Nearly a year ago, I wrote up a post where I reworked the
Cell Saga from Dragonball Z, and I said I might take a look at Dragonball GT
someday. But, before that, we have to take a look at the next arc in the
Dragonball series, the Majin Buu saga. Now, like last time, here’s a recap of
how the story goes in the original series. Taking place roughly 7 years after
the Cell Saga, Gohan is now a teenager in high school and has given up on his
training, ChiChi had a second son Goten, who is best friends with Trunks. Everyone
seems happy and fine, but that is until a god named Supreme Kai shows up and
informs them that an evil presence known as Babidi is trying to revive an evil
and powerful spirit known as Majin Buu. So, with Goku returning to Earth for just
one day, they all try and prevent this, fail, Vegeta turns evil again, but then
sacrifices himself, Goku’s day runs out so he has to go back to the afterlife,
and now it’s up to our remaining heroes to stop Buu. After several attempts
including fusion, training with the gods, and Buu transforming several times,
nothing seems to work, so in the end Goku of course is the one who comes in,
saves the day and kills Buu.
Now obviously technically speaking, I wouldn’t have to
change a lot from where my version of the Cell saga left off, except that
Vegeta was also dead. But that could easily be rectified by having him be
brought back with Goku…except I ain’t gonna do that. Nope. Instead I’m gonna
rewrite it so that Vegeta and Goku are left out of the whole thing, because if
you remember, both in my version and in Toriyama’s version, the Cell Saga ends
with Gohan inheriting the responsibilities of protecting the Earth and being
the most powerful warrior, so it’s just a big slap in the face for the
character to be shoved to the wayside during this arc, no, he’s the main
character, that’s how it’s supposed to be. So let’s begin.
First off, I’m setting this story even further into the
future, not 7 years, but 13. That way, I’m going to have it that Gohan is just
graduating from college after finishing some kind of Masters or PhD, hell,
knowing his mother she would have made him do 3 at once. And Trunks is just a
little older than Gohan was during the Cell Saga. The first few episodes will
be very slice of life, just like they were in the original series, except the
focus here is on Gohan training Trunks, while also trying to find a job (Not
that hard considering his many qualifications) and he’s also trying to balance
this with his relationship with Videl, who he’s been dating for several years
at this point. During this time we’ll establish that Trunks is a very powerful
Saiyan, possibly even more powerful than Gohan was at that age, but also while
Gohan has been keeping up with his
training, and is much more powerful
than he was during the Cell Sage, fighting just isn’t in his heart. Keep in
mind, Gohan is a pacifist, he doesn’t like
fighting, and if he had the choice, he would retire his fighting lifestyle, but
feels Trunks isn’t ready for that level of responsibility.
This brings us to the other Z Fighters, during the 13 years,
they’ve all taken turns training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber to become much
stronger, not as strong as Trunks or Gohan, but strong enough. But, seeing as
they’re not really needed on Earth, Tien, Chiaotzu, Krillin and Yamcha have all
left Earth to become intergalactic heroes with King Kai co-ordinating their
missions, why? Because that would just be kinda cool, and give them more to do
than just stand there, at least this way you can imagine they’re doing
something useful off screen. Now here’s where I have to do a bit of retconning
from my previous story. In the Cell Saga I said Dende still becomes the
guardian of Earth, but after thinking it over, I’ve decided to cut him out and
just make Piccolo the guardian, because that still makes sense, he is still
technically Kami so why not? Trust me, it’ll make the story more dramatic later
on.
Now, finally, the story begins. King Kai sensing that a
planet is under attack, sends off the Z Fighters to help, the villains
attacking the planet of course are Babidi and Dabura. After an epic fight
between the Z Fighters and Dabura where they put up a decent fight, but in the
end are beaten, the Z Fighters learn that Babidi is looking for strong fighters
to absorb, once they learn the Z Fighters are from Earth, which is also where
the people who killed Freeza are from, they decide to travel there in hopes for
even more powerful heroes they can absorb power for their greatest weapon,
Majin Buu. So they leave the Z Fighters and the planet in critical condition
and head for Earth, King Kai takes note of this and instantly warns Gohan,
Trunks and Piccolo on who’s coming.
With Piccolo, Gohan and Trunks united, ready for the threat,
this is where Piccolo’s arc rears its head. Impressed by how much Gohan has
grown in the years since Piccolo was his mentor, and now seeing his prodigy mentoring
someone else, makes him question how useful he can be. Yes, Piccolo is the
third strongest man on the planet, but there is such a huge gap in power,
especially when the other two are so much younger, he becomes insecure in
himself. Eventually Babidi and Dabura arrive, and this is where everything from
the discovery of Babidi’s ship, to when Vegeta explodes is exactly the same,
except replace Goku with Gohan, Vegeta with Piccolo, and Supreme Kai with
Trunks. Babidi has three tasks set up that will cause the trio to fight, and
the more energy they use, the closer Majin Buu is to being freed. However, when
all three tasks prove to be incredibly easy, the only one giving some kind of
challenge is Gohan vs Dabura, Babidi becomes increasingly more desperate. Using
his magic, Babidi senses the former evil in Piccolo that he has buried deep
inside of him and Babidi exploits that. He feeds thoughts into Piccolo’s mind,
manipulates him, forces him to face his insecurities, his fears and secret desires
to be stronger, eventually making Piccolo succumb to Babidi’s magic and become
his puppet.
Now, with Piccolo returning to his evil roots, he begins to
fight Gohan, leaving Trunks to fight Dabura. Now because Gohan is injured and would never want to hurt Piccolo,
he’s forced to hold back, while Piccolo-having become stronger thanks to
Babbidi’s magic-has no problem giving it everything he’s got. Likewise, Trunks
would usually have very little chance against Dabura, but thanks to his fight
with Gohan injuring and exhausting him, it’s an even fight. Not that any of
this matters, because the longer they fight, the closer Majin Buu gets to being
freed. But before that, during the fight between Piccolo and Gohan, emotions
are running rampant, both have to come face to face with how they’ve changed.
Piccolo thinking Gohan has forgotten him, shuns him, or even worse, pities him.
Gohan tries to get through that he’s never felt that way, this is all Babidi’s
magic talking, tricking Piccolo into thinking this, but in actuality Gohan has
always viewed Piccolo as an incredible mentor, even to this day. Sadly though,
none of it seems to be getting through.
Eventually the two fights come to a close, Dabura beating
Trunks near to death, at this point just toying with him, and Piccolo about to
end the fight with Gohan. However, once Gohan sees Dabura about to go for the finishing
blow, one giant blast of energy, a spark erupts in Gohan, he unleashes a giant
punch to Piccolo so he can get away, showing just how much he was holding back
that even in the state he was in, he could have beaten Piccolo at any moment.
All Piccolo can do is witness Gohan jump in front of the blast at the very last
second to protect his prodigy, just like Piccolo did for Gohan all those years
ago. Stunned by the act he’s just seen, something snaps in Piccolo. Gohan
collapses to the ground, not dead, but certainly by death's door. Dabura, now
drained of energy, draws his sword, ready to take out Trunks and Gohan the old
fashioned way, but Piccolo intercepts; breaking Dabura’s arm and sends him
flying, he quickly charges up a Special Beam Cannon and blows a hole right
through Dabura’s chest, killing him. With Buu’s pod already beginning to hatch,
Piccolo knows they have no chance on beating it, unless he makes the ultimate
sacrifice. He quickly tells Trunks to apologies to Gohan when he wakes up, and
to tell him how proud he is of him. Trunks flies off, carrying Gohan, and
Piccolo unleashes all of his energy in one giant blast, consuming both Babidi
and Majin Buu.
King Kai, viewing the whole ordeal, grieves for the loss of
Piccolo, and thanks him for his noble sacrifice. But-before he can finish, he
notices, the pod Buu was hatching from, is still intact, and Buu still emerges,
completely unscathed. Once Trunks arrives at the Lookout with Gohan, he gives
him a senzu bean so he’ll regain consciousness. He learns of Piccolo’s sacrifice
and explodes with agony, but he has no time to grieve. King Kai contacts them
and informs them Buu survived and is free on Earth. He explains that he has
been looking into the history of Babidi and Buu. Babidi was from a planet of
magic users, what our heroes know as Ki, they call magic, and they didn’t use
it for fighting, but for sorcery, and Babidi was one of the most powerful, but
dreamed of being the only magic user so he would
be the most powerful. Through his experiments he ended up draining all the
magic from the other citizens of his planet, killing them, and creating Buu.
They then went around the universe, killing other magic users, however,
eventually Buu’s power would run out, and need to recharge. So during this time
Babidi would have to travel to planets with powerful magic users, have them use
all their power so Buu could absorb it, though he knew he needed protection so
he used his magic to recruit Dabura. Thankfully, now that Babidi is dead thanks
to Piccolo, this’ll be the last Buu, once he runs out of energy, he’ll die permanently.
On the other hand, now that Piccolo is dead, that means they have no Dragon
balls, and no Hyperbolic Time Chamber.
While Gohan recovers and they try to think of a plan to stop
Buu from destroying the Earth, but they quickly realize, Buu isn’t destroying
the Earth. Any and all havoc he caused, he did under Babidi’s rule, so, with no
Babidi around, Buu is just doing whatever he wants to do, in this case, eating
sweets. However, King Kai suggests that Gohan travels to his world so he can
train him, just in case, while the other Z Fighters will keep an eye on Buu. So
Gohan heads off to train with King Kai, just like his dad did; and seeing as he
is much stronger than his dad was when they trained, it shouldn’t take as long,
and who is helping him with the training? None other than Goku and Piccolo. The
next several days on Earth see Buu be taken in by Mr Satan and Videl, who
learns from the Z Fighters that as long he stays happy, nothing bad should
happen to Earth. For the first few days this seems to work, they give him food,
they become his friend, even adopt a puppy. But, like in the original show,
something bad has to happen to the puppy. In this case, the puppy nearly gets
runover by a car, but Buu makes it explode to save him. This causes a panic,
police start shooting, the dog gets caught in the crossfire, and this causes
Buu to go ballistic and start murdering people, so Videl and Satan run out of
there and head for shelter on the Lookout, along with every other DBZ
character.
With Gohan still training, the Z Fighters are forced to head
down there and confront Buu. Once down there, they know they can’t beat him in
a straight up fight, but they are much smarter than Buu and hope that they can
come up with a strategy against him. At first it seems to work; they keep
forcing Buu to use up his energy with regeneration and stray blasts, Trunks is
even able to do a lot of damage using Dabura’s sword. But, the strategy doesn’t
last forever, eventually Buu is able to blast them all and they are down for
the count, Trunks being able to last the longest, but eventually Buu knocks him
down as well. Just as Buu is about to destroy the world for annoying him, Gohan
shows up, having completed his training and gives all the others senzu beans.
Gohan uses the Kaioken to overpower Buu and uses the same
strategy the Z Fighters did, try to drain him of all his energy as fast as
possible. But Buu decides to use a strategy as well, he fires off a blast at
the Z Fighters, Gohan gets in the way and takes the full blast. Buu uses this
to his advantage and strikes Gohan several times and attacks him with another
energy blast, severely injuring him. With nowhere else left to turn, Gohan
decides to use the Spirit Bomb as a last ditch effort, with the Z Fighters
distracting Buu so Gohan can charge it up. Using King Kai to speak to the
entire planet, Gohan quickly absorbs a lot of energy, but he knows it’s not
enough to take down Buu, so King Kai expands his reach to the entire galaxy,
with dozens of planets recognising the Z Fighters, they instantly submit their
energy, and suddenly Gohan is strong enough.
He unleashes the spirit bomb and Buu attempts to deflect it
with all his might, but even with all this energy, it isn’t enough, so Gohan
unleashes another technique he learnt on Kai’s planet, the Special Beam Cannon,
and in the other hand, the Kamehameha. Combining the two and using that to
increase the power of the Spirit Bomb, he’s eventually able to consume Buu in
the energy and drain him of all of his power. In the aftermath, Buu has returns
to his pod form, to which Trunks immediately cuts in half, killing Buu for
good.
We then transition to one year later. Gohan has hung up his
Gi and has retired to a life as a business man, and is set to marry Videl. While
Trunks is now in charge of the Z Fighters, having shown great leadership skills
in the battle against Buu, and now they explore the galaxy, saving lives. A
perfect conclusion to the Dragon Ball Series.
So not only is my version of the story much more streamlined, getting rid of Buu’s transformations, fusions
and an unnecessarily long story, this is much more simple, has in my opinion
well developed character arcs and makes a lot of the characters far more useful
than they were in the original Majin Buu arc. But that’s just my opinion. I
hope you enjoyed reading and maybe some day I’ll get around to fixing GT.
-Danny
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