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duhragonball · 5 years

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Dragon Ball GT Retrospective (6/7)

[Note: This was originally written on January 15, 2013.]

So now we come to the end of the Shadow Dragon Saga, with only one composite Shadow Dragon left to go.

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What sucks about Omega Shenron is that he's so lukewarm as a villain. He's supposed to be the most powerful bad guy ever, but he mostly stands around gloating, and he's incapable of actually finishing anyone off. All of the major Dragon Ball villains left a pretty heavy toll before they were finally beaten. The only guy Omega manages to kill is his own teammate Nuova Shenron, and he has to do that twice. He's immune to every attack, shrugging off the combined offense of two Super Saiyan 4's, and yet he kicks Mr. Satan in the gut without hurting him. The result is a long, boring slog where neither side make any progress. Now, by comparison, my favorite Dragon Ball villain is Cell. Cell kills thousands of civilians to gather strength, and he cowardly flees the Z-fighers when they try to force a confrontation. He can recover from injuries, but he still has to resort to guile in order to gain the upper hand. He then absorbs the Androids to attain his final form, which carries dramatic weight because Krillin was in love with Android 18. He then flaunts his superiority by holding a tournament, daring anyone to oppose him. Goku is no match for Cell, but he still gets his licks in, and that's an important element for any domineering villain. Cell mocks Gohan for challenging him next, and tortures the other good guys to amuse himself, and this backfires disastrously. Gohan begins demolishing Cell, and suddenly he's reduced to a pathetic mess. He miraculously survives a desperate suicide attack, but he overplays his hand, returning to the battlefield for one last attack, which Gohan manages to overcome. While he's a dangerous and supremely powerful bad guy, Cell always managed to be just vulnerable enough to make you think the good guys had a chance. Omega Shenron offers none of that. When he absorbs all seven Dragon Balls he claims to have all the powers of the other Shadow Dragons, but so what? He was kicking Goku's ass without any of that. Besides, the other Shadow Dragons sucked. Goku laughs off their powers, but Omega no-sells all of Goku's best moves, including the Super Dragon Fist (again). Omega can just reassemble his body, so it's no use. Goku decides the only course is to self-destruct while holding Omega's arms behind his back, but Vegeta shows up in the nick of time and convinces him that it won't work. Omega then presses his advantage by standing perfectly fucking still and watching while Bulma drives a Blutz Wave Generator Truck onto the battlefield. She fires it at Vegeta, who turns into a Great Ape. Everyone worries that Vegeta will go on a rampage, except the fans, who remember that Vegeta could retain his intelligence while in Giant Ape form. Vegeta goes on a rampage anyway, then reveals he was just playing a little joke. This wouldn't annoy me so much except this entire process takes like a hundred years to get through. Vegeta finally turns into a Super Saiyan 4, and Omega Shenron just takes it in like none of this matters. After all that, Vegeta admits that his joining the battle will make little difference, and he suggests to Goku that they should use the Fusion Technique. See, this is what pisses me off so much about Dragon Ball GT. One of the few lasting concepts from the show that anyone cares about is the Super Saiyan 4 form. It looks really stupid, but fans dig it anyway, if only because it's the ultimate power in the Dragon Ball franchise. They put SSJ4 Goku on the cover of the DVD box set I bought. But the dirty little secret of GT is that SSJ4 barely gets used. Goku doesn't even transform into Super Saiyan 4 until the series is more than halfway over. Once he learns the power, he seems to be able to use it whenever he wants, as long as he wants, but he barely ever takes advantage of it. Super 17 defeats SSJ4 Goku, so Goku kills him in base form instead. There's (a little) internal logic to that scenario, but what was the point of introducing a new power-up to the franchise if they weren't going to use it? The Shadow Dragons are the same deal. Most of them weren't even worth using Super Saiyan 4, so why were they introduced in the first place? The ones who were worthy opponents don't show up until near the end, and SSJ4 Goku doesn't really get rolling until Episode 56. Meanwhile, the fans want to see if Vegeta can do it too, and he can, but by the time he pulls it off, they don't even let him do anything. You have to wait until the series is nearly over before you get to see SSJ4 Vegeta, and then it's straight into the Fusion. And guess what? The Fusion's a one-off deal, too. Goku and Vegeta manage to to the Fusion Dance to become Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta, but the fusion wears off by the end of that episode. They spend most of that one episode talking about fusion instead of letting the audience enjoy Gogeta's cool powers. The whole point of GT is that, without the schedule headaches of adapting a comic book serial, Toei could tell a streamlined story without using filler. And yet something as crowd-pleasing as SSJ4 Gogeta gets maybe 15 minutes of airtime. How many episodes was Master Daltaki in? Remember, the guy who liked to play with dolls and he wanted to take off Pan's clothes? "Gosh, Master Daltaki's my favorite character!" said absolutely no one, ever. What really, really, sucks about the limited use of SSJ4 Gogeta is that Gohan, Trunks, and Goten run interference so Goku and Vegeta can have time to create him. This is in spite of the fact that they were no match for Omega Shenron to begin with, and they already spent their insufficient energy in a failed bid to recharge Goku. Somehow Trunks manages to not only survive against Omega, but he manages to get in a decent kick while he's at it. If base form Trunks can surprise Omega Shenron, then what do they need with a Fused Super Saiyan 4? Why buy any time at all if every character is treated as interchangeable? Anyway, SSJ4 Gogeta nearly beats Omega Shenron, but he spends too much time screwing around, and the fusion wears off. Omega does seem to be worn down some from the assault, but he just re-absorbs the Dragon Balls and he seems to be back at full power. You know, it would have been a lot more tolerable if Omega had shown at least some fatigue from all of this. What made Vegeta and Nappa's invasion so classic was that the Z-Fighters were hopelessly outclassed, but they managed to chop down the big oak by hanging in there and taking every advantage they could find. Goku does manage to swipe the four-star Dragon Ball, preventing Omega from absorbing the full set. The problem is that it appears to make no difference whatsoever. Goku swallows it for good measure, and he and Vegeta spend a whole episode trying to fuse again, even though you have to wait at least an hour between Fusion Dances. Finally, Omega Shenron toys with them by allowing them to do the dance unhindered, but by that time Goku has run out of gas. He reverts to base form, which means he's no longer compatible to fuse with Vegeta because he's a little kid. You'd think he could try fusing with Pan, but no one ever bothers to point out alternatives. So now it looks like Vegeta will have to tackle Omega Shenron by himself, except at this juncture the four-star Dragon Ball pops out of Goku's forehead, and Nuova Shenron reappears. At first he seems to be evil again, but he turns on Omega and traps him in an inescapable sphere of flame. I don't see why this would be fatal to Omega Shenron since nothing else works on him, but Nuova is convinced that this will kill Omega and spare himself, because only his body is protected from the intense heat. Omega simply possess Nuova's body, and we're right back where we started. Oh, and Vegeta runs out of gas too, so that's also an issue. Omega Shenron finally quits screwing around, and launches a big-ass energy ball at Goku. Despite being completely exhausted, Goku not only holds back the attack, but survives it when Omega makes it blow up. Vegeta and their sons make a last-ditch effort to fight Omega, and this goes about as well as you'd expect. They're all hopelessly outmatched, yet Omega fails to kill a single one of them. Finally, Goku emerges from the rubble with a Spirit Bomb. He asks King Kai to help him summon energy from people all over the universe, so that the Spirit Bomb will be big enough to work. This is smart thinking, and my only objection is that Toei just cribbed this strategy from the end of the Majin Buu arc. Of course, GT Logic is an original creation of Toei, so while Goku readies the Spirit Bomb, Omega Shenron fires energy blast at him from pointblank range, and it doesn't hurt Goku at all. Seriously, why did they worry so much about the fusion dance when Base Form Kid Goku was stronger than Omega Shenron the entire time? Goku finally launches the damn attack, and it's the only thing that works on Omega, ever, so the fight is over. All that's left are the Dragon Balls, which spontaneously spit out the original Shenron, now back to normal. Shenron explains that he must exile himself from the Earth, but he grants one final wish from Goku to resurrect all the innocents killed in the conflict. For no apparent reason, Goku then jumps on Shenron's back and leaves with him. He makes a couple of pit stops to say good bye to Krillin and Piccolo, then he falls asleep on Shenron's back. The Dragon Balls then float up to Goku's body, where they are absorbed somehow. I have no idea what any of that means. Goku doesn't even explain to his friends and family what he's doing or where he's going. The Kais, who usually provide exposition for things like this, are never heard from again. It's like Toei just assumes you can understand why this is necessary. It's also unclear where Goku and Shenron went. Is Goku dead? Because Pan discovers his clothing lying on the ground, as if he faded away like Yoda. In the GT Movie, which is set one hundred years later, an elderly Pan prays at Goku's gravesite. So it makes sense that he was presumed dead at some point. My guess has always been that Toei wanted to write Goku out of the story to end things once and for all, but he's been dead twice before already, so the only way to send him away for good was to do it so ambiguously that no one was sure where he went. Trunks speculated that when the people of Earth learned to get along without the Dragon Balls, Shenron would eventually return. Since the Balls were stuck in Goku, you'd have to assume he'd show up as well. This was addressed by the Dragon Ball AF rumormongers, who held that Goku would return in that nonexistent series as "The Dragon God". While Goku's motives are never revealed, the final episode of GT at least makes it clear that he never returned in a meaningful way. A century later, Pan watches her own grandson fight one of Vegeta's descendants in the World Martial Arts Tournament. She spots Goku in the crowd, but she can't find him, and decides it wasn't real. Instead, Goku wanders around the stadium, apparently taking in the sights before he jumps into the air and flies away. That doesn't answer a lot of questions, but it does demonstrate that he never visited Pan, or she would have been less likely to dismiss this sighting as an illusion. No, the other Dragon Ball heroes are long dead, barely remembered by their descendants. Goku doesn't seem to be dead, but in a world that moved on in his absence, he might as well be a ghost. Whatever he's become, it'll never go back to the way it once was. Personally, I find the ending of GT pretty weak. For one thing, they ended Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z in similar fashion. Goku leaves the World Tournament to marry Chi-Chi, then Goku leaves another World Tournament to train Uub, then Goku leaves another World Tournament... for no clear reason. The first two represented phases in Goku's life. He becomes a young man and starts a family, then he becomes a middle-aged man and takes an apprentice. The GT ending fittingly avoids any such milestones of life, since it spent the whole series cramming a fifty-something Goku into a ten-year-old body. I've heard of fans crying at the end of GT, but I think it has more to do with the fact that the series is utterly finished, rather than the drama of a beloved character moving on to whatever it is he's going to do. I think I would have preferred a proper epilogue, something to show us what happened to the rest of the cast, and why Goku left and what will become of him now. But after sixty-four episodes of crap, I should be used to disappointment by now. NEXT: 100 Years Later

#dragon ball gt #really sucks #i mean come on #2013gt

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