I grew up on Dragon Ball just like most fans. Enjoyed the characters, story, the fight scenes, the humor and everything else that made DB and DBZ fun. Though I'm curious over the fact that most people hate DBGT with a passion. what do I think of it? Well, it was ok for the most part, but not as awesome as DBZ was. My main gripes with it were the inconsistencies in the story and that it was treated more of a parody of itself than the previous installments.

The reason GT started off on the wrong foot was because the cretor Akira Toriyama wanted to put the series to rest after working on the manga and the anime for 10 years straight, which can drain anyone's creativity down a lot. Of course he tried ending the series many times, most notably in the end of the Frieza saga, until he finally had his wish while finishing the Majin Boo saga. At the time he stated that he wanted to take a new step in life and work on other projects, but the problem was that fans wanted to see more of Goku and his friends, so DBGT was created as a non canon continuation of the series with the creator having very litlle to do with the show aside from character designs.

the first thing that was done wrong was Goku accidentally being turned into a child by Pilaf at the first episode of GT. From what I understand, the reason for this was that the creative team behind the show wanted to have more of a "return to roots" concept and make GT revive the things that made the old Dragon Ball series fun.

With that idea in mind, new dragon balls were introduced that apparently were spread across the universe after the wish was made and Goku, Trunks and Pan (Goku's Granddaughter) were on a mission in space to retrieve them in less than a year before the Earth explodes. Then after about 16 episodes of the "more adventure and less action concept", ratings declined because fans wanted more DBZ type action stories.

After that the series took a radical shift in tone that made it look less campy and more serious by having another alien villain, have most of their deceased villains return from hell through a portal and finish the series with the black star dragons that were created from negative energy of the old dragon balls.

Now pesonally this series could have been a lot better if they didn't choose the return to roots concept and just kept it more like DBZ. What hurt it were the inconsistent fight scenes, odd transformations, misused characters, the odd story and many plot holes (though Dragon Ball is known for is inconsistent writing at times)

As for the main cast, well Goku always had a naive personality most of the time and was essentially the same character, although a bit more laid back and childish this time round. Trunks, instead of acting like a lone wolf character similar to his father Vegeta as well as his future self in the android saga, took more of a geeky side working as a business man in capsule corp. Pan I can only describe in just 2 words: annoyingly cute. Being the bratty tomboy character raised by Videl, she still has a mixed reception among fans. Just imagine how different she could have been if she was raised by Piccolo the same way Gohan was raised, but that's just me rambling. Still I should point out that despite her annoyance most of the time, Pan does have her sweet and funny moments, especially with her grandpa Goku. It's odd to say but Pan and Goku were portrayed as if they had a sibling rivalry here, with Pan acting like the bossy older sister and Goku acting like the naive little brother when he's in his child form. It's a shame that Pan never became a Super Saiyan. Toriyama just couldn't figure out how a female SSJ would look like.

As for the rest of the cast, many were misusd, others were ignored, Krillin dies again (shocker), it was clearly poking fun at itself. One character who should have gotten more screen time was Uub. Once he fused with Fat Buu and became Majuub he could have been a much more important character than the rest of the Z warriors, but like the rest of the fighters he gets pushed aside and Goku still saves the day. after the Baby saga he ended up being another minor character, which is disappointing considering how much he was developed as a newcomer in the last episodes of DBZ

Speaking of Goku, his SSJ4 transformation, though an amazing and emotional scene, especially with the Japanese soundtrack, is very inconsistent. He has to grow his tail back as a kid, grows into the golden ape comes to his senses and turns into a saiyan-beast hybrid, though it was never explained where he got his new pants after the transformation (weird anime logic). And to make things even more confusing he turns back into his child self and doesn't require to go through all of the SSJ transformations to reach SSJ4. Vegeta's SSJ4 transformation is even more inconsistent requiring a Blutz wave machine made by Bulma which I simply consider as cheating his way to SSJ4. it must have been added at the last minute. Oddly, though the transformation is not Canon, it has been added in several DBZ fighting games.

That being said the last episode is the most memorable, Seeing Goku say farewell to most of his friends, Fusing himself with Shenron and at the end when the credits roll and they show all the memorable stuff that dragon ball went through in the last 10 years while the opening theme plays is enough to make any DBZ fan shed a tear.

Overall, the anime series is very nostalgic to me. It's a mixed bag, but I wouldn't say it's god awful. It could have done a lot more to fix all the bad stuff that happened earlier. None the less it does have it's replay value. I always find myself watching random clips of the old episodes. If you like it or not, I'll leave that up to you.

The Good:
The Japanese soundtrack
The SSJ4 transformation scene
The emotional last episode
The show's sense of humor

The Bad:
Misused charcters
Short and odd fight scenes
Ridiculous plots
Poorly developed villains
Inconsistent story and fighting techniques.