A Defence for Dragon Ball GT

GT is one of those things that a lot of fans of the Dragon Ball franchise do not look back on with a lot of pleasant things to say. So let's go into a little bit of detail on why that is. Dragon Ball GT is the sequel series to Dragon Ball Z, taking place roughly 10 years later, it was also the first Dragon Ball series to not be written by Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama and beyond a few character designs, had no involvement. Because of this (As well as the new Dragon Ball Super), lots of fans don't consider it canon. Or good. And frankly I don't think it deserves a lot of the hate it gets, in fact I think it's quite good.

Now I've always been one to point out issues with Dragon Ball in the past and I would be amiss to not discuss some of the issues in GT as well. The main ones being how so many of the characters get thrown to the wayside in favour of Goku & Pan. Seriously, almost none of the other characters apart from Trunks and Vegeta get anything substantial to do in the entire run of GT. Even characters like Uub who was supposed to be a major character did absolutely nothing. This is something that really bothered me, especially when there were so many opportunities where they could have had some interesting dynamics and see how these characters have changed since Z. Also the decision to make Goku a child again, while I don't hate it like lots of people do, I also don't get it, I don't see why they did this. So, with those being pointed out, lets talk about all of the things about GT that I like.

So, let's start with the most obvious one and that being the improved animation. This isn't exactly a surprise, the show was made after Dragon Ball Z, so with improved technology, not to mention how big the budget was for a spin-off to Dragon Ball, of course it's going to have beautiful animation, detailed characters, very unique designs, in particular Super Saiyan 4 which is probably the only thing in the series most fans admit they really like. Which of course they would, it's such a great & unique design, certainly better than Super Saiyan 3.

Something else this show has that is an improvement are the villains. With the exception of Majin Buu (First one) all the villains in DBZ are pretty interchangeable and rather dull when you think about it, they have no proper motivations, no distinct personalities, the only thing memorable about them are their designs. In this series the villains are made much more interesting, for example Baby is able to take control of Saiyans but only when they go Super Saiyan, that lead to some great fights where our characters would have to fight each other and hold back because if they don't they'll be taken over, but also because they don't want to hurt their friends and family.

Then there were the Shadow Dragons, evil versions of Shenron from overuse of the Dragonballs, what a great way to introduce a group of villains, because one of the biggest issues in the Dragon ball franchise is how they can use the Dragonballs to fix any problem. Well now there are consequences for that, 7 evil dragons have now been released, all with unique designs, powers and personalities.

The final thing that this show most definitely improves upon is the pacing. It's no secret DBZ has awful pacing issues, it's one of the internet's favourite jokes. But the reason why it had such bad pacing is because it was running alongside the manga and in order to avoid catching up with it, they had to stretch certain things out. GT doesn't have that issue, it's a completely original story meaning each story arc lasts for roughly 20 episodes and frankly that is a better system than the 70ish episodes per arc that DBZ had.

Overall would I say GT is better than Z? No. I love both and I think both have major problems, but GT gets far more hate and I just don't think it's deserved so I just wanted a chance to stick up for it and talk about the good qualities.

-Danny