Dragon Ball GT Episodes 59-64 Review: Be Careful What You Wish For [Shadow Dragons Saga, Pt 3]

Dragon Ball GT, Episodes 59-63: Shadow Dragon Saga, Part 3

Episode 59 starts off with our typical Dragon Ball "my power up is stronger than everyone present!" with Omega Shenron blowing everyone away with his sheer power, and in his clash with Goku shows off a bit of the moves that Nuova, Eis, Oceanus and Rage Shenron's powers. There's a bit where Goku realizes that his sight is returned, but he pretends to be blind to get a cheap Kamehameha-RYUKEN combined shot through Omega's chest.

Didn't... didn't he give Eis Shenron grief for pretending to be weak and then getting a cheap shot in? What the hell, Goku. I mean, it's very cool that he manages to travel through his own Kamehameha wave to dragon fist Omega Shenron in the gut, but still. Eis Shenron was like, five episodes ago!

Of course, Omega Shenron turns out to not be dead, as apparently he has Rage Shenron's goopy jelly reformation technique... but... wasn't Rage Shenron a tiny creature that creates a big suit out of the jelly, instead of being able to recover by turning into jelly? That doesn't make that much sense, really. Omega then unleashes a beatdown on everyone present, even kicking Mr. Satan. (And honestly? It's very impressive that Mr. Satan survives a kick from someone of Omega Shenron's caliber). Goku grabs onto Omega Shenron and he's about to do Vegeta's Final Explosion trick to get rid of Omega once and for all.

And then Vegeta shows up and tells Goku to not do that, because if Goku dies, "the earth will be finished". By... by what, exactly, Vegeta? Omega is literally the only threat left. Bulma arrives in a GODDAMN TANK and she shoots Vegeta with the Blutz Wave... and is there any reason that they couldn't have done this away from where Omega Shenron could've stopped them? I mean, there's no reason for Omega Shenron to not just blast Bulma and her tank, either. Is everyone just dumb in this episode? Vegeta goes Oozaru, and... loses control? Why? He's never had any problem with Oozaru back in Dragon Ball Z. And then Vegeta goes Golden Oozaru, then Super Saiyan Four. It's rushed, honestly, and as badass as it is to see Super Saiyan 4 Vegeta and his skin-tight hot pants... doesn't this spit on everything Vegeta's been through in the Buu Saga? The whole point of the Majin Vegeta arc is that you shouldn't gain power via shortcuts. Is there any real reason that Vegeta couldn't have trained on his own to unlock the Super Saiyan 4 form not with a moon-beam steroid blast, but after his anger at being useless at the end of the Baby arc?

My god, episode 59 has a fuck ton of logic problems, yeah?

At the end of episode 59, Vegeta just tells Goku that their combined strength isn't going to be enough to take on Omega Shenron, so they got to fuse. Episode 60 starts off with Pan, hilariously, asking everyone "what's fusion?" and no one answering her. Bulma in her tank tank, Gohan, Goten and Trunks try to buy time for Vegeta and Goku to do the fusion dance, but Goku just... stands there. Vegeta even lampshades this, asking Goku why the fuck he's just standing there like a moron. Apparently he's proud? That's... that's the reason? Jeez, the writing staff really took a hit in this part of the arc. Anyway, Goku and Vegeta combine into... GOGETA! A form previously only seen in a single movie, Fusion Reborn. Well, that's cool. I wasn't expecting that!

And Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta is absolutely badass, trouncing Omega Shenron, and pulling a Jiren trick and quite literally blasts Omega Shenron away by staring really hard. There's also some cool bit where Gogeta just unleashes his aura, and when Omega Shenron flies close Gogeta's already hit him multiple times, too fast for the eye to see. That's actually badass.


Bulma's poor tank gets blown up (she survives Looney Tunes style) and I guess that's the reason she doesn't go shooting Trunks, Gohan, Pan and Goten with the Blutz Wave even more, huh. Uub actually asks Trunks or Gohan to fuse with him so that they can also become stronger... and then Gohan just laughs it off as "oh, silly Uub, heal your arm first, yeah?" And it's honestly just kinda dumb. We could've had a talk about how you need compatibility for the fusion dance to work, how they're all spent from donating their energy to Goku, or something. But, nope, just "fuck off, minor character", which really isn't particularly endearing of this arc to me, honestly.

And then Gogeta starts dicking around, quite literally, by creating clones and making a fake Kamehameha with party streamers and shit and sticking out his tongue. Yeaaaah, that's more of a Gotenks thing and it does feel out of place. Gogeta laughing and dicking around honestly feels out of character for this fused form, and even if Goku is in the body of a kid, he's fused in the serious SS4 form and this bit is just kind of weird.

Omega Shenron creates this gigantic Minus Energy Power Ball which is oh-so-dangerous. Everyone else flies away... and Gogeta just kicks the ball into space. Gogeta apparently puts in his own plus energy into the minus energy ball which... cancels it out and prevents it from exploding? Okay..? The minus energy stuff has been really weird and is honestly just bad plot device writing, but we ain't got time for that because Gogeta swoops in with a BIG BANG KAMEHAMEHA and god damn despite all the problems I have with this arc, that move looks cool.

The Big Bang Kamehameha fails to kill Omega Shenron, but it does knock out the other dragon balls. Gogeta is about to deliver another Big Bang Kamehameha... and then the fusion ends, because they've been wasting too much time dicking around. Omega then sucks back all the dragon balls and re-powers-up... but Goku catches the four star ball.


And then we have episode 61, where we quite literally spend a good one-third of the episode with Vegeta shouting about how it's all Goku's fault for dicking around, and how he now refuses to strike silly poses. Didn't... what? Vegeta was the one that suggested fusion in the first place! This is just bad writing for no real reason. Also, did we need the gag scenes in the Kai realm? That'''s dumb.

Goku then swallows the four star ball to emulate Omega Shenron and he chokes. (All the while Omega's just standing, by the way) And finally Goku and Vegeta decide to fuse again, and everyone else tries to buy time, and it's actually cool. We spend nearly the entire episode just with our heroes trying to fuse while Omega refusing to let them do the dance, and everyone tries to get in Omega Shenron's way. We get a cool Kamehame-Final Flash combo, we get a cool bit where Vegeta and Goku do a mass Afterimage technique to fool omega Shenron, and it's legitimately cool. But the episode ends with the fusion failing due to energy imbalance since Goku's a lot more tired than Vegeta... and Goku reverts back into his kid form. And the four star ball appears on Goku's forehead for some reason.

The Goku-has-a-ball-on-his-forehead joke runs way, way longer than it should, but it's just a way for Nuova Shenron to finally return. Nuova pretends to be re-corrupted by Omega's minus energy, and we get a brief fight between Nuova and Vegeta while Omega Shenron... sits down? Nuova is about to kill Goku... until the two of them suddenly turn around and unleash their combined attack onto Omega Shenron. Nuova is apparently purified by the 'plus energy' inside Goku and all this plus/minus power malarkey is just stupid, honestly. I just prefer my own explanation, that Nuova's holding a grudge for Omega shooting him in the back and killing him.

Nuova then unleashes his final technique, the Burning Spin, which creates a cage of fire around the two of them, with fire tentacles... and Nuova tells Omega that whoever fires an attack in that state will cause them both to die in an explosion. Nuova has no respect for Omega, including a particularly fun line where he turns around and tells Omega essentially "hey, you're used to shooting people from behind, right?" That's all badass and all, and Nuova fires a shot... and the two of them explode... and Nuova lands on the ground. But then Nuova cracks open and dies, because apparently Omega launches all of his dragon balls into Nuova's body, taking over his body from the inside? That's a pretty brutal death for poor Nuova, being exploded from the inside. And somehow now losing any power, while both Goku and Vegeta are out of Super Saiyan 4 time.

Episode 63 is the climax of this arc, and it's actually a relatively tense one. Omega creates a minus energy death ball thing, and Goku fails to stop it, and the resulting explosion wipes out a city and puts Goku at the center of the crater. Vegeta tells Trunks, Gohan and Goten to "live and avenge us someday!" as he goes off to fight Omega Shenron alone, comparing his last stand here to how he's going to protect his new home in the way that he cannot protect Planet Vegeta. That's actually touching!

There's some minus energy apocalypse shit going on with cataclysms going everywhere, and the dog president dies when a gigantic lightning bolt strikes the castle and completely vaporizes it. And while everyone (except Bra, who the staff has forgotten about) flies away, Trunks ends up staying behind to help Vegeta fight Omega, and both Gohan and Goten fly in as well. It's a valiant last stand, and I honestly won't make the obvious joke about how they lose because they aren't Goku. See, unlike the other examples of the secondary characters getting trounced, this is an actual touching moment, for me, at least, and the scene of Omega stabbing and impaling Vegeta on his horns is unexpectedly brutal.

Of course, Goku, in the crater, gathers Genki for the Spirit Bomb. But the energy on Earth alone isn't enough, and he telepathically contacts King Kai, who's way too jubilant that Goku's using his old technique to save the universe. King Kai contacts the East, West and South Kais, telling them to broadcast Goku's voice to the entire universe, and we get a brief montage of New Namek, plus some of the other characters from earlier in GT -- only the Para Para Brothers get any dialogue, but we get to see Imecka, Don Kee and his goons in jail, toothache giant, Zunama and the villagers, the doctor and the cabbage boy from the Baby arc... yeah, GT really has some disappointing supporting characters, huh, because I genuinely forgot about half of these, and it's nowhere as "hell yeah!" as the Buu Saga Spirit Bomb. Still, it's badass, even if it doesn't really make sense for the de-powered kid Goku to just shrug off every single one of Omega Shenron's panicked attacks onto him. Maybe the Spirit Bomb's powers are protecting him?

Regardless, Goku unleashes this Universal Spirit Bomb, and blows Omega Shenron up! Victory for Goku! And as Goku falls down, the real Shenron, without being summoned, appears from the dragon balls, and the episode ends.

I'll review episode 64, the end of Dragon Ball GT, separately, so that I can talk about the different arcs briefly and list the things GT did right and the things it did wrong. But overall... my feelings about the Shadow Dragons arc is more or less actually similar to how I feel about the Buu Arc from Dragon Ball Z. It's functional, but it's also riddled with a lot of pacing problems, and a final fight that isn't as entertaining as it should. Omega Shenron is also nowhere as interesting as many of the show's other big bads. Oh well -- it's over, and honestly? It's nowhere as bad as people make it out to be. It's far from perfect. Very far from it... but I honestly enjoyed myself through this very flawed story arc.

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Dragon Ball GT, Episode 64: Until We Meet Again

So here we are. The final episode of Dragon Ball GT, and, up until the release of the Battle of Gods movie in 2013, more than a decade later, the final piece of proper serialized Dragon Ball animation after running non-stop since its inception. And thus, the final episode of GT is... is more of a closure of Goku's story than really trying to resolve much plot holes. Because after all... there's really not that much to go on after Omega Shenron is defeated. 

The real Shenron talks to Goku and the others, telling them that humanity's been relying way too heavily on the dragon balls, and that Shenron is taking them away. It's a theme that I wish was actually properly explored. If GT didn't have such a troubled production, maybe it could've had a running theme of facing the sins of the past and responsibility throughout the Baby, Super 17 and Shadow Dragon arcs. Unfortunately, the message isn't quite as poignant as it is, but it is delivered in a pretty somber tone as Shenron makes it unambiguously clear that it's the end of an era. Goku asks Shenron to repair the Earth after the devastation caused by the Super 17 and Shadow Dragon sagas, and then when Shenron tells Goku to go, Goku replies with a cryptic "is it time already?" 

Goku then rides on Shenron's head as they fly up into the sky with the dragon balls going along with them. And while Chichi panics a bit, they end up just kind of brushing it off as Goku going off on another adventure -- maybe like when he flew off with Uub at the end of Z. Only Pan and Vegeta seem to know what's going on, as Pan finds Goku's ripped-up blue gi on the ground, and while it's ambiguous, it's clear that Goku has either died or ascended or... something. Vegeta tells Pan to "treasure it"  before flying off... and Goku's most likely died, I suppose. It does explain why Goku isn't affected at all by Omega Shenron's attacks last episode when he's charging the spirit bomb, anyway. 

We get a brief montage of Shenron and Goku flying through the clouds, including a neat callback to the opening of Dragon Ball Z, and we briefly see Yamcha and Pu'ar in the desert, as well as Tien and Chiaotsu training under a waterfall... but Goku stops at Kame House to meet with Roshi, Old Man Krillin (yay!) and Umigame. They have a bit of a fun reminiscing of the old days, and Krillin notes how neither Goku nor Roshi have changed, while he got old. Goku spars with Krillin for old times' sake, giving Krillin a victory, and then Goku seems to have disappeared. 

Goku also shows up in hell, where apparently Piccolo's became Hell Batman, beating up escaped demons and everything, and Piccolo's reaction to Goku's arrival is "YOU MORON DID YOU GET TRAPPED AGAIN". Oh, Piccolo. Goku and Piccolo have a handshake, and then after an apology for giving him so much trouble, Goku disappears again. And then as everyone else goes home, Goku lies down to sleep as the dragon balls enter Goku, and Shenron roars... and he and Goku just disappear. 

It's a weird, weird ending, and we cut to a Tenkaichi Budokai in the far future where Pan is now the grandmother of a little boy called Goku, fighting while wearing Goku's blue Gi, facing off against a descendant of Vegeta, also called Vegeta. It's a bit of a too on-the-nose of the 'their legacy continues' as Grandma Pan sees Goku among the crowd briefly, but fails to catch up to him. And as Goku leaves the tournament grounds, we get a montage of multiple important moments of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and... well, just the scene of Baby's death from Dragon Ball GT. But it's a very nice montage with an instrumental sound, before the narrator notes that this is the end of the story of Son Goku and the Dragon Balls, as Goku salutes the audience and flies away on the nimbus, before the final THE END.

Except it isn't, of course, as I'm writing this review a full 21 years after the final episode of Dragon Ball GT is broadcasted in Japan, and despite the hiatus, Dragon Ball has returned in full force in the form of a new series of movies, a whole load of video games and an anime sequel. The franchise proved to have enough staying power in everyone's hearts, and it's definitely heartwarming that, yes, "until we meet again" actually did happen. But the staff writing this episode of GT didn't know it. As far as they knew, this was the final entry in the story of Dragon Ball, and while there's a couple of extra TV specials down the line... this is it. As far as the staff writing Dragon Ball was concerned, this was the end of Dragon Ball.

And the ending episode itself was a melancholic, well-done piece that truly sets the tone of reminiscing of all the adventures that our good buddy Goku has gone through. And that's a very nice ending.

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So now, how do I feel about GT as a whole? I feel that my opinions about the respective arcs themselves are made abundantly clear in their respective reviews, since all the three major arcs -- Baby, Super 17 and Shadow Dragon -- did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. Some of the biggest problems that GT has is lack of a consistent tone, sometimes waffling between forced comedy and seriousness way too quickly (the Sugoro Space during the Baby saga; the whiplash from the Freeza and Cell fight with Krillin's deaeth in the Super 17 arc), and sometimes just going on and on with dreary seriousness without a break (the Omega Shenron fight in particular). There's also the problem of Goku being the only one that is allowed to do anything, with parts of the Baby and Shadow Dragon Sagas feeling really forced when Goku essentially demands that every other Saiyan give him their powers, and for those other characters to just shrug it off and go "eh, what can we do". That's pretty bad. Only Uub and Vegeta really get any chance to shine among the secondary cast, but even then Uub's big badass scenes all end up basically replacing Piccolo in Z (not a bad thing, mind you) and Vegeta's character arc is insanely inconsistent, as I have covered in the Omega Shenron arc. There's also, of course, the fact that the first fourteen or fifteen episodes are straight-up bad filler, and everything revolving the Black Star Ball arc feels really, really poorly done in both scripting, action and drama.

But I think the biggest problem that GT has is the fact that neither of the supposed four main characters end up being really stale. Goku spends most of his scenes either being the hero, or making jokes about wanting to fight or being hungry, and while he's never been a character that is really deep, it is particularly bad here. There are several great moments for Goku, like this melancholic Goku at the end of GT, or the bit where he remembers the family time when he achieves SS4, but ultimately, Goku's a flat protagonist, and that makes the moments when he acts a bit dickish since he's the only one allowed to be a fighter feel really bad. A lot of people snidely joke that "GT" refers to "Goku Time"... and honestly, considering how Goku essentially takes over every fight he's in? They're not wrong.

Pan, unquestionably the character with the most screentime after Goku... ends up really being inconsistently written. See, the writers really can't decide if they want Pan to be a badass, scrappy tomboy warrior, or an inexperienced kid that ends up being a damsel in distress... and as a result, Pan ends up really waffling between "I can totally beat up bad guys" to "waaaah I'm thirsty" all the time. The show's staunch refusal to really give Pan any sort of power-up or a chance to shine, be it achieving Super Saiyan or defeating an enemy, makes it really extra-hurtful to the character too. The only character Pan defeats all by herself was one of General Rilldo's robot minions, I think, and every other time she's allowed to fight, it's Goku that ends up dealing the killing blow. Which makes the decision to focus on Pan so much end up really frustrating if she's never allowed to grow and be badass.

Giru, the robot sidekick... is okay. His big role is clearly during the Rilldo arc, where he has to fight between helping his newfound friends or execute the commands given to him by his creators, and his relationship with Pan is nice enough, but ultimately he's meant to be a sidekick, and ends up getting taken out before each big conflict. Trunks, the other member of the big team... ends up having no character whatsoever to talk about beyond being generically heroic and the straight man of the group. And therein lies the problem. The fact that none of the characters are particularly well-written or well-defined, which I think is a very valid criticism of GT. Dragon Ball's other incarnations have never been particularly that deep at exploring characters, but there tended to be a couple of characters whose story arc is particularly compelling in any given arc, and in GT there's a definite dearth of that. There's an attempt at giving Piccolo, Uub, Vegeta, Majin Buu and Android 18 big character moments, but other than Buu (who recurs throughout the Baby saga) none of them work particularly well due to lack of buildup or straight-up inconsistent writing in Vegeta's case.

The best part of GT, though, is definitely the concepts behind all the arcs and the villains. None of them are particularly bad, and with a non-rushed production and a better writer, and perhaps better utilization of character arcs, the concepts that underlie the main GT arcs are definitely well-done. And at least in the execution of the character of Baby in particular, GT ends up delivering what ended up being probably one of my favourite Dragon Ball villains. Ultimately, though, the problems that riddle GT end up outweighing the good parts, and while the same problem riddle Z and Super (albeit to an agruably lesser degree) the fact that GT's start was absolutely rocky and genuinely painful to sit through gives the series an over-inflated reputation for being nothing but shit. And it's honestly really unfair. I've gone through GT from start to finish, and it's... not bad. There are some moments that are genuinely good, but for the most part, GT's...  watchable. Except for the Luud arc. So yeah. It's definitely been a fun trip, and while we're not going to see Dragon Ball for a while as Super goes on hiatus, it's definitely been a fun ride through the Grand Tour.