn't think that there was any evidence of what would've happened if GT wasn't canceled so early on. My guess would be that they'd take the super rushed Baby, Super 17, and evil Shenlong arcs and fleshed them out a lot better. I think that the Super 17 arc was a creative miss, but every other idea in GT looked great on paper. I think the execution is what messed it up and I assumed that was from rushing to finish the project up in 64 episodes.

Would make sense. Though TBH, I still think Super #17 wouldn't have happened if they'd had more time. It was a creative miss, as you note. To me, it feels like just a quick way to get to the Evil Dragons arc. There are a million other, more elegant, more interesting ways to set that up.

I will note that I have problems with the "GT had great ideas but poor execution" criticism -- I don't want to get into it too deep here, but it's a very summative, vague thing, and could be applied to pretty much all media that isn't amazing. "Execution" means a lot of things. But, I think you raise a good point about the rush GT may have been under.
To be honest, I always appreciated GT's quicker pace, but the Super #17 arc is paper thin. If done right, the idea of basically doing a take on DBZ movie 12 as a TV storyline could have been a fun arc, but at 6 episodes, you really don't have any space to do anything new with it, and it's always just stuck out to me as "We wanted to get to the Evil Dragons arc quickly, and have time to fully show off the Evil Dragons storyline, so we did a rushed 6-episode fanservice-y romp to get us there."

My point is... You raise a good point about the rush, but personally, I think GT only really felt rushed in those last 24 episodes; and even there, mostly just in the Super #17 arc, which is just such a frickin' mess of crap happening all at once... The Evil Dragons arc could have been better with more room to spend more time with each dragon, and deal with the consequences on a worldwide scale (maybe also have room for more characters to be involved outside the final fight)... Other than that, I always thought GT's pace felt quite good. Granted, with more time in the Baby arc, they could've had more story elements and ideas explored, and perhaps the fact they essentially wasted somewhere between 8 and 15 episodes (as far as the Baby storyline is concerned) means they weren't able to delve into it as deep as they could have in those 40 episodes... But I think the main victims of the short run are in the last 24 episodes.

[Matches Malone]

Agreed. GT's production was clearly troubled, but clearly a lot of effort was, and a lot of ideas were, poured into it. Would be great to have the full story on its production, and see some of the unused scripts and such.

In another interview, Nakatsuro said there was no plans to introduce a Ssj4 until the higher ups demanded it, so how would've things played out against Baby for example without it ? Like I said, a goldmine.

[Zestanor]

Do we know they wanted it to go longer anyway? 64 episodes is longer than most anime

The Dragon Ball hunt was supposed to go for longer, maybe twenty episodes. But they decided at the last minute to return to the form of DBZ because thet felt it would begin to drag, so after the crossdressing episode they dropped the Pilaf arc-esque approach

What followed were two arcs that I assume were made up on the spot: Lood and Gill’s planet. The Lood arc in particar strikes me as having no sense of direction; like they were frantically throwing stuff up there while rushing to develop a more interesting concept: Gill’s planet. The Gill’s planet/Mu arc’s initial purpose was also clearly aborted and repurposed as the setup for Baby.

Because the show seemed not to be planned more than four episodes in advance (due to the decision to change course at the start), I doubt that Toei had a vision or game plan for GT at any point. Not even SSJ4 do I think was planned from the start.

Scratch that: I bet the Tenkaichi Budoukai was planned from the start. Unfortunately after Baby they decided they’d had enough, and rushed the ending. If they had decided to go longer, I guess they would have done a proper tournament.

[Ringworm128]

SSJ5 is probably the only surefire thing that would have definitely shown up sooner or later.

[Kid Buu]

Provided us with more amazing ED choones.

[Vijay]

Hello, friends.

Simple question this time; what would Toei have done with GT if it hadn't been just 64 episodes?

Probably been discussed a billion times before, and TBH, I'm kinda reaching here to see if anyone happens to have heard of any draft ideas that were thrown out when GT's run was cut short, but your own speculation is also welcome. (FWIW, I have heard that there were some draft episode scenarios planned out early on that were discarded, including something about a Prison Planet, so I do wonder if there were ideas "on the board", so to speak, for what stories Toei could tell after the Baby arc)
For all its faults (and as much as the franchise was already well past its best when GT began), I do reflect quite kindly on GT, and I do wonder what would have happened if they had got a little more time with it, and I'm curious what the Kanzenshuu lot have to say about this.

Personally, my speculation is that Super #17 wouldn't have happened at all; we'd have got an entirely different storyline after Baby, and the show would have worked towards the Evil Dragons arc slowly over a longer period of time (I've always had a pet theory that Super #17 is basically a 6-episode sprint Toei threw together to get the world to a situation where the Evil Dragons arc could take place, after they heard they were only getting 24 more episodes after Baby), and then the Evil Dragons arc would have eventually hit when it was time for the show to end; either for the purposes of them moving on to a Goku Jr-centric series, or to bring the franchise, in its initial incarnation, to a conclusion a year or two after the 1997 end we got in reality.

GT would've sooner or later took DBS ToP route. Though given GT's script writers are storyboarders intellect at forming a coherent "story" can be considered as the "best" in DB franchise...

It's only natural. Where else to go after Shenron? The very existential core of Dragonball? And yeah, naturally we wud have got SSJ5, maybe even SSJ10...

Don't get me wrong, but GT's strongest "plot-based" episodes were it's 1st and final episode. Simple.

[Robo4900]

Provided us with more amazing ED choones.

Maybe if it had gone on long enough, ZAIN would have finally done an OST CD too.

[JulieYBM]

Series Director Kasai Osamu didn't have much of a vision for the series, so I'm not sure what would have happened. I believe the biggest issue with the Super #17 arc might have been the fact that Series Composition (basically the head writer) Matsui Aya was away on maternity leave. Matsui's last script for the series was #22 and her last credited episode for Series Composition is #50. Episodes #51-64 have no credited head writer but my guess is that 前川淳 (Maekawa Atsushi) was the unofficial head writer at that point. Maekawa wrote Episodes #6, #17, #19, #24-25, #30-31, #35-36, #40-47, #50-52, #55-57, and #60-64 by himself. This indicates to me that Matsui either finished enough story notes for the rest of the Baby arc (#1-40) and then left the series (but maintained unofficial credit) and Maekawa started churning out scripts as fast as possible to meet broadcast.

I blame Producer Morishita Kouzou and Series Director Kasai Osamu for not having an idea of what they were doing or any plans. I suppose it's possible that Fuji TV waited until the last minute to agree to renew Dragon Ball GT for another six months but who the fuck knows?

Actually, I'm beginning to think that the last six months were only ordered to give Yama'uchi Shigeyasu more time to develop his Doctor Slump TV series.

[ABED]

I could certainly buy the idea that the Super 17 arc was just thrown together as an excuse to set up the next arc. It’s easily the sloppiest arc in GT, and it straight up recycles the premise of DBZ Movie 12, but it’s not nearly as fun or clever about it.

Anyway, I haven’t heard anything regarding any scrapped drafts for GT. I do remember that rumor about how the show was supposed to end after episode 40, only for its run to be extended because of Final Bout, but just like with the rumors that Toriyama intended to end the series with Freeza and/or Cell, it seems like that’s nothing but a rumor. My best guess for what Toei would’ve done if the show had gone on longer is that we would’ve gotten a fair amount of slice of life episodes.

It is basically filler. I think every episode ends with a foreboding shot of the DB's cracking.

[sunsetshimmer]

I would probably just expand what we already got and add some slife of life episodes GT was missing as almost every episode was focused on main story almost if you were reading manga. I always wanted to see some episode with Pan, Bra and Marron hanging out together. The problem is, there is no room for those except for 1 year time skip between Baby and Super 17 arcs. Other than that, make Goku vs Baby fight last 1-2 episodes longer, make Super 17 saga at least 4-5 episodes longer with more focus on villains from hell and Super 17 himself. Shadow Dragons arc was about fine in length. I would probably just give Oceanus one more episode because i like her and she appeared in like half of episode only which wasn't enough for me. At least Haze got entire episode. And one more episode for Vegeta SSJ4, he didn't get enough screentime. If there was another arc then i would only see it between Baby and Super 17 arcs as well. Making another arc after GT would possibly damage reputation its ending has or completely change entire ending.

[Zestanor]

I always wanted to see some episode with Pan, Bra and Marron hanging out together.

This is Shounen, so doubtful that would happen

[JulieYBM]

Pretty sure the girls wouldn't hang out more not because "it's shounen" but because certain powerful men hate women.

[TheSeductiveTomato]

I'm under the impression that the Shadow Dragon Arc was meant to be the finale either way so we'd probably have more stuff happening between that and Super 17 or between Super 17 and the Baby Arcs.

[sunsetshimmer]

I always wanted to see some episode with Pan, Bra and Marron hanging out together.

This is Shounen, so doubtful that would happen

Then they could add Goten and Trunks. Make them go shopping with girls only to find some thugs trying to rob store and give Trunks and Goten some kind of Great Saiyaman vibes. Anything to just see girls actually talk to each other which if i'm not mistaked never even happened in series. At least Pan and Bra since Marron is a bit older so she might not like to hang out with them.