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duhragonball · 5 years

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Dragon Ball GT Retrospective (5/7)

[Note: I originally wrote this on January 14, 2013.]

The final arc of Dragon Ball GT is one big slap in the face of anyone who held out hope that it would somehow get better. I remember when Funimation promoted the last round of episodes premieing on Cartoon Network. "The Shadow Dragons Saga". That just sounds epic, right? They couldn't possibly screw that up, right? I mean, Shadow Dragons have to be awesome, whatever they are. It's probably a law or something. Well, someone call the cops, because Toei found a way to take a concept like "Shadow Dragons" and make it suck.

The story begins with the fallout from the Super 17 Saga. Goku and his friends gather the Earth's Dragon Balls to repair the damage caused by the Hell portal, but when they find the balls, they're all cracked. Unsure how to proceed, they decide to summon the Eternal Dragon anyway, and to their horror the whole thing goes pear-shaped. Smoke billows out of the cracks of the balls, and the dragon that emerges is completely different from the Shenron they usually deal with. This dragon smokes a big cigar and he mocks the heroes when they ask to make a wish. The Smoke Dragon then takes the Dragon Balls away and dissipates. At this point, the Elder Kai contacts Goku and explains what the hell just happened. The whole issue stems from a throwaway line from the end of Dragon Ball Z. Then, the Elder Kai disapproved of using the Dragon Balls to revive the victims of Majin Buu. He trusted the Namekians with the power of the Dragon Balls because they refrained from using them, but he felt that frequent wish-making would interfere in the "natural evolution" of the universe, or something like that. At the time, everyone just assumed he was being conservative, but this Smoke Dragon is what he had been worried about from the beginning. The short version is that the Dragon Balls have side-effects. Each time you make a wish, it introduces bad karma to the balls. They store the negative energy until they can't contain it any longer, and if that happens they crack and release an evil dragon that can destroy the world. Normally the safety valve for this is that the Dragon Balls scatter across the planet after each use, and they take centuries to find again, which is plenty of time for the negative energy to dissipate. But Bulma invented the Dragon Radar, which has allowed her and her friends to gather the Dragon Balls multiple times in a matter of decades. This latest attempt was the straw that broke the camel's back. Bulma quickly shifts the blame to Goku, since she never would have been able to gather the Dragon Balls without his help, and Goku decides that the only way to make things right is to go kick some evil dragon ass. Pan tags along with Giru (the robot who assimilated the Dragon Radar), and that's the status quo for the next several episodes. The Smoke Dragon separates into seven evil Shadow Dragons, each with a Dragon Ball embedded in his body. Giru locates them with the radar, Goku fights them for a while, repeat seven times. As you might have anticipated, I have several problems with this premise. First, the Dragon Balls aren't some magic talisman that appeared out of nowhere. Granted, they didn't come with an instruction manual, but over the course of the story, we learn how they were created and how they work. The Namekians essentially "invented" the art of making Dragon Balls, and the general rule is that a set of balls is only as powerful as its creator allows it to be. Thus, the Earth's Dragon Balls could resurrect the dead, but they were helpless against Vegeta and Nappa, who were stronger than Kami, their creator. The Namekian Dragon Balls could grant three wishes, but they could only resurrect one person per wish. Dragon Balls can also be "transferred" from one creator to another. When Kami merged with Piccolo, Goku recruited another Namek, Dende, to reactivate his Dragon Balls. Dende not only accomplished this, but he took requests, and rearranged the wishing power of the Dragon to grant two wishes instead of just one. As a bonus, you could just make one wish, then come back and make the other four months later instead of waiting a full year. When Guru, the creator of Namek's Dragon Balls, died, Moori became their new caretaker, and he removed the whole "one resurrection per wish" limitation. The point I'm trying to make here is that the "technology" of the Dragon Balls is pretty well understood, and while it might seem magical to the uninitiated, experts like Dende, Mr. Popo, and Moori were always happy to answer questions and explain the rules. So why didn't they ever say anything about the dangers of overuse? When the Smoke Dragon appears, Mr. Popo mentions how an evil dragon destroyed an entire star system once. Why didn't he say anything about this before? Of course, it's not like the good guys used the Balls frivolously. Most of the time it was kind of an emergency, or a matter of stopping a bad guy from using them first. But still, at some point they should have come forward and explained the risks. "Look, we seriously have to stop using the Dragon Balls or else." Second, assuming the Dragon Balls were designed with this limitation in mind, why do they only turn to stone for a single year? Whoever wrote this episode of GT never considered the fact that the Dragon Balls already had a safety valve in that they can't be used continuously, even if you have the means to re-gather them all. If the safest course is to use the Dragon Balls only once every 100 years, as Elder Kai says, then why not fix it so the Dragon Balls remain inert for a full 100 years? This is the same problem I had with the Black Star Dragon Balls destroying the world after each use. Why would anyone create something so inherently dangerous? This would be like Sauron forging the One Ring and if he doesn't take it to Mars and polish it exactly seven times on every seventh Thursday it blows up and kills him. No, that's dumb. He made it convenient for himself. If he loses it, it'll find its way back to him. It's indestructible unless you take it deep within the heart of his own territory. That's not airtight, but it's pretty safe. I could accept that the Black Star Dragon Balls were a flawed, overpowered creation, but this "negative energy" idea holds that any Dragon Balls are flawed and overpowered. What good are they if you can only make one wish every century, and there's no one around to enforce that rule? Third, no one ever brings up the Namekian Dragon Balls, which were used almost as often as the Earth's set. If each wish contaminates the Balls, then a set that grants three wishes a pop should be even more dangerous. Worse, the Namekian year is roughly one-third of an Earth year, so the Namekian Dragon Balls can be used three times more frequently. The Namekians themselves had little need for that many wishes, but after the battles with Frieza, Buu, and Baby, they had to use them to help out the people of Earth at least five times. That's fifteen wishes, dammit. So where's their evil smoke dragon monster? No one even attempts to explain this, which just makes the premise that much harder to believe. I'm not saying Dragon Ball or Dragon Ball Z were free of plot holes, but Akira Toriyama worked pretty hard to establish the rules of the story and keep them straight. With GT they just do whatever and hope the audience doesn't think about it too hard. Fourth, why don't they just kill Dende? The deal is that if the Dragon Balls' caretaker dies, then the Balls and the Dragon both go inert. Usually this is a obstacle to be overcome, but in GT the Dragon Balls seem to cause more problems than they solve. Piccolo sacrificed himself to prevent the Black Star Balls from being used again, so why doesn't Dende take one for the team and end this Shadow Dragon crisis before it starts? Of course, he doesn't have to die, he could just use his power over the Dragon to deactivate it, right? Again, I could live with this as long as someone on the show offered an explanation why this won't work. The whole premise seems to hinge on the idea that the negative energy contaminating Shenron is much stronger than the powers of Shenron himself or his creator. But why should that be? If the negative energy is a backlash to the energy used to grant wishes, then shouldn't evil Shenron be exactly as powerful as regular Shenron? He can be despicable and uncontrollable, but physically he's no stronger than before. King Piccolo killed Shenron with one hit, and Goku's like a million times stronger than that in GT. And yet the Shadow Dragons are strong enough to give a Super Saiyan 4 a hard time. I can appreciate the poetry of the Dragon Balls themselves being the final boss of the Dragon Ball mythos, but it just doesn't line up with everything we've known about the Dragon Balls leading up to this. For all the hype, Shenron was never omnipotent, and he's actually pretty fragile when you get down to it. His main role is to solve problems that can't be fixed with punching or explosions, so putting him in a situation where he has to trade punches with Goku is kind of dumb. Toei tried to solve this problem by beefing up Shenron, effectively turning him into an unrecognizable set of characters. Instead of one giant dragon who looks pretty scary, we get seven humanoid-looking goofs who are supposed to be insanely powerful, but most of them just suck. More than half of the Shadow Dragons are pathetic. I'm not saying that to insult the concept, I mean they are literally pathetic characters. Goku shows up and they go all to pieces, mostly for the sake of bad comedy. Then they use guile and treachery instead of strength, and Goku only wins when he finally stops screwing around. I suppose this was a deliberate plan to make the Shadow Dragons feel like other groups in Dragon Ball. Each Shadow Dragon is stronger than the last, and the real challenge is to beat the one at the end. Fair enough, but why would Shenron divide himself so unevenly? For that matter, why do the good guys play along with that? Goku wants to fight them all by himself and no one has a problem with that? Considering how weak most of the enemies are, they would have been better off sending Goten or Majuub to wipe out some of them while Goku handles the tough ones. Anyway, the worst part about the Shadow Dragons is that they each get at least one whole episode to show off how much they suck. The Two-Star Dragon: Funimation gave each Shadow Dragon a name, and they called this one "Haze Shenron" because he deals in pollution. He's the weakest Dragon, but his pollution powers make his enemies even weaker, so that's why it takes twenty minutes to beat him. This is dumb, because all the heroes in the show are adept at sensing ki, the life energy everyone uses for shooting fireballs and flying and so forth. Goku can tell that Haze Shenron is weak just by looking at him, but for some reason he can't sense his own power fading. Of course, if he'd just destroyed Haze at first sight, he could have avoided the entire issue, but they had to stop and talk to him first. Haze's weakness is his overconfidence. Once he has Goku and Pan beaten, he tosses them into a polluted lake, thinking the acidity would corrode their flesh in minutes. Instead, Giru (who is unaffected by pollution because he's a robot) rescues them and drags them to a cleaner part of the lake. Not only does this clean water revive them, but they stay down there for like five minutes without drowning. Now that they have a second chance to beat Haze, they take him out with one hit and recover the Two-Star Dragon Ball. The Five-Star Dragon: This guy was named "Rage Shenron", which doesn't make sense unless rage has something to do with electricity, which is his power. Rage looks like a deformed bird fetus, and he controls purple slime that feeds on electricity. He's not much stronger than Haze, so he uses all of his electric slime to create a giant replica of himself to ride around in. Goku turns Super Saiyan 4 to fight him, but his attacks are useless against Rage's slime, which can absorb ki blasts and redirect them. Rage's weakness is his overconfidence. Once the battle starts going his way, he gathers so much electrical power that his slime body grows to the size of a small town. Goku and Pan are helpless against him, but fortunately it rains. Rain short circuits the slime, destroying it, but Rage's body is so large that he can't take shelter. Goku and Pan literally float in the air and watch the dumbass beat himself because he was too sloppy to check the weather forecast. Rage makes a fake surrender ploy at the very end, so Goku blows him away with a Kamehameha just for good measure. The Six-Star Dragon: They called this one "Oceanus Shenron", although he seems to be more of a wind elemental than a water one. At this point, the continuity starts to get fuzzy, because it seems like Goku and Pan have only been at this for one afternoon, but by the time they track down Oceanus, he's already established himself as a local legend in this fishing town. His tampering with nature somehow causes fish to fly out of the ocean and onto dry land, and the villiagers gather them up instead of fishing like they're supposed to be doing. For no apparent reason, Oceanus assumes the form of a green woman called "Princess Oto", but Goku and Pan see through the disguise immediately. Oceanus mostly spams this one attack, Whirlwind Spin, which resembles a hurricane. Even though Goku once broke a mountain in half with his bare hands, the air pressure it strong enough to pin him down. He could power up to Super Saiyan 4, but he doesn't. I have no idea why. Oceanus' weakness is his overconfidence. Pan is too stupid to figure out the flaw in Whirlwind Spin, so a seagull demonstrates it for her. Like a hurricane, the center of the attack is relatively calm, so if you fly in directly overhead, you can get in a free shot. Pan hits Oceanus with a Kamehameha, and Goku uses his own for good measure, and that's it. The Seven-Star Dragon: This one is named "Natron" or "Naturon". I don't even know what that means, since he's a body thief who digs tunnels. He hot dogs it for a whole episode just so he can pretend to lose and trick Pan into taking his Dragon Ball. This allows him to take control of her body, which he uses to become much stronger (his first body was an ordinary mole, so it's a big step up). Pan's not that strong in Dragon Ball Z terms, but apparently Pan + Natron Shenron is somewhat impressive. It's kind of hard to tell how strong he is, though, because Goku keeps holding back for fear of killing his grandaughter. Natron's weakness is... his overconfidence. Goku plays possum near the end, and Natron taunts him by allowing Pan to partially emerge from his body. Goku yanks her out, leaving Natron stuck in his true form, which is somehow even smaller and crappier than the other three Shadow Dragons we've seen so far. For some reason Goku's totally cool beating up this sad sack in his SSJ4 form, even though he barely bothered to use it against the other three. Kamehameha, and we're done. They spent two episodes on this bullcrap, so I especially hate this one. The Four-Star Dragon: This one has fire powers, so Funimation named him "Nuova Shenron". I don't know why they spelled it that way, unless it was for trademark purposes. They didn't call the Two-Star Dragon "Haiz Shenron" though. Nuova looks pretty dumb, but compared to the first four he at least looks like a worthy opponent. He's also the first one who can actually fight worth a damn. So of course Toei introduces him just as Goku's inexplicably weakened from hunger. It's not like they're in the middle of nowhere. Goku could fly back home in a few minutes and grab something to eat in between dragons, so why did he walk into Nuova's turf unprepared? The result is a whole episode of pointless stalling. Nuova wants to play cat and mouse with Goku, even though he seems to be able to kill him in a toe-to-toe fight, thanks to his heat powers. Goku scampers around and whines about how hungry he is, and Nuova calmly walks around looking for him, apparently forgetting that he can a) fly, b) fly at super speed, and c) melt anything in his path. If Goku punches Nuova, he'll only burn his hand, so the only hope he has is energy blasts, which he can't use because he's too hungry. Nuova's weakness is sloppy writing. Even though Goku just got done complaining that he's too weak to fight with energy blasts, he turns around and starts harassing Nuova with energy blasts. The idea seems to be that he can't land a heavy blow, but he can whittle him down with hit-and-run attacks. This leads to Goku using the sewers for cover, and when Nuova chases him into the sewer, he's briefly stymied when he runs into a dead end. Blocking Goku's path is some sort of giant ventilation fan. He doesn't want to fight Nuova in close quarters, but that fan you guys. It's turning at speeds exceeding 3rpm. It must weigh at least twenty pounds, and it's probably made of solid aluminum. How can Goku possibly get past it? Well, he digs down deep, and somehow finds the courage and skill to time a perfect jump through this enormous, slow-moving fan that probably wouldn't have hurt him even if he missed. What's more confusing is that Nuova didn't just shoot him dead while he was waiting for the right moment. Once they're out of the sewer, Goku then decides to fight Nuova as a Super Saiyan 4, even though he was too weak to do anything else for most of the episode. Intermission: Now, in the midst of all this, Vegeta's back at home having a midlife crisis. This is probably the best episode of Dragon Ball GT, simply because it's roughly 50% flashbacks of cool scenes from DBZ. Vegeta's frustrated because he hasn't gotten to do anything for the whole series, mainly due to the fact that he never advanced beyond Super Saiyan 2, while Goku is two levels above that. He wants to help round up the Shadow Dragons, but Bulma warns him he'll die. Look, maybe he's not the strongest guy on the block anymore, but I'm pretty sure Vegeta could have taken out the first four Shadow Dragons, and I'm really sure he could have blasted apart that ventilation fan that stymied Goku. Also, Pan's a lot weaker than Goku and she managed to stay alive this long. Anyway, Bulma figures out how to turn Vegeta into a Super Saiyan 4 so he can join the battle. I'm kind of surprised it took this long for them to try it, since her plan is to just use the same technology that turned Vegeta into a Golden Great Ape during his possession by Baby. Cleansed of Baby's contamination, Vegeta can repeat the process, and jump from Golden Ape to SSJ4, the same way Goku did. Come to think of it, Vegeta could have just undergone the same procedure Goku used to grow his tail back. It's been like a year since SSJ4 was discovered, so it's not like he hasn't had time to work on that. What sucks about this episode is that they spend the entire time teasing SSJ4 Vegeta, but we don't get to see it until several episodes later. The Three-Star Dragon: While Nuova Shenron fights SSJ4 Goku in a halfway decent battle, his comrade "Eis Shenron" shows up and interferes. See, he has ice powers, so Eis=Ice, or something. The gag with Eis Shenron is that he's Nuova's brother, and while Nuova's been teasing a face turn during his battle with Goku, Eis is a cowardly opportunist. He uses Pan as a human shield, has no qualms about using dirty tricks to win, and when Nuova refuses to help him, he feigns surrender and blinds Goku with a.... You know, actually, I have no idea how Eis blinded Goku. He's on his knees surrendering, he surreptitiously dips his fingers into a frozen puddle on the ground, and then he swipes at Goku's face. The implication is that Goku's eyes have been poisoned somehow. I mean, is it poison ice? That doesn't make a lot of sense. And yet, afterwards, Goku washes his eyes out with water, and Nuova gives him a small bottle of "antidote" (where did he get it?). So I don't think we're talking about frostbitten corneas or whatever. The point is that Goku spends the next four episodes or so with his eyes shut. Eis' weakness is that Goku can kick your ass with his eyes shut. He stupidly assumes that blinding Goku "halves" his strength. Except Goku can sense his enemies' ki, so he can still fight just as effectively without looking. This has been demonstrated countless times in the past, so I don't know why Toei would pretend to ignore this years later. Eis and Nuova are supposed to be the strongest enemies Goku has encountered to date, but they fight like amateurs. Goku punches a hole in Eis' body and follows up with Super Dragon Fist, which would have been satisfying if he hadn't waited so long to use it. Nuova Shenron decides to withdraw, feeling that it would be wrong to fight Goku until he regains his sight. I find Nuova's change of heart ridiculous. The Shadow Dragons entire reason for being is to destroy the world. When Goku meets him, it's in the ruins of a city he presumably attacked and destroyed. He claims to have a code against hurting innocents or the defenseless, except he's made from evil energy and his ultimate goal is to destroy the world. Goku never questions him about this apparent conflict of interest, and it doesn't really matter because Nuova gets killed before it really becomes an issue. Just as he gives Goku the antidote to Eis' blinding attack, both he and the medicine are cut down by.... The One-Star Dragon: This guy doesn't have any elemental powers, so Funimation just called him "Syn Shenron". He's easily the strongest one, which begs the question of why he didn't just come after Goku from the start. He no-sells all of Goku's attacks, and leaves him battered and unconscious. Seems like a winner, right? Syn's weakness is GT Logic. Just when all seems lost, Goku's family and Trunks show up to help him. Gohan, Goten, and Trunks agree that they're not strong enough to fight alongside Goku, but they plan to donate their energy to Goku so he can recharge to full power. Majuub tries to hold off Syn Shenron, but to no avail. Despite the fact that Syn dominated a Super Saiyan 4, the boys manage to hold him off long enough. So if they can do that, why can't they just fight Syn directly? And if they really are no match for Syn, how are their combined powers sufficient to re-energize Goku? Of course, this whole paradox is just a retread of the last time SSJ4 Goku needed a recharge, back when he was fighting Baby. Goku insists on taking more energy from the boys than is safe to use, because he needs extra juice to cope with Syn's power. This is irritating, because it really isn't clear what the risks are in this situation. Gohan and the others are no worse for wear, in spite of giving "all" their energy to Goku, and Goku doesn't seem to get much stronger for the boost. It's just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Goku does manage to get the upper hand on Syn, although it seems less like Goku is stronger and more like Syn just overdosed on stupid pills. Even though we've established that Goku can fight just as effectively while blind, Syn still tries to exploit the weakness by throwing a clockface from a tower at him. Goku then blows him away with a Kamehameha-Super Dragon Fist combination. The only catch is that it doesn't get the job done. Though beaten, Syn absorbs the other six Dragon Balls, transfoming into "Omega Shenron", the final final boss of Dragon Ball GT. Hoo-boy. NEXT: The Omega Glory

#dragon ball gt #really sucks #2013gt #no seriously i'm rereading these as i go and i'm seeing stupid bullshit that i had forgotten about #every once in a while i think to myself 'well gt wasn't *that* bad'#but no it was fucking awful #goku #pan #giru #rage shenron

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