The Merits of Dragonball GT

[Midori]

Hi!

I'm looking to gain some fan knowledge of DBGT. I've seen Dragonball and Dragonball Z, and really in my time have not given GT much of a chance. I personally don't care for how they do the animation from what I've seen of the series, and from what I've read, well...meh. I'm not trying to "troll" with this, but I'm honestly seeking peoples opinions as to why they like it, good and bad. I like the music as I have a DBGT soundtrack, but mostly again, I'm seeking fan critique to motivate myself to buy the series. What do you guys think?

Thank you in advance for your opinions on this. Midori

P.S. I'll be out until Sunday and so I'm hoping to read what people have to say when I get back!

[LeprikanGT]

The cons: it was rushed and most of the animation is crappy aside from fight scenes; especially Kid Goku's hands. They look like little stick nubs with no knuckles. And of course the first 16 episodes.

The Pros: I liked Omega and most of the main villians and the fights were nice. Also SS4 was nice.

[SHINOBI-03]

If you want an opinion from someone who watched all of it without sleeping, then you can read this: My opinion after watching GT...

[Sprite Satan]

I feel Dragon Ball GT would have been a lot stronger if they had kept the Ultimate Dragon Ball/Cult/Baby arc going for the 64 episode run. I don't think it would have pulled much better ratings or anything, I think people were just sick of a weekly Dragon Ball show after 6,000 years or whatever it was.

Anyway, yeah. I think the whole Cult of Ruudo thing was pretty interesting. The layers of it and all that. The only problem was that every week another reveal came which is just too fast to make it seem important.

The Dragon Balls were stolen by the Para Para Brothers who were working for Cardinal Muchi-Muchi who worshiped Ruudo, the church of which was led by Dolltaki, who was manipulated by Dr. Mu, who built Baby, who actually had built Dr. Mu. Then there's the stuff with Giru, planet M2 and Rirudo.

I'd say that part of GT is probably my favourite and could have been something not great, but respectable at least, if more effort was put into it.

[sangofe]

Pros:
- the Bebi saga and all the transformations (this is just a personal opinion since I'm a sucker for the saga because a lot of things happens).
Cons:
- the incredible stupid decision of taking Pan on the tour instead of Goten.
- the animation that makes the characters actually feel much less stronger than in DBZ, it just feels like they fight much slower with very little impact.
- centers more than ever around Goku; other characters do not get to shine.
- no adult Gotenks!
- not very original story arcs.

[Jon Jon]

Pros: The Music, the first arc (I am more of a fan of Dragon Ball, and that's what that arc felt more like to me.)

Cons: felt rushed, the ending is the most incomplete thing ever, really just feels like a glorified fan-fiction to me.

[Cipher]

Cons:
- the incredible stupid decision of taking Pan on the tour instead of Goten.
- the animation that makes the characters actually feel much less stronger than in DBZ, it just feels like they fight much slower with very little impact.
- not very original story arcs.

1) Dragon Ball has to have at least one true child protagonist at all times. This shouldn't be a surprise.
2) I think that could very easily be argued as a positive.
3) How the hell are the Baby and Shadow Dragon arcs not original?

The cons: it was rushed and most of the animation is crappy aside from fight scenes; especially Kid Goku's hands. They look like little stick nubs with no knuckles. And of course the first 16 episodes.

What? The episodes done by Last House look terrible, and have looked terrible ever since the Cell Games. Aside from that, GT has great animation. I'm not really sure how you can argue otherwise.

the ending is the most incomplete thing ever

Wait, what? Or are you just one of those people that needs the ending to any genre fiction to come with a neat little bow on it?

Pros

The truth about GT is it's actually a very entertaining show. The color palette is gorgeous, the tone is an enjoyable mix of action and comedy-adventure, and the music is excellent. Although, it's only fitting for the pastel-colored space opera that is GT and not the kung-fu homages that the other two series are.

I also love the place in the character's lives GT takes place during. The characters, Goku aside, are old and tired and settled down. "But the character designs are all gross and not bad-ass looking! Bwaa!" That's the entire point. They've all gotten frumpy and complacent. GT feels like an epilogue, and that's really cool.

The villains and locales are some of the most original in the series. Toriyama is great, but he has certain tropes he sticks to character-wise, and his favorite fight scenery is plains and canyons. GT tosses in the crazy super powers right and left, and takes you from swamps to asteroids to the middle of forests, and back again. Cool stuff.

Fuckin' Giru. Nuff said.

Every arc actually connects to the characters and their actions in some way, from Saiyan past, to defeated villains, to their abuse of the Dragon Balls. Speaking of which, the series actually placed focus back on the titular objects for the first time since the Freeza arc.

The ending is the best idea Toriyama never had, and a perfect thematic conclusion for the series. For years, Dragon Ball had been dropping hints that, hey, it's not really cool to just keep falling back on the Dragon Balls to fix your mistakes. From Kami saying he had no intention of reviving Shen-long to Old Kaioshin's warnings about universal balance and whatnot. By the Buu arc, the characters couldn't be assed to care who was getting killed; they had the Dragon Balls, so I guess it was just whatever. The Shadow Dragons were the perfect way to deal with that, and even though everyone gets aaaaall upset because they were monsters-of-the-week instead of SUPER HARDCORE BAD-ASSES, they continued GT's trend of having very cool, unique villains. The 28th Tenkaichi Budokai was the perfect ending for Goku's character, but GT is the perfect ending for the overall series.

The last episode is awesome. Oh, and Goku totally died stopping that blast.

(The Actual) Cons

It is slightly Goku-centric; that's a legitimate complaint. The side characters do have a tendency to jump into fights only to be beaten down in a short burst of music to build up Goku's awesomeness. However, I fail to see how it's any more than slightly worse than the original Dragon Ball in this aspect.

The fights are less hand-based than ever. This isn't a problem in the early episodes, where the fights are short and the adventure is the focus, but once the series moves back into hero vs villain territory, it becomes a little tiresome. Cool villains and interesting scenery aside, it gets a little stale when everything devolves into ki-blast after ki-blast.

It somewhat ruins the impact of the 28th Tenkaichi Budokai by sidelining Uub after his first real fight. Which is a shame, because he's fairly firmly established as second strongest hero in the series after Goku and Vegeta.

Overall

There's no doubt that GT has a different feel than Dragon Ball and Z, and I'm not going to say it's just as good. Although I would argue it's more competently handled than the anime version of either, in terms of pacing, etc.

People love to get hung up on the fact that it contains some inconsistencies and contrivances, which I find is a ridiculous complaint for Dragon Ball-anything, and the perceived lack of bad-assery in its characters, which is absolutely a good thing and and a complaint best left for grammatically incorrect Youtube comments.

I actually have a suspicion that a lot of the flack GT gets in the American fanbase stems from the days when Power Level "debates" were the name of the game, and people were upset with it for things like its (easily explained) Super Saiyan Gohan, lack of Super Saiyan 2, and again, the perceived weakening of its cast. If we can all agree that Power Level debates are stupid, I hope we can agree on most of these complaints being stupid as well. It's a kid's series. Shut up and stop arguing about internal logic that was never present from the start.

GT's one of those things that consistently gets hated on. Yet nearly every time I hear about someone actually sitting down to watch it for the first time, if they're separated from all the complaining, they come away saying, "Well, that wasn't so bad." It definitely deserves an open-minded watch-through from each fan, at the very least.

[SHINOBI-03]

3) How the hell are the Baby and Shadow Dragon arcs not original?

For Baby, it could be:
- Garlic Jr. ((Turning everyone into his minions and then purefing them with divine water))
- Dr. Raichi ((A Tsufuruian who have a grudge against the Saiyans))
- Boo. Absorbs bodies to get more power.


But the Dragons? No.

Oh, and Goku totally died stopping that blast.

Some of us might not think the same way.

(The Actual) Cons

It is slightly Goku-centric; that's a legitimate complaint. The side characters do have a tendency to jump into fights only to be beaten down in a short burst of music to build up Goku's awesomeness. However, I fail to see how it's any more than slightly worse than the original Dragon Ball in this aspect.

It somewhat ruins the impact of the 28th Tenkaichi Budokai by sidelining Uub after his first real fight. Which is a shame, because he's fairly firmly established as second strongest hero in the series after Goku and Vegeta.

Oh, you have no idea how I got annoyed with those two points!

[Cipher]

For Baby, it could be:
- Garlic Jr. ((Turning everyone into his minions and then purefing them with divine water))
- Dr. Raichi ((A Tsufuruian who have a grudge against the Saiyans))
- Boo. Absorbs bodies to get more power.

If you're going to play it that loose, then the Buu arc was just Daimao part two.

Some of us might not think the same way.

That was just me slipping in my personal everything but outright stated by the series thoughts on it. Neither here nor there.

[Gaffer Tape]

I've never seen GT all the way through. Overall, I've more or less enjoyed what I did see. Well, actually, when I got the fansub of the first four episodes, I immediately didn't understand why, if one of the stipulations of Goku's age reversal was that he no longer had access to techniques he didn't know as a child (which makes perfect sense) like Shunkan-Ido, he was still able to transform into a Super Saiya-jin! I don't know if this was ever explained, but it never really made any sense to me. I thought that really seriously putting Goku back where he was at the beginning of the series would have been a really interesting idea, as well as combatting the over reliance on SSJ. But, no, they just couldn't go without it, so it got shoehorned in there anyway.

I liked the idea of going back to hunting for dragonballs... IN SPACE!!! Too bad they lost confidence in themselves and did an abrupt shift back to OMG ROXORS EXTREME BATTLES! It's like watching the original series in fast forward: a third of the series is light-hearted adventure, then the rest is peril-averting battles to the death. And I really haven't seen any of the middle of the series, but things like a random Tenkaichi Budoukai thrown in there followed by a few episodes of 17 coming back and killing off Kuririn (again) just seem really, well, random, and I don't know why they had them be so short.

However, I have seen all of the evil dragon stuff, and I have to say, I loved the concept of that. Overusing the dragonballs is a bad thing? Each wish the characters made has its own corresponding evil entity associated with it? That's an awesome idea! While it did end up being executed as a "monster of the week" type thing (which was actually relatively refreshing but didn't exploit such an original concept to its fullest), just the idea of such a plot twist was both surprising and made a lot of sense.

Also, I loved the idea of the combination of Goku/Pan/Trunks. Those three really worked together. And I actually liked how this Trunks was portrayed as an adult. It made sense to me. Goku was just... Goku. Pan was trying to be the grown up. Trunks, who's basically spoiled and irresponsible, is forced into the role of the adult to keep the two kids in check. Okay, so it's basically a domestic comedy setup, but after years of characters just beating the crap out of each other, it was quite refreshing.

[Travis Touchdown]

I liked the music, Super Saiyan 4, and the ending. I honestly hate the ending in Z because it didn't feel like the story was over. I hated how Goku abandonned his family without a second thought to train Uub. GT offered up an ending which truly did feel like the story was over and couldn't go any further. Sure, Goku abandons his family again, but it's arguable over the circumstances; is he going to train? Did he die and he has to go to the afterlife? Did he become a higher being of sorts? Seeing his decendant a century later was just the icing of the cake.

[rereboy]

Whenever I read GT summaries or read someone`s very positive description of GT, I actually feel that GT is pretty good and cool.

But when I watch it... Meh...

So... Good ideas with very poor execution, plotholes, very little use of any other character besides Goku, Vegeta, Pan and Trunks and everybody sucked compared to Goku.

[NeoKING]

Hi!

I'm looking to gain some fan knowledge of DBGT. I've seen Dragonball and Dragonball Z, and really in my time have not given GT much of a chance. I personally don't care for how they do the animation from what I've seen of the series, and from what I've read, well...meh. I'm not trying to "troll" with this, but I'm honestly seeking peoples opinions as to why they like it, good and bad. I like the music as I have a DBGT soundtrack, but mostly again, I'm seeking fan critique to motivate myself to buy the series. What do you guys think?

Thank you in advance for your opinions on this. Midori

P.S. I'll be out until Sunday and so I'm hoping to read what people have to say when I get back!

You'll really want to give GT a shot. In a nutshell, Dragon Ball GT is a 64-episode series which is sort of a combination of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z with lots of surrealism thrown in. Lots of it. The good thing about GT is that it has these little arcs within sagas, kind of like One Piece. By episode... 11 or 12, you'll begin to see that not everything is what it seems in GT, and a lot of things are more related than you think. By the end of GT, the entire story of Dragon Ball is properly concluded and all the heroes of the series have more or less learned their lesson, but with a great sacrifice.

[Zephyr]

In my opinion

Major Pros:
- Reminiscent of DB near the beginning
- Baby Saga resolving a conflict that predates events in DB
- Piccolo's sacrifice to destroy the Black Star Dragon Balls
- Consequences of the Dragonballs' overuse
- Universal Genki Dama

Minor Pros:
- Pilaf's short return
- Seeing SSJ Kid Goku
- SSJ4 Gogeta
- Cameos toward the end


Major Cons:
- Goku being turned back into a kid (which was actually cool for the parts that were more reminiscent of DB, but the scenes more reminiscent of DBZ were tarnished by it)
- Contradiction of the Daizenshuu's explanation of Pan's inability to go SSJ.
- The under-use of a large cast with great potential (Uub, Vegeta, Goten, Gohan, etc.).
- Little to no character development.
- The dull/boring narration and soundtrack (for Funi at least).
- SSJ4 being named as such when the form is not actually an ascension from the SSJ3 form, but a new one all its own.

Minor Cons:
- Rildo, a minor villain, who is killed by 3 Kamehamehas, was (according to Goku) more powerful than Kid Buu (who had to be killed w/ a Genki Dama)
- Many characters capable of going SSJ2 (or others who by now would be capable of SSJ2) never do so, even when the need arises.
- Gohan turns SSJ, when he should still appear normal while doing this, due to his power being fully unlocked in DBZ.
- Everyone's design and appearance.

I realize all of this is nitpicking, but its still more than enough for me to favor DBO over GT as the canon continuation of the Dragonball storyline after DBZ. Don't get me wrong though, GT certainly has its moments.

[Cipher]

Major Cons:
- Contradiction of the Daizenshuu's explanation of Pan's inability to go SSJ.
- SSJ4 being named as such when the form is not actually an ascension from the SSJ3 form, but a new one all its own.

Minor Cons:
- Rildo, a minor villain, who is killed by 3 Kamehamehas, was (according to Goku) more powerful than Kid Buu (who had to be killed w/ a Genki Dama)
- Many characters capable of going SSJ2 (or others who by now would be capable of SSJ2) never do so, even when the need arises.
- Gohan turns SSJ, when he should still appear normal while doing this, due to his power being fully unlocked in DBZ.

Oh look, everything irritating and ridiculous about standard GT complaints in one neat post! None of those are cons. The entertainment quality of a series does not depend on its ability to follow off-the-cuff information in a guidebook.

As for the last three, do we know that Gohan's transformation was ever intended to be permanent, or that it might not fade without even occasional use? Do we know who's really SSJ2 when and who's not? The anime is never, ever consistent with it, even in Z. And Goku never says he was stronger than Kid Buu. Just "Buu," and probably Mr. Buu at that.

Better question, do these little niggling strength errors really affect your enjoyment of the show? If so, that sucks dude, I'm sorry. The latter half of Z must be terrible on you as well. This is the kind of tripe that people really need to tune out before watching GT. That, and people need to remember that Dragon Ball as a whole is shonen silliness, not a highly logical drama.

[Kid Buu]

I enjoyed GT, the one thing that I didn't was the colour scheme. It also just seemed so...off to me.

The water/blue Dragon (forgot it's name) had one of my favourite designs, but they ruined it by giving her a lamer transformed look.

[Jon Jon]

The ending was rushed and really didn't make a lot of sense. It wasn't clear in the slightest either, there's a difference between an ending that "makes you think" versus something that clearly wasn't done well. VegettoEX did an article on it analyzing it.

http://www.daizex.com/general/tidbits/dbgt_ending.shtml

[NeoKING]

I enjoyed GT, the one thing that I didn't was the colour scheme. It also just seemed so...off to me.

Thats apart of GT's charm; the animation and colors has this surreal vibe to it. Like in the Baby Vegeta vs. Goku on Planet Tsufuru, it's surreal to see a planet where the entire sky is bright red/pink and then seeing Goku's SSJ colors bring in a yellow contrast. Another example would be Planet Imecka, and the secret room where Baby was first incubated.

[sangofe]

3) How the hell are the Baby and Shadow Dragon arcs not original?

Amen to this:

For Baby, it could be:
- Garlic Jr. ((Turning everyone into his minions and then purefing them with divine water))
- Dr. Raichi ((A Tsufuruian who have a grudge against the Saiyans))
- Boo. Absorbs bodies to get more power.

[/quote]

The super 17 arc is not very original either, and the Bebi saga is essentially Goku v.s Vegeta one more time, as we've seen a "few" times in DBZ before...

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

All I can say to you is if you get over the fact that "IT WAZNT MAD BY TOIRYAMA" and "OMG IT DONT MAKE SENSE, THERS TO MANY PLOTHOLS", you'll like Dragon Ball GT.