"GT = Goku Time" is an exaggeration.

[sintzu]

It’s very apparent Vegeta didn’t just become a couch potato and sees his role as a defender of Earth, his words.

Yet he didn't have Ssj3 despite 15 years passing since the Buu arc while in Super not only did he get THREE forms that far surpass Ssj3, he did it in a fraction of the 15 years. In Super he climbed the ladder of extremely strong characters and ended up being the 3rd strongest mortal and somewhere on the destroyers' list, a list that he could only dream of in BOG. In GT he got his ass kicked by everyone he encountered from start to finish and if that wasn't enough they didn't even let him keep Ssj4.

[ricky84]

Absolutely was Goku Time and that was a good thing. He already had left everybody in the dust, Vegeta explains later that he stopped chasing after Goku after that N°1 speech in Z, Gohan is a teacher and wears a bloody tie, Goten a ladies man and Trunks a CEO. They don't even look like the Z-senshi anymore, so it's logical to focus on the dude that never changes all throughout the show and keeps trying to best himself. Only Uub remained relevant in that regard but he was unfairly left out. They could've given him something more than one-shotting Rildo, literally 4 seconds of spotlight.

The Space arc was Goku, Pan and Trunks time, the Baby on Earth Arc was the least Goku Time of all, in Super 17 arc they all looked like Gotenks and Gohan did in Fusion Reborn, the dragon Arc was just DraGoku Ball GT. Seven new enemies, and not even Trunks went along, he went to fucking space but he couldn't go to Ginger Town? they were all there when Shenron didn't show up, so what the hell?

When people that GT is Goku Time, they mean that Goku is the only character that does anything of value in the series, they don't just mean spotlight. This was not the case in Z, Super and even Early DB.

The franchise not being a ensemble show is no excuse for throwing characters under bus, its just bad writing. So I don't see how anyone could use the "DB is not a ensemble" defense for GT.

A basic rule for writing is that if a character isn't going to get any development or usefulness in a story's setting, they shouldn't be there at all. You should permanently write them off like they did with Kami in Z and Piccolo in GT.

There's plenty of anime/manga and stories of other mediums that aren't ensembles yet give large amounts of development for most of its cast like Hunter x Hunter, Full Metal Alchemist, Evangelion, One Piece, Gurren Lagaan, etc. The problem with series like Bleach, Dragonball and to a lesser extent Naruto is that they are filled with large cast of characters that do virtually nothing but take up space. If Toriyama killed off Roshi, Tien, Yamcha, Chaozu and Yajoribe after the Saiyan arc, it would have no major effect on the rest of the franchise.

[ricky84]

It’s very apparent Vegeta didn’t just become a couch potato and sees his role as a defender of Earth, his words.

Yet he didn't have Ssj3 despite 15 years passing since the Buu arc while in Super not only did he get THREE forms that far surpass Ssj3, he did it in a fraction of the 15 years. In Super he climbed the ladder of extremely strong characters and ended up being the 3rd strongest mortal and somewhere on the destroyers' list, a list that he could only dream of in BOG. In GT he got his ass kicked by everyone he encountered from start to finish and if that wasn't enough they didn't even let him keep Ssj4.

To be fair, he did beat Baby Gohan, Baby Goten and Hell Fighter 17 in GT.

[ABED]

Terms like "contribute" and phrases like "doing anything of value" are vague and VERY open to interpretation.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Absolutely was Goku Time and that was a good thing. He already had left everybody in the dust, Vegeta explains later that he stopped chasing after Goku after that N°1 speech in Z, Gohan is a teacher and wears a bloody tie, Goten a ladies man and Trunks a CEO. They don't even look like the Z-senshi anymore, so it's logical to focus on the dude that never changes all throughout the show and keeps trying to best himself. Only Uub remained relevant in that regard but he was unfairly left out. They could've given him something more than one-shotting Rildo, literally 4 seconds of spotlight.

The Space arc was Goku, Pan and Trunks time, the Baby on Earth Arc was the least Goku Time of all, in Super 17 arc they all looked like Gotenks and Gohan did in Fusion Reborn, the dragon Arc was just DraGoku Ball GT. Seven new enemies, and not even Trunks went along, he went to fucking space but he couldn't go to Ginger Town? they were all there when Shenron didn't show up, so what the hell?

That's not a bad thing they didn't look anymore like they did in Z. In fact, that was something that pleased me.

Goten was a teen while currently he remains to be a small kid as always, and the Pilaf gang was turned into kid-forms too. Just.. sigh.

Pan in Super was a baby, if memory serves.

[PFM18]

But seriously, go to any comments section, explore the Kanzenshuu threads, you'll see praise for Super everywhere. Hell, just pop over to the Wikipedia article's reception section, and you'll hear about all the praise thrown at it by critics, or check out its IMDB page where it has an 8.1/10 rating, or its Rotten Tomatoes page where the percentage of users who rated the show 3.5/5 or higher is 81%, or its TV.com page, where its average user rating is 8.6/10, or Google it, and you'll see the Google likes percentage is 96%, or look at the show's Crunchyroll page, where the show has an average rating of 4.5/5, further broken down into 36 ratings of 1, 24 ratings of 2, 26 ratings of 3, 47 ratings of 4, and 293 ratings of 5. S

Well I guess I just wasn't aware of this, thanks for all of the detail here. It is pretty eye-opening for me to some extent because most of what I see on forums is bashing it.(Usually nitpicking or bashing it for things they don't even understand, so not really legitimate criticism but still) The positive reception's existence does make sense to me though because I love Super myself and am so thankful it was made because DB felt incomplete to me without it.

Sales of the DVDs, BDs, and manga also speak volumes(No pun intended).

Let's be real; that pun was completely intended

It’s very apparent Vegeta didn’t just become a couch potato and sees his role as a defender of Earth, his words.

Yet he didn't have Ssj3 despite 15 years passing since the Buu arc while in Super not only did he get THREE forms that far surpass Ssj3, he did it in a fraction of the 15 years. In Super he climbed the ladder of extremely strong characters and ended up being the 3rd strongest mortal and somewhere on the destroyers' list, a list that he could only dream of in BOG. In GT he got his ass kicked by everyone he encountered from start to finish and if that wasn't enough they didn't even let him keep Ssj4.

I think this summarizes some of these differences very well. Vegeta's character has always and will always be defined by being a warrior and being Goku's rival. In GT, he is a joke who gets his ass beat constantly and is hardly even a warrior considering he clearly is no longer passionate about becoming stronger and training. In Super, he is for the first time in the series a truly legitimate rival to Goku and this ability for him to keep up with Goku is a function of his character development as seen by several of his big power boosts in the series being a result of some facet of his character development.

[ABED]

Vegeta constantly gets his ass handed to him in DBZ as well. I concede that in Super he's quite close to Goku in strength, but I don't take issue with him in GT. He's more domesticated, but he still has a competitive streak. We don't see much of him in the series, but there is a whole clip show episode where we see his competitive side.

[Timetraveller]

It's a shame we never got another show that had Vegeta training and trying to keep up after his #1 speech instead of the lazy road GT took by just having him give up. I wonder how that would've turned out.


If that wasn't bad enough, the writers went a step further by saying Vegeta couldn't transform into it again because he wasn't "special" like Goku. How they were picked to write for DB (or any Shonen for that matter) is something I'll never understand.

Honestly sounds like you as a Vegeta fan were just disappointed the show finally moved past him. It's not bad writing to have a character slowly develop over the course of 200+ episodes to where his family becomes his number one priority over of his obsession with defeating Goku. It's character development, and good character development at that. I saw this on twitter but someone realized that Toriyama symbolized Vegeta's humanization through his clothing (Source: https://twitter.com/SmugStick/status/10 ... 8571259904). Over the series, he is shown losing pieces of his saiyan armor until the show ends with Vegeta in full earthling clothing. Super backtracks on all of this because of fan service like they did with Frieza, Future Trunk, Broly etc.

Yamcha and Krillin fans were probably the same way when DBZ started. "Can you believe they made Krillin this weak?"

You are over-reading things. The actually reason why Vegeta stops wearing saiyan armor in the Buu saga (and the end of Z) is because the tournament doesn't allow armor (he is shown wearing saiyan armor in the 2008 OVA, which is post-Buu). Besides, that interpretation doesn't match up with the 2004 ending of the original manga.

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the in-universe explanation is. Vegeta is a fictional character written by Toriyama. His in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance are decided by Toriyama

[PFM18]

Vegeta constantly gets his ass handed to him in DBZ as well. I concede that in Super he's quite close to Goku in strength, but I don't take issue with him in GT. He's more domesticated, but he still has a competitive streak. We don't see much of him in the series, but there is a whole clip show episode where we see his competitive side.

I thought you never watched Super?

[ricky84]

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the in-universe explanation is. Vegeta is a fictional character written by Toriyama. His in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance are decided by Toriyama

You just contradicted yourself lmao. I just point out the "in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance" of Vegeta written by Toriyama are not what you claimed they are.

[Robo4900]

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the in-universe explanation is. Vegeta is a fictional character written by Toriyama. His in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance are decided by Toriyama

You just contradicted yourself lmao. I just point out the "in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance" of Vegeta written by Toriyama are not what you claimed they are.

In-universe fluff is totally plastic; it is moulded to fit whatever the story requires, and quite often Toriyama simply doesn't pay attention to a lot of previously-established worldbuilding details all that well. If Toriyama thought it made for a better story for something to go one way, the way the in-universe rules work around that don't really matter; worst case they can easily be changed to suit the story.

Dan Olsen describes this a lot better than I ever could, though, so if you're not quite getting me, I suggest watching his video.

Well I guess I just wasn't aware of this, thanks for all of the detail here. It is pretty eye-opening for me to some extent because most of what I see on forums is bashing it.(Usually nitpicking or bashing it for things they don't even understand, so not really legitimate criticism but still) The positive reception's existence does make sense to me though because I love Super myself and am so thankful it was made because DB felt incomplete to me without it.

Would it surprise you if I said I really don't like Super?

Glad you're enjoying the current run of Dragon Ball, but it's not really for me. Way I see it is like this: Super attempts to recapture what the franchise was in its glory days, GT attempted to move beyond Toriyama's writings into new territory. I find Super's approach to be retreading old ground in ways that don't interest me, while I find GT to be fresh material that goes places the stuff it follows never went. Kind of the same reason I really love DB movies 2 and 3, and Z movies 1, 8, and 10-13.
TBH, I think it's quite nice that there are these two different takes on a follow-up to the original story; it's kinda nice to have two different ways of exploring where the franchise goes after Z, and it also provides a neat solution to the problem of how to reconcile Kai and Z, since GT references filler in Z, while Super doesn't, so you can tie up Dragon Ball as splitting at the end of DB into either Kai, Super, and the new Broly movie, or into Z, GT, and the TV specials.

Plus, the Super manga is utterly ace, despite my personal distaste for the anime.

Let's be real; that pun was completely intended

... Maybe just a little.

[ABED]

Vegeta constantly gets his ass handed to him in DBZ as well. I concede that in Super he's quite close to Goku in strength, but I don't take issue with him in GT. He's more domesticated, but he still has a competitive streak. We don't see much of him in the series, but there is a whole clip show episode where we see his competitive side.

I thought you never watched Super?

I haven't but I can read

[Timetraveller]

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the in-universe explanation is. Vegeta is a fictional character written by Toriyama. His in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance are decided by Toriyama

You just contradicted yourself lmao. I just point out the "in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance" of Vegeta written by Toriyama are not what you claimed they are.

Nah, there's no contradiction. Vegeta's in-universe reason for not wearing armor in the buu saga doesn't change the fact that his saiyan armor becomes more and more minimal until he wears regular human clothes in the finale. It may or may not have been intentional by Toriyama but the symbolism of his humanization is clearly evident.

[PFM18]

Vegeta constantly gets his ass handed to him in DBZ as well. I concede that in Super he's quite close to Goku in strength, but I don't take issue with him in GT. He's more domesticated, but he still has a competitive streak. We don't see much of him in the series, but there is a whole clip show episode where we see his competitive side.

I thought you never watched Super?

I haven't but I can read

what so you read the manga?

[ricky84]

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the in-universe explanation is. Vegeta is a fictional character written by Toriyama. His in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance are decided by Toriyama

You just contradicted yourself lmao. I just point out the "in-universe motivations, decisions and appearance" of Vegeta written by Toriyama are not what you claimed they are.

Nah, there's no contradiction. Vegeta's in-universe reason for not wearing armor in the buu saga doesn't change the fact that his saiyan armor becomes more and more minimal until he wears regular human clothes in the finale. It may or may not have been intentional by Toriyama but the symbolism of his humanization is clearly evident.

If it wasn't intentional then that means you and the other guy on twitter are clearly projecting meaning that isn't there.

[sintzu]

This ability for him to keep up with Goku is a function of his character development as seen by several of his big power boosts in the series being a result of some facet of his character development.

I think it was the result of the development he made during the fight with Kid Buu as by giving up his hate for Goku and fighting to better himself and protect his family it made him a better warrior.

Vegeta constantly gets his ass handed to him in DBZ as well.

The difference is that he made up for each defeat unlike in GT where he had nothing to show for it. For example, he couldn't do anything against Freeza on Namek but he made up for it in the very enxt arc by saving Goku and turning into a Ssj. When he lost to 18 he made up for it by finding a form beyond Ssj and beating Cell. When he couldn't do anything during the Cell games he made up for it by aiding Gohan in his victory against Cell. He was powerless against Kid Buu but he made up for it by finding a way to defeat him and holding him off Goku. When Vegeta lost his body to Baby he didn't make up for it during the super 17 arc. When Vegeta got beat by 17 he again, didn't make up for it against the shadow dragons.

[ABED]

He did not make up for each defeat. He lost to Cell and never got that one back. He turned SSJ, but that didn't undo Freeza brutally killing him. It also didn't stop 18 from toying with him. All your post says is Vegeta gets stronger after it's a day late and a dollar short. You're drawing an artificial distinction, and if we are going with your idea, then Vegeta does have something to show for it at the end. He is a punching bag long enough against the one star Dragon to give Goku enough time to create the Genki Dama, just like against Kid Buu.

[ricky84]

He did not make up for each defeat. He lost to Cell and never got that one back. He turned SSJ, but that didn't undo Freeza brutally killing him. It also didn't stop 18 from toying with him. All your post says is Vegeta gets stronger after it's a day late and a dollar short. You're drawing an artificial distinction, and if we are going with your idea, then Vegeta does have something to show for it at the end. He is a punching bag long enough against the one star Dragon to give Goku enough time to create the Genki Dama, just like against Kid Buu.

Vegeta's assist against Cell is the main reason why Gohan was able to beat him in the end. So he did kind of get that one back.

[ABED]

He did not make up for each defeat. He lost to Cell and never got that one back. He turned SSJ, but that didn't undo Freeza brutally killing him. It also didn't stop 18 from toying with him. All your post says is Vegeta gets stronger after it's a day late and a dollar short. You're drawing an artificial distinction, and if we are going with your idea, then Vegeta does have something to show for it at the end. He is a punching bag long enough against the one star Dragon to give Goku enough time to create the Genki Dama, just like against Kid Buu.

Vegeta's assist against Cell is the main reason why Gohan was able to beat him in the end. So he did kind of get that one back.

He helped out a little, which is nice, but I fail to see how any of this shows how useful he was in Z by comparison.

[ricky84]

He did not make up for each defeat. He lost to Cell and never got that one back. He turned SSJ, but that didn't undo Freeza brutally killing him. It also didn't stop 18 from toying with him. All your post says is Vegeta gets stronger after it's a day late and a dollar short. You're drawing an artificial distinction, and if we are going with your idea, then Vegeta does have something to show for it at the end. He is a punching bag long enough against the one star Dragon to give Goku enough time to create the Genki Dama, just like against Kid Buu.

Vegeta's assist against Cell is the main reason why Gohan was able to beat him in the end. So he did kind of get that one back.

He helped out a little, which is nice, but I fail to see how any of this shows how useful he was in Z by comparison.

1. He is the reason why Gohan and Krillin survived most/all of the Namek saga.
2. He is the reason why Gohan beat Cell at the end of the Android arc.
3. He is the reason why Goku beat Kid Buu at the end of the Buu arc (the Spirit Bomb and the wishes made by Porunga & Shenron were his ideas). Without him, Goku would have tired out against Kid Buu in their fight since he couldn't sustain SSJ3.

Compare all this to what he does in GT, and you'll see how useless he was (along with everyone not named Goku) there.