Non-thread-worthy discussions

[Makaioshin]

We will probably slowly see Raspberry pushed out in all side material in favor of Cranberry with the Moro anime on the horizon. XV3 may be the final time Raspberry is playable in a game...

[SHINOBI-03]

With Dragon Ball GT getting reevaluated and reexamined for the past few years and the multiple commentaries done by fans it made me realize something:

Dragon Ball GT was such a depressing series to follow Dragon Ball Z with

It was designed to be lighter and less serious than Z but from what I've noticed it felt like it was unintentionally became the darkest entry of the entire series, or at least the original 80/90s run.

Just think about it: The series starts by literally telling us the earth will be destroyed within a year. There was always a sense of upcoming doom rearing its ugly head while we're distracted by Goku & Co.'s silly space adventures, while on Earth we have Baby who enslaved the entire planet. And even when that was dealt with the Earth was still destroyed thanks to Baby using the Black Star Dragon Balls thus making the entire trip wasted for nothing, even when it was still seen as a minor setback, Baby has achieved what many past villains couldn't do.

Then comes the next arc where Hell literally breaks loose and all the past dead villains return, and our heroes suffer more casualties among them in one of the more heartbreaking scenes of the entire franchise. Our heroes couldn't catch a break even after they thought they won.

And then we get the Evil Dragons arc where the entire theme was our heroes being way too careless with the Dragon Balls, almost like punishing them for using the item that helped them the entire series, the one it was named after, all of it culminating in Goku's symbolic death and moving on to the next generation.

And writing this made realize even the GT TV Special had a depressing premise like what the hell, man?

The way the series looked like was also in favor if it. It wasn't bright, the sun was absent between the space scenes and alien skies and the smoke and clouds engulfing Earth in the later parts of the series.

Even Dan Dan wasn't an upbeat or a peppy theme song that excites you to watch an action series, it had this depressing, melancholic tone behind the music and lyrics about finding love.

Despite Dragon Ball and Z having their own moments, the series still had a level of hope and certain victories where the light at the end of the tunnel is certain and the characters will look back and smile when it's done. Looking back at GT it was like one bad thing is over but the next arc will get even worse.

[The Dark Knight]

Don't forget Piccolo being stuck in hell seemingly forever, Buu leaving Satan to fuse with Uub, and #17 being taken advantage of then killed without being resurrected. We find out in the end that Goku and Vegeta's families never kept in touch, and Goku jr. in the special was left all alone when Pan was on her death bed. The more I think about GT, the more I appreciate the end of Z for ending the story on a very happy note with all the characters doing well and keeping in touch.

[SHINOBI-03]

Don't forget Piccolo being stuck in hell seemingly forever, Buu leaving Satan to fuse with Uub, and #17 being taken advantage of then killed without being resurrected. We find out in the end that Goku and Vegeta's families never kept in touch, and Goku jr. in the special was left all alone when Pan was on her death bed. The more I think about GT, the more I appreciate the end of Z for ending the story on a very happy note with all the characters doing well and keeping in touch.

Piccolo isn't just stuck in Hell forever, he's stuck doing an endless job of protecting Hell's exit for what seems an eternity.

[JulieYBM]

I like the breakdown of Dragon Ball in Dragon Ball GT. Life changes and withers and breaks and dies and ends. Art that reflects that is important to engage with. A long-running series should come to that point eventually and say something with it. I don't think Dragon Ball GT is particularly great about how it handles that, but I like that there are things that happen and just don't get 'fixed'. Sometimes, your friends die and your family disappears and you will never see them again.

[The Dark Knight]

I like the breakdown of Dragon Ball in Dragon Ball GT. Life changes and withers and breaks and dies and ends. Art that reflects that is important to engage with. A long-running series should come to that point eventually and say something with it. I don't think Dragon Ball GT is particularly great about how it handles that, but I like that there are things that happen and just don't get 'fixed'. Sometimes, your friends die and your family disappears and you will never see them again.

The problem is that Dragon Ball was never that kind of series; things always worked out in the end. GT ending on such a sad note is just not Dragon Ball, at all. Those types of plot points definitely work and are powerful, but only in series where such concepts are appropriate and expected.

[MasenkoHA]

I like the breakdown of Dragon Ball in Dragon Ball GT. Life changes and withers and breaks and dies and ends. Art that reflects that is important to engage with. A long-running series should come to that point eventually and say something with it. I don't think Dragon Ball GT is particularly great about how it handles that, but I like that there are things that happen and just don't get 'fixed'. Sometimes, your friends die and your family disappears and you will never see them again.

The problem is that Dragon Ball was never that kind of series; things always worked out in the end. GT ending on such a sad note is just not Dragon Ball, at all. Those types of plot points definitely work and are powerful, but only in series where such concepts are appropriate and expected.

Eh GT’s ending works fine with the “Messiah Goku” approach Toei tends to lean into when they’re not directly adapting Toriyama’s manga.

It’s an ill fitting ending to Toriyama’s work but a decent ending to the anime trilogy

[JulieYBM]

I like the breakdown of Dragon Ball in Dragon Ball GT. Life changes and withers and breaks and dies and ends. Art that reflects that is important to engage with. A long-running series should come to that point eventually and say something with it. I don't think Dragon Ball GT is particularly great about how it handles that, but I like that there are things that happen and just don't get 'fixed'. Sometimes, your friends die and your family disappears and you will never see them again.

The problem is that Dragon Ball was never that kind of series; things always worked out in the end. GT ending on such a sad note is just not Dragon Ball, at all. Those types of plot points definitely work and are powerful, but only in series where such concepts are appropriate and expected.

'Was never' doesn't matter. Dragon Ball has been a franchise where these things can and have happened for thirty years.

Like, if we're to subscribe to a notion of Dragon Ball—and Toriyama as an artist—'break the rules' of traditional storytelling, then we have to reckon with how Dragon Ball inevitably becomes its own set of rules that need to be broken. Dragon Ball GT breaks the rules of Dragon Ball and that's not an inherently bad thing. I'd argue Piccolo's death has the emotional gravitas that it deserves, existing under a context where it was a part of a continuing, eight-year long uninterrupted narrative starting with the Saiyan arc and being built on in the minds of the then-audience, which is a going to be familiar with Dragon Ball as created by Toei Animation in its weekly series and films.

I feel like we're missing the forest for the trees when we act like there is a unified Dragon Ball vision that is only from Toriyama and we don't understand that the cartoon projects all have different visions and needs that exist outside of Toriyama's comic and ideas. Toriyama famously said that the animated projects lacked a 'poison' in how it depicted Goku. If we're going to acknowledge that difference between Toriyama's desire for Goku to be 'poisonous' then we have to acknowledge that Toei Animation's various directors, writers and producers did in fact have differing goals from Toriyama. If we are to acknowledge THAT then we need to judge it by those various goals, one of which IS going to be the fact that they were trying to make a project that had commercial curtailing that Toriyama's comic does not have to the save degree or in the same manner.

Which is all to say, it just feels really silly to be talking about what Dragon Ball is due to how we remember it vs how it inevitably, historically, is many things and will continue to change to become many new and different things.

[SHINOBI-03]

Eh GT’s ending works fine with the “Messiah Goku” approach Toei tends to lean into when they’re not directly adapting Toriyama’s manga.

It’s an ill fitting ending to Toriyama’s work but a decent ending to the anime trilogy

“Messiah Goku” had to be the weakest aspect of the ending just for not making it clear to us on what happened to Goku or what kind of a deal he made with Shenlong. It felt being vague for the sake of being vague rather than giving us a definitive answer.

[Koitsukai]

I actually enjoyed the gloomy vibe GT had, the nostalgia worked for me. However, art shouldn't leave you feeling this sad like this show did which is how I felt the first time I watched it. We already have real life for that, and it sure does a great job. An upbeat tune to lift you up should always be there.

The bittersweetness of GT was great, it just failed to do anything upbeat after all the below-the-belt blows it kept dealing us. Probably just tweaking the epilogue a bit would've fixed the issue I have with it.

Hybrids that don't even know each other or the power they've inherited, the families we grew up with no longer recognizing each other... Really, there were no pictures of Goku in Bulma's life for her great-granddaughter to say, "Hey, my boy is fighting that guy from my family album... what the fuck?" The guy has a huge-ass statue over there. Has Goku's name been erased from the Briefs household so thoroughly that not even then and there can they make the connection?
Because I can live with Goku moving on to go snort some coke with Shenron and stay up late for a century, I mean, who would pass on that? but I can't stomach the idea of him being forgotten by his best friends. Not after his final sacrifice.
The Tenkaichi Budokai staff remembers Goku but Bulma doesn't?

[angeldreamZ004]

I said this once and I'll repeat it, I think GT would've greatly benefited if it had been a self-contained series like Daima, instead of following the classic, continuous weekly TV format of its predecessor(s). Those 4 arcs being thought as one single story from beginning to end with Toei actually giving time to develop them.
But money spoke louder, and they wanted to follow up with a new ongoing series right after the Z anime ended. It hurt the series a lot and I blame that decision for the majority of the community complaining about it for so many years and still a lot to this day (a lot in the opposite side suddenly showed up as well, which I don't understand, where were these people back then, my opinion on the series hasn't changed at all since I watched it for the first time years ago, so could be new fans)

Especially given what I consider to be its strongest aspect, which is giving an actual definitive end for the characters. Having Goku become an ascended master was perfect in my view and more satisfactory than the off-screen end that Toriyama gave for him and Vegeta in DBO.
Having that idea of definitive endings planned since the beginning would make the actual intent behind the series even more impactful and contribute to its drama.
Not only that, it would also justify something that is my personal gripe with the series, which is the absolute lack of the elements of training and evolving in battles, which is something I consider an essential if not the most essential part of Dragon Ball's writing, especially Super (try removing it from that series, and would be equal to removing the skeleton from a human body, that is where the complexity of its writing lies in)
Super being a ongoing series with no intent of giving definitive endings for its characters (mainly because it's a midquel) had to go in a direction where it prioritizes the complexity of battles and the strategies and ideas behind them in order to show its creativity, that's why so many new battle concepts are introduced per arc and new characters barely or never return for future arcs, which is ideal for a series that has no ending planned, invest in new concepts, expand the universe and lore.

GT goes in the opposite direction, as Toei decided to take a more casual approach to the battles, while also working with only legacy characters without changing them, like, for those who complain about DBS Goku, something that is important to note is that the reason he's the way he is in that series is because the change is intrinsically connected to the new things he has to learn from battles and training, woth that, changes inevitably come. Those who aren't interested in it will objectively dislike it. Note how in GT, Goku doesn't even train with a master, that means he has nothing new to learn other than from himself. Same applies to the other characters.

Which would've been better if again, the end of the series was planned from the start. It would make more understandable why Pan and other characters don't get stronger, especially in a story where the world will end. The characters have to rely on what they already have in their arsenal, with a few exceptions that come in the way such as SSJ4 and Majuub. It's also why I like to say that GT works like as if it was a very extended Old Z Movie story, because those movies pretty much worked the same way, but with the limitations of being very short, and having to follow what the anime was telling. GT had the freedom to do anything.

It would also help in showing how it's important to completely set it apart from Super (and Daima later), as the two sequels having completely different goals from each other.

Still wouldn't been my favorite sequel if it took that direction, as I would still prefer Super's ideas regardless, but would be enough in my view to make it a lot better and I would for sure enjoy it a lore more than Daima. The way it is I still think it's good and I do like it more than Daima, but not that much and definitely not enjoy it as much as Super.

I'd argue Piccolo's death has the emotional gravitas that it deserves, existing under a context where it was a part of a continuing, eight-year long uninterrupted narrative starting with the Saiyan arc

Piccolo Daimao arc*, I know Gohan is part of the equation, but I think his death is also a great nod to what started back then before Raditz, when Kami tries to kill Piccolo, consequently leading to his own death as well and the disappearence of the DBs.

With the rest I agree, a lot of people seem to dislike GT just because it's "not Toriyama" or "goes against his ideas", like, can't it be appreciated just for what it tries to do from pure creative mind? There's the constant need for comparison which I think is unnecessary, Super faces same problem, a lot of people don't welcome its ideas because they don't want changes, not even because it's good or bad. I'm personally open to it as long as I think the new ideas are interesting and well executed. The only reason for me to not like GT that much being that I think its ideas weren't very interesting and would've worked better in a planned non-weekly ongoing TV series format. Not because it "doesn't feel like Dragon Ball", it still has its values regardless of that.

Eh GT’s ending works fine with the “Messiah Goku” approach Toei tends to lean into when they’re not directly adapting Toriyama’s manga.

It’s an ill fitting ending to Toriyama’s work but a decent ending to the anime trilogy

“Messiah Goku” had to be the weakest aspect of the ending just for not making it clear to us on what happened to Goku or what kind of a deal he made with Shenlong. It felt being vague for the sake of being vague rather than giving us a definitive answer.

Hugely disagree, him becoming a ascended master fits his character very well especially in the context of GT where he's ultimately the strongest and has already learned everything he had to learn. Goku during the entire original series is depicted as someone who always comes up with a surprise unexpected by the other characters, going multiple times through training isolated from the rest of the cast, and even off-screen. So at the same time he's the protagonist, that also contributes to creating an aura of mystery around him, how he reaches those levels, how does he learn what he learns, he's always reaching higher realms and next time he will surprise everyone again. His ending in GT not being explained in its full extent not only works for the viewer, but also for the characters themselves, they are also not meant to understand it, he will forever remain as this character who's going to somehow impress over and over again. I consider him the most complex character in the franchise for that and a few other reasons, I think his spiritual growth and how that reflects in his character and the way he interacts with the world around him takes him to a direction of the series's writing in a level that no other characters do.
He's familiar and mysterious at the same time, so giving an answer would've made that ending less impactful in my view.

[Kid Buu]

I guess I am the only one who doesn't mind Goku Jr didn't know Vegeta Jr. Personally, I'm not friends with the grandchildren of the people my grandparents are friends with, so makes sense to me.

[DanielSSJ]

I'm not a fan of how Vegeta attained Super Saiyan early in the Cell arc. It feels like it was supposed to be kind of important in the Freeza arc that the first Super Saiyan in 1000 years pointedly WASN'T the posterchild for Saiyan ruthlessness but instead the kind-hearted aberration.

Like, Goku was told over and over by characters who were familiar with the legend that someone as soft as him could never be a Super Saiyan, Vegeta even insisted as he died that Goku must set aside his sense of mercy and become ruthless to cross the Super Saiyan barrier. Yet the arc ends with Super Saiyan Goku attempting to spare his wrist enemy's life and lamenting that he was forced to kill him in the end. Freeza even briefly jokes that if a "calm and quiet heart" is a requirement, it's no wonder Vegeta couldn't do it.

So it kinda annoys me that Vegeta acquired the form anyways without changing annoying about himself just by trying harder.

[MasenkoHA]

I'm not a fan of how Vegeta attained Super Saiyan early in the Cell arc. It feels like it was supposed to be kind of important in the Freeza arc that the first Super Saiyan in 1000 years pointedly WASN'T the posterchild for Saiyan ruthlessness but instead the kind-hearted aberration.

Like, Goku was told over and over by characters who were familiar with the legend that someone as soft as him could never be a Super Saiyan, Vegeta even insisted as he died that Goku must set aside his sense of mercy and become ruthless to cross the Super Saiyan barrier. Yet the arc ends with Super Saiyan Goku attempting to spare his wrist enemy's life and lamenting that he was forced to kill him in the end. Freeza even briefly jokes that if a "calm and quiet heart" is a requirement, it's no wonder Vegeta couldn't do it.

So it kinda annoys me that Vegeta acquired the form anyways without changing annoying about himself just by trying harder.

I think it goes with the whole “Toriyama didn’t really plan ahead too much” thing

I kind of got the impression Toriyama probably was going to kill Vegeta off in the Namek saga and then decided he was too useful (and popular) to get rid of so the wish to bring everyone killed by Freeza and his men back was decidedly not specific if they were good or not .

And like the best way to keep Vegeta relevant so he didn’t become Tenshinhan 2.0 was having him become Super Saiyan and Future Trunks already set up the precedent that Super Saiyan wasn’t going to be as special as the Freeza arc implied.

[DanielSSJ]

I think it goes with the whole “Toriyama didn’t really plan ahead too much” thing

I kind of got the impression Toriyama probably was going to kill Vegeta off in the Namek saga and then decided he was too useful (and popular) to get rid of so the wish to bring everyone killed by Freeza and his men back was decidedly not specific if they were good or not .

And like the best way to keep Vegeta relevant so he didn’t become Tenshinhan 2.0 was having him become Super Saiyan and Future Trunks already set up the precedent that Super Saiyan wasn’t going to be as special as the Freeza arc implied.

Probably, but I don't think it would've been that hard to write around Vegeta not having Super Saiyan in the arc. Just lean into him not being able to keep up and have him be angry and miserable about it and take it out on everyone around him, particularly Trunks. Then when Trunks gets killed and Vegeta finally transforms, it's a tragedy because not only he finally gains what he wanted most in the world after losing something far more important, but it's far too little, too late to make a difference. But admittedly that's with the benefit of thirty years of hindsight

[angeldreamZ004]

The Cell Saga explores the concept of awakening SSJ through intense training + rageboost, it happens more than twice in the arc especially if we go by the anime. So Vegeta unlocking it earlier in the arc for me is fine even if it was off-screen, especially because it's through him that we are introduced to the SSJ Grades, with him being the first one who could finish off Cell because he awakened SSJ Dai Ni Dankai, but he decided to not do it.
It later reflects in Trunks getting killed and someone else (Gohan) having to awaken a stronger SSJ level in order to defeat who he had the opportunity to finish previously. So what we got ended up being more satisfactory and I think more interesting for me.

[Michelle91]

GT's first half is pretty upbeat and campy as it try to be a light heart adventure that the Pilaf saga was. Once the Bebi saga starts, things try to be like DBZ again.

[DanielSSJ]

The Cell Saga explores the concept of awakening SSJ through intense training + rageboost, it happens more than twice in the arc especially if we go by the anime. So Vegeta unlocking it earlier in the arc for me is fine even if it was off-screen, especially because it's through him that we are introduced to the SSJ Grades, with him being the first one who could finish off Cell because he awakened SSJ Dai Ni Dankai, but he decided to not do it.
It later reflects in Trunks getting killed and someone else (Gohan) having to awaken a stronger SSJ level in order to defeat who he had the opportunity to finish previously. So what we got ended up being more satisfactory and I think more interesting for me.

The issue for me is really just that, to me, the Freeza arc's story indicates that Super Saiyan requires something character-wise that Vegeta does not possess. It's important to the themes that he fails and Goku succeeds. The way the Cell arc shows that actually Vegeta could've become a Super Saiyan if he just tried harder undermines those themes, and I think the story could've been just as good if not a little better if Toriyama committed.

(It's also not the first time the Cell arc undermines the good writing of the Freeza arc. The circumstances behind Freeza's "death" at the hands of Goku is great character work for both of them, but it kinda goes to waste when Freeza's brought back as a cyborg just to job to Trunks.)

[angeldreamZ004]

Spoiler:

The Cell Saga explores the concept of awakening SSJ through intense training + rageboost, it happens more than twice in the arc especially if we go by the anime. So Vegeta unlocking it earlier in the arc for me is fine even if it was off-screen, especially because it's through him that we are introduced to the SSJ Grades, with him being the first one who could finish off Cell because he awakened SSJ Dai Ni Dankai, but he decided to not do it.
It later reflects in Trunks getting killed and someone else (Gohan) having to awaken a stronger SSJ level in order to defeat who he had the opportunity to finish previously. So what we got ended up being more satisfactory and I think more interesting for me.

The issue for me is really just that, to me, the Freeza arc's story indicates that Super Saiyan requires something character-wise that Vegeta does not possess. It's important to the themes that he fails and Goku succeeds. The way the Cell arc shows that actually Vegeta could've become a Super Saiyan if he just tried harder undermines those themes, and I think the story could've been just as good if not a little better if Toriyama committed.

(It's also not the first time the Cell arc undermines the good writing of the Freeza arc. The circumstances behind Freeza's "death" at the hands of Goku is great character work for both of them, but it kinda goes to waste when Freeza's brought back as a cyborg just to job to Trunks.)

I can understand as can make SSJ feel less legendary and mystical, and with Vegeta if you focus solely on his character and how him relates to it you can find problems, but in my case I also see it more from the universe perspective, which would have to count Gohan and Trunks awakening the form as well. The Cell arc takes that direction in favor of its thematic (Spiritual vs Artificial) which I like a lot, but I guess you can argue that Toriyama could've simply created different powers ups for the characters then (like how it was done to Piccolo and Kami), giving Vegeta something unique that suited him, instead of just giving everyone SSJ in order to keep the form somehow exclusive to Goku ala Ultra Instinct from Super.
But Toriyama took the (maybe easier) "Saiyajin evolution" approach, which I thought was very well executed so it definitely didn't bother me which is why I'm fine with Vegeta and other characters unlocking it, with the connection to intense training, which we later see as becoming a important part of Vegeta's character as well which is later further explored in Super. So the way the transformation was treated after the Freeza arc was really good in my view (at least for the Cell arc. Boo arc coming up with Goten and Trunks awakening it with no effort and SSJ3 being what made me lose interest)

[DanielSSJ]

You keep mentioning Gohan and Trunks in relation to this, but I don't have a problem with them being Super Saiyans. It's not that I wanted the story to stick to the "once every thousand years" part of the legend. It's that the Freeza arc makes such a huge deal about how the Super Saiyan's supposed to be ruthless to the extreme according to the legend, and how Goku attaining it over Vegeta proves that the Saiyans as a culture and Vegeta as a stand in for that culture had it wrong. Goku attained it by being the anti-Saiyan, and Gohan and Trunks (and eventually Goten and the other Trunks) are part of the generation of kind-hearted Saiyans that only exist because of Goku. Vegeta's the only outlier.

And the rest of the arc could progress relatively unaltered. The Saiyans would still evolve Super Saiyan in different ways, just like in canon. Vegeta just wouldn't be part of it until he reads some shoujo and develops some emotions (or lets the son he thinks he doesn't care about get killed, either or)