First watch of GT finished! A few thoughts...

[Catsenti]

So I recently finished watching GT for the first time ever via the Blue Water dub.

Generally, I think the fight scenes were great! Nothing ever dragged on IMO, at least not to the degree of something like Goku vs Freeza in Z. That fight is honestly my main point of comparison when it comes to lengthy fights in Dragon Ball overall. So I never really felt the need to fast forward like I did a few times in Z.

The plot is shaky in places. It had a lot of great ideas! The character design of SSJ4 is good, the idea of the Shadow Dragons is good, and I thought some of the ideas for worlds and encounters in the Black Star Dragon Ball section was good. My problem with the plot is how everything is executed. I feel like they could have gotten far more creative with the concepts at play than they did. For example, with the Shadow Dragons, wouldn't it make more sense to fit the powers they have around the wishes that created them? It seems like they really decided to assign random wishes to each dragon and then pick the powers they had out of a hat. I could give other examples, but we might be here all day.

I can't say much about the acting in the Japanese version, as though that was an option I had I figured it might be more interesting to try watching the Blue Water Dub. And "interesting" was definitely the right word. I thought that the acting was decent overall. There were a few miscasts, most notably Roger Rhodes' Vegeta, but I think the two standouts were Jeremiah Yurk as adult Goku and Matthew Erickson as Trunks. But I think it was overall an enjoyable watch this way, and the side characters were all very good. The scripts towards the end also felt like they switched translators at the very last minute, because suddenly we're getting references to ki and a whole lot more bad jokes.

But yeah? I don't think this was nearly as bad as I was preparing myself for. Who knew?

[Xeogran]

I like GT plenty, it's a fun series that focuses more on the overall world building and relations, than just fights.
The online hate is really overblown out of proportion. And it's always the same few arguments too.

[MasenkoHA]

. It had a lot of great ideas!

Perfect sum up of GT.

. For example, with the Shadow Dragons, wouldn't it make more sense to fit the powers they have around the wishes that created them?

Half of them were brought on by resurrection wishes though.

[Catsenti]

. For example, with the Shadow Dragons, wouldn't it make more sense to fit the powers they have around the wishes that created them?

Half of them were brought on by resurrection wishes though.

...Fair point, didn't consider that when I wrote that

[BeaBumby]

So I recently finished watching GT for the first time ever via the Blue Water dub.

Damn! You beat me to the punch! Anyhow, I'm glad you thoroughly enjoyed it!

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Glad you had a fun time with GT, its best appreciated when viewed as an experimental "grand side story" rather than a love letter to Z fans, which I think a lot of its detractors probably wanted.

With regards to the Blue Water dub, translations were co-written by Alex Kind and Paul Goldrick with edits by Aaron Nordean, Cisco McLaren, Jason Cushing and Scott Jackson. The scripts are quite faithful for the majority of the run, the jokes do stand out but luckily they're not frequent and as you said only towards the end. They could have been there as a result of too many cooks in the kitchen, or uncertainty about how to adapt a line any other way that felt natural. The Ocean cast were going to dub GT originally, so I imagine Cam Desmond was directing the actors to sound as much like them as possible. Jeremiah Yurk in particular felt like he was cast to be a Kirby Morrow clone, but I agree it wasn't too bad. A lot better than Roger Rhodes' Brian Drummond impression, I agree. The kid actors, like Zoe Slusar were great though.