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tigerlover16-uk · 7 years

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Dragon Ball GT:My thoughts on the Baby Saga. A sort of review

The Baby Saga is often regarded by a lot of GT's defenders and even it's detractors as perhaps the best Saga in the entire series. Do I agree? Well, I haven't re-watched the Shadow Dragons Saga yet, so I can't give a clear answer yet, but going off of memory and everything I know going forward... I'm willing to say that for now, yeah, I think it probably is GT's best Saga. It's certainly leagues above the previous really boring Saga, I'll tell you that, and even if I haven't re-watched it yet I already know for sure it's better than Super 17 (Oh God, do I really have to watch that?).

But does that mean it's a great Saga, or that it can make the whole series worth watching? TLDR version: No, it's not great. It's very good, but it has it's fair share of issues that drag it down a lot. And it's worth watching on it's own, but it doesn't save what's an all around bad series.

Long version is a lot more complicated. I'm going to be going into a lot of detail about this, so bear with me, this is going to be a long ride.

I'm going to get the positives out of the way first, since the problems and things I'm mixed on are a lot easier to explain and discuss and I don't want to give the impression that I'm just harping on this Saga.

The story here is really good and interesting. While it starts off slow with the Machine Mutants arc, once baby shows up and especially when he arrives on earth, the arc has a lot of really great tension and is easy to get sucked into. There's plenty of interesting twists and turns, the drama ranges from good to great, apart from a few moments. And it's easy to care about the conflict and want to see the characters succeed in the end. The story is mostly very well paced, the villain's plans and execution of them are great, and it has a lot of that epic feeling you'd expect from Z.

The score and animation are both beautiful, and are a big part of making this story an enjoyable and often epic experience. The music for the fights is appropriately epic and tense, and the themes for the more emotional scenes like Pan getting through to Golden Ape Goku and his subsequent transformation into Super Saiyan 4 are just breathtaking. There was definitely some good emotion in this story. And while I felt a few of the fight scenes were too short or anti-climactic (Uub's initial clash with Baby for one) and a few of them cut away from the action or just had the characters talking in between attacks too often, for the most part the action in the saga was intense with some great fight scenes, though I wouldn't count them among the best in the franchise. Also side note, they really spammed the energy blasts too much for my liking.

Oh, and the Super Saiyan 4 transformation. Probably the best and most iconic new element to come out of GT, and for good reason. While I really like Super Saiyan Blue both for continuing the simplicity of the SSJ designs and the mystic blue colouring working well for what's supposed to be Godly Ki, there's no denying that from a visual perspective the Super Saiyan 4 form is just freaking cool. While i personally would have gone for golden fur if I was designing it, the red coat, tail and wild hairdo, along with the animalistic eyes give the form a cool, beastial feel that just REALLY works well. Harkening back to the great ape transformation, it feels much more like what I'd expect a "Super Saiyan" to look like, feeling much more like a proper transformed state than the glowing blond hair and green eyes ever did. The method behind transforming into it was pretty interesting, and the golden Great Ape form (Both of which were really cool too) was a good callback to the filler-only flashback of the original Super Saiyan, showing that the writers were at least trying to make GT feel like a proper continuation of the story. Sad that the show as a whole structurally fails as such, but I have a loooong rant at the end to cover that.

So overall despite everything else I'm going to say here, know that this Saga was an enjoyable experience for what it was and the production values were great, but I'm going to be very frank with the rest of this little essay. Onto the stuff I'm mixed about.

The mini-arc that starts off this saga, despite it's great premise, felt fairly lacking to me. Basically to sum it up, our heroes Goku, Pan, Trunks and Giru pass by a planet which Giru claims to be his homeworld, so the gang decide to stop by so Giru can meet up with his friends and family. However, the place at first seems deserted and really creepy, giving our heroes the impression that something is wrong. it turns out that this planet is where Dr Myuu, the evil scientist we'd been introduced to late in the last saga as an apparent evil mastermind seeking the dragon balls for universal domination is based, along with his army of robot servants, called Machine Mutants (I'm a little unclear about whether they're just robots or if the mutants thing implies they're something along the lines of Androids 17 and 18. Though looking around I think the Machine Mutants name might have just been a dub thing). He orders his most powerful servant, General Rilldo and his squad of elite robots to capture our heroes so he can disect them and research their biology for his own uses, and steal their Dragon Balls. It also turns out Giru is supposedly a traitor working for Rilldo and leads our heroes into a trap, so Goku ends up fighting some robots, then Rilldo shows up and turns Trunks to metal and sending him off to Myuu's lab. Goku fights Rilldo while Pan goes off to find Trunks, some shenanigans as she tries to save the say herself only it doesn't go that well, Goku gets captured too, then right when Dr Myuu is about to dissect them all Giru reveals that he's actually NOT a traitor, frees Goku and Pan, reveals he and Trunks had their own plan to sabotauge Dr Myuu, they fight his ultimate creation Baby who apparently goes down after one combined hit, but he really survives as a bit of goop and hitches a ride with an escaping Dr Myuu, who our heroes fail to stop but decide that since they've defeated his ultimate weapon and pretty much screwed up his operations that he's no threat to the galaxy anymore, so just let him go. But then it turns out Baby was somehow the evil mastermind behind all this and he regenerates and crushes Myuu's head, getting a dragon ball which he uses to lure our heroes into a trap in the next two episodes. And so the Z fighters leave the planet to find the rest of the Dragon Balls, killing off Rilldo in anti-climactic fashion right as they're leaving.

Did you get all that? I know that probably seems like a rushed description that leaves a lot of questions if you haven't watched the episodes, but I've got a LOT of ground to cover and this is just me giving my thoughts on the saga, not a recap, so sue me.

Honestly this arc was just okay. On paper it feels like it should be really interesting, a robot planet and the general story make it seem like this should be a very cool story, but it's execution (Like so much of GT) is a bit lacking. And the biggest problem is partly a holdover from the last Saga, and it can be summed up in one word: Investment.

(Oh yeah, I'm going to be giving some of my thoughts on the previous saga as well in this part and a few others to better explain my thoughts on the Baby Saga as a whole, so please excuse me if at some points it feels like I'm just rambling a lot).

Part of the biggest problem I realized I had with the Black Star Dragon Balls Saga is that I wasn't invested in this cast of characters. After jetisonning the majority of the supporting cast with the end of the second episode, we were left with Goku, Pan and Trunks as the stars of the Saga along with a robot sidekick called Giru, who swallowed the dragon ball radar and thus gained the ability to detect the Dragon Balls himself, so he kinda needs to hang around. Now, choosing to focus on a smaller cast of characters for the first arc wasn't the problem here. The problem is, these particular characters the way they were written... were not an interesting pair.

Goku faired the best of them overall I think, but the gimick of turning him back into a kid and the fact that he acted more like his kid self at certain parts just felt kind of weird and off-putting, especially when I later realized my biggest problem with it was how this development was pretty much the physical embodiment of the structural problem with GT as a sequel series. but again, that's for later. Pan, who I'll cover when I discuss her role in the arc as a whole, was almost completely unbearable for the previous Saga and was similarly annoying in these set of episodes, even though she did have some good moments.

And Trunks? I'm going to be honest, I was never a big fan of kid Trunks in Z. I didn't hate him or find him annoying or anything like some people, I just thought he was kind of okay, not all that interesting on his own. I much preferred Goten. But I'll give him credit, when he had Goten to bounce off of their dynamic could be pretty fun, and his more emotional moments in regards to Vegeta's character development were well done. But in GT? Honestly, I don't know if this was just me personally talking, but Trunks in this show this far was just the definition of meh. He wasn't annoying or unlikeable, he was just a bit bland. He served as an alright straight man and the more mature one of the group (Even if his introduction as trying to shirk his responsibilties as Capsule Corp CEO really don't paint him as such at first glance), but he really wasn't that interesting as a character. Just sort of... there for me. And honestly, looking at him a lot of the time I just kinda wish I was watching Future Trunks instead.

And Giru was... boring. He had no character apart from being the sorta cute robot sidekick that makes annoying noises and gets abused by Pan (Making her oh so much more likeable). Honestly he felt entirely pointless apart from one episode where he was kinda cool, but that was my least favourite episode for other reasons so I never really liked him.

So to sum up, we had one good character who also had a bit of a distracting gimick, one bland character, one terribly written character that feels like depressingly wasted potential, and a worthless character. Yeah, with a cast like this and stories that either felt like a weaker rehash of an older story or just weren't that interesting and with uninspired comedy and action, I was really, really bored by the end of the first Saga of GT. And since I wasn't invested in the characters, that really affected how I felt about the Machine Mutants arc.

On paper I feel this arc should work, because a lot of the writing is good and the action, while not all that great, was a big step up from what had come before. But I couldn't care that much because I didn't care about most of these characters at all. Giru's supposed face turn was the worst of it. The show seems to expect us to feel shocked and betrayed about this revelation, and to feel sorry for Pan and how hurt she was about this turn of events and everything else happening. But the fact is, I wasn't upset. I was apathetic. Why should I care that this boring robot with no interesting characteristics or real purpose other than I assume failed kid appeal might be a traitor? While I think I cared more as a kid, as an adult watching this I was just shrugging my shoulders and saying "Okay, so let's move on to the next part". And any efforts to make me sympathise with Pans feelings fell flat due to her poor characterisation. And while I cared if the characters survived, because I'm a decent human being and I do really love Goku however he's portrayed, I wasn't really on the edge of my seat for a lot of this arc. The action was okay, there were some good moments, when the revelation that Giru wasn't a traitor happened I just shrugged again and watched the rest of the episode mildly interested. If I cared about the characters more, I might have enjoyed this arc a fair bit, but as it was I remember having a constant sense of "Just get to the good parts" throughout most of it and it feels like they didn't really come. Just meh all around.

I think this was also why I thought the Saga really improved the moment we got back to earth. After so many episodes with just these four characters travelling around on a bunch of underwhelming adventures, it was just so darn refreshing to get back to the familiar setting and characters of earth. Not that I don't have my issues with how many of the characters are portrayed, but it was sitll a big improvement.

As for the villains here? Wasted potential. I described this in a previous post, but it bears repeating. General Rilldo was an interesting concept on his own, and honestly I wish he'd been the main villain of his own Saga. He's evil sure, but he actually seems to have a sense of comraderie with his fellow robots, making him perhaps the one good boss villain we've had in a Dragon Ball series, his design while not great was decent and his demeaner and powers made him an intimidating foe and just really cool and dangerous in his own right. He's stronger than Majin Buu, can regenerate as long as he's surrounded by metal to absorb (On a planet that seems entirely made of metal), and can shoot a beam that gives anyone it strikes the Han Solo carbanite treatment, probably the single most op attack outside of Akkuman's power to blow people up by harnessing the evil in their hearts. This guy was awesome and interesting in his own right with plenty of potential for some good development and creative, intense battles. So what does he amount to?

He has one good fight with Goku, then disappears until the episode after the gang already foiled Dr Myuu's plans, wherein he gets beaten by a combined beam attack from Goku, Pan and Trunks. Which not only doesn't make much sense considering his pre-established regenerating ability, but feels increadibly anti-climactic. Oh and also apparently he was being controlled by Baby too, which really seems kind of pointless unless Baby just wanted to try and abosrb some of his power for himself, but it just made me raise my eyebrow and wonder what was the point of that since last we saw of Baby he was fleeing on Myuu's ship and we next see him on that damaged ship the Z Fighters come across. Okay, so how'd he manage to come back and possess Rilldo, and then fly on ahead of the gang to attack that other ship? It was just kind of confusing and pointless.

My problem with Rilldo is basically the same issue I have with characters like Dedoria and Tagoma. He's a really good elite minion character, but we don't see nearly enough of him to make use of his full potential as a villain, and he had a lot of it so it's just disheartening.

Especially when you compare him to Dr Myuu. The guy was boring. Really, really boring. I honestly can't remember much about him at this point apart from the goofy accent Funimation gave him, no idea how he sounds in Japanese. He's underdeveloped and his character just amounts to generic evil scientist guy who's evil, backstabs minions that are no longer of use to him and his overall motivation is that he's power hungry and insane. That's it. There's no depth to this guy, he's like a low budget Dr Gero with a worse design and none of what made Gero interesting in his own right. His introduction sets him up as some sort of mysterious and threatening big bad, but when we actually meet him he just becomes so much less interesting and generic compared to Rilldo. And then he has that breakdown when he finds out Trunks discovered and tampered with Baby, and I think we were supposed to feel sorry for him like Pan did, buuut... I just couldn't.

Maybe part of that was the delivery of his voice actor, which doesn't sell it as all that upsetting, but I had no reason to feel sorry for this creep. Myuu was a bland villain, a horrible person with no redeemable qualities on display and he did nothing to earn my sympathy. I heard someone say this scene made them feel sorry for him because they thought he was just insane, and yeah, I do sympathise with mental illness and all that. But between how he was portrayed both last saga and here, and the general way he behaved before and during his breakdown... no, I don't think this was simple mental illness. I think he was just generically evil mad scientist guy who was just pushed to having a breakdown in that moment because he was horrified his plans for domination and doing horrible things to the people of the universe were foiled and what he believed was his finest work was ruined.

And if he was mentally ill, while I would feel sorry for him, I would feel more offended and disgusted that the writers would include a mentally ill character only to portray them like THIS. Fiction has a long and shameful history of portraying the mentally ill as violent, disgusting criminals that are a danger to those around them, and it's contibuted to society's mistreatment and abuse of the mentally ill. So to have a mentally ill character who's an evil, mass murdering madman who wants to backstab everyone who's loyal to and cares about him, perform twisted experiments on the corpses of his enemies and victims and take over the universe for his own greedy ambitions... no. This is a TERRIBLE use of a mentally ill character if that was the intention. I don't think that was what they were going for, so I didn't feel sorry for him during his breakdown. Like with most of the main cast, I just wasn't invested.

So, with all I've ranted on was this a bad start to the saga? Eh, I thought maybe at first, but like I said, the action's decent and it had at least one good idea. So, I just thought it was a meh start that at least set up the real, more interesting villain.

Mercifully too, because once Baby takes over as the main threat, everything starts to become a million times better. I already did a post a few days ago covering my thoughts on the two episodes after the Machine Mutants mini-arc so go read that for full details, but I'll say that, while a few of Baby's traits make him seem like a rehash of Buu and partly Cell here, that quickly becomes a non issue and they effictively sell how creepy a villain Baby is. WIth his mannerisms and disturbing, The Things-esque power to possess people by turning to goop and sinking into their bodies, it makes the character terrifying and makes him feel unique and different enough from previous villains in his own right. And things get even better when he arrives on earth as Goku and the gang are still off hunting for the Dragon Balls. In three episodes, Baby arrives on Earth, starts gradually possessing the saiyan characters there, before working his way up to Vegeta, the tension rising higher all the while before he takes control of Vegeta, using the saiyan prince as his final host before infecting the entire planet with parasites that put them under his hypnotic control. Making Baby the one villain besides briefly King Piccolo to effectively take over the Earth. Wow. And during that fight we learn his backstory too.

Anyone remember the Tuffles? The race of technologically advanced, humanoid aliens that lived on what became Planet Vegeta before the Saiyans massacred them? Well, before they were all killed in a strike orchestrated by King Vegeta, their greatest scientists pooled their resources and some tuffle dna to create a powerful bio-weapon that they sent into space that would eventually evolve into a powerful, parasitic life-form that would take revenge on the saiyans, destroying them and rebuilding the tuffle race and their empire. Now this backstory is a fantastic concept, and it really helps to tie this saga into the lore of the franchise and create a villain with a fascinating motivation that gives him a really good, logical reason to want to attack the saiyans and do battle with Goku. This great motivation and concept are one of the things that really help sell Baby, which is unfortunate given it kinda reflects what I'm going to say about him in a bit because while it's a great idea, it has a few issues.

For one, the portrayal of the saiyans arriving on planet plant in their pods and King Vegeta being the one to lead the massacre of the Tuffle race doesn't gel at all with the backstory of the saiyans King Kai establishes early on in Z (And it seems to become a tradition in other media involving the Tuffles to make the whole backstory even more convoluted from what I've seen), where King Kai seemed to imply it happened too long ago for King Vegeta to be the one to lead the attack, and definitely before the saiyans made a deal with another race to be able to travel across space. Plus how the original backstory played out, the saiyans were supposedly a race that also inhabited the same planet as the Tuffles, but the two races apparently just stayed seperate from each other and didn't interact much until one day the saiyans randomly attacked, starting a war that ended one night when the full moon transformed all the saiyans into great apes. A pretty good backstory on it's own, and while the idea of the saiyans invading and turning into great apes carries through to GT, literally everything else about the set up is changed.

Now retcons are nothing new, Dragon Ball and Z had plenty of them, but with a few exceptions they all normally fit in really well with the story, served as decent answers to open ended questions and tied up loose ends, or they were at least handled well enough that you could buy the different interpretation. The revisions to the Tuffle backstory here though? Honestly, given that a lot of things in this saga are built on lore established in Z's filler so it's obvious the writers must have watched Z, the retcons to the Tuffle backstory don't make any sense and can't be rectified with Z's interpretation of events. The only explanation that would make any sense about how this could still work if we're taking this as genuinely a follow up to Z is if King Kai was lying and making stuff up in places when he was telling Goku about the saiyans backstory, which yeah King Kai is shown to not be as all-knowing as he tries to pass himself off as, but this makes him look pathetically incompetant and ignorant if that is the case.

If we want to accept this as an alternate universe take (Which GT technically is, but it wasn't meant as such at the time so i won't count it as in how I choose to judge it, which'll factor in to another criticism later) like the movies that don't fit snugly into canon, then fine, the new backstory works on it's own, but for something trying to tie into Z's continuity as a direct sequel... no. Just, no. So while the reasons behind Baby's creation and his subsequent motivations are fantastic, the ham-fisted retooling of the Tuffle backstory hurts the presentation a bit.

Also, while it might have been explained better in the Japanese version, the dub at least does a poor job explaining the part where he ended up in Dr Myuu's lab. Apparently, he created Dr Myuu and programmed him to think he was actually Baby's creator, but he was just using Myuu to help him develop a more powerful form for himself that could stand up to the saiyans. And somehow Dr Myuu found out about the Black star dragon balls, though all that and how Baby knows about earth are poorly explained or not at all (Please tell me the subs do a better job), and, and it's all just pretty convoluted and confusing.

Honestly it felt like the writers had a great idea, but then tried way too hard to make it complex to try and make this backstory seem as "Deep" as possible and be surprising, when really it's a bit head scratching and combined with the aforementioned retcons just makes everything needlessly messy and confusing. Honestly, wouldn't it have made a lot more sense if Dr Myuu was a Tuffle scientist who'd managed to escape the planet before the saiyans massacred his race, and he did create Baby himself partly using his own dna and memories and having events play out largely the same as they ended up doing? As well as turning himself into an android like Dr Gero to extend his life while also creating the Machine Mutants, going insane after finding out the saiyans were killed by Freeza, robbing him of his own revenge so he decided to take over the universe himself to outdo Freeza as compensation? Just saying, it would have made things flow a whole lot more smoothly. As it is, this backstory sounds very great on paper, until you start analysing certain aspects of it and it becomes a real mess.

So yeah, his backstory sounds good at first, but it's a real clunker that could have been ironed out better. But does that stop his take over of the planet and subsequent actions from being creepy, awesome and tense as all heck? Thankfully, no! Just about everything he does in these episodes is great, despite the issues his confrontation with Vegeta was well handled, and then once Goku and friends return to earth only to be confronted by their possessed relatives, it's all really great drama. After managing to possess Trunks and smashing up Giru, robbing Goku and Pan of some of their few remaining allies and backing them right up into a corner, Baby then proceeds to confront Goku in Vegeta's body, dominate him in a fight and then seemingly MURDER Goku, leaving Pan, Mr Satan and Buu in shock and horror as everything goes to heck. And then Baby uses the Black Star Dragon Balls to create his own new version of the Tuffle Planet, where he plans to transfer the enslaved human race to use them to rebuild the Tuffles society and spread his empire throughout the universe, undoing everything our heroes had worked so hard in all the previous episodes to accomplish up to this point and leave us on a cliffhanger where all hope seems officially lost.

That. Was. All. BRILLIANT! While there were a few minor complaints I could lobby at these episodes and that backstory was sloppy as I've explained, it only slightly detracts from what was a very well executed plan that sets Baby up as a powerful, disturbing and fearsome foe and ramps the tension right up to eleven. It was a ton of fun to watch and is some of the best set up to a villain in all of Dragon Ball, and if things continued as great as they did here with Baby then he could have easily been one of the best villains in the series.

Sadly though, this is the point where things start to fall flat. While everything about his introduction and rise to power except the execution of his backstory was almost perfect, everything about Baby as a villain after the main action moves to the Tuffle Planet becomes very... meh.

Honestly I think his set-up set the bar a bit too high on the "Crowning moment of Awesome" stunts meter, and since it was a while before he really got to do anything as close to as awesome as taking over humanity and beating Goku, he would have needed to rely on his personality and mannerisms to sell him as an interesting villain from here out until he became a golden Great Ape. And that's where his shortcomings become clear.

Because while he starts off terrifying and just plain creepy, he's aleady possessed and taken over all of humanity by this point, so his gimick of turning to goop and infecting people stops becoming a factor from then on, taking away the creepy factor somewhat. Kind of like where Cell stopped absorbing people after 18, becoming less creepy and more just smug and in love with himself in his later forms, though still entertaining and threatening. But Unfortunatly, Baby just doesn't have as much of a personality or charm as most of the major DBZ villains to carry him without that creepy factor, so he gradually becomes increasingly less interesting after taking over the world. His personality from this point really does just feel petulant, petty, cruel and a bit whiny at parts. And I don't mean whiny and petulant in the same way as Zamasu, who's demeanor and some of his dialogue would at least make him amusing and the kind of person you took great satisfaction in seeing get their face beaten in, just normal whiny. Overall he justs comes off as "Generic Evil Space Emperor guy #99926547". He's still threatening, but only on the basis of being much more powerful than the good characters, the drama tends to revolve around the other characters like Pan being confronted by her possessed parents, and when characters do confront Baby before Goku achieves SS4, mainly just Uub, the conflicts are very brief and as I'll explain in a bit, the results there are iffy.

The show seems to be wanting to set up some kind of a moral conflict with Baby's takeover of the human race, with Goku confronting him about how the saiyans paid for their evil ways already and the earth didn't deserve to suffer for his petty revenge, and later on Baby saying something along the lines of bringing peace with Goku reprimanding him over how stripping humanity and presumably all other races in the universe Baby wants to control of their free will is not the way to do it. This could have been a fascinating moral debate and really deepen Baby's character if they actually went deeper into this, but it's only brought up in those two instances and nothing ever comes of it, with Baby just quickly dismissing and moving on with what he was doing both times. He ends up coming off like he just wants to take over the universe for the sake of being an evil ruler. And his claims that humanity under his control are now the new race of Tuffles... makes no sense, since genetically they're all still humans. Technically he's still the only being in the universe even close to a real Tuffle since he has Tuffle cells mixed into his DNA, so he just sounds delusional there. If I had been writing this, I would have had Baby assign Bulma and Earth's top scientists to work on a way to clone an entire civilization's worth of new Tuffle's from the Tuffle cells in his DNA, or have the Z Fighters under his control go out to eventually find the earths Dragon Balls to wish the Tuffles back to life himself. His plans for humanity would basically be making them his brainwashed slaves serving the Tuffles, and he would still want to conquer the other races in the universe in the same way. But actually explore the implications of that. Show Baby talking to Bulma and some scientists about his plans for the Tuffles, and have him show genuine joy and happiness over the idea of bringing the Tuffles back. Maybe have him shed a few tears that all his years of waiting and planning are paying off.

Then when Goku comes back and starts to overpower him as an SS4, have Baby break down over this and how he's going to be the saviour of the universe, keeping all races subdued so that all conflicts would cease. Only to have Goku drag him through the coals for his methods and all the moral implications that would arise from his turning all living creatures into his puppets (In this scenario none of the possessed characters would show any personality at all at most times and would basically come off as soulless robots, with only the possessed Z Fighters, Videl, Chichi and Bulma showing any slightly twisted hints of their own personalities just to screw with Pan and Goku). But Baby would refuse to listen, thinking that Goku's just evil and here to take away everything he's worked so hard for like the Saiyans did to his race in general, having a complete mental breakdown as Bulma then transforms him into his Golden Great Ape form, where he really isn't in control at any point. Just imagine the dialogue and emotion we could have gotten out of this scenario? And I came up with this on the spot as I was watching the episode.

I really liked the potential of that conflict, but it just felt like the show only cared about hinting at the possibilities there rather than exploring it, which just leave Baby feeling flat from the second half of the saga onwards.

Also, I didn't like most of his designs. His first two designs were just bleah all around, and Baby-Vegeta was... I don't want to say bad, but something just didn't look right about it to me. I don't know how to describe it, but I guess it just felt a little too try-hard and coming off a bit silly in parts that were meant to make him look cool. The only design I wholesale liked was his Golden Great Ape form, which was where he was at his least interesting as a character since by that point he was mostly just going nuts to the point of gleefully opening fire on his own people (Not that he hadn't endangered them willingly before. So much for wanting to rebuilt his beloved race, which he claimed they were now).

So, overall? Baby was an effective villain, but between the designs, the convoluted nature of his backstory and the poorly done retcons that just seemed to be done in a forced attempt to add weight to his possession of Vegeta as his main host that come to the detriment of the story, and his increasingly less interesting character as the arc goes on, Baby just becomes a big mixed bag of wasted opportunity. Not that I think he was an overall bad villain, he started off fantastic, he was still very threatening and he brought about a lot of great moments (And a bunch of bad ones, but again, be patient) but let's just say Team Four Star's placement of him on their best villains list was pretty fitting. He's not top 10 material in any way. Which is sad, because he felt like he should be right up there with the likes of Freeza and King Piccolo on concept alone. The humour the saga had was very hit or miss. Nothing really struck out to me as pretty funny in the Machine Mutants arc or the episodes immediately after it. Some of the jokes were just outright pacepalm worthy, like the baby deer trying to nurse from Pan, or they were just meh and didn't do much for me. The only times I really laughed were a bunch of the moments with the Kai's (Can always count on Old Kai to be fun), and I guess some antics in that weird parallel dimension with the space beavers (God that sounds silly), but other than that not a lot sticks out to me.

Okay, I've talked about the Machine Mutants arc, Baby and the hit or miss humour. So, I guess it's time to talk about how the supporting cast was used. For the record, this is where things start to get negative. Because almost NONE of the supporting cast I thought were used particularly well. Not that they were all used badly, some were, but with a lot of other characters it just felt like they were just there... because they kinda had to be, more or less.

The only supporting characters that I thought were used well overall were Kibito Kai and Old Kai. The two of them were actually very helpful and crucial to making sure Goku succeeded in saving the day, Kibito rescuing him from Baby's final attack on earth (Even though that led to it's own issues), sneaking into the lookout to get the sacred water and healing the fallen Saiyan characters (Though I'm still a little unsure whether they were supposed to have been killed by Baby's attack and Kibito's using his mystic Kai powers to bring them back, or if Baby's attack simply injured and scattered them and Kibito simply found and healed them. Again, maybe the Japanese version explains things better but if it did, the dub copped out of explaining this clearly). And Old Kai, apart from just being really amusing, actually came up with some clever ideas and plans that helped to win the day. Arguably they were both more helpful in ultimately saving the day than in the Buu Saga where most of their ideas ended up failing, which, yeah, good job GT.

Wish I could say the same for everyone else.

Starting with the ones I'm not angry over, Goten and Gohan got to be in this Saga. Goten was the first person to fight and get possessed by Baby on earth and we see him going on a date. Cool, having a social life and it's following up on his change of interests established at EoZ. A pity then that impressing said girlfriend is just about the only thing about his character that gets explored outside of him trying to help out in the next two sagas, since quite honestly, he feels kind of meh here. Honestly he comes off as kind of flat compared to Z, and his boringly generic design doesn't help. We lost his much more unique and interesting teenaged look for a white shirt and a hairstyle that together just make him look like "Generic anime guy number 90-something". It's boring, and he doesn't really get to do anything except get possessed and transfer power to Goku (Because God forbid he and Trunks were actually allowed to turn into adult Gotenks and actually do something cool and plot relevant in the final act, right?).

It probably doesn't help for me that his scenes with Valese, the only downtime he has for us to explore his life outside of being involved in all the usual saving the world shenanigans apart from episode 2, were... kinda awkward. And that's entirely because of Valese herself. It feels like the writers wanted her to be the cute, really sheltered character that was endearing in how innocent she was, but... they really overdid it. She just came off as so uninformed and stupid that it was a little creepy. I mean, there's being sheltered, and then there's not knowing how to eat ice cream off a cone when you're supposed to be an adult in your early 20's. How stupid and overprotective were her parents, exactly? Kid Goku would have made sense for that joke because he was completely isolated from humanity besides Grandpa Gohan before Bulma crashed into him, but with an adult woman the joke just doesn't work. In fact, it was a little bit disturbing. She was just awkward, and didn't really play well off of Goten.

Back to Goten himself, while I like the guy just fine, he got so little to do and was such a static character that he came off a little boring here, though cool enough when he tried to save the day himself. Just wish his fight with Baby was longer. Gohan also felt a bit flat. He didn't get any noticeable character moments that showed off his personality, and he only got one cool moment where he recognized something was wrong with Goten so got him to somewhere secluded from Chichi, Videl and Bulma to try and sort that out, though it didn't work. Outside of that, just became another brainwashed servant, which was hit or miss in how that was carried out. It was certainly sad to see Pan's reaction to her brainwashed parents wanting to kill her on the Tuffle planet so props to how well that scene played out, and the ambush when Goku and Pan got back started off well, but the fact that Goku in his base form was able to beat Gohan and Goten pretty easily in their super saiyan states not only made that scene feel anti-climactic and made them both look like a bunch of complete wimps. If Goku had gone super saiyan I wouldn't have minded it, but the two of them had earlier managed to curbstomp Vegeta while working together (Even if Baby was in the drivers seat of Gohan's body), so the result is that all three characters look like wimps compared to kid Goku who's body supposedly can't even sustain his full super saiyan 3 power five minutes later. Other than that his only other contribution is also transferring energy to Goku. Honestly for a character who was practically the co-protagonist of the previous series, Gohan's character and role were pretty meh here.

Vegeta has some good scenes near the start, mostly relating to his interactions with his daughter which were excellent. Bulla for everything we see of her seems like she'd be an interesting character. And that bothers me to no end since after teasing us with some good scenes, she disappears after the story moves to the New Tuffle Planet and she does nothing of significance for the rest of the series. Way to throw away all potential for an interesting character and a possible action girl there, GT. Other than those cute moments, Vegeta only gets an okay fight with the possessed Gohan and Goten before becoming Baby's main host. Which, no, I don't consider that a particularly good use of his character since it takes Vegeta as himself out of the story until the very end and he's just any other puppet for Baby, just the one he happens to use for the rest of the saga. And the evil possessed Vegeta concept just screams re-hash of Majin Vegeta, minus the great character development for Vegeta that lead to and how it helped cap off his redemption arc. The attempts to add some sort of a deeper meaning to this by revealing it was Vegeta's father who massacred the Tuffles as I've already explained was ham-fisted and stupid, so no points there. So much for one of the other most important characters from Z. Now he has to wait until near the very end of the final saga to become actually relevant again.

Oh, and Krillin gets some cameos... and they're nothing special, really they just reinforce that he's the butt monkey and imply that 18 has low expectations of her husband, which I didn't like. And yeah, his design is pretty bad here. I'll rant about why I don't like how Krillin's used in the next saga when I get to it. Also, the show really wastes the potential for Marron to develop an actual character, so minus one more point.

Trunks I pretty much already explained my thought on his role at the start of the saga, it was nice to see him making a clever plan with Giru to beat Myuu, but after he gets back to earth he becomes as quickly irrelevant as the other half-saiyan characters. And he's not that interesting of a character here. And if you're wondering, yeah I am glad Giru was kept out of the rest of the saga. No I am not glad he came back, I just hope he's less pointless going forward.

Mr Satan was... basically Mr Satan. He got a few amusing though not laugh-worthy moments being his usual show-boating self, it was clever how he had Buu help him get around Baby's mind controlling parasites, and he got a few good moments here or there being a supportive grandfather to Pan and when he was about to stand up to Golden Great Ape Baby when he thought all the saiyan character were out for the count and Pan and Goku were dead, but honestly he didn't really contibute anything meaningful to the story on his own, so his use here was just kinda meh, though appropriate for his general role in the cast. Oh, and he also got a goodbye scene with Buu... yeah, let's talk about Buu.

I HATE what this Saga did with Buu. First off, despite how he's pretty much positioned to be extremely helpful, being immune to Baby's control and saving Mr Satan from it, he never does anything significant as himself in this saga apart from sneaking Pan and Mr Satan on to Baby's planet. Which, yeah, the writers could have easily come up with another excuse to that. And despite how he's one of the strongest Z Fighters next to Goku, Buu NEVER fights anyone in this Saga. His first role in a story following his redemption, his first real outing to prove himself useful as a hero and a Z Fighter, and Buu doesn't get one action scene. For crying out loud, despite being not very far away he doesn't even fly in to save Pan when Gohan starts trying to choke her to death, when there's literally nothing stopping him and she needed to be saved by Uub showing up from out of nowhere. Which makes Buu look more stupid and incompetent than he really is. And after that, what does his role amount to? He takes a fatal attack meant for Uub, which results in him sacrificing his physical form to merge his power with Uub to give him a power up.

(Takes deep breath and begins to shake with barely suppressed rage. A few minutes later I take another breath and proceed to talk through gritted teeth)

What. The. Heck!

THIS is what they chose to do with this character? No, no. Just. NO. This moment was completely unearned. The writers sacrifised an interesting and fun character, one with tons of potential for interesting development and interactions with the other supporting characters, a character with a range of cool and useful abilities as well as being one of the few supporting characters to almost match Goku and Vegeta and thus be a critical ally in serious fights. The writers discared Buu, who we'd only JUST gotten to see come back from being eaten by his corrupt counterpart and completing his redemption arc, all just for the sake of giving a far more criminally underdeveloped character a power boost. And what does Majuub, the transformation of Uub that we sacrifised a FAR more interesting charater for the sake of achieving, amount to in the Baby Saga and GT as a whole?

ALMOST NOTHING.

Seriously, Majuub gets one fight with Baby that lasts five minutes, then gets turned to chocolate and eaten by Baby taking him out of the story for several episodes, only coming back to serve as a distraction to stop Baby from whiping out Goku when the other saiyan characters are charging him up. That's it. And while his fight was good, it was far too short for something built up in this fashion and comes off as a slap in the face to any fan who cared about Buu and wanted to see Uub actually used to his full potential. Honestly I didn't remember the scene with Uub in Baby's stomach as I was re-watching the saga, so after I watched Majuub get taken out so quickly I was absolutely livid and left with a bitter feeling as I was watching the next few episodes, since it made it feel that Buu's sacrifice was rendered completely irrelevant and pointless. And yeah that little moment helped, but barely, especially when the results for the rest of the series are that it was still a pointless move.

It's a real sore point for me to see interesting characters with potential get killed off. And yes, I know Buu wasn't entirely dead and his consciousness could still communicate with Uub since they were one being now, but let me ask, when does that ever come up again after that concept is introduced? ... Yeah, that's what I thought. Majin Buu sacrificing himself was just so poorly handled. Buu didn't actually get any good moments himself in GT, and the way his merging with Uub was set up felt like the writers throwing in a concept that could have been interesting without doing anything to earn it. Losing Buu as a seperate character honestly just feels like it wasted more story potential than it offered. Let's compare this incident to Piccolo merging with Kami for a second since that's what this idea most resembles, and I'll explain why Kami becoming one with Piccolo actually worked fine. The two characters from the late part of Dragon Ball were established as being two beings that used to be one. Kami had an interesting character and he got some development through his interactions with Goku, and he continued to be a useful supporting character for the early parts of Z right through the Freeza saga.

In the anime he even gets to be a plot relevant character for the Garlic Jr Saga which, controversial as that was and I haven't watched it in years, I do remember that arc giving Kami some good moments. Kami had plenty of moments to shine and screentime relevant to his position in the cast and the series, but there wasn't really anywhere else to go with him as far as developing him as a character was concerned by the Androids Saga. So merging him with Piccolo, effectively removing him from the cast, didn't feel like a waste since it stopped him from gradually fading into irrelevancy as more higher power characters were introduced. With the position of Earth's Guardian long established as being a role passed on throughout the ages, it also provided the opportunity to bring Dende back and develop him some more as Earth's new Guardian, so we lost one character only to have another we'd all grown to like come back in his place. And most fittingly his merging with Piccolo provided adequate closure to his character and brought things full circle for the two of them, since as well as giving Piccolo more power it purged his heart of any remaining darkness, solidifying Piccolo as a truly heroic character if that wasn't already firmly established with his own character development up to this point. Piccolo and Kami merging together was well executed and perfectly timed, so it didn't feel like Kami as a character was being thrown under a bus all of a sudden just for the sake of plot convenience that didn't even solve the issue it was meant to.

But for all the reasons I've already mentioned, Buu's merging with Uub doesn't work anywhere near as well and is just an insulting waste of Buu's own character. And the worst part is... I wouldn't have even minded if, in a theoretically much better version of GT where be served the role of secondary main character like he logically should have, Buu and Uub merging happened much later in the series. After we'd gotten to see Buu interacting more with the supporting cast properly integrating into the group dynamic. After we'd gotten to see him form some kind of friendly, surrogate familial relationship with Pan, who he really should have interacted with on a personal level and had some sort of relationship with since she's his best friend's grandaughter. And have a decent relationship with Uub too, on that note. And of course, after Buu had gotten plenty more development and made more useful contributions to protecting the earth to make it seem like his character and all the possibilities he had weren't being needlessly tossed aside. And more importantly, Majuub should have won the fight against whatever villain the Z Fighters were battling so the results of this incident were satisfying, though still fittingly bitter sweet.

Because Buu's sacrifise could have been a compelling tragedy if it was done at a more fitting time and didn't feel so close to meaningless in the long run. As it is, Buu's character and his sacrifise felt completely misused and infuriating in how they were executed. The best that comes out of it is that the scene where they merge was fairly touching in it's own right and his goodbye to Mr Satan was pretty sad, though personally I thought that even that was too rushed for it's own good.

And that wasn't even the only aggravating waste of a supporting character. Oh strap yourselves in folks, because Piccolo's use in the story felt equally as bad, if not somehow worse.

Now, I'll say this right off the bat. Piccolo is one of my favourite characters in the franchise, so I take what happens here very personally. His role in the story of the Baby Saga is pretty much completely pointless. He shows up in one episode sensing that somethings up, shows up after Gohan gets possessed by Baby to fire his special beam canon at the guy (Missing him by a mile, might I add) and then just gets blasted by Baby. And we don't see him again until the very last episode of the Saga. The audience is left hanging on what the heck really happened to him in that moment for the rest of the story, and it's never properly explained what happened to him and where he's been when he does show up again. So his earlier scene could have been cut entirely and literally would not have made any difference. In fact, it would have made things a lot better since viewers wouldn't have been left confused about what happened to him and left hanging for so long for no real reason. It's practically a big lipped alligator moment.

And then there's what happens in the final episode of the saga when he does show up. He gives Goku some ki to help him teleport himself and a wayward kid off of the doomed planet earth before it explodes... and stays behind on the planet as it explodes. In his last few moments of life, he telepathically contacts Gohan, explains that the Black Star Dragon Balls are connected to him because of his connection to their creator Kami. And he's decided to nobly sacrifice himself so the Black Star Balls will be turned to stone and can't be used to cause any more damage ever again. This scene was emotionally gripping and well executed. Piccolo's moving goodbye speech to Gohan, his heartbroken reaction to the thought of losing his beloved friend and former mentor, and the music accompanying the breathtaking scenery of the dying planet earth around Piccolo all come together to create a powerful, moving death scene.

And the fact that Piccolo's death was done in a way that was so powerful... makes it all the more aggravating for how STUPID and needlessly mean spirited this whole thing was.

Now to properly explain why killing Piccolo off like this makes me want to pull my hair out in a fit of madness, I need to talk about something that I've wanted to get off my chest since I decided I was going to re-watch GT for the fun of it. For anyone who might be reading this who hasn't actually watched GT or needs a reminder, the Black Star Dragon Balls were introduced in the first episode as a set of even more powerful dragon Balls that Kami had created but stored away in the Lookout at an unspecified time in the past. The biggest differences between them and the normal dragon balls, is that the black star dragon balls scatter across the universe when their shenron (Who's design is a lazy recolour of normal shenron, way to be creative) grants a wish... and they set off a timer where the planet they're used on will be destroyed within a year afterwards. I HATE this idea. I hate it so, so much. And 90% of that has to do with the outright HORRIBLE implications it opens up for Kami's character. WHY would Kami create these darn things? I mean, Kami by the time we met him was old, bitter and jaded with humanity, but he wasn't a monster or a creep willing to risk the fate of the planet he'd sworn to protect. There's no logical reason for why Kami would need to create something so dangerous, especially when he'd already produced a perfectly useful and less destructive set of Dragon Balls. We never get any explanation as to why he would make these things, and none of the interpretations one might be able to come up with in pondering this idea paints his character in a very good light.

At best they could have been created as an experiment to see how much more powerful a shenron he could make, with the whole "Destroys the planet it's used on" idea being an unintentional side effect that he only figured out after the fact and so he hid them away, which doesn't ruin his character much but it does turn him into a reckless idiot, especially with what ended up happening. And at worst they make him look like an intentionally reckless creep that was willing to potentially endanger the planet for the sake of an experiment to see if he could really make these things. Like, what if he intended to wish himself to go to a planet that was much better off and more peaceful and leave humanity to rot? Probably isn't what happened, but it's as valid a headcanon as any else, and that's what makes the Black Star Balls existence really disturbing.

Whatever way you look at them, there's not only no reason for them to exist, but any explanation there is harms Kami's character in retrospect. Especially since it means he's now officially the only guardian in Earth's history who's actions directly led to the end of the world, no matter how briefly that lasted. The Black Star Balls are the foundation of the plot for the first half of GT, and that foundation is one of the biggest and most infuriating plot holes in the entire franchise. And it's made even more stupid by the fact that not only did Emperor Pilaf somehow find out about them, but apparently King Kai knows about them too and he was able to do some research into them by the sound of things. Somehow, even if it's not a well known fact, knowledge of these balls DID get out there, even though Kami obviously never gave them to humanity as a gift like the other dragon balls. And no, we don't get an explanation for how Pilaf found out about the or how King Kai knows, so that just adds to the stupidity and raises further questions.

There's also this other plot hole. Why didn't the black star balls disappear when Kami merged with Piccolo? It was a big deal how the original dragon balls turned to stone after the two characters merged, to the point they had to get Dende to recreate them from the old ones, so how come the black star balls were exempt from that? And don't tell me Dende's using the dragon statue to create the new balls reanimated them, because then Dende would have had to be the one to die. The black star dragon balls existence is a stupid contrivance that violates the previous series logic and defiles one of it's most underrated supporting characters all to set off a stupid plot, and the horrible way this was all executed to kill off Piccolo makes his death feel needlessly mean spirited and completely unfair, and the fact it's the only major character death to stick besides Android 16 and also Buu in this series makes it all the more aggravating.

I might not even be so mad about it if the next saga doesn't get Piccolo stranded in Hell where despite Goku hoping he gets back to heaven, we never find out if that's the case. So Piccolo gets to do nothing useful for one saga, and he gets stranded in the deep dark pits of Hell for the rest of the series with no indication he gets the happy ending his character deserves for all the development and experiences he's been through. All for a cheap attempt at "Drama". Screw you GT, way to insult one of the franchises best characters and everyone who was a fan of him!

(Deep breaths)

And, yeah, now it's time for me to talk about Pan, isn't it. Okay, this is another one where I'm going to have to describe my reaction to her right from the beginning. I'm not going to hold any punches on this one, because personally Pan to me was the most disappointing waste of a character in Dragon Ball history.

She gets a pretty decent introduction in the first episode, but then she quickly becomes a whiny, self-centred and pretty selfish, entitled, arrogant brat completely lacking the skills to justify her boasts. She starts off the adventure by sneaking onto the ship and setting it off prematurely, also denying us the chance to see Goten in a leading role for the saga in the process, and in doing so she ends up damaging the ship and causing it to crash on an alien planet, almost getting Goku and Trunks killed and thus dooming the mission and the earth. Then throughout the Saga she proceeds to whine a lot and be a hindrance almost more than she actually meaningfully contributes to conflicts, making her increasingly unlikeable and tiresome as the episodes passed with only a couple good moments here and there. And then the final episode of the Saga became my least favourite episode of the whole show, possibly the whole franchise simply on how badly it FAILED at it's job of making Pan's supposed character arc work and justifying her place on the team.

Oh yeah, Pan has this bit of a character arc where she's fed up of being treated as a little kid and wasn't allowed to go on the mission to gather the dragon balls at first. On paper it's not a bad idea, but if it wasn't executed poorly up to this point, episode 15 killed it completely. Basically after overhearing Goku and Trunks talking about sending her back to earth for her own safety, Pan gets really upset and after the ship is damaged while landing on a desert planet where another black star ball was located, Pan sneaks out to find it herself, almost dying from heat exhaustion and needing to be saved by Giru from a giant worm that would have eaten her. EVERYTHING about this set-up fails. Trunks and Goku's logic is that Pan should be taken back to earth and swapped out for the more powerful and experienced Goten, since she's a lot less strong and experienced and might be in danger if she continues being on the mission. And everything she does here proves them right. In her attempts to prove herself, she stupidly wandered into the scorching hot desert alone and very nearly got killed if not for Giru, and at the end Trunks basically decides to keep her along for the rest of the journey because even though she almost got herself killed, her actions still led them to the dragon balls location so therefore she proved herself useful.

Except no she DIDN'T. Well, okay, she led them to the Dragon Ball, but Trunks and Goku could have found it easily on their own. More easily probably and quickly enough and with proper supplies that they wouldn't have succumb to heat exhaustion first, especially since they would have taken Giru who can track the dragon balls. Pan's stunt didn't actually accomplish anything except nearly get her killed, and it's treated in the episode as proof that she's a capable Z Fighter that deserves to be on this important, world saving mission. When in any logical story it would have been the exact opposite.

That's pretty much how her character arc plays out. She tags along and almost ruins the mission. She whines and complains every time things don't go precisely her way (I lost track of how many times she said "I want to go home"), and any of the helpful things she does could have been done as well or better by another character. Things really would have gone a lot more smoothly with Goten or anyone else tagging along, especially when she's often a hindrance or needs saving. With the dialogue and the way it's set up, it seems the show wants her to be sympathetic and have us want her to prove how great she really is, but her attitude and lack of meaningful contributions outside of a few minor cases completely go against that, and episode 15 especially may be the worst written episode in the series. The only thing it accomplished is giving Giru a good character moment and finally helping move Pan past the point of bullying him a lot, everything else was an unsatisfying mess.

But does she get better in the Baby Saga? Yes... and no. On the bright side, after she gets back to earth and from being confronted by her possessed family onwards the whining and bratty attitude is tones down a great deal and it becomes easier to sympathise with her as so many harsh things happens to her. Especially when she gets a really sweet moment where she sees her grandpa in his Golden Great Ape state and she manages to get through to Goku, which helps him to unlock the Super Saiyan 4 transformation. That entire sequence was beautiful, and it really shows how Pan's character can shine by buckling down on the element that was most interesting and touching about her in EoZ: Her relationship with Goku. Something GT until then hadn't been doing a great job at exploring. The scene of Pan desperately trying to get through to her grandpa and everything that comes out of it was probably my favourite scene in the entire series so far.

But sadly, there's another problem with Pan's character underlying that scene. That moment, outside of maybe a scene or two in the Machine Mutants arc... that moment and her helping to power up SS4 Goku for the final battle are really her only meaningful contributions to anything in the grand scheme of the saga. Even if Pan isn't as unbearably annoying as she was for the rest of the show going forward, the fact remains that Pan, despite being arguably the secondary protagonist considering how much screentime and focus her character got, is pretty weak and doesn't contribute as much to saving the day as she should have. She is strong for crying out loud, from what I recall she easily beat Android 20 in the next Saga, so she's not a complete wimp. But against the major villains she's very unhelpful, like the majority of other characters she gets repetedly sidelined from having meaningful contributions for the stupid idea of "Goku's the main character, so he has to do everything that matters himself" Which is a gross oversimplifications of DB's formula that disregards how the supporting cast was used in DB and Z.

And she NEVER. Goes. Super Saiyan. For God's sakes Toei, it wouldn't have taken much effort to do that, I've been bitter about this all my life.

And the reason I'm so upset about this, the reason I'm hard on how Pan is used in this series... is because I REALLY wanted to love her character. Pan had amazing potential as a character. Her scenes were the best part of the EoZ episodes of Z, every second she was on screen there was pure gold and her character was dripping with potential. Think about it. We have a female saiyan hybrid character, one who's established early on as a prodigy with great power and an adorable, endearing personality. She's the granddaughter of Goku, and she wants to train and get stronger. She would have been an ideal choice as Goku's successor if you think about it.

With her being a main character in GT, we could have had our first female super saiyan. Our first major action girl desides 18 who contributes greatly to the fights against villains and is a well developed character (I don't count Chichi and Videl because Chichi had one fight in Dragon Ball where she didn't land one hit and Videl never reached the level where she would be able to actively contribute much to the conflict in the Buu Saga, even if she was awesome she kinda faded into the background in the second half of it). The franchise has a huge female fan following, and it's a sticking point for many that the Z Fighters are dominated by men with only 18 being on the level where she can actively contribute to the fighting, and even she got a lesser role after becoming a married mother in Buu Saga. Pan's inclusion would have solved this issue very naturally, and she could have been a great, endearing character with some interesting development if the writers just followed what was set up with her in Z and put the right effort into making her interesting and awesome.

And they completely dropped the ball. It's a disappointing waste that makes me really upset. Especially since this portrayal turned her into the franchises version of Scrappy Doo for the next 20 years, with it taking her portrayal in Super to finally help salvage her reputation in the fandom. And you know you did something wrong when a version of a character you use who's a baby manages to be more endearing and popular than how you wrote her.

Pan may be less annoying and has more good moments after the middle of the Baby Saga and onwards, but the rest of how she's portrayed makes her perhaps the worst character in any Dragon Ball series. And she's our second most prominent character. Is it any wonder people hated this show?

And I guess there's only one more character to discuss for this saga, and this is another big one. Uub. Let's be straight here, Uub is TERRIBLY used in this Saga and in GT in general. So, after Z ended with Goku deciding to take on Uub as his successor and training him for FIVE YEARS (Incidentally between that and the ending to the show, it really does push the whole narrative of "Goku's a deadbeat who cares more about training than his family" since they were apparently only at the Lookout which means Goku could have visited his family at any time or vice versa, what the heck?) Uub leaves for home in the first episode, then shows up literally out of nowhere in episode 30 to rescue Pan, in a scene I've already mentioned makes Buu look slow witted and incompetant. We then get a handwave explanation on how Uub managed to avoid getting possessed by Baby's plague, though for the life of me I can't remember now if he explained how he reached the Tuffle planet, and he declares that he's going to avenge Goku and save the earth and it's people from Baby. And then he goes down in barely a minute... wow, great way to bring back a character that was built up as being so very important.

Now I want to say this right now, I like Uub. I think the guy's perfectly fine as a concept, the good re-incarnation of Kid Buu who becomes Goku's protege as a child. I have some issues with how that was executed and how both Goten and Pan were shoved aside for that role when either one of them could have made a more logical choice as Goku's successor, but I was happy to give this kid a chance. Uub could have been very interesting and cool if written well, and I've always wondered how that story would go. But Uub's use here and in the show is pretty pathetic.

I've already gone into how I feel about his becoming Majuub, but even apart from that he gets the short end of the stick. He gets no real personality other than "Noble hero type", we don't learn much of anything about him for the whole show. His re-introduction is kind of cool, but it's so sudden and it took so long for him to come back for a character that was set up to be so much more important than he ultimately was that everything he does in this Saga feels so underwhelming. His first fight with Baby is far too short and anti-climactic, making his training with Goku seem like a waste, and while his second fight as Majuub was good and probably the best individual fight in the whole Saga, it's still much shorter than it feels like it should have been and thus does a disservice to both him and Majin Buu. His only meaningful contribution is to stall Baby at one point, which still doesn't make up for how badly he's used here and in the show as a whole since it's barely anything.

We don't get any significant interaction with Uub and any character here besides Goku and arguably Buu, and if I recall I don't think we get any for the rest of the series too, where he's even less relevant. For how he was set up as a character, GT refuses to use him for anything worthwhile and doesn't even try to explore the concept of Goku being a mentor.

And it was as I was thinking about that halfway through watching the Saga that I made a revelation. I realized then and there why GT failed so badly. Because you see, it's not just the common complaints of "Good ideas, bad execution". It's not even that it wasn't good compared to Z or the original Dragon Ball. It's a greater issue with the show as a whole that Uub is right at the heart of. By it's very nature and conception, GT structurally fails as a proper follow up to the Dragon Ball story.

These days it's regularly agreed that GT and it's story are an alternate timeline in the Dragon Ball franchise. A what-if, non-canon story that doesn't connect to the actual canon of Dragon Ball. So, naturally we should judge it as an alternate universe story that doesn't need to be completely subservient to canon, right?

Wrong.

While it's more specifically a follow up to the anime due to it's use of several anime exclusive elements, back in the day when it was being made and people were watching it as it aired, GT was meant to be an actual follow up and continuation of the story. It aired very soon after the Z anime concluded, and while Toriyama only had minimal involvement in it's conception mostly in designing things, it was specifically back then intended as a proper sequel. So that's how we should judge it. And that's where it screws up the most, because GT's story is not a natural progression. It's taking things backwards.

The story of Dragon Ball always moved forward in one way or another, and so did it's main character. Characters changed, matured. The universe expanded naturally as the threats steadily escalated, and even though Toriyama literally made everything up on the spot, the story flows very naturally step by step, never losing momentum. While his development in Z may have been a bit more subtle compared to in the original Dragon Ball, Goku did naturally grow as a character all throughout, naturally because Dragon Ball was his story and his life, every new saga (Except Garlic Jr, but that's non-canon soooo doesn't really count) being the next step in that. As set up by the ending of Z, Goku's next step after saving the universe from Majin Buu should have naturally been to train his new student to pass on the torch. Bring things full circle, since close to the start of the story he became a pupil to a wise but laid back martial arts master, and now he IS a wise but laid back martial arts master. This was the part of his story where he was still a great powerful hero, but he was getting older so as much as he loves fighting and all that it's time to realize that he's getting old and the world needs a new hero to protect it for when he's gone.

GT should have been about Goku training Uub, as well as possibly other characters like Pan or even Bra, so the new generation could grow strong and carry on in his and the other Z Fighters place when the time came. Goku still would have fought to protect the universe if danger showed up at his door, but the focus would have been as much on Uub taking on the role of Earth's defender and ultimately saving the day when he needed to with Goku's encouragement and support, the same as Goku did with Gohan except here he wouldn't take the torch back when Uub's calling in life turned out to be elsewhere. Which it wouldn't, because he was literally born to be Goku's pupil.

Instead what happened? Uub was shoved aside in the first episode to not be heared from again until just short of halfway through the series, never really amounting to anything. None of the other younger characters do either. And how does the series actually start off? With Goku turning into a kid, and a group of three having to go into space to find some dragon balls. And then later on it turns out they have to fight an evi villain who wants to collect the dragon balls to achieve his goal of universal domination. Yeah, you heard right. It's basically a re-hash of the Pilaf saga, except it's "IN SPACE". They're pretty blatant about it too, since there's two episodes that're essentially a re-hash of the episode introducing Oolong except not as good. So yeah, instead of moving the story forward, we regress the story and the main character back to the very beginning, ditching all the other supporting characters we'd come to love for a while in the process and pretty much dropping what should have actually been the main storyline starting out with no fanfare.

Continuing on from Z, the show is an awkward tonal shift where we go from epic story where Goku saves the entire universe from the biggest baddest villain yet, to goofy stories about a planet where everything is giant sized, Trunks dressing up as an alien bride for some giant fatso, and a bunch of weird guys in spandex who have the power to make people dance by singing really bad songs. Yeah, it's kind of stupid. And then once we get to the Baby Saga things suddenly go back to being much more serious like in Z, as if the writers suddenly realized "Oh crud, this isn't working! We've got to fix this" The tone is just off for a while. And the stories themselves just don't work for what the series should have been like.

The Baby Saga and Shadow Dragon Sagas are often cited as being fantastic concepts for a continuation of Dragon Ball, and that's because they really are. With proper tweaking and if the story followed it's natural progression, they could have worked great in a proper follow up to Z. The Shadow Dragons especially were theoretically the perfect final boss for Dragon Ball, being the corrupt physical embodiments of the Dragon Balls themselves. But not only was their execution poor in places, but as we've established the natural progression of the story was derailed from the get go. Uub should be the secondary main character, the series should be about his journey to becoming earth's new hero ending with Goku's retirement and settling down, or deciding that even if he's old and not the true hero of the story anymore he can still carry on with his love of fighting with whatever time he has left. Uub should have been a greater focus and defeated at least some of the villains, including Omega Shenron with Goku's help perhaps so they both strike the final blow, and probably not have it be a cheap rehash of Buu's defeat.

But no, the story was broken from the start and no-one seemed to realize it along the way and make any effort to re-rail it. Goku barely developed at all, and his being a kid again at the start was the physical representation of the stories regression and desperately clinging to the past to try to appeal to the mindset in Japan that the original series was where Dragon Ball was at it's best and most iconic. And his remaining a kid throughout the series despite it's apparent shift to correct that misstep embodied the wonky tone that made it seem like the series was caught between moving forward or not. He doesn't really grow much as a character from these appearances, stuff just happens to him and he reacts the way you'd expect him to. And Goku does pretty much everything that really matters most himself while every other character gets sidelined 90% of the time. It really took the untrue idea people have of Goku making everyone else irrelevant around him and made it true for this series.

And then there's that ending... look, I know a lot of people really like it and I can see the value in it, and I can understand people loving it and I suppose from one point of view it works... but I don't like it. I have never liked it. I've never been satisfied with it and it makes me happy to know for sure these days that GT is non-canon so I don't have to think about it as how this story ends. I'll get into it when I talk about the Shadow Dragons Saga and go into great detail looking at it from multiple viewpoints, but just know that it kills the series for me.

So, yeah, that's how I feel. GT could have been an amazing series if it took the natural route that Dragon ball should have gone, but the fact that they chose to regress the story in a cheap attempt at pandering and all the other issues I mentioned and more really derail the series beyond repair.

So then why did I say this Saga was good back at the start? For all the reasons I mentioned and the simple fact that, aside from this laundry list of complaints, it was still an overall enjoyable experience with some great moments and ideas. It wasn't great, it could be boring or enfuriating at times and wasn't anything special in the grand scheme of Dragon Ball stories. But for the most part, it was fun. It could have been a fantastic saga with the right tweaking, and while it can't save a broken, bad series like GT, on it's own it could be entertaining and fun for the most part. If you were to watch anything from GT, the Baby Saga is definitely the one you should check out because it is worth watching at least once if you're a Dragon Ball fan. (Though maybe not if Piccolo is your fave).

Overall, I'd give the Baby Saga a B-

I had fun overall, and as much as I don't really see myself re-watching anything from this show again anytime soon, the best parts of this Saga make me really wish I could love the show more and it turned out better. It does prove that the series had value and while I can't say the same for the previous arc, I'm glad I watched it again.

Well, I guess now that I've gotten my thoughts on the Baby Saga out of the way, I guess it's time to re-watch the Super 17 Saga... ugh. Pray for me, people.

#Dragon Ball GT #Dragon Ball GT thoughts #Dragon Ball #dragon ball analysis #The Baby saga #son pan #son goku #Uub #Dragon Ball Super #piccolo #majin buu

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briangroth27 · 6 years

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Solo: A Star Wars Story Review

Solo, like Rogue One before it, didn’t seem like a story I absolutely needed to know. That said, it’s also like Rogue One in that it’s an entertaining and well-made movie, while being quite fun and deepening several aspects of the Star Wars canon as well. Solo does lose a bit of momentum at the end, but I still think it’s worth a watch! Full Spoilers... Alden Ehrenreich was likable and charming as Han, pulling off the iconic Solo demeanor with a more optimistic twist. He doesn’t play the character exactly like Harrison Ford did, but there’s enough of Ford in the performance and writing to believe this is the same person. I'm glad they didn't make him a suave ladies' man like a lot of fans seem to think he was in the Original Trilogy: Han’s always been an overly confident guy who relies more on luck and improvisation than his actual capabilities, but he’s extremely devoted to the people he loves (and not smooth about his feelings; he’s totally thrown by Leia). I loved the layered performance Ehrenreich gave, where you could tell Han isn’t always quite as good as he needs to be about disguising his insecurities despite boasting about what he can do; if there’s a moment of silence, he starts to break. Han’s arc must’ve been a difficult path to tread here, since A New Hope already covers Han’s transition from selfish scoundrel to hero, so Solo should’ve taken him from some origin point to at least the beginnings of his scoundrel nature. While they got him there plot-wise, sending him and Chewie (Joonas Suotamo) off to do jobs for Jabba, I’m not sure his character changes much at all, because he was already a boastful scoundrel when he was stealing to survive at the beginning of the movie. That’s the only issue I had with Han’s arc in this film: I wouldn't say he changes very much at all, except he's jaded by love and slightly less optimistic by the end. I do wonder if Val’s (Thandie Newton) dedication to getting a heist done—even at the expense of her own life and despite the fact that they don’t succeed in that heist anyway—was meant to show us why Han is so willing to “dump his cargo at the first sign of trouble.” If so, I would’ve liked to see more of a reaction to her death from him, though we do get to see Han see Beckett’s (Woody Harrelson) reaction to her death. Combining this with Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke) leaving Han at the end of the movie, I wonder if he simply figures that no score is worth dying for when not even love lasts.

At first I didn’t mind one way or another about the revelation that “Solo” isn’t Han’s real name, just something given to him as he was enlisting in the Imperial Navy to get off Corellia, but this Mary Sue article changed my mind by pointing out that he continued using the Solo name and was so proud of it that he passed it down to Ben. I really like that choice now! It’s also cool that Han is so much a nobody that he has no last name, giving him a connection to Rey that deepens the instant recognition and familiarity he sees in her in The Force Awakens. He takes to her so quickly not because he secretly knows who her parents are, but because he’s been exactly where she is: a nobody who’s waiting on someone who will never come back. Han having been an Imperial officer who washed out in the face of war and disagreed with the Imperial stance that they were not hostiles also makes him a parallel to Finn, giving some more weight to Han seeing right through him but working with him anyway in TFA. That was a really cool, stealth strengthening of that trio’s bond in Episode VII.

I liked Han’s friendship with Chewie and enjoyed seeing them meet and build their relationship. Chewie doesn’t get much to do here, but I did enjoy the comedic banter between him and Han. If there are sequels to Solo, I hope Chewie gets an arc of his own instead of just being Han’s backup like he’s always been. I’d also love to see his partnership with Han grow and deepen into a true friendship. I could’ve done without Chewie actually ripping a guy’s arms off in this movie, though. In A New Hope, Han’s threat to C-3PO about Chewie doing that always felt like he was screwing with the droid, not that Chewie was actually that violent. There’s nothing in the movies to suggest Chewie would tear people apart either (even strangling Lando in Empire isn’t as brutal as ripping people into pieces). Oh well; this was one of the few moments in the movie that felt like they were compelled to pay off a throwaway line or bit of lore when they really didn’t have to. Another was Han getting his iconic gun, but that one didn’t feel as much like a Moment so I didn’t mind it. Also, I know exactly why they had Han shoot first here, but that sorta doesn't make sense if (officially) the older, more jaded Han doesn't.

Donald Glover was far and away the best and most charismatic part of the movie and he owns every scene he's in. While Ehrenreich’s take on Han was more like what Chris Pine did with Shatner’s Kirk—incorporating small things that captured the essence of the original version while feeling new—Glover used Karl Urban's approach to McCoy: a pitch-perfect recreation of the original without feeling like he was doing an impression. I could see Billy Dee Williams' Lando throughout Glover's at all times and it was great! Lando and Han becoming frenemies was really entertaining to watch I'd like to see where this contentious friendship goes in a potential Solo sequel. Their cat-and-mouse partnership was a lot of fun, and I also liked the context the movie gave to Lando mispronouncing Han’s name in Empire: years later, he’s still ribbing him for mispronouncing Sabacc. I’ve never needed to see how Han won the Millennium Falcon from Lando, but this movie grounded it in their characters—Han was savvy enough to know how Lando was cheating at Sabacc and his first attempt to win it was based on betting a ship he didn’t own—so I was pleasantly surprised. I was also surprised to see Glover get a chance to show off his dramatic chops here as he struggled to carry as much of L3-37’s (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) body back to the Falcon as he could despite the firefight going on around him, and he knocked it out of the park. The two of them established an easy partnership and there were definite feelings there on both their parts, so the change in Lando after her death was palpable (at least until he had his defensive charm up again when Han and Chewie caught up to him at the end of the movie). I do wish that they had addressed Lando’s pansexuality head-on instead of just alluding to him wanting to sleep with L3-37 and calling Han “baby.” The sorta-flirtation between Lando and L3 was a little odd given she’s a robot, but then droids are sentient in this universe (and cultural norms could be entirely different there: Qi’ra’s only question is how the sex would work, not that it’s weird to even consider), so I don't know how I feel about that. In any case, since L3-37’s CPU is still connected to the Falcon by Return of the Jedi, Lando telling the ship to hold together has a lot more meaning now: he can’t lose her twice (not to mention the fact that she was literally falling apart in Solo). I liked L3-37 and her growing rebellious cause. I’d never considered that there needed to be a droid uprising before and this movie certainly paints them in an entirely new light across the saga (or at least anything pre-Episode IV). I always knew they were sentient and not just disposable tools, but now it looks as if they’ve always been slaves in large sections of the galaxy. I wish L3’s droid rebellion had lasted beyond where it does here (or at least that it was mentioned to have a larger impact), but I guess the breakout on Kessel was more of an isolated opening salvo, not the flashpoint of a larger resistance. Either way, the state of droids shown here absolutely colors a lot of their interactions with the main characters across the saga: how many of them wanted to be working in those roles and how many were forced into those positions? R2 and 3PO being sold by Jawas to moisture farmers absolutely has darker connotations now: even though the Skywalkers weren’t hosting droid death matches, they were still buying thinking servants. Perhaps the droids the Rebel Alliance will later use have come to them willingly and are hoping to win their freedom as well, rather than having been stolen from the Empire or brought to the cause by their respective Rebel pilots. It seems like the state of droids in the Star Wars universe is a surprisingly rich topic for exploration! Qi'ra was good for what they gave her, but I'm not sure we saw enough of her relationship with Han to really feel the depth of his devotion to her or the impact of losing it for either of them. It’s clear from their performances they loved each other on Corellia, but I never got the feeling this was an ill-fated eternal love, particularly after the relatively cool reception Han got from her when he met her years later. I definitely liked that he was far more enamored and lovestruck than she was, though; that was a cool reversal of what you’d expect in most romances and followed Han’s character perfectly. Unlike other bits of context Solo adds, however, I think this love story makes Luke giving Leia a Force Projection of Han's dice in The Last Jedi even weirder. Ever since I saw TLJ, I’ve thought it was an odd choice to make the dice such a connective touchstone when we’ve only seen fleeting glimpses of them in the Falcon (if you could pick them out, as they were never even a momentary focus. Now, since they're so closely tied to Han’s relationship with another woman, it’s downright bizarre for Luke to give them to Leia as a memory of her dead husband. Even if they’re meant as a way for Luke to tell Leia “good luck”—since that’s how Han views them—that’s still creepy because the only thing Leia has ever given Luke “for luck” was a kiss before they knew they were siblings. I still think Luke should've given Leia a projection of the medal she gave Han at the end of ANH instead. Han, Luke, Leia and the audience would've been emotionally connected to the revelation that he’d kept it all these years. Oh well, back to Solo.

I wish Qi’ra had been revealed as the true crime lord the whole time. She takes over the role in the end and my guess is Solo 2 will have her and Han as enemies, but it felt like we would’ve gotten a more compelling hero/villain standoff here if she and Han were openly at odds. Qi’ra leaving Han would’ve been more impactful coupled by the revelation that she’d been pulling the strings all along as well, since Han wouldn’t have been able to see that coming. I don’t believe heroes always need a personal connection to the villain to make for compelling drama, but Han’s relationship with Qi’ra developing into enmity would’ve been far more interesting than the threat of Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) killing them all because of a lost shipment. Not only is that a less resonant argument with Han’s character and outlook, it’s something we’ve seen from countless crime lords in the Star Wars galaxy before. Qi’ra having been shaped by her experiences since Corellia into a woman who uses her head to survive instead of her heart as a guide (like Han does) is definitely a setup brimming with the potential to make her more interesting than “the woman who doesn’t love Han anymore.” However, I would’ve liked to see her more active side at the forefront instead of her past experiences just providing a reason why she’d choose crime over Han. Maybe she could’ve been planning on stealing the fuel shipment they stole from Kessel to start her own crime empire and overthrow Dryden—and using Han’s love for her to do it—all along; something to make her more than a damsel needing Han to save her from servitude to Vos. I did like that she, not Han, got to eliminate Vos in a pretty cool fight, though. I’m also interested to see where her new partnership with Darth Maul (Sam Witwer, Ray Park) goes.

Maul’s cameo was great and I'm very interested to see how he’s reincorporated into the film side of the universe. He had a cool visual and thrilling fights in Episode I, but his appearances on Clone Wars and Rebels have made him one of my favorite Star Wars characters—the fact that he willed himself to stay alive after Obi-Wan cut him in half is fascinating!—and I’m very excited to see where he goes from here. I have no idea when this is supposed to fall on the timeline, though: I would think he’d be in his "Old Master"/obsessive hunter phase from Rebels by now and not trying to build his criminal empire like he was during Clone Wars.

I think the weakest link in Solo is Dryden Vos, unfortunately. He didn’t interest me as a villain at all nor did he come off like a major threat, and that made the last act of the movie (everything after the Kessel Run) feel slow, like the tension and momentum dropped out of the film (though never to a point where the movie or the experience was ruined for me). A galactic scramble for hyperfuel is a fine idea and it’s a good McGuffin for a movie about smugglers, thieves, and pirates, but playing Vos as a run-of-the-mill space gangster fell flat for me. Perhaps there’s a parallel to be found between Vos and Beckett in terms of their training Han and Qi’ra only to be killed by them, but Vos’ implied brutality and threats of death still came off as less than imposing. Speaking of Beckett, I liked the guidance he gave Han in setting him down his smuggler’s path, but I think the movie rushed Han’s reaction to Beckett betraying him. I wish Han had been hurt more by Beckett turning on him, even if he did see it coming (I do like that he was clever enough to outwit Beckett): Han could’ve been hoping he was wrong and that moment could’ve been a bigger gut punch than it was. The revelation that pirate Enfys Nest (Erin Kellyman) isn’t actually a villain at all, but is trying to prevent the hyperfuel from falling into the wrong hands so she can turn it over to the Rebellion isn’t a problem for her earlier attack on Beckett’s crew as they try to rob a train (a very cool sequence), but it does hurt the standoff with Han at the end a little. I imagine on a second watch, that scene will feel significantly less tense. Despite the movie dragging a bit at the end, it has a great balance of big action and chase scenes, humor, heart, and emotional weight! The tone was especially impressively consistent, given the directorial shakeup during filming. I do wish the movie had a more vibrant color palette: it looked too dark at times and pretty washed out for the rest. The scope of the universe was great and it was nice to have a small story that didn't involve a superweapon of some sort, even if a galactic fuel shortage could lead to cataclysmic events and inhumanity we haven’t seen in the other films. As much as this is being sold as a western heist movie, I kinda wish the Kessel theft was slicker or more tied to Star Wars technology like the train robbery was. It quickly devolved from a planned heist to a frantic scramble and it would've been nice to see the former instead (even though the sequence we got was great on its own terms). Perhaps we’ll get to see more polished thieves at work in Solo 2. When this movie was announced, I absolutely did not want to see Han win the Falcon from Lando or do the Kessel Run: both are world-building throwaway lines only necessary for setting up the uneasy friendship between the guys and establishing that the Falcon is famously fast, and neither needed to be more than that. However, since both were done well I don’t mind that we saw them here. The Run was far better than I expected it to be and I loved the inclusion of space monsters; I wish there had been more of them. I liked John Powell’s score a lot and it tied in iconic bits of John Williams’ work perfectly. All the shout-outs to bits of Star Wars extended canon were fun; even that 90s video game Masters of Teras Kasi got a mention!

Despite my misgivings about the momentum of the third act, by no means did this film put me off the idea of solo films (or Solo films). I’d love a young Leia movie and I’d absolutely watch a Lando film. I wouldn’t want it to be a prequel to Solo, though: I don't need to see how he got charming or how he won the Falcon in the first place. Just watching him scam his way across the galaxy (and maybe spreading L3’s message of droid freedom?) would be excellent. I also hope we get a direct sequel to Solo, but if we don't, this didn't feel unfinished or rushed.

Solo’s a fun thrill ride with heart! It features engaging depictions of characters we already know and love, introduces new ones with interesting potential, and adds a lot of context to moments and character relationships in all three Star Wars trilogies. It’s definitely worth seeing!

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#solo #a star wars story

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