Dragon Ball GT Episodes 25-33 Review: Baby Arc, Pt. 1

Dragon Ball GT: Baby Saga, Part 1 [Episodes 25 - 33]

Yeah, this is going to cover a larger amount of episodes than I tend to do for the GT arc, because the Baby Saga is actually relatively long, even if you discount the whole Rilldo/Myu stuff out as  a fake-out. But the thing is... it's actually decently done, with Baby, despite being a relatively flat villain, having decent motivations and a high creep factor that honestly makes him feel like a rehash of the likes of Cell... but in a good way.


And honestly? The staff of the show seem to recognize this, having Team GT's quest for the Black Star Dragon Balls take place more or less as an afterthought. Considering how shit the actual quest for the dragon balls are, and how they tended to be detached from the actual arc villains like Don Kee, Dolltacki and Rilldo, it's honestly not something I particularly mind, because throughout episodes 25 through 27, we just get a montage of Goku, Trunks, Pan and Giru finding a dragon ball on a generic planet as what's essentially glorified filler. We had one where they fought a giant alien tiger, a giant balloon alien and a snow planet. And honestly? All the Baby stuff is more interesting. It even works as a narrative tool (even if the dragon ball gathering squad does run fairly longer than they should) as a juxtaposition between the horror show that is Baby's rampage on Earth and the GT squad quite literally just dicking around in space.

And Episode 25, other than the brief detour of the GT Squad fighting a tiger monster, starts off with a relatively slow-paced "normal life on Earth" nonsense. We've got Vegeta gloriously shaving off that ridiculous mustache (because apparently Bra calls it ugly in the past, and apparently Vegeta's completely under the thumb of his daughter), Chi-Chi and Bulma hang out and do gossip-y stuff, and Goten continues to be a horn-dog teenager. Can I just say how much I love Goten as this ladies' man? Goten has such a distinct lack of personality in both Z and Super that this is genuinely the only time that he's ever been distinct beyond "Tiny Goku".

And then, of course, Baby arrives on Earth and is invading random humans in his search for Saiyans, eventually coming into conflict with Goten's date as his human host gets treated like a supervillain of sorts. We get the glorious return of Mister Satan, who aims to challenge Baby's host... only to, y'know, realize that it's not just a normal thug but someone super-powered. Satan then shanghais Goten into helping out, and it's... it's not particularly spectacular, but it's a fun enough interaction between the always-fun Mr. Satan and the "aw jeez but I'm on a date" Goten.

And then, of course, after realizing that Goten is a Saiyan (well, half-Saiyan), Baby goops out of his host's body, truly ramping up the horror show. Throughout episode 25 Baby has been silently moving from host to host with no one being aware, and it's genuinely well done, I think, and the reveal of Baby's new form, with golden gauntlets and a bodysuit, makes him... well, it kinda makes him look like a kid trying to acct like a rock star, but Baby is miles and miles far more distinct than the 'generic alien' that the likes of Rilldo, Dolltacki and Ledgic were.

Episode 26 is basically an episode-long battle between Baby and Goten, which is actually genuinely exciting as far as these things go -- it's not just because the attacks are flashier and everything, but it's clear that Goten's actually going Super Saiyan and using his full strength, against Baby, who is also using his relatively full strength. Throughout all the previous battles in GT except the one against Rilldo, it's always been a foregone conclusion and more of a 'why don't they finish the clearly-outmatched bad guy off' deal, and here, as much as Goten might spend a brief part of the battle showboating for Palace's sake, it's still a relatively thrilling battle.

And, of course, Baby ends up taking over Goten's body after pretending to be hit by a Kamehameha, and Goten ends up acting like a douche. The show has to go a bit out of its way to explain why Goten just doesn't kill Chi-Chi, Bulma and the rest of the extended cast (essentially Baby not wanting to blow his cover), but it is actually a neat scene when Baby-Goten goes around and acts like a gigantic douchebag. I just wished it didn't last as long as the joke wore itself way too quickly.

And then we have Goten fighting Gohan in the wastelands, which Gohan brushes off as a 'brotherly spat' to not to get Chi-Chi to worry... but Gohan realizes that Goten's not really Goten. The fight between Gohan and Goten is, again, quite thrilling. While it's a given that the main characters are 'safe' since this is Dragon Ball, it is quite neat to see the conflict in Gohan's mind as he has to defeat Baby without really knowing of the nature of this enemy and not kill his little brother in the process. There are some really cool sequences here with a double-energy purple blast from Baby Goten, and a particularly cool lariat move... and then Baby jumps hosts to enter the more powerful Gohan.

Again, it's pretty cool! We've had villains that absorb the good guys before with Cell and especially Buu, but Baby's puppeteering of the good guys' bodies as he jumps from one host to the next, leeching off their badass powers and his stated mission of working himself up to Vegeta, the strongest Saiyan on Earth, is genuinely interesting, giving Baby a way to power up that feels different, while at the same time involving the side cast without having to juggle too many characters. We also get the somewhat interesting twist that the Saiyans need to go Super Saiyan for it to be the ideal condition for Baby to jump bodies, which doesn't particularly make sense... but eh.

At the end of episode 26, Piccolo arrives to catch Goten and demand that Baby get out of Gohan, but Baby Gohan just unleashes his power and appears to vaporize Piccolo, in a scene that is genuinely chilling. I mean, poor Piccolo's basically the show's biggest jobber, but it's still, again, quite well-executed. It's something that harkens back to the high stake supervillain deal that most of the previous smaller arcs of GT completely fails to deliver, and the sheer maliciousness and creepiness of this body-hopping parasite is genuinely well-done.

Episode 27 ends up being the last of the three-parter of Baby defeating everyone on Earth, because this time around, Baby Gohan goes straight after Vegeta. We get a somewhat-too-long sequence of the now clean-shaven Vegeta acting all "hmph!" with Bra after accompanying her shopping all day... and then Baby Gohan shows up and blows up their car. Vegeta tells Bra to get out of there, before challenging Baby. And by god, the Vegeta and Baby-Gohan fight is genuinely exciting! The fact that Vegeta doesn't actually seem to care if he accidentally kills Gohan as collateral damage is definitely true to the character (and besides, y'know, dragon balls) and the fact that the setting of the fight takes place in a cool area with multiple giant windmill turbines that just get fucked over as these two Saiyans clash ends up with a fight that ends up being quite gripping and exciting -- something that no fight in GT has ever been before. We get Galick Guns and Masenkos and everything.

We also get Baby's motive rant. We know that he and Myu came from the Tsufuru-jin race (or Tuffles, the English romanization of that name which I'll use because it's easier to type), and that apparently Baby's the consciousness and hatred of the entire race, this super-intelligent Brainiac-style computer launched into space, meant to be the new 'baby' of the race and driven with the hatred that the Tuffle King has against Vegeta's father, King Vegeta. Vegeta, naturally, scoffs at the Tuffles' anger because, hey, he's an enemy. Fuck him!

But then one of the bigger twists takes place when Goten wakes up after being knocked out (apparently Piccolo is vaporized in the blast, but Baby Gohan takes Goten back?) Goten ends up acting like he's in a daze, which leads to the revelation that apparently the ones that Baby takes over and leaves behind doesn't automatically get freed from Baby's control. While the main Baby entity did move from Goten to Gohan, it's revealed in this episode that he leaves his 'eggs' behind to essentially control the mind of his previous hosts -- in this case, Goten.

Goten and Gohan both attack Vegeta at once, causing Vegeta to go full power to knock them both out... but this, of course, makes the opportunist for Baby totake over Vegeta's body... and after a horrifying body-horror bit as Vegeta slowly loses his mind, Baby-Vegeta transforms Vegeta's body, giving him Ultra Instinct! white hair and weird-ass lines on his face. It's a pretty badass moment of the villain utterly dominating and trouncing the good guys, and it's not done in such a simple way as "oh bad guy too strongkt call Goku". Again, at this point in the story I'm genuinely invested in a way that I've never been before for GT.

Episode 28 then rolls along, and we get an honestly way-too-long sequence of the GT squad arriving and giving the black star dragon balls to Dende and Popo... but, of course, Dende and Popo has already been taken over by Baby, as is everyone on Earth. The scene were Goku and Pan return home to the robotic and hateful Videl and Chi-Chi didn't quite work as well as it probably should, either, and neither is Trunks getting taken over by the egg that Baby laid within him back in the hospital arc. Trunks is taken over, and poor Giru is smashed apart, actually keeping Giru out for nearly the entirety of the arc. I would actually be sad if Giru wasn't a flat caricature of a character, but there you go.

But what works well is Majin Buu and Mr. Satan, where apparently in the couple of weeks or months that Baby takes over everyone on Earth, Majin Buu ends up being immune to it, able to wrap up Baby's egg and later spit it out, whereas Satan's hidden in Buu's own body with Buu's absorption technique. It's a genuinely novel and fun little utilization of Buu's unique abilities, and I definitely appreciate it. Buu and Satan then go off to recruit Goku to help them fight the taken-over humans, and giving Buu and Satan an increased role is definitely much appreciated.

We get a brief bit of Goku and Pan fighting Gohan and Goten, but poor, poor Pan is just blown away by her father and uncle, partially because she's in shock at fighting her papa, but also because the writers just don't like Pan, it seems. Goku then gets increasingly irritated, and then we get a cool bit where he just backhands Goten's cheap shot without even looking, and admonishes the mind-controlled Goten for being a coward that will attack someone from behind, and then Goku's subsequent unleashing of Ki, and then the rapid-fire punch and Ki blasting of Gohan and Goten is genuinely super-badass. The noticeably better animation these past couple of episodes is also particularly noticeable!

And Mr. Satan ends up coming to save the day, too, telling Goku that Baby's behind this and mind-controlling everyone... just as Baby-Vegeta (or just Baby, as I'll call him) shows up. And episode 29 starts off with Buu having to escape with Satan and Pan because Satan blabs about Buu's ability to resist Baby's Tuffle-ization. Can I just say how cool it is that Buu's chocolate beam isn't sinister anymore and actually an utility tool he uses to carry Pan and Satan around in his belly?

We get a cool bit where Goku sort of has to battle Baby, Gohan and Goten all at the same time, and then Trunks and Bra arrive... and the Goku goes Super Saiyan 3! Which is always badass with that long-ass hair, but apparently Goku's tiny kid body can't maintain the form for more than a couple of blows, causing Baby to easily overpower Goku and completely overwhelm him, with some legitimately cool moments like him unleashing a Big Bang Attack and a couple of invisible punch waves. The four kids then transfer their powers into Baby some more, causing Baby to transform yet into another form with these wacky shoulder-wing things as the Baby-Vegeta entity becomes more Baby and less Vegeta. Oh, and we get a hairdo that points forwards, again, something more akin to Baby's true form instead of the shorter spiked-upwards 'do that Vegeta has.


And then Baby does this evil version of the Spirit Bomb (called the Revenge Death Ball) where he summons the evil Tuffle energy of everyone on Earth, all of whom are converted to the cult/hivemind of Baby and then unleashes it upon Goku... and then Buu gives us the ominous declaration that Goku's Ki has vanished...

And... sadly, we go downhill from here. God damn it, GT, you were actually good for the past five episodes! Sadly we get episodes 30 and 31, all of which involves Goku being trapped in this strange Sugoroku Dimension where he's forced to play some weird-ass giant board game against a couple of shape-shifting Space Tanukis called Sugoro and...  I dunno. It's completely dumb, it involves the Tanukis cheating, and then the Tanukis befriending Goku because they were trapped here by the entity... but apparently the entity forgot to disable their flight technique when it gets angry? It's completely asinine, feels stupid, Sugoro is annoying and nothing in this sequence is executed well at all.

Apparently this all happens when Kibitoshin shows up to attempt to teleport Goku away, but he drops Goku. And we go through another whole long, unfunny argument between Kibitoshin and Elder Kai about this nonsensical purgatory nonsense. And we cut away back and forth with Pan crying and Satan trying to comfort Pan... the Pan scenes are actually decently done, but it's kind of ruined because we all know Goku's just playing a board game a couple of dimensions away.

Meanwhile, Baby reigns on a weird-ass throne while the Saiyan kids and Dende bow on upside-down rock cones or some shit, and then Baby uses the black star Dragon Balls to wish for a new Planet Plant, restoring the planet that the Saiyans took from him, aiming to re-populate the new Planet Plant with the Tuffle-ized population of Earth. Why not just rename Earth "Planet Plant" or "Planet Tuffle"? Eh. Of course, the whole irony here is that in his quest to avenge the Saiyan slaughter of the Tuffles, Baby's essentially done an identity slaughter of Earth, but the show never really stops to acknowledge or explore Baby's hypocrisy.

When it's not dealing with Goku's silly board game or the Kais being useless, episode 31 shows off Pan, Buu and Satan trying to infiltrate the Tuffles, by getting Buu to morph into Handsome!Buu, which is hilarious. Pan also recovers Giru's body, smashed by Baby, and we get a brief cameo of Bearded Krillin, Android 18 and Marron, all of whom have gone as fanatical as the likes of Chi-Chi and Videl, but thanks to Team Pan's hijinks, they end up missing out on evacuating Earth. Pan's idea, however, is just throwing laxatives at everyone in an attempt to have them crap out the eggs and... jeez, I know Pan's a kid, but seriously? This isn't particularly funny either, but at least it's over quickly as Pan is confronted by the mind-controlled Videl and Gohan, stopping Pan in her tracks. And as Baby laughs sinisterly, Gohan is commanded to choke Pan to death...

And then UUB SHOWS UP!

Holy shit, I genuinely didn't expect that. I really wished this scene had Pan actually end up growing a spine and being a real main character and maybe going Super Saiyan and take down her mind-controlled dad, but Uub is cool too.


Thanks to Uub being a hermit, he was also unaffected by the Baby plague, so he shows up and demands Baby change everyone back, and we get a genuinely badass Uub versus Baby fight. We get a cool little beam struggle, we get a bit where Gohan, Goten and Trunks get in the way and Baby gets super pissed-off at his minions actually taking a hit for him, and Pan fails to do anything, getting quite literally knocked away without a second thought. Uub, meanwhile, puts up a decent fight but gets trounced by Baby.

Buu carries Satan and Pan away to be safe, but throughout the entire Uub/Baby fight, Buu's not his usual happy jolly genie self, but is actually introspective. As he brings Satan away, Buu then goes into a brief speech, telling Satan that "we'll always be friends forever", and that he's inspired by Satan beating up the people that killed Buu's dog in the past because it's the right thing to do... and in a way, I've not realized how the previous episodes have been low-key building up to Majin Buu getting some character development. It's genuinely dramatic as Buu tells Satan that he can't leave Uub behind to die, and he jumps in the way of Baby's Revenge Death Ball, exploding... and then the remains of Buu's power merge into Uub.

As Baby does the generic villain pontification thing, Buu and Uub meet in their shared mind-space, with Buu telling Uub that they were once one... and now they need to be one again. And then they fuse into this buff version of Uub with a deeper voice and Majin Buu's clothes, and this is a development that genuinely surprised me. As better as Super's quality in writing and the comedy-and-action sequence may be, this is the sort of death with consequence that is done remarkably well. Buu's character development was built up -- albeit not as much as I'd like -- and his joining together with Uub is a genuinely touching moment, as is Satan's desperate cry of Buu's name as Buu flies off to his heroic sacrifice.

...meanwhile while all this badass fights and emotional moments are going on, Goku's in the sacred world of the Kais, having the two moron Kais and the goddamn space Tanukis pull out his tail with a pair of pliers. Because Elder Kai thinks it'll make Goku stronger. And my god I know it's hard and expensive to animate fight scenes, but the Kai/Goku scenes go on and on and on and on.

Again, god damn it, GT. Between the Sugoro space and the wildly random 'pull a tail out' nonsense, it really ends up grinding the action and killing the tension during these parts of these episodes, ending up as real black marks against the Baby Saga in particular. I'm not opposed to comedic scenes, but these are forced, the Sugoro space adds nothing to the story, and they really could've done the Kai-pulling-Goku's-tail bit far better. And with a bit more explanation beyond 'just cause'.

Episode 33, the last episode we're stopping here, is this new "Majuub" (as the internet calls this form) fighting against Baby, and the fight is genuinely cool, with one moment where a swirling mass of lasers ends up whirling into a gigantic tornado that's well animated. Uub also accidentally turns a whole lot of people into candy, which is hilarious... and it's another high-stakes battle. Sadly, since this isn't Goku, Uub gets defeated in a beam struggle against Baby and gets turned into candy and eaten...

All the while Goku and the Kais are dicking around with pulling Goku's tail out. Again, it takes way too long, and Goku ends up finishing and teleporting into Planet Tuffle just as Uub is defeated. And as sad as it is that Uub ends up being nothing but a jobber, it does feel quite as badass as, say, Piccolo fusing with Kami during the Cell Saga. Yes, it's ultimately futile, but god damn if it isn't badass, and in Buu's sacrifice's case? Actually well done.

Goku goes Super Saiyan 3 and gets absolutely beaten up by Baby, and as he looks upon the Earth in the sky, not comprehending... suddenly his tail twitches, and his heart and muscles start to pound, and he starts to transform. His eyes go reed, his fangs go sharp... he screams... and he turns into a GIANT MONKEY! And it's not just the old Oozaru form either, because as Goku transforms, his fur goes gold. This is Golden Oozaru, seemingly the Super Saiyan version of a Saiyan's long-forgotten-by-the-manga Oozaru form, and the transformation sequence is genuinely well-done. I just really wished that the Kai scenes really do a better scene at explaining the point of the end-game of pulling Goku's tail out (somehow that works?) and all that jazz, but hey, at least we get this cool and genuinely different form, right?

(Also, wow, this review went longer than I thought it would be).

Overall, this first chunk of  the Baby Saga, despite some hiccups on episodes 30 through 33 with the Kais and Sugoro space, is still genuinely well-done, with some really great action scenes and Baby being a decent enough recurring villain with really interesting powers. Add some really great scenes for Goten, Satan, Buu and Uub, and I genuinely enjoyed this stretch of episodes far, far more than anything else in GT. Yeah, GT does have some quality in it, even if it's still plagued by some problems.