When it first came out it was very good, it had fun action, a great plot and interesting characters. However by the third timeskip, it absolutely jumped the shark. What else is there to be said that hasn't been said before? Goku, a guy only driven by adventure and battle, settling down and having a kid? It is extremely out of character for him to do that. I honestly thought the engagement thing was a joke the first time I saw it, but apparently Toriyama decided to shoehorn this and completely ruin the story with it. This is also before they add fucking ALIENS to this damn show by the way. Aside from Bulma, the cool and interesting side characters we got in the beginning like Yamcha, Launch, Krillin, and Tien are now getting fizzled out for much more boring side characters. Take Vegeta, who is basically a smaller, more irritating Tien with an OP Saiyan bloodline to boot (I’m still pissed off at that retcon, so much for characters working hard to get results, apparently you need to be born the right way too). Only unlike Tien, he is without any sort of nuance to his character, he is either completely good or pure evil on a switch, he acts more like a plot device than a character most of the time. Not to mention all the fights he keeps losing, because even God hates his ass so much he feels like he needs to take an L at every step of his life.Trunks, whose story is basically "I'm this super COOL badass swordsman from the FUTURE, and I'm the son of two characters that never actually met before, and I can one-shot the previous arc villain and I'm so COOL." I know Toriyama smokes a lot, but what was he even on for him to somehow forget that he was a writer and make fanfiction of a story HE'S creating? He somehow looked at this mess and deemed it worthy to be published.
Then there is Gohan, Goku's disappointment of a son. I don’t know why Toriyama even focuses on this character, he's only there just to job fights, get angry, almost look like he is doing something, job again, and get saved by his daddy, father figure, or even the enemy team somehow. They keep on yapping about his "potential," but honestly is it even there anymore?This all comes down to a head with the most recent chapter, where Goku fights Toriyama's pet AKA Cell. Despite Cell somehow beating the odds and achieving his perfect form (partly because the Z-fighters got a clause from Toriyama himself detailing that no one is allowed to hurt his baby boy Cell, so that’s how he was able to absorb two androids under their watch somehow), he still ends up having an even match with Goku. The battle that lasted chapters looked incredibly promising, until the end, where Goku forfeited out of nowhere. This is the most out of character I have ever seen Goku in my entire life. Goku has never given up before. Even if Cell was "out of his league," this is the same Goku that fought Tao, King Piccolo, and Vegeta, and I’m supposed to believe that he gives up?
To add insult to injury Goku sends his fraudulent son to the ring. He refuses to send out Vegeta or Trunks? I know Vegeta is a fraud who is almost the entire reason they are here right now and I know that after Mecha Frieza, Trunks is taking after his dear old dad, but to send a guy with zero wins under his belt into the battlefield is idiotic. Actually scratch that, because Toriyama decided that Goku didn’t display enough signs of CTE yet and gave a SENZU to Cell. Goku, of all people, wouldn’t be giving his opponents the advantage, especially people he was not fighting.So now currently we’ve got a 9-year-old fraud kid fighting against Toriyama's pet AKA the strongest in the universe. We already know what is going to happen: Gohan is going to lose again, Goku is going to get even angrier, and he is going to launch an even bigger energy blast against Cell (because those have worked well so far). Dragon Ball has fallen down the drain, Toriyama is washed, and I honestly have stopped caring to be completely honest.
