Dragon Ball GT Review

Finally, everything has been leading up to this point, I watched the original Dragon Ball earlier this year and then Z afterwards and GT is a show I have vague memories of since I watched it as a kid back when the Blue Water Dub was airing many years ago. Most my actual memories of GT was with the DBZ games when they would cover GT. So watching this series after so many years, how does it hold up? Honestly? It's not that great, not the worst anime I have ever seen and it's not 100% deserving of the bad rep it gets but at the same time, there are a number of issues with DB GT that prevents it from being consistently enjoyable for me. The best way of describing GT is that it feels like an anime where the writing staff was getting fired every couple of episodes and as a result the whole show feels like an oddly disjointed experience and the show does eventually reach a point where I can sit through an episode without asking questions every 10 seconds but at the same time, GT's underlying problems still persistent. I will be going over the series Saga by Saga and rating them individually and then giving the series an overall score like past DB anime reviews.

Black Star Dragon Ball Saga - 5 out of 10. Jumping into GT right after DBZ and things get jarring right away. So many odd inconsistencies and random jumps from point a to c rather than smoothly transitioning from point a to b to c. First of all, Dende forgets that he has the ability to heal people and literally asks Mr. Popo to give Goku first aid. Then even more questions I start asking, like how did Pilaf and his crew know where the Lookout was? The Lookout was a closely guarded secret and you would have to be an A class detective to figure out where it was, and Pilaf magically knows where it is and even finds the means to get there with everyone smoothly getting past security to boot. This is like the Joker or a Batman villain figuring out where the Batcave was, knows Batman is Bruce Wayne and is able to bypass security with ease and it's all done off screen. It doesn't even end there, oh no, it turns out Kami had a dark secret with the Black Star Dragon Balls and he never once told Goku or Mr. Popo about it and they are super dangerous yet so easily accessible that Pilaf is able to find it without even looking hard. I know Dragon Ball was never was the most planned series throughout it's run but this is just stretching it. Then Goku becomes a kid again because Red Shenron did not know what a figure of speech means. And it doesn't end there, after this Roshi is in the city for some reason and Goku decides to randomly eat food instead of going to his family about his problem. What truly annoys me about this Saga is the fact that the whole idea is actually sound on paper but the writers find a way to screw it up with the Z fighters going on a intergalatic space adventure to find them even if the whole story is lacking in agency since no one seems to be that concerned that earth will blow up in a year. Vegeta has to drag Goten and Trunks to go and no one seems to be that concerned overall. But the set up is still there, but the writers lazily write Goten, Vegeta and Gohan out of the story since they didn't know how to write a dynamic with 6 characters so they have Pan magically hit the launch button on the ship as if it was easily accessible because someone would design a ship that way. Okay, I ranted on the early episodes of GT enough, but it is so bad to the point where I consider it some of the worst content DB has ever produced. This Saga does get better after this but not by a whole lot, the lack of agency still persists with the show never once keeping track of time to when the earth will explode and they spend multiple episodes wasting time on other planets not even knowing if a year will slowly past by. The adventures themselves are okay and the character interactions are decent enough to get me through it, but the lack of agency still persists. That and I am not a fan of how the series has done the Star Trek and Star Wars thing of having aliens be stand ins for human civilizations like a Space Middle East or Space Native Anericans, it's not enough to ruin the series for me, but it tends to be grating when stories do this. The story does start to have more tension and agency when they get to Giru's home planet even if General Rildo's plan which is really Trunks and Giru's plan to figure out Dr. Myu's plan can be rather convoluted when you think too hard about it. Goku's fight with Rildo was also pretty enjoyable. And well time to time to move on to the next Saga. 

Baby Saga - 6 out 10. This saga starts off as promising but GT being GT finds a way to make this an idea executed awkwardly. This 6 out of 10 is a generous one. We get introduced to first major overarching villain through Baby, and his abilities are pretty interesting with him being a body takeover parasite, and the early episodes with him are okay even if Baby does come off as a bargain bin Imperfect Cell since they both have a horror gimmick and need to outwit their enemies before they can get stronger, but after the episode where Baby fails to take over Trunks at the Space Hospital, the writing goes downhill almost immediately. After this, Baby manages to learn mind control, get a power increase AND learns where earth is entirely off screen, it almost feels like these episodes were cut out because this can be bizarre, and comes back to my issue of GT feeling it never smoothly transitions from a to b to c. Not only that but while Baby's backstory of him being connected to the Sayain race is interesting, it feels like a retcon of sorts because the Tuffles was never mentioned when Dr. Myu was trying to keep Baby alive, and it's never explained where Dr. Myu fits with Baby's grand design and how he came up with Myu's schemes, this is what I mean when GT's writers were getting fired every few episodes. Not only after all this Baby manages to take over Goku's friends and family and take over the world in a short period of time off screen as well. And my issues don't even end here either. Remember how I made a big deal about Dragon Ball's use of the worf effect and how important it is to establish how threatning villains are? Well GT, takes this concept and takes away any of the balance Z had. Every character Baby fights gets beaten very easily, Piccolo, Vegeta, Goten, Trunks, and Uub get beaten with ease and it rarely ever feels like Baby could even loose where Frieza, Cell and Buu got push back from the characters I mentioned minus Uub, Baby never once even has a challenge, this is everything people assiocate Z for having but miss the point. As a result everything in this Saga before Super Saiyan 4 gets introduced is dull. I might as well get to that, what pushes this Saga to a 6 and not a 4 or 5 is Super Saiyan 4. I will admit, when Goku transform into the Giant Ape and then Goku realizing he has family and friends to fight for to get him to snap out of it was well done. It's one of GT's better moments up until that point. Super Saiyan 4 is also one of the better moments of GT because Baby actually is faced with a challenge. From here on out the writing is actually okay, even if it has GT's bad habbit of having one sided fights and of course GT's really bad habbit where the series even has a on he nose metaphor, of the other characters besides Goku getting "buried" in the ground. The ending of the Baby Saga while sound on paper lacks any impact since Piccolo dies in his second appreance and he no showed in the story for quite some time. It lacks any kind of emotional core since Piccolo got one shotted by Baby the last time he was seen before the scarifice. This Saga is saved by Super Saiyan 4 mostly. 

Super Android 17 Saga - 5 out of 10. Not a whole lot to say on this Saga, it's the shortest Saga of GT, and it features all of GT's questionable writing antics from the start. How did Gero and Myu was able to hypnotize 17 on Goku's earth to being evil? He wasn't evil in Goku's time and he never killed innocent people, so you would need something great to have him turn evil, and it comes back to GT's underlying issues from not smoothly transitioning from point a to b to c. Also, how was Gero and Myu able to build an Android in Hell with recources they had and with Hell being on tight security? How is two 17s stronger than Perfect Cell? I still never understood that. Outside of those issues, the whole Saga feels like a rehash of the DBZ movie Fusion Reborn and it's not even handled as in that since it's GT being GT, all the characters besides Goku are useless and all they can do is beat up characters that are bigger jobbers than they are. And out of all the villains who come back get beaten really easily and Vegeta's reunion with Nappa is less than a minute, if this is supposed to be "fan service" it's not handled that well. Goku's fight with Super 17 is okay and Android 18 does get decent closure here but that's the only praise I can give this Saga. 

Shadow Dragons Saga - 7 out of 10. What? What is this? After all the complaining about GT thus far I am giving it some praise, yes, this Saga is by far GT's magnum opus and is the thing that prevents me from calling GT completely "unwatchable". The Saga at the start was decently foreshadowed with negative energy making the Dragon Balls crack which already is writing above the standard that GT has shown thus far. I also love the concept on paper, and it feels like the writers were doing a decent job at understanding how overused the Dragon Balls were and how it erased any permanent consequnces the DB series ever had. There is a weird meta involving this Saga and I like it all the more for it. I also like how each Dragon gave Goku a challenge and he had to outsmart all of them in order to win. And while a bit too OP for my tastes Omega Shenron does a good enough job at feeling like the series "final boss" of sorts which is rather fitting since much of my exposure to GT was the DBZ games. It does suffer from GT's problems of every character besides Goku being one note jobbers, and aspects of it feel rushed like how the Shadow Dragons took over the world, learn their abilites and got personalities in the span of a few hours, but this I can ignore this the actual overall writing feels competent now even I wonder why Bulma couldn't make a new Dragon Radar for Goten, Gohan and Trunks to use to help Goku and even Vegeta needing to use Bultz Waves to catch up to Goku was decently foreshadowed and is about as close to interesting characterization for Vegeta GT will ever give. 

Overall, I get why GT gets it's bad reputation but I do feel the Shadow Dragons Saga somewhat saves it and the ending is a better conclusion than what Z provided and it's brevity compared to other DB shows is one big reason why I was able to finish it at all. The show is mediocre but not completely unwatchable.