Dragon Ball GT - Episodes 3-5
So GT is going to work with these shorter, slower-paced mini-arcs which probably took a lot of Dragon Ball Z fans by surprise. The tonal and pacing shift is certainly strange, and... and I really wished we didn't quite have the whole hanging sword of "find the black-star dragon balls or the Earth is going to be destroyed!" at the same time when an episode starts off with Pan and Trunks bickering about who should do what chores. It's like... I don't mind comedy, but these few episodes have a particularly bad balance between comedy and action. And it's not just the black-star dragon balls either, because the tension-vs-comedy ratio even within this mini-arc on Imecka (or Imegga, depending on your favoured romanization choices) felt absolutely off.
So after some dicking around at the beginning of the third episode about chores and about trying to send Pan back to Earth, Pan just hides the master control key in her prepubescent breasts and... yeah, I'm not going to discuss that scene. Moving on! Thanks to the missing part at the end of episode two, Trunks (who's nothing at all like Future Trunk's badass warrior or Kid Trunk's happy-go-lucky personality, but is reduced to being the straight man of the group) is forced to make a crash-landing on Imecka, and they spend the entirety of the second act of the episode has them be met with the gimmick of this planet -- the population are insane swindlers who force them to pay lots and lots of money for stuff that they don't really need.
And, see, I'm not sure how they got enough of the currency (gamets?) to pay the swindling merchants, or honestly what the logic is in running a luxurious hotel that traps its guests into spending money on TV, a bed with a chain, a shower that won't run out and a particularly expensive mini-bar. Like, who's the intended customers? Team GT only ended up there because of a crash-landing, and we don't see any other aliens on Imecka, so who's staying in these expensive hotels and buying all the tacky merchandise? Did Don Kee (or Don Kia) really get so filthy rich on money simply by oppressing the poor people whose homes he takes away with robots? It's bizarre and honestly not a lot of thought seemed to be put into this setting beyond "hey, let's make a swindler planet where everyone is out to get your money!"
At the end of the third episode, Team GT meets a bunch of poor Imeckians whose house gets torn down because they're behind on payments, a rather somber mood to set up the villain as compared to the wacky hijinks of the hilarious money-trap hotel (the hotel scene is legitimately funny, I must say), and we get to see the generically flamboyant money-grubbing boss Don Kee. And then the third episode ends with a random small robot -- Giru, the 'mascot' of Dragon Ball GT seen all over the commercial breaks and the opening scene -- eat the Dragon Radar while their spaceship is towed away. Oh no! Crisis!
See, while I could buy that Trunks and Pan are at least smart enough to keep their head down (and Kid Goku, whose mentality seems to have regressed into a kid as well) throughout everything that's happened in the third episode, I really don't think that they would stand by and do nothing as their ship is towed away. There's no reason for them not to just fly in and go all kamehameha and stuff. I do appreciate the scene showing Goku trying and failing to use the Instant Transmission ability. It went on for a bit too long, but it does add a bit of tension as oh-no-Goku's-lost-some-of-his-abilities! Which... which probably didn't sit well with most of the audience at that time, I could imagine. I don't particularly mind it since, y'know, the whole concept of GT is turning Goku into a kid for hijinks. But still... they can fly, right? They still have above-average strength? And episode 5 shows that they're still immune to missiles and bullets, so what's really stopping them from ending this the moment that their ship got stolen?
And then Team GT tries a bit of a sneaky approach while stuffing Giru into Trunks' bag (as a side-note... they spend way too long chasing Giru around) and Pan... ends up crying because someone threw a soda can that hit her head. What? It's really weird what they're trying to do with Pan. Like, I get that she's a kid that talks herself up and is way too overconfident, but throughout the past four episodes I've brought into the fact that at least she's somewhat mature enough to, y'know, at least understand the seriousness of the situation and not cry when a can hits her head. I'd buy if she was pissed off and got angry, but that's just so weird.
Anyway, action scenes! And it's done relatively competently as Goku, Pan and Trunks beat up the random green-skinned mooks, the two mooks with unique models (Shiela and Gale, as the internet tells me) and then Goku finally unleashes a kamehameha that beats those two... only for a third minion, Ledjic (or Rejikku depending on your favoured romanization), to show up and bat it aside. Oh no! A villain that can stand up to Goku! Are we going to get some tension? Well, not in this episode, because team GT makes a clean getaway while Ledjic just stands there glowering, probably angry that the fact that his big-ass ears has fused onto his cranial bones. The next day, Goku and the gang return to town only to find themsleves wanted criminals.
And thus begins the fifth episode... and we really could've condensed all this into two episodes, honestly. We get another scene of Team GT meeting another family of impoverished people that motivate them to fight, because apparently they just forgot or didn't care about the one they met on episode 3? Or, y'know, just throwing in some episode padding. The trio give themselves up, before showing up at Don Kee's room having beaten up everyone in his employ... and then Goku fights Ledjic, as the episode title implies. Ledjic knows that Goku's a Saiyan, and shows off some neat moves like pulling out swords out of his shoulder spikes, and for someone with a rather silly-looking fashion sense, Ledjic puts up a good fight. Goku goes Super Saiyan, and trounces Ledjic, and just like Super antagonist Hit, Ledjic ends up developing a degree of respect towards Goku as fellow warriors, refuses to fight under Don Kee and walks away. But if... if he's so disgusted by the Don's money-grubbing jackassery, why work for him in the first place? Again, yet another example of a good concept that didn't end up well done at all in terms of execution.
Speaking of a poorly-executed thing... Ledjic's design is... really, really fucking weird, isn't it? Like, Dragon Ball Z's got its own plethora of wacky-looking gonky aliens like Ginyu, Dodoria and Guldo, but Ledjic's design is just... I dunno. Between the weird head and the bright-red jacket and the strange yoga singlet-pants deal, I really can't take the man seriously.
Anyway, Team GT solve the planet's problems by dropping Don Kee's giant safe in the middle of the town. And... and I'm not sure what the whole end-game of this mini-arc is. No one in the main cast had a character arc, so unless Ledjic's going to show up later as a major rival or something, this whole set of episodes felt like nothing but, y'know, "filler" episodes in a series that has no business with filler. The arc sort of introduces Giru, who ends up being revealed at the end of the fifth episode to have incorporated the Dragon Radar (which it ate) into its body, but they could've actually, y'know, had Giru be relevant into the sparsely-plotted Don Kee story but no. Nothing of that sort. So yeah, overall... it's not bad, and the animation and Japanese voice-acting are decent (I tried to listen to English Pan in one of the 'Pan whines' scenes and it goes from charming to grating instantaneously), it's just utterly bland and devoid of any real substance and a clear sense of not much thought being put into the worldbuilding or story logistics. We're at least going off to find the first Black Star Dragon Ball next episode, though, which is "north" of Imecka. How... how do compass directions even work in space?
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