All of the Dragons were defeated by a Deus ex Machina.
Haze was beaten by an underground spring clearing up an airborn toxin.
Rage was beaten by rain.
Oceanus was beaten by a random bird pointing out her incredibly obvious weak spot.
Naturon was beaten when he taunted Goku by showing him Pan, by showing him the real Pan!
Nouva just decided that he wasn't evil anymore and the way he was beaten by Omega was stupid and implausible.
Eis lost a fight he was originally winning with ease for no reason and with one hit.
Finally, Omega was beaten with the Deus ex Machina Spirit Bomb that somehow made base Goku invincible.
edited 29th Aug '15 12:42:26 AM by PushoverMediaCritic
Yeah, I'm a little surprised the dragons didn't really have much to do with the wishes they used. They could have used them to actually explore the problems they had caused by virtue of their existence, but that never came up.
It was nice that Pan got into the action, though. Even if it made no sense. And she didn't amount to much in the final final battle.
The *Legendary* Super Saiyan is motivated by a crying infant! He is a literal giant f***ing baby!My main problems with the saga were both
(for example, the wish to remove the bomb from 18 could've been a cyborg dragon, and the wish to erase Buu from everybody's memories could've created a Buu-Dragon) and the fact that all of them need to be dealt with by Goku and Pan, despite the series actually having an entire roster made up of capable fighters (those two I mentioned could've been fought by 18 and Uub, respectively). And then we have stupid things like Goku forgetting he can sense energy.
So yeah, even ignoring the moral ramifications, I feel it's still poorly written. The only good parts were the fight with the 7-star dragon and Goku swallowing the 4-star ball.
The Latin version of GT, at least, made it pretty damn clear that Goku was already dead when using the Genkidama against Omega Shenron, and that's the only reason why he 'survived' long enough to use it.
himitsu keisatsu seifu chokuzoku kokka hoanbu na no da himitsu keisatsu yami ni magireru supai katsudou torishimariSkipping the issues with the very idea (because they've been touched on three times) the only dragon that should have been anywhere near a credible threat from a narrative perspective was Nova...maybe Sin too, but that's it.
Way back in the "Bebi" saga, it was stated little kid Goku, without any fancy transformations or special techniques, had the power to light up a galaxy. So Goku, transformed four times over has to deal with the oh so threatening powers of pollution(blow it away with you aura), earthquakes(fly), saltwater(see pollution) and ice(see pollution)?
At least with Nova Shenron, it was made clear his heat was "hotter than the sun", explaining why fire and a giant lens are adequate to battle the supposedly mighty super saiyan 4 but that's only one I even halfway bought. The electric slime thing could have been as believable as any other specialty technique used in Dragon Ball except right from the get go it was shown to be completely ineffective against Super Saiyan Goku 4(like everything else should have been)
But that applies to a lot of things GT (the Fusion of two Android 17s! That should be about as strong as Buu Saga Gotenks...as a plain super saiyan. Uubuu should have been able to beat him)
Now, touching on what I initially skipped, the bad"negative" kharma being stored within the dragon balls isn't the best idea, the retcon required not the least among the reasons against it. Use of the dragon balls displacing bad kharma in such a way a malevolent force(I'm guessing a corrupt group of Oni) could take advantage of it? That I could buy, with the mangarevival of F after life system (said malevolent force screwing with bad karma is disrupting the reincarnation process, making Freeza's punishment last even longer). That would also make using Dragon Balls to help solve the problem less jarring.
I could have also gone with shadow dragons that actually resemble the wishes they were based on, rather than the "classical elements" approach GT went with. Cyborg dragon in particular, who'd I'd base on the Evil Midnight Bomber, what bombs at midnight!
edited 29th Aug '15 8:46:57 AM by IndirectActiveTransport
Buldogue's lawyer
Midnight Bomber(what bombs at midnight) was The Tick dammit!!!!!
Edit: Wait, you fixed it while I was writing that. Good work man.
edited 29th Aug '15 8:48:50 AM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!I thought it'd be cool if the Shadow Dragons were attempting to repossess the wishes made to Shenron. Like, the panties dragon wants the panties back, and another dragon wants to re-age Piccolo, and one wants to kill Goku, etc.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Now I want two dragons fighting over a large portion of the human race.
"But I was used to wish them back!"
"No, I was!"
My various fanfics.slides discreetly out of his SSJ argument, as he's spun himself into a circle thinking about it
Again, I've read about GT, but I've never watched it; that being said, I always liked the idea that the Dragons were based off of the wishes the Dragon Balls were used for. I think the justification for (Sin?) Shenron being the most powerful, because he was made from the wish to revive everyone killed by Frieza, is a bit silly, but...
I do like the idea, though, that the Dragons would want to reverse the wishes, as stated above. It would allow you to make them dark reflections of the wishes themselves, without making them comical.
edited 29th Aug '15 10:11:07 AM by Reservoir
Even though it runs into the "punished for being responsible" issue Saiga's post explained, I do find it interesting how the Shadow Dragon's brutality is inversely proportionate to the selfishness of the wish. Nuova was born from King Piccolo's selfish wish for eternal youth, and thus is pretty firmly a good guy. Oceanus was born from the morally-ambiguous panty wish, and as such displays both good and bad traits and does what she wants (Giving free fish to a village but at the same time wrecking their fishing market). Haze and Rage were both born from relatively selfless wishes to revive a single dead person, and as such are pretty evil but at the same time rather small-scale and petty. Naturon, Eis, and Syn were born from the three most selfless and large-scale wishes (Two mass revivals and the Buu fiasco being forgotten) and as such are easily the most unrepentant and evil of the seven.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!But, with the exceptions of Dr. Gero and Cell, every dragon ball villain has comical moments. Okay, maybe not Filler, Non-Serial Movie and GT villains but they don't count.
Even Freeza, emperor of all evil, got bit by Goku and sent to a hell where he was tended to by fairy angels while walking teddy bears marched around him.
Shadow Dragons. Another problem is that Nova Shenron, one of the few things I say was "good" about GT, was created by King Piccolo's wish for his youth and power. That was a "bad" wish that did nothing to displace good kharma. I'll give some credit in that it makes sense for Nova to be the "good" dragon, since he was born from a "bad" wish, but it'd make more sense, or at least be more consistent, to just use a "good" wish to begin with.
Okay, dragons related to wishes...we already got cyborg dragon and Majin Buu dragon...A dragon based on Bora, guardian of Korin tower? A dragon who fights with a spear? Might be too similar to Dabura but it's all I got for now.
The wish to revive Goku is easy, a dragon version of Goku. Eats a lot, uses an important artifact as a bludgeon, flies on a cloud, has multiple transformations.
Panties are tough one, all I can think of is are panties with a mouth, legs and scales.
Youth and power is also a really vague wish. I guess we could make a Namekian dragon but Cymbal already was one of those, not to mention Porunga, not to mention that wasn't a "good" wish(like the one made to revive Piccolo's victims), so we're replacing it with the wish to remove the self destruct devices from the Androids to create cyborg bomber dragon.
Syn Shenron actually was a decent Freeza dragon, what with the pointy bits and transformation. The absorbing of people and using their powers made him more like Cell though (now why didn't the GT writers use the wish to restore Cell's victims, a "good" wish that should have dispersed the bad kharma caused by Cell's actions? Too much time between wishes? Well there was plenty of time between Majin Vegeta\Buu and Android 18, so that doesn't hold up)
Buldogue's lawyerI actually do think that's pretty interesting.
I suppose maybe that black dragon that appeared before the balls split off just has a twisted sense of humour. Make the dragons evil based on the inverse selfishness of the wish.
Or it's just poorly thought out bullshit. Whichever floats your boats.
One Strip! One Strip!There's only seven dragons.
Something was gonna be left out, unless they spontaneously made three more balls, or had some of them formed from more than one wish.
One Strip! One Strip!

And yet I still think the Saga was good. And no review on it made by anyone is going to change my mind.
Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!