Dragon Ball GT Episode 64 Review: To End An Era

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.