Why do people hate Dragon Ball GT?

Dragon Ball GT is kind of the whipping boy of the Dragon Ball world. Opinions range from complete hatred to mixed feeling, but probably everyone would rank it as the worst Dragon Ball tv series.

But how could such a highly rated show like Dragon Ball Z be hated so much? Just why do people hate Dragon Ball GT?

Critics of the show hate Dragon Ball GT for the following reasons: Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama didn’t write it, there was a significant shift in tone from the popular Dragon Ball Z, the animation didn’t look as good, it didn’t respect characters, and many people didn’t like the storylines.

If Toriyama didn’t write it, it isn’t canon!

Before the battle of the Gods movie came out, Dragon Ball GT was in a weird space where the studio claimed it was canon and it had Toriyama’s blessing.

But there was certainly a backlash from people who automatically didn’t like Dragon Ball GT, and looked to pick holes in it, just because it wasn’t written by Toriyama directly.

A large part of why people hate Dragon Ball GT is because Toriyama didn’t write it, regardless of its quality.

Tonal shift – It just didn’t…feel right.

This is difficult to explain, but it is noticeable when watching. The end of Dragon Ball Z felt like this warm fuzzy fantasy land where occasionally bad stuff would happen, but it would all be okay because Goku and his pals would sort it out.

Dragon Ball GT seemed to have a darker colour palette, the characters seem less happy, there was less cheerful music, and it seemed like we had entered the Twilight Zone.

From Dragon Ball through to Dragon Ball Z the show had remained tonally the same, but Dragon Ball GT brought forward a disturbing shift which many people hated.

The animation wasn’t as good.

For some reason, the characters had lost their charm. The twinkle had gone out of Goku’s eyes, and many of the background characters looked more like forgettable humans, then the cosmic Super Heroes.

Vegeta is an example of someone who completely changed and lost his dynamic energy. When the Tuffle takes over Vegeta, it looks nothing like Vegeta.

Usually changing someone’s hair from black to white shouldn’t make them unrecognisable but this only illustrated how far Vegeta had fallen from grace… and that moustache looked dreadful!

Look for yourself and compare your favourites’ character design from Dragon Ball Z to Dragon Ball GT and you will immediately see why GT gets so much hate.

The new characters could have been better.

Although technically not a new character, Pan was turned from an extra to a lead character. Many people found Pan extremely annoying and pretty useless character who didn’t help out much.

There were also other characters that got, even more, hate like the Para Brothers for example.

When a show ruins existing character and struggles to create new likeable ones, it’s probably a bad sign. Dragon Ball Super even brought bad Frieza and Broly as villains and it can be more challenging than you think to create new characters… just look at the hate Jiren gets.

A tv show’s only as good as its story.

So the writers, tone and animation had changed? GT still had the potential to be a good show…if only the story was better!

While I personally don’t think the story was terrible and thought each saga had a good premise, many people hated the stories.

The black Dragon Balls came out of nowhere and seemed like a flimsy attempt to recreate the magic of the original Dragon Ball. Vegeta retiring and not going on the quest also made no sense. The Super 17 saga didn’t make any sense and contradicted the laws made in Dragon Ball Z with their version of hell. The science behind the SSJ4 just seemed bonkers.

It takes a lot in a show about magical Ki energy and aliens that look like humans to break immersion, but GT somehow managed. Throughout the show, many people were left scratching their head, wondering what the hell just happened.

So there we have it—a brief summary as to why Dragon Ball GT was hated so much. There are probably many more personal reasons people would for not liking the show, but I feel these are broadly the main reasons why people hate Dragon Ball GT.

But obviously, if Dragon Ball GT is your favourite show, then that’s great! If everyone had the same opinion then life would be boring… but clearly Vegeta should never ever ever have a moustache again.