Dragon Ball GT, Episodes 16-22 [General Rilldo Arc]

Episode 16 starts off with a rather slow start, with Giru convincing the GT team to land on

And then Giru shows data of the recording he's made while observing the Saiyans throughout the past 15 episodes to Rilldo and the Sigma Force, and gets a medal for his services... which, considering the big twist to be revealed at the end of the arc, makes absolutely no sense.
But Pan's one-woman charge into Rilldo's castle, and Goku's pissed-off argument about how Giru's betrayed them, are legitimately well-done scenes. Pan actually does something, unleashing a gigantic two-handed explosive blast to counter Natt of the Sigma Forcce during her assault, despite Natt previously being able to trounce Pan with the data he's acquired. It's a legitimately neat moment, and a far cry from the previous arc that quite literally reduced Pan to nothing but a prop.
Mind you, episode 17 does revolve almost entirely around Pan's sneaking around through the fortress disguised as a robot, and it's way too repetitive. It does allow some random helpful rebel to tell us what a 'Machine Mutant' actually is. Apparently Rilldo and Myu came to this planet, and turned everyone from organics into robots, Borg-style, and that... okay, that actually makes a neat little backstory.

And then the three Sigma Force members fuse together into a giant fake-Voltron fake-Mazinger thing, the Mega Cannon Sigma. Yeah, between Maji-kayo, Katopesla, Koichiarator and Anilaza, Drgaon Ball Super actually has a fair amount of references to these chunk of episodes from GT, huh? But as neat as the Mega Cannon Sigma is, and its continuous transformation into flying and drill forms, Goku just ends up blowing the Mega Cannon Sigma up with a Kamehameha. It's still pretty neat, though, and far, far more interesting than every single fight in the Luud arc put together.


Meanwhile, Pan spends way, way too long just charging into Rilldo's castle to confront Giru, only to be rejected by the walls that is... liquid and has... space-time changing properties or some shit? Basically a fancy sci-fi trapdoor. Pan meets up with the old-helpful-machine-mutant, asking him how to shut off the space-time-rejector machine, but after a way-too-long sequence where Helpful Robot turns out to not know how to do it, Pan... punches the poor sod through the ceiling, and says "that's why you're a reject." Yeeaaaaah. Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen. Punches poor, abused old robots that's just trying to help.
Mr. Reject actually still helps Pan in his final charge, but ends up getting electrocuted for his troubles. Giru spits Pan out with the tower's trap systems, but also gives her the dragon balls, and it's at this point that it's clear that Giru's actually still on the side of the angels, and that we're going through a very tired "he must fool his friends to fool his enemies" routine, and in this case it's Pan that's the chump.
Goku and Rilldo's fight continues through episode 21 which is so goddamn repetitive, although we do get a neat sequence where they fight in an abandoned cinema. It would be poignant, Rilldo fighting in the remnants of the civilization he destroyed, but it turns out that the whole point is so that Goku can make bad jokes about the juice machines. Pan arrives shouting her head off like a jackass about how she has all the dragon balls, causing Rilldo to do what he should've done three episodes ago and engulf both Goku and Pan with metal.

Yeah, never mind that there's no real point in time where Trunks and Giru could really have thought this plan up (Giru seems surprised by Rilldo's existence on the planet at all), but it also means that Giru is acting like he's conflicted about his loyalties in locations where no one can see him for no real reason. Also, their entire plan hinges on Rilldo not just killing the Saiyans, but using the non-lethal carbonite deal to send them off to Myu... which, again, also means Trunks and Giru banked on Goku and Pan being defeated? Yeah, it doesn't make much sense.
Trunks also reveals that he has found out Dr. Myu's big secret, which is revealed in episode 22 to be a super-secret chamber containing the NEO Machine Mutant called Baby (a.k.a. Space Cell). Baby's test tube is in this long walkway above a space lake, with little mini-comets that impact all over the area for cheap dramatic atmosphere, and instead of, y'know, blowing up the evil murder machine, Trunks just 'shuts it down' with a virus.

And they just stand there while Dr. Myu runs towards Baby's tank and just hysterically types and tries to revert Baby's shutdown. They quite literally stand still there and crack jokes and talk about Giru's recent betrayal while Myu is completely in distress. Also, apparently that horrible, horrible Luud arc is all in the name of gathering enough energy to power Baby? ...but didn't they use the energy to power the Luud robot itself? Yeah, Myu just doesn't make sense.
Of course, while Goku is dicking around, Baby's eyes open, there's a big explosion and we get a legitimately cool bit where Baby grows from a robot fetus to the size of a real baby, screams out loud and just crawls like a weird robot-fetus with sunglasses and a penis-head-horn, screeching and screaming. It's actually a sense of unearthly threat that the likes of Luud, Myu or Rilldo fail to really give, and it's cool. And then Goku, Pan and Trunks just kamehameha him together and blow him up! That's... that's actually cool.

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