Is Dragon Ball GT Still Worth Watching?

Dragon Ball GT has a complicated history, to say the least. While many fans consider it non-canon, including Christopher Sabat, the voice of Vegeta, there has never been any official confirmation one way or the other. The argument for non-canon status is that GT is the only Dragon Ball series that is not based on existing work by Akira Toriyama.

Toriyama did do the character designs for the series, but it is unknown to what degree he was involved in the story. The series does feel like it's missing that certain spark its predecessors had, perhaps due to a lack of involvement from the franchise's creator. The divisiveness of this 64-episode series persists to this day, raising the question: Is GT worth watching at all?

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Why GT Has Such a Poor Reputation

Objectively speaking, Dragon Ball GT is subpar at its best. The series picks up five years after the end of Dragon Ball Z to reintroduce characters who have changed in unexpected ways. Unfortunately, the changes are so radical and without context that these don't feel like the same people that the previous series spent 291 episodes on. The Z Warriors have become the Z citizens, and GT skips over why.

Vegeta is the greatest victim of this trend. He has cut his hair, ditched his Saiyan warrior attire and enthusiastically accepts an artificially achieved transformation in place of one borne of training. This is not the same Prince who lived by his Saiyan pride alone and had the best character evolution of anyone in the franchise's previous installment. GT has all but turned him into a human, and, like Krillin and Yamcha, humans can only matter for so long before they fall to the wayside.

Most famously, Goku was inadvertently wished back into a child and forced to remain that way for the entire series. It was an understandable move to create nostalgia for the original series, but it went on longer than it should have. The series' favorite Saiyan is a very simple man who doesn't experience much growth, so his endless quest to get stronger fills that role. Making Goku weaker is the equivalent of stripping away his character development, leaving the viewer to wonder what the point was of everything that came before.

Hardcore Fans Should Definitely Still Watch

Dragon Ball GT does have its merits. The Super Saiyan 4 transformation has retained its popularity over the years thanks to its radically different design from the previous Super Saiyan forms. The nature of Saiyan biology is something that Dragon Ball Z didn’t spend much time on. Sporting a fur coat, wild hair and tails, this truly iconic form reminds the audience why Frieza calls them monkeys in the first place.

GT finally addresses the abuse of Shenron's power by creating consequences for over-wishing. Goku and the rest of the Z Fighters have been much too liberal with the Dragon Balls over the series' long history. Having devolved into a get-out-of-jail-free card, the wish-granting orbs make it difficult to feel like there's ever anything truly at stake. Though the arc could have been executed a little better, it was a poetic send-off for the series to have the Dragon Balls be taken off the board to protect the Earth.

For any fans of Dragon Ball Super who miss the days when Goku cared about right and wrong (or even his family), GT does the character justice in this sense. Spending much of his time with his granddaughter, Pan, it is clearly important to the Saiyan to win back her love when she resents him for leaving to train Uub. Oddly, Goku's good intentions in this series land the universe in hot water rather than his lust for battle -- which is more than Super can say.

Kid Goku "training" (grounding coffee) in Dragon Ball GT

Like anything, there's good and bad in Dragon Ball GT. Granted, the bad gets pretty bad. However, any Dragon Ball content is watchable content. The 14th most profitable media franchise of all time, the anime juggernaut is as popular as it's ever been, making it the perfect time for a re-watch.

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