Unpopular DB opinions

[DanielSSJ]

Late to the GT discussion, GT didn't fail because they wanted to go back to the action adventure comedy of early DB. THAT was actually a good idea after DB turned into more of a somewhat stationary show where the action comes to the main characters & I genuinely mean that. GT failed for several reasons.
1. Burnout on the franchise after over a decade of the manga & animes being a constant thing. The manga started in 1984 while the first DB anime was '86. The manga ended in 1994 & the anime in '95. With that, there were 2 anime TV shows, 16 movies, 2 TV specials, & a lot of other media.
2. The way the manga & Z ended were an ending to the story. Toriyama was done writing those characters & the world & he wanted you to know it.
3. Unfortunately, the anime writers couldn't tell a lot of interesting stories to save their lives, which even they admitted to themselves.
4. Making Goku a kid again rather than maintain what Toriyama had done for years & have Goku be an adult, with the kid role being taken by new characters.
5. Continuity errors with not only the manga, but also the previous animes.
6. Inconsistent power scaling & logic of the universe (Toriyama also suffered from this at times, to be fair).
7. Bad pacing of the stories.
8. Not that interesting of ideas they DID do or just poor execution of what they had.

This is just MY shortlist, but yeah.

I would also wager, given than GT started syndication the literal next wee after Z ended, the production schedule itself probably wasn't so great. Could help explain why the episode to episode writing felt so rushed and inconsistent.

[The Dark Knight]

I would also wager, given than GT started syndication the literal next wee after Z ended, the production schedule itself probably wasn't so great. Could help explain why the episode to episode writing felt so rushed and inconsistent.

GT actually had a regular schedule; what happened was that half way through they threw out what they had and went back to the drawing board, which resulted in the Baby arc.

[DanielSSJ]

Yeah but wouldn't the fact that they're having to come up with the story from whole cloth as opposed to adapting an existing work have an effect on things?

[The Dark Knight]

Yeah but wouldn't the fact that they're having to come up with the story from whole cloth as opposed to adapting an existing work have an effect on things?

Of course it did, but things probably would've turned out better had they had their vision for the series set in stone from the beginning, rather than wasting so much time on content they never ended up using.

[Doctor Seaweed Roll]

Despite initially watching GT through fan recordings of Blue Water dub (not sure if they were sent to Seed Of Might to help recover lost episodes) I genuinely enjoy the GT Rap after only discovering it in the last 5 years

[Scsigs]

Despite initially watching GT through fan recordings of Blue Water dub (not sure if they were sent to Seed Of Might to help recover lost episodes) I genuinely enjoy the GT Rap after only discovering it in the last 5 years

I view the GT Rap in the same vein as the One Piece Rap. Bad, but CAN be enjoyable if you're in the mood for them. I'd still rather listen to the original theme songs any day, tbh.

[Scsigs]

Spoiler:

Late to the GT discussion, GT didn't fail because they wanted to go back to the action adventure comedy of early DB. THAT was actually a good idea after DB turned into more of a somewhat stationary show where the action comes to the main characters & I genuinely mean that. GT failed for several reasons.
1. Burnout on the franchise after over a decade of the manga & animes being a constant thing. The manga started in 1984 while the first DB anime was '86. The manga ended in 1994 & the anime in '95. With that, there were 2 anime TV shows, 16 movies, 2 TV specials, & a lot of other media.
2. The way the manga & Z ended were an ending to the story. Toriyama was done writing those characters & the world & he wanted you to know it.
3. Unfortunately, the anime writers couldn't tell a lot of interesting stories to save their lives, which even they admitted to themselves.
4. Making Goku a kid again rather than maintain what Toriyama had done for years & have Goku be an adult, with the kid role being taken by new characters.
5. Continuity errors with not only the manga, but also the previous animes.
6. Inconsistent power scaling & logic of the universe (Toriyama also suffered from this at times, to be fair).
7. Bad pacing of the stories.
8. Not that interesting of ideas they DID do or just poor execution of what they had.

This is just MY shortlist, but yeah.

I would also wager, given than GT started syndication the literal next week after Z ended, the production schedule itself probably wasn't so great. Could help explain why the episode to episode writing felt so rushed and inconsistent.

Like the other person said, GT was in the works for probably around a year before it premiered in Japan. As soon as it would've been announced that the DB manga was coming to an end, Toei would've been looking into doing something else with the franchise on their end, so they had their producers come up with something. They would've had to come up with a story, outline it, script it, storyboard it, animate the episodes, & have the voice cast record their lines for it. These things take a lot of time. It's why they were able to turn the initial arc into the Baby Arc. They managed to do a gradual transition. The animation alone would've taken probably 2-3 months per episode. Or probably 5 minutes & a smoke break if it was Last House.

[Goten_jr]

Dragon Ball GT is that Not good , but People exaggerated how Bad it was , i think the Show has it‘s Qualities, good Moments, funny parts, some good Characerization, Artstyle, Visuals, emotional Moments , very few decent fights tho, I actually Like the entire First Half of GT more than for example the Buu Arc or Even some of the Original Dragon Ball.

[90sDBZ]

GT aired in the UK immediately after Z ended (in the correct episode order too), and I personally remember feeling the whiplash of going from the epic final battle with Buu, to the trios' adventures in space.

Of course the whiplash was made worse by the dub cast changing yet again, from Ocean to Blue Water. Not only did GT have a completely different tone and feel, but all the voices were different too.

The Japanese Tokunaga score also took some getting used to for me, obviously being very different to the various dub scores from Z. I did come to love it over time though, and have since gained a strong appreciation for GT in general.

[Kenji]

The whiplash didn't hit me as hard perhaps because the Boo Saga itself was already leaning into the black comedy side of Dragon Ball, because "super strong dark entity from outer space" was becoming a repetitive and boring premise... and also because I didn't like a lot of what came before very much.

A lot of Dragon Ball is bad, the sooner you accept this, the better you'll be able to just enjoy things despite their flaws.
On another note, I don't see much difference in tone shift between going from the epic battle against Cell to Gohan's superhero high school adventures, and the epic battle against Boo to the trio going to space.

[The Dark Knight]

GT aired in the UK immediately after Z ended (in the correct episode order too), and I personally remember feeling the whiplash of going from the epic final battle with Buu, to the trios' adventures in space.

I was lucky to see Funimation's GT, so I went from Buu directly to Baby, skipping all the in the process. I believe GT would have been far more successful than it was in Japan had they just started with Baby instead.

A lot of Dragon Ball is bad, the sooner you accept this, the better you'll be able to just enjoy things despite their flaws.

I don't think this applies to Toriyama's original manga and its animated adaption, but I do agree in terms of the Toei original content like GT, Super, the movies, etc.

[Kenji]

I don't think this applies to Toriyama's original manga and its animated adaption, but I do agree in terms of the Toei original content like GT, Super, the movies, etc.

That was not my experience at all, sorry.
IMO, the manga for most of its runtime remained meh, peaked at Saiyan and early Namek, then nosedived, crashed and burned when the Ginyu Force showed up. Of course, this is all very subjective and my experience does not and will not replace yours no matter what I say here.

[Kid Buu]

I don't think Buu -> GT was any more of a whiplash than going from Cell Games to Saiyaman, or from Zamasu to random slice of life epsiodes about a Saiyaman movie and Yamcha playing baseball.

[Scsigs]

It maybe because I just haven't watched both Z/Kai & GT back to back, but I don't think there's a lot of whiplash when starting GT. Maybe because I knew what to expect going in, maybe because I haven't seen much of before Baby after the first 2 episodes that establish the tone & direction they wanted to go with. I'm also someone who tries to go into a show with no expectations & establishing them as I watch. Though, I don't envy UK fans getting the voice cast changed because Ocean wanted to save some money.

Also, saying all of DB is bad is just...no? It started as a comedy adventure series inspired by Journey to the West, gradually changed into a more action-based series still with its fair share of comedy & adventure, then landed just mainly on the action. The characters are pretty likable, others are funny, & others are just there. A lot of the villains are cool, the stories creative, & the action is very good. I also like a lot of the jokes thrown in. Now, DB has its problems & those have been discussed to death online before all over the place, so I don't need to go into detail here because I'm sure most of us are already familiar with them. So, I have no idea where it could be "bad" other than taste issues.

[Kid Buu]

I don't think this applies to Toriyama's original manga and its animated adaption, but I do agree in terms of the Toei original content like GT, Super, the movies, etc.

That was not my experience at all, sorry.
IMO, the manga for most of its runtime remained meh, peaked at Saiyan and early Namek, then nosedived, crashed and burned when the Ginyu Force showed up. Of course, this is all very subjective and my experience does not and will not replace yours no matter what I say here.

Are there any aspects of the DB franchise you enjoy outside of the Saiyan and early Namek arcs of the manga then?

[PhantomSaiyan]

That was not my experience at all, sorry.
IMO, the manga for most of its runtime remained meh, peaked at Saiyan and early Namek, then nosedived, crashed and burned when the Ginyu Force showed up. Of course, this is all very subjective and my experience does not and will not replace yours no matter what I say here.

I'm curious then, what made you join this forum? Joining a forum dedicated to a franchise is something I'd do only if I was a superfan, like in Dragon Ball's case, I had always assumed that everyone here loves the original manga and original anime.
I would never join something like, idk, a Naruto forum (random example), because I only enjoyed parts of it, so it wasn't enough to become a dedicated fan.

[Kenji]

A lot of things we grew up with were bad, there's no shame in recognizing it.
Things like Power Rangers, Mortal Kombat, Dragon Ball, etc. definitely didn't get popular because of the quality of their writing.

It's okay fam, I still watch/play them.

[Kid Buu]

A lot of things we grew up with were bad, there's no shame in recognizing it.
Things like Power Rangers, Mortal Kombat, Dragon Ball, etc. definitely didn't get popular because of the quality of their writing.

It's okay fam, I still watch/play them.

Well I'm curious what you like about the series then? Nostalgia?

[Kenji]

Well I'm curious what you like about the series then? Nostalgia?

Music, artwork, character designs, occasional good female representation, occasional good comedy, fan-service, furry bait, and occasional good messaging. Things are not black and white, y'all.

[Kid Buu]

Well I'm curious what you like about the series then? Nostalgia?

Music, artwork, character designs, occasional good female representation, occasional good comedy, fan-service, furry bait, and occasional good messaging. Things are not black and white, y'all.

I understand. I was curious - not challenging!

Although I didn't know DB fandom overlapped with furry bait community.