Dragon Ball GT

Great ideas, poor execution.
As a massive franchise, Dragon Ball maintained its status as the father of shonen because of its uniqueness, single handedly creating the battle genre. Even with the occasional bumpy rides of Dragon Ball Z (mostly on the Buu Saga), it managed to have an interesting story with memorable moments, about interesting characters. And GT learned nothing from it.

Watching the show knowing beforehand that Akira Toriyama only managed the character designs, i was curious of how Toei would guide the story. Short answer; it had great potential, but failed hard in the execution. Leaving few redeeming qualities (one of them being the opening, the best in the series).

The story starts off showing everyone after the end of the original series, it's a great way to start, sure, but right after, the hunt for the black star dragon balls begins, and it's just a more mature morning kid's cartoon, almost as if capitalizing the name of Dragon Ball just so its relevance doesn't die out after the original ended, just so it could putt and sell as much merchandising as possible.
The Baby saga is where things start to kick it, it has an overarching plot, so the episode by episode ordeals are left out, but the rest of the story just feels like it wasn't planned out, with predictable writting and poor pacing.
In everyway it feels like a downgrade in terms of story; Goku being a child, feels like his progression was haulted with no believable purpose (a character that we are shown every step of his growth from the beginning), the rest of the cast are just a shadow of their former self, only for Goku to safe. Even the SS4 transformation is the least memorable one story wise, no build up like SS1 or SS2 Gohan. The action is pretty generic, with no interesting interactions between the characters.

The animation is good, receveing an upgrade, with a more defined line quality and animation. The quality manages to maintain the same throughout, and the characters design are passable, except for SS4, it has a great design, being the only way it stands out from the previous Super Saiyan transformations

Character wise, the main trio (Goku, Pan and Trunks) have an interesting dinamic, but nothing really hits home. Especialy Pan, she doesn't have any growth and only causes trouble, we are left expecting in many occasions her moment to shine but it never shows up. Trunks is no better, just forgettable throughout, and overshadowed in the end by literally everyone else.

Overall, it feels like a show trying to be and feel like Dragon Ball but not achieving it. Fights and transformations don't cut it, i was not invested because nothing really meant anything, there were no stakes involved in most of the fights, the few good scenes relied on nostalgia (the ending comes to mind), and don't get me wrong, it is a good ending and a fitting one, but the way it reached that point was forgettable and a chore to watch.