Anime What are your thoughts on Dragon Ball GT?

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Dragon Ball was all my friends would ever talk about, specially during the "Z" era -- it was such a phenomenon that it actually managed to carry all of them from the very beginning of the original series and into the crazy stuff of the Sayan, Cell and Freezer sagas. It was utterly amazing to me as I bore witness to their fandom, watching them all stick around for hundreds of episodes without ever getting bored of it... I guess a good beatdown never gets old.

But then I noticed that the conversation started to die down towards the end of the Majin Buu saga, stopping completely by the time GT came about in exactly the same way it did when Ash made it to Hoenn (right after Misty left the group and Gary openly declared leaving the Pokemon Master dream... Felt like The Beatles breaking up, man XD).

I had always chalked it up to us just being older and just way too buried with responsibilities to properly give it a chance (and it did made sense -- we were seventh graders by the time GT debuted here), but I don't think it's a very well-loved series overall... I have yet to meet one true super fan of it and I could personally never get into it in the same way I did both DB and Z (or even some of the newer stuff).

GT seems to exist mostly in isolation, almost shunned by the community at large for reasons that aren't at all clear to me and that makes it all the more fascinating to me.

What do you think?

 

[JellyjamLu]

I like GT for the most part, The music is great, awesome character designs, especially the villains & fight scenes were pretty sweet, additionally i love some of the scenery/backgrounds & color palettes used.
Sure the story side of things was not Hip-Hop, Pop & Rock but for the most part it was serviceable.
I'd watch GT over Kai & Super any day of the week, it has a strong place of nostalgia for me.

 

[Tonberry]

It's both kind of overhated and overrated at the same time. It's a show that has a few decent storylines and designs, but the high points don't reach nowhere near as high as Dragonball did (few things to, after all), and the low points are way, WAAY lower.
(Should also be stated that I'm a manga-andy first and foremost as it's what I grew up with, and I think the anime adaptation of regular Dragonball has a lot of crummy issues too, but it also has neat added stuff)

As of recently it's received a sort of reappraisal (probably due to how much of a mixed bag Super was) but this has mostly led a tiny group of incredibly angry fans who praise it way too much. Kind of like Final Fantasy 8.

To me, it just lacks the Toriyama touch, in that it feels like it was made by fans. It's simultaneously too much rethreading of old themes, too serious, too silly, and just plain boring.
I thought the premise of them going on space adventures sounded interesting, but it loses its appeal pretty quick when it just turns into battles with some of the most bargain-bin DB designs ever concieved (except for Super Saiyan 4, I love that shit to death).

All in all, it's pretty meh. It's worth a shot if one is craving more Dragonball, then it's up to you whether to stick around or not. I'm glad Daima sort of replaced it as the "wow they're kids and also SSJ4 is here too" show.

 

[Pearly]

Honestly even the worst parts of super were still way better than the worst parts of GT, super was at the mercy of being padded, whereas the manga of super, in all parts that are not Toyotaro original stories and designs, were much better paced and stayed 1:1 with Toriyamas story treatments for the most part. The anime staff deviated a little too much from time to time to create tension.

GT has some great moments , but as Tonberry mentioned it lacks the Toriyama touch, super for all it's flaws was overseen by toriyama, as was much of Daima, anything that is seperate from toriyama was never really to my liking. The dragonball super broly movie mops the floor with all the dbz movies, with the only holding up being fusion reborn and wrath of the dragon of those for me. The two TV specials were also great.

All in all, anything Toriyama oversaw or flat out created is all I like when it comes to dragon ball, I thought super saiya-jin "4" was a pretty dope design and concept, it should not have been called super saiya-jin though, maybe something else, but then Toriyama went and canonized it in Daima so, I guess it is super saiya-jin 4 now. The opening theme is also awesome with the ending of GT being thematically pretty great. It also had the honour of being the only dragonball property to do so poorly it got cancelled at the time in Japan. This caused any and all creators to not follow up on dragonball in any official capacity as that Toriyama magic was clearly needed for success.

Damn I hate that we got no new dragonball after uub, the guy literally rounded out his story before passing away and throwing a troll wrench into the western fans minds with the SS4 thing in Daima, man is a comedy troll writer to his dying day. Absolutely astounding storyboard artist though, man had a gift for camera angles and shots. He storyboarded all of super broly and it has my favourite animated fight cinematography of all time.

TLDR; GT can be fun, but lacks that Toriyama magic, touch as it were.

 

[bjork]

Vegeta has a mustache. That was the end of it for me.

Seriously though, I've only watched a handful of episodes and like Pearly said, it just doesn't have the charm of everything before it. I also kind of frown on it because the existence of GT led to me being asked about five times a day at my old job, "why don't you carry Dragonball AF?" and I'd have to explain that we couldn't since there was no such thing outside of a fan project, and it just got so tiring after awhile.