I love Dragonball Z. When it first started airing on YTV I watched every week. And every time the Saiyan Saga ended I prayed, “please, please let YTV have purchased new episodes.” But for a long time it would just repeat back to the Raditz saga, to that first episode The Worlds Strongest Team. *sigh* White boy problems. Even though it took a few years I eventually watched the whole series. I watched the Buu saga in university, holed up in my dorm room getting misty-eyed when Vegeta sacrificed himself for the Earth. And yes, even for you, Kakarot.

Since high school I’d known of Dragonball GT, Super Saiyan 4, and the basic premise of the dragonballs becoming evil demons. My Chinese friend always told me, “you don’t want to watch it — it’s stupid.” But a few weeks ago I acquired GT and watched the whole thing.

My friend was right.

GT‘s problem isn’t just that it is not based on the Akira Toriyama manga, or that it seems to clumsily copy a few popular base elements of Dragonball Z and the original Dragonball saga, or even that much of it makes no sense — its biggest problem is that it lacks passion. No one sacrifices themselves, or dies, or has any character building moment whatsoever. Much of it even seems crafted to conveniently support the plot. For example, Goku is the most powerful being in the universe, but he doesn’t use force when collecting the dragonballs because Pan says, “that’s wrong.” Or how he can’t use instant transmission when he’s a kid, so they are foced to travel from planet to planet by spaceship. Very suspicious.

So I’m going to save you some time. The below is the best part of Dragonball GT and inspired today’s comic. That and a conversation about how good Vegeta has it. He marries into wealth, has children, gets to do anything he wants, be biggest asshole who ignores his family, and everyone simply says, “Well, that’s Vegeta for you.”