Dragon Ball GT Episodes 34-40 Review: Four [Baby Saga, Pt. 2]

Dragon Ball GT, Episodes 34-40: Baby Saga, Part 2



Okay, we're back with this! I definitely do like the Baby Saga a lot, lot more than my insanely low opinion about the pre-Baby episodes of GT. Honestly, it's extremely enjoyable, and I'm just slightly disappointed at the execution of some plot points -- like the lack of follow-up regarding the whole theme of Baby being the sum collective of the Saiyan race's past sins as conquerors and space pirates. While that particular concept was definitely explored earlier during Baby's encounters with Vegeta, I feel that none of ended up mattering at the end of the saga, with Baby reduced to a generic powerful menacing villain with a more interesting backstory than most. I'm also not the biggest fan of how Uub, after his huge power-up, ended up faring not really that much better than Pan or Trunks, treated as nothing but stumbling blocks... but Uub did have a fair amount of awesome scenes despite the slight mishandling of his character, so eh.

Let's jump right in, yeah? Episode 34 just spends most of its screentime following up on the Golden Oozaru cliffhanger, and, of course, as with his previous Oozaru form, Golden Oozaru Goku just rampages and launches flamethrowers around. I actually find it somewhat neat that Baby actually goes into a bit of a PTSD at this, and not even Pan is able to reason with Golden Oozaru. In the Kai realm, Elder Kai notes how he had hoped that returning Goku's tail would unlock "Super Saiyan Four". And... and this is one of my bigger problems with this plot, really. How does Elder Kai know about Super Saiyan Four? How does he know how to unlock it, or how pulling Goku's tail will give him a power-up? The show never really makes an effort to explain it, and we're just left mind-bogglingly puzzled since the show really thinks that it's more important for the space tanukis to make jokes and for Elder Kai to be oh-ho-ho such an old-Japanese-man instead of explaining the reasoning behind what he's doing.

The second half of episode 34 is Pan just trying to get Goku to calm down, and he seems to calm down upon looking at the Earth. Pan tries to get Goku to sniff her old fighting Gi, but that doesn't work... what does work is a handy-dandy photograph of them in a holiday, and it's actually some great character development for Goku, I think, who's been portrayed as mostly one-dimensional in GT (and Super. And also a huge portion of Z) as nothing but a fighting maniac. It's cheesy as all hell, and it's honestly stretched out longer than it should, and Goku's own one-dimensionality in GT doesn't really help the case, but the flashback to the holiday and Goku noting that while he's missing out on fighting, he's enjoying being with his family. It causes all the waterworks to start flowing, and this apparently is enough of an emotional anchor for the Golden Oozaru form to stabilize into its true form... Super Saiyan Four.

Oh, and Goku's an adult now. Because apparently the transformation from the Golden Oozaru gives Goku his proper adult body? I know what Super Saiyan Four looks like, of course, having played some of the Dragon Ball fighting games, but it's still pretty badass... and best of all, it's not just Goku with a different coloured hair. That's always something that bothered me about things like Super Saiyan Blue or Super Saiyan 3 or Ultra Instinct... it's essentially just the same design with a different hair dye and aura. Super Saiyan 4 is such a weird, weird beast, with the monkey tail, the furry muscles and the black hair and the eye-shadow. The pants are a bit weird, but eh.

While all this is going on, Baby has flown off to talk with Evil Bulma, talking about how Goku transformed with the aid of Blutz Waves, something that apparently triggers the Oozaru/SS4 transformation in Saiyans. Again, it'd be a lot, lot nicer if there's some foreshadowing to all of this! But psychotic evil possessed Bulma is so fun I can't really blame her. Super Saiyan 4 Goku is all "I'm primal and scary", in the way that original Super Saiyan was back when it was introduced, and he wails on Baby while not being serious at all -- a well-worn trope in Dragon Ball stories. He's just batting Baby around, and not even Baby's most powerful technique, the Revenge Death Ball, works. (I just love it when Japanese anime characters suddenly revert to English to call out their attacks. It's so cheesy. RIBENJI DESUUUBORUUU!) There's a bit of a talk about the Saiyan race's true nature as warriors or whatever, but we don't really get any conclusion because Goku quite literally doesn't give a shit. We could've had a badass "look in a mirror and see what you have done, Baby!" moment, but sadly all we got was just punchy-punchy.

After a hurtful "KILL HIM BABY SAMA!" moment where there's a nicely subtle look of pure shock and rage on Goku's face at Bulma's corruption, Evil Bulma then finally manages to point the Blutz Wave radar dish to amplify the waves and shoot it straight at Baby. Baby then transforms into Golden Oozaru Baby, which still retain the gloriously ridiculous space armour shoulder-pads and even Baby's weird booties! That's adorable. And, in true DBZ fashion, now it's Golden Oozaru Baby's turn to whack SS4 Goku around.


Throughout all this, I feel like I must acknowledge how we keep cutting away to Kibitoshin and Elder Kai and the two space tanukis and none of their dialogue matter, and it's just an excuse to take up screentime. Less grating are the scenes with Mr. Satan and Pan, whose dialogue at least feel somewhat more relevant.

Episode 36 starts off with Tuffle Bulma trying to reason with the big monkey Baby, and we get a hilarious bit when Goku decides to take big monkey Baby to the Kai realm. Okay,  that joke's actually quite funny. But after a short bit of needless and senseless rampaging... it turns out that while Goku's busy protecting the mind-controlled humans, Baby's just being a dick and pretending to be rampaging. He's apparently retained his sanity, because Baby himself doesn't transform -- he's just a parasite, and only Vegeta's body lost his mind. Huh. There's a cool bit of finger-beam barrage from Baby as he targets (and misses) the mind-controlled Videl and Chichi. Baby then charges up the Super Galick Gun, launching it onto Earth and causing a gigantic explosion, witnessed by Krillin and his family (who thankfully survives, but that's a horrifying scene nonetheless).

So Goku stands in-between Baby and the Earth, charging up his newest technique -- the X10 Kamehameha. Which is basically the Kamehameha, but red. But apparently... somehow, Goku can't charge fast enough, but Baby can? And then Goku is forced to take on the Super Galick Gun blast with his body to prevent Earth from getting blown up. And then episode 37 starts off with Goku falling... and then Baby falls as well, apparently the damage from Goku's earlier X10 Kamehameha having a delayed effect.

And then we take a break from Planet Tuffle to get this extremely and excruciatingly long sequence of Kibitoshin running around like a little moron as he tries to get the 'Ultra Holy Water' from Kami's lookout, trying to avoid the mind-controlled Dende and Popo. It does make Shin look like a complete moron, and as much as I appreciate using there's no real reason for this scene to go this long as it did. Beyond the discussion between Kibitoshin and Elder Kai, and the antics at Kami's Lookout, it went on for way, way too long. And then after Kibitoshin cures Dende and Popo with the Ultra Holy Water... he teleports to Planet Tuffle. You'd think that Kibitoshin would just force-feed the water to the Baby-Vegeta entity to free Vegeta's body from Baby. Okay, then, maybe he's just afraid that it won't have the same effect on the main Baby body? But instead of going to what would be the logically next-most-powerful character there, Gohan, Kibitoshin goes to Trunks for... for no real reason other than Trunks is one of the supposed main characters of GT.

And honestly? While Kid Goku and Pan and even Giru has had character arcs -- basic character arcs, but some character arcs nonetheless -- Trunks is just kind of there, yeah? And here he's just functioning as a walking plot device, honestly.

The 37th episode ends with Baby finally getting up after another infusion of Blutz Waves from Evil Bulma, while Goku tries to bluff and distract Baby from causing more destruction to the humans. The 38th episode then begins with Baby slapping Goku around, and Pan finally decides to do something. Again, it would be a great moment for Pan to finally go Super Saiyan, or learn a finishing move, or something, but all she does is essentially cry and shoot a bunch of futile blasts at Baby's face, before getting swatted aside. She does make note about how nobody that Baby harmed is actually the target of the Tuffle race's revenge (except maybe Vegeta).... but again, no one really acknowledges this. Trunks then comes in to save Pan, and he goes Super Saiyan, but he gets dispatched even faster than Pan.

Kibito Kai arrives with Goten and Gohan, and Goten suggests forming Gotenks! All right, an adult (or teen, I guess) version of Gotenks? That's pretty cool. But Goku and the writing staff apparently doesn't give a shit about any other side characters (one of GT's biggest weakness)  and Goku quite literally tells Goten and Trunks that they can't stand up to Baby. Not all of them separately, but if they all give their energy to Goku, it's... somehow... better than all of them fighting separately? Its a justification that doesn't really make sense, and honestly it's a shitty way to justify making it a one-on-one fight.

Goku blinds Baby with a Solar Flare, which I thought is hilarious, and Gohan, Goten, Trunks and Pan stand all around Goku to turn him into a Super Saiyan God Powered-Up Super Saiyan 4. Huh, apparently even the Battle of Gods movie cribbed from GT, huh? And as the Saiyans do their holding-hands-in-a-circle bit, Majin Uub suddenly attacks Baby from within his body, because apparently he knows how to get out of his own chocolate spell, and he distracts Baby long enough for Goku to power up, before Uub finally gets spat out. Well, that's actually kinda neat on Uub's part.

Baby unleashes a Super Galick Gun that appears to knock everyone out and vaporize Pan and Goku, causing a very well-done heartfelt cry from Satan (poor man just lost Buu, and now he thinks he lost his granddaughter too) but of course, Goku's all super-powerful now, leading to episode 39, the final confrontation.

It's a bit of a shame that episode 39 starts off with the underwhelming bit where Goku and Baby run across the plains, shooting laser blasts at each other. It's so ridiculous, especially with how weirdly off-model the big gorilla Baby was in that scene. Baby is just spamming a lot of attacks, like the Super Galick Gun Barrage, and the Revenge Death Ball - Final... but Goku just quite literally tanks everything with his newfound power, soaking up the death ball that beat him and Uub earlier in the saga. Goku then uses a Kamehameha to blast off Vegeta's tail... and as Vegeta's body shrinks down, Baby's body apparently 'got big' during the Oozaru transformation, and he has grown too big to stay inside Vegeta's body. Which is... a bit weird, but I won't really question it.

Mister Satan, god bless his soul, actually goes straight after Baby's real form and is all like "you have nowhere to run now!", but Baby uses a variation of the Solar Flare to escape, running into Bulma's spaceship to fly away into space. But Goku just waits until the ship gets high enough, then uses the X10 Kamehameha to blast Baby straight into the sun, where he ends up being vaporized in a typical Dragon Ball Z brutal disintegration scene. Baby is dead, and it's honestly a fight that I really enjoy despite the many, many missteps and inconsistencies.

I really do wish that we actually get an explanation for both Golden Oozaru and Super Saiyan 4, I wish we got a proper explanation of the Blutz Waves beyond a handwave, I wish Trunks and Pan actually did more in beating Baby, I wish we get a Golden Oozaru fight, I wish we get more exploration of Baby's whole deal as the Saiyan race's past sins, I wish Gohan did something, I wish we actually did get Gotenks, I wish Uub did more (although Uub definitely fared better than Trunks and Pan)... but all in all, it's still very enjoyable. It's just not as good as it could've been.


Episode 39 ends with a montage of Kibitoshin using the plot device water to return everyone on Earth to normal... but then ends again with the Earth breaking apart because the Black Star Dragon Balls thing. Oh, right. That was a plot point.

And episode 40 is just disasters cracking the Earth open, but Vegeta points out the obvious. They have a spare planet in Planet Tuffle, so why not just make that the new Earth? It's a neat little way to resolve the arc and have a long-lasting consequence to the Black Star Dragon Ball/Baby stuff without actually changing too much, it makes use of Satan's role as the Earth's premier superhero, and we get a badass line from Vegeta, even. "Saiyans often move en masse to other planets anyway". This is a huge excuse to have cameos from older characters like Android 8, Nam's tribe, Yajirobe and Korin, the Pilaf gang, Yamcha, Tien and Chiaotsu, plus Master Roshi.

And then there is this long, long sub-plot with a little farmer kid being left behind on Earth as it breaks apart, and Piccolo's apparently left behind on Earth, and helps Goku to save the kid... but remains behind as Goku teleports to one of the spaceships heading to Planet Tuffle. Piccolo then telepathically says a farewell to Gohan, noting that the Black Star Dragon Balls are tied to his life-force since he's all that remains from the original Nameless Namekian who made the Black Star Dragon Balls, and... and I'm not going to lie. The scene is executed very well, with Piccolo saying farewell to Gohan as he breaks down crying and shouts Piccolo's name while Piccolo dies amidst Earth's destruction...

But it rings hollow in the way that Buu's sacrifice earlier in this saga didn't. Piccolo is absent throughout the entire arc after Baby first arrives on earth. If he had been around throughout the Baby Saga, or even the Black Star Dragon Ball Saga where we might see, y'know, him at least considering the fact that the Black Star balls are part of his fault, or if he feels some need to atone for his past sins as Piccolo Daimaou, or something...  this just feels like an out-of-nowhere sacrifice inserted and shoehorned at the end of the Baby Saga for no real reason. And I'm sorry, as well-executed as the actual death scene and the amazing voice acting by Piccolo, Goku and Gohan's voice actors are, the sacrifice rings really hollow and comes out of nowhere.

It's even worse because they actually wish the Earth back with the Namekian dragon balls. We could've actually had something really poetic -- with Piccolo electing to go down with the ship as Earth itself explodes, the planet that he protected and menaced at different times in his past, especially considering how half of Piccolo is Kami, Earth's god-slash-guardian... it would've been a poetic sacrifice if not a well-foreshadowed one (and one that ties thematically to the whole past-sins theme that the Baby Saga attempts to do), but alas, we couldn't even get that. Piccolo just essentially dies because... we need a death? Because we want to handwave the Black Star Dragon Balls away? That whole Black Star balls thing are a mess that isn't properly explained, either.

Overall, the Baby Saga isn't the best storyline I've ever seen. The actual execution of  Baby and the fight between Baby and the Saiyans -- Goten and Vegeta earlier in the arc, and Uub and Goku in the later parts -- is definitely well done, and in my opinion even stands up to some of the best that Super or even Z has to offer. Baby himself is a very, very solid villain in my books -- slightly boring, but there's enough good stuff about him to feel positive about. There are some really great moments in this arc, too, like the horror show of Baby's initial arrival on Earth, and the dramatic sacrifice that Uub makes. But the actual execution of the arc, downright atrocious B-plots (the tanukis!), the lack of exploration of the underlying themes, the abrupt resolution with a forced death for Piccolo, all end up with a less-than-satisfying product. Again, a good chunk of this is caused by the fact that it had to continue from the pretty shit pre-Baby storyline, and had to wrap that hot mess up, but that's really no excuse for a lot of the problems inherent in this arc itself. Still, I did enjoy this arc a lot, despite its flaws... and that's why these past couple of GT reviews had involved so many episodes at once. I actually didn't stop watching until the end of the arc, instead of just watching one episode at a time.