Dragon Ball GT, Episode 6
Yeah, they try to go for a "yay fun time adventure" stuff with this episode. And don't get me wrong, having Goku, Pan and Trunks explore a series of wacky planets is neat, but this one honestly didn't feel particularly fun. Nothing about the planet felt like it really was as fantastical as they're probably supposed to seem, since they're just... giant bugs and a giant dude with a toothache. Not every episode needs to end with a huge character development or personal soul-searching, but there's literally just nothing here beyond "Goku acts like a hungry kid, Pan acts like a spoiled kid and Trunks is responsible." The subplot about Pan being kidnapped by bees that think she's a queen because she... found some fluff and wings that makes her look like a queen bee on a ditch somewhere or something? That whole bee subplot really went nowhere and the bees just leave the episode as soon as they enter it.
There's some rather poor attempts at humour as the cast walk around the feet of the giant and try to figure out how to get the dragon ball from where it's stuck onto the apple that the giant is eating, but honestly even that's pretty boring. Nothing in this episode is especially bad, but nothing in it is either interesting or noteworthy either and it honestly really makes me wish that they had just found the dragon ball that they did in this episode among Don Kia's loot or something. Overall, this episode's kind of like plain bread -- filling but tasteless. Like, this entire episode's just one whole lot of uninteresting.
Dragon Ball GT, Episode 7-8 [Zunama Arc]
The same can't be said about the two-parter of episodes 7 and 8, on the other hand, which really feels like the plot of a single episode stretched so far across two episode. I use the term 'plot' very, very loosely, because what we get is a rehash of Oolong's introduction in the original Dragon Ball, but if the Oolong arc was devoid of comedy and world-building, and also has a weird cross-dressing subplot that doesn't even deliver in giving us any wacky hijinks.
The plot of this two-parter is essentially our heroes find the six-star Dragon Ball on some random-ass planet that looks like it's not an alien world but a rejected town from a Legend of Zelda game, where apparently they're terrorized by a giant catfish ogre creature called Zunama (an anagram of namazu, which means catfish in Japanese -- an animal associated with earthquakes). Zunama claims to have the power to create earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and demands a bride from the tribe, so instead of doing the sane thing and beat up Zunama, they decide to spend the entirety of episode 7 dicking around and dressing up Trunks as a woman. And that's the entirety of the joke, the punchline that didn't land, is that "Trunks is dressed up as a woman". It's not funny after the initial reveal, and everyone else acts in the same on-dimensional way that they've been. There's like three different jokes of "Goku's such a hungry kid, oh ho ho" and I think the entirety of Giru's dialogue is "danger approaching".
Episode 8 has Trunks trying to get Zunama drunk even when his disguise has fallen off instead of, y'know, trying to beat Zunama up. And then it's revealed that Zunama is actually someone who can predict earthquakes and volcanoes and not actually able to create them, which is like Generic Anime Filler Episode Plot #25. And he's realized that the volcano he's made his lair in is becoming more and more active, so clearly the number one priority is to... fool the townspeople into giving him a bride and return to the very active volcano. Yeah.
And then Goku solves it all by Kamehameha-ing the volcano, because an explosion into an exploding volcano apparently doesn't cause an even bigger explosion. Despite being a giant monster that has terrorized them and is about to steal a woman to be his bride under false pretenses, Zunama is forgiven and allowed to live with the villagers, and the dragon ball ends up being stolen by some weird alien with a weird spacesuit and a head-tail, rendering this entire two-parter absolutely atrocious and really honestly pretty bad. Yeah, if the episodes are like this -- cheap, lifeless, soulless attempts to rip off Dragon Ball with flat characters and zero-effort plots, no wonder GT received the amount of bile it did. I do sincerely hope it gets better down the line, but jeez.
Dragon Ball GT, Episodes 9-10 [Para Para Arc]
The Para Para Brothers' existence is something that I know about before going into GT, having been shown the absolutely ridiculous dance routine in its entirety. But by god, having to sit through two entire episodes about these guys... it's really, really a pain to watch these episodes when all the three brothers all have essentially the same personality and end all their sentences in para. They're trying to mimic the Ginyu Force in being a quirky-but-deadly enemy, I suppose, but where wacky villains like the Ginyu Force works is that all five members of the Ginyu Force have distinct designs (and at least distinct gimmicks in their power sets if not personalities) the Para Para Brothers... doesn't. It's the same design, except one is fatter, one is shorter and one is thinner, and their entire shtick is that they're like Team Rocket if you suck all the personality and charm out of Team Rocket.
The entirety of this two parter is essentially the Para Para Brothers leading Team GT on a chase into a labyrinth asteroid which turns out to be the nest of a bunch of space maggots, returning back to their boss, which is a weird cult worshipping the great stone statue called "Lord Luud", led by some high priest called Mutchi Mutchi who kills mercenaries and turns them into dolls to feed them to the eldritch statue. We cut back to Luud and Mutchi-Mutchi a couple of times, but then than vaguely be an evil cult, they don't really have much personality to them.
Somehow, they manage to stretch this over two episodes, having Team GT fight the worms through way, way too many variations and the Para Para Brothers having so much screentime to develop, except that they don't. Halfway through the second episode, the Para Para Brothers finally face off against Team GT, telling them that they want the second dragon ball, and then go through the Para Para Dance, where they speak English words "Raighto Raighto Refuto Refuto Biggu Gureto Sumairuuuu" and... and it's dumb. Like, I get that they're trying to parody like an aerobics skit or something and that the dance is irresistible or something, but the execution is so devoid of life, and part of why it's effective is apparently forcing you to dance drains your stamina... but the Para Para trio is also dancing alongside them, so... um... I guess they just get free punches in? Jeez. This is dumb.
And then the Para Para brothers somehow summon all the giant space maggots, whose appearance shocks the Para Para Brothers... which, in turn, the act of which shuts down their weird light-show armour-speaker things? And then Team GT beat them up, but then Pan and Giru get stuck in the Para Para Brothers' ship and fly off to Luud? Yeah, either way, this entire two-part episode is dumb. Like, seriously, it's one of the utterly most worthless, insipid-of-joy pieces of shit I've forced myself to sit through. Like, I'm sure GT gets better down the line, because this is just... this is just really bad and boring. Nothing that happens in these two episodes is anything but clumsy, doddering setup or just shit-poor execution of a one-note joke that isn't even funny. So yeah... it's quite easy why GT gets a bad reputation if it contains something like this in its midst.
_______________________________________________________
Dragon Ball GT - Episodes 11-14 [Luud Arc]
Wow. Wow. The Para Para mini-arc was bad in a nauseous way, but this little mini-arc really feels shit, huh? And a good chunk of it is thanks to how utterly inept both the writing team is, as well as how inept the characters end up feeling. Nevermind the fact that Goku and Trunks completely forgot about Super Saiyan until after fighting for a requisite five minutes. Nevermind the fact that we, the audience, have already been treated to excruciatingly boring exposition about the generic cult so Pan re-discovering them is quite literally just repetition. Nevermind that the villains have less personality than a sock. Nevermind the fact that episode 11 literally spends three whole minutes with Pan and Giru repeating the same tired one-liner over and over again.
So much of this stretch of Dragon Ball GT is just so... so utterly dull. Nobody is allowed to grow. None of the action scenes are cool. All of the designs are weird for weirdness's sake, and the show never does anything interesting with anything. It's not even like Super where while the power-scaling and animation are iffy at times, they genuinely try to at least simulate a character arc or try to create powerful anime moments. No, this feels just like an anime going through the motions. Goku, Trunks and Pan are less characters and more walking designs to root for by default, with none of them showing any real personality beyond the generic "Goku is hungry, yuk yuk yuk" or "Trunks isn't as good as Goku, yuk yuk yuk" and "Pan is a girl yuk yuk yuk" and "oh look at Giru repeating Danger Danger Danger such an interesting marketable character".
Episode 11 just has the cast re-discover the Cult of Luud, which, by the way, is probably the logistically dumbest cult out there. The whole point of the Cult is that it's a sham created to bring in silly sheeple to be sacrificed to the gigantic Luud statue, who's actually a... "robot mutant"? Whatever that means. I'm not trying to get into the logistics of how a robot and a mutant even makes sense together. But this Lord Luud is just a fancy robot, and the cult seems to just want to use the manpower to find the dragon balls. If so then... why not send out the cultists alongside the Para Para Brothers to scour the galaxy for the dragon balls instead of them chanting "enyakayakayaka" in that room like morons? Or just feed them all to Luud? Nothing here really makes sense logistically beyond "hey, we need a cult scene!"
Episode 11 basically ends with this Cardinal Mutchy Mutchy, a generic alien cult leader, turning Pan and the Para Para Brothers into dolls, feeding the Para Paras into Luud, while spending way too much time fighting non-SSJ Goku and Trunks. Mutchi Mutchi and his pet lion alien get beaten up by Goku... and then the whip he's been using turns out to be a shapeshifting, telekinetic alien called Mutchi! And... Mutchi (meaning literally 'whip' in Japanese) isn't the worst design out there. It's stereotypically anime, but it's at least memorable. I mean, he's got whips for hands that telekinetically controls objects, and that alone makes him somewhat cool in that he gives us some neat visuals -- the only ones in this entire mini-arc -- but Mutchi is a thug, and like a thug he goes down.
No, the seeming big bad of this cult is Dolltaki (not Dothraki), who is... some dude with an ugly bowl-cut, who, in the words of Pan, is a doll otaku, and creeps all over Pan knowing full well that the doll's an actual person, and we're subjected to scenes of Dolltaki agonizing over which dolly clothes to dress Pan in, and Pan is clearly distressed as this weird manchild with a dick-chin tries to undress her while in doll form. This is so wrong on so many levels that there's not even a "oh, silly Japanese, making pervert jokes" feel to it. There's something significantly different from the traditional pervert joke that, say, Master Roshi does to Dolltaki intending to strip an underage girl and have her live with him forever and ever, all the while Pan is clearly distressed.
Dolltaki then activates Lord Luud before he's fully ready, and Luud is... a giant robot baby who really looks like Mosco from Dragon Ball Super. The narrator called Luud "God of Destruction Luud", so it's likely that Mosco's a reference to Luud, huh? Luud's ultimately a generic fighty-fight villain with no personality either, beyond being really big and really primitive, but of course he's not at his full power.
Oh, and Dolltaki feeds his cult to Luud. Is there any real reason for him not to do this earlier, and then use Luud to go around the galaxy's lesser planets and suck them dry? Nope! And then Dolltaki, the secret leader behind the secret leader behind the leader, reports to the for-reals secret leader, Luud's creator, a fancy-ass alien hipster scientist with a ginger mustache and space sunglasses, Doctor Myu, probably the only one out of this gaggle of villains to really have a pleasant design instead of being weird-for-weird's sake. Myu chastises Dolltaki for activating Luud before Luud's fully charged with the life energies of enough people, even though Myu's the same idiot who thinks the most efficient way to charge Luud up is to set up a fake cult under the supervision of Dolltaki. So... yeah.
Pan gets eaten and absorbed by Luud (totally not dead!) and Luud powers up and by god it's so hard to care for any of this. In a better show, Myu's revelation should be absolutely shocking, like, here's the real big bad. Here's the Aizen to the Hollows, here's the Akatsuki to Orochimaru, here's Freeza to the Saiyan invaders, here's the Phantom Troupe to Hisoka... but nope. None of the villains in this arc -- not the Para Paras, not generic Jafar clone Mutchi Mutchi or his whip Mutchi, not the literal robot Luud and not the creepy one-note doll-otaku Dolltaki have any sort of personality beyond a single line or two. Dolltaki's just creepy, Para Paras are dumb and Mutchi is sadistic. That's it. None of them are written with any sort of depth or real attempt at being memorable. Throw in the fact that nobody's evil plan really makes sense here, and you get the recipe for a clusterfuck of an arc.
Let's get into the final episode of this mess, episode 14, where we immediately cut the tension that Pan's dead and/or in trouble, because apparently Luud's inside is actually just... a floating void of nothingness. We spend a literal half of the episode with the powered-up Luud doing nothing but stand and shoot the odd eye-beam and knock Trunks (a.k.a. The Job-Master) out of the sky. Like there's a whole sequence where Luud just stands there and shoot eye-beams for Goku to dodge comically. The entire episode is just an inanely stretched-out nonsense of Pan and Dolltaki having a shouting contest, and then the Para Para Brothers shows up and by god when Luud and Dolltaki make the Para Para Brothers look good, you know something's seriously wrong with this arc.
The Para Para Brothers do this whole gag where their telepathy involves them trying to sing in falsetto or some shit, and that somehow Luud is built so that the only way to defeat him is to shoot his core from both outside and inside. Somehow, the dolls that empower Luud is able to move around inside it. Yeah, nothing here makes any sense, the gag with Goku not being able to count because he's dumb went for too long, and I cheer when Luud falls because this stupid plot arc is finally over. Sadly, Dolltaki doesn't die, and escapes to presumably menace our heroes in the future, because he's such a great villain.
Let's get into the final episode of this mess, episode 14, where we immediately cut the tension that Pan's dead and/or in trouble, because apparently Luud's inside is actually just... a floating void of nothingness. We spend a literal half of the episode with the powered-up Luud doing nothing but stand and shoot the odd eye-beam and knock Trunks (a.k.a. The Job-Master) out of the sky. Like there's a whole sequence where Luud just stands there and shoot eye-beams for Goku to dodge comically. The entire episode is just an inanely stretched-out nonsense of Pan and Dolltaki having a shouting contest, and then the Para Para Brothers shows up and by god when Luud and Dolltaki make the Para Para Brothers look good, you know something's seriously wrong with this arc.
The Para Para Brothers do this whole gag where their telepathy involves them trying to sing in falsetto or some shit, and that somehow Luud is built so that the only way to defeat him is to shoot his core from both outside and inside. Somehow, the dolls that empower Luud is able to move around inside it. Yeah, nothing here makes any sense, the gag with Goku not being able to count because he's dumb went for too long, and I cheer when Luud falls because this stupid plot arc is finally over. Sadly, Dolltaki doesn't die, and escapes to presumably menace our heroes in the future, because he's such a great villain.
Oh, and while Goku and Trunks not really developing or having any real personality is a problem, what's up with their treatment of Pan, huh? She's not allowed to do anything, she'll never reach Super Saiyan as far as I know, and she ends up spending two entire episodes stuck as an immobile doll put in embarrassing and uncomfortable positions and manhandled by a creepy doll maniac. Yeah, GT's not kind to Pan, yeah? I mean, she's grating, but nowhere as grating as her treatment. Or as Giru. Fuck Giru. He adds literally nothing to the plot or the cartoon other than to be one extra toy for them to make money out of.
Overall, a pretty sorry excuse of an anime arc. Yeah, we're 14 episodes in, and we've not had anything that's really great or exciting, and our protagonists are pretty boring. No wonder GT has the reputation that it did.
_______________________________________________________
Dragon Ball GT, Episode 15: Beginning of the End
The whole theme of this giant desert planet populated exclusively by giant sandworm monsters is that "Pan needs to gain self-confidence". Trunks talks about returning back to Earth to refuel and maybe pick up Goten, so when they are stuck temporarily on a planet due to an encounter with a giant sandworm, Trunks and Goku tell Pan to stop getting in the way when she tries to prove that she's not a child. So Pan proves that she's not a child... by acting like a child, throwing a hissy fit, going into the desert, falling down because of exhaustion and nearly getting killed by a giant sandworm.
A giant sandworm, which, by the way, was beaten up by Giru, who flies in to rescue Pan. I'm not sure if Giru's meant to actually be secretly a badass, or if the writers have such a low opinion of Pan that they let her be beaten up by a giant beast and be rescued by a babbling mascot... but considering the treatment poor Pan went through in the series, and how she's portrayed as either a nuisance or a braggart all the time, I really just think that the show writers just don't really know what to do with Pan.
Anyway, we get the dragon ball, Trunks and Goku thinks Pan is actually badass and confident because she found a dragon ball (no, it's all Giru's doing) and Dolltaki gets killed by one of Myu's actual competent minions, a buff elf dude called General Rilldo. Yes, Dolltaki actually gets shot in the head with a laser beam and dies. Thank you. There's something genuinely good that happened in this episode, at least. So yeah, presumably we'll be kicking things to high gear? Maybe?
No comments:
Post a Comment