Why is SSJ4 Gogeta so loved after one GT episode?

Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta had everyone talking once again because of Dragon Ball FighterZ. He's always been extremely popular, which raises a fair question. He's in essentially one episode of the entire Dragon Ball franchise, and that episode belongs to Dragon Ball GT (1996), a series many people criticize. So why is he so beloved?

Dragon Ball Highlights is where I look back at some of my favorite moments in Dragon Ball history and celebrate them. This time the focus is Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta and the fight that made his name.

Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta was the strongest Dragon Ball character before Dragon Ball Super

First, remember that people like strong characters. Whether you have a problem with that or not, and whether you care about power scaling or not, people like strong Dragon Ball characters. Before Dragon Ball Super was even a twinkle in Toei's mind, Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta was the strongest character we had ever seen on screen in Dragon Ball.

I know the canon police will object that GT doesn't count. That's an argument for another day. I'm talking about the anime here, not the manga and not Akira Toriyama's own plans. GT was the last anime of the original run of Dragon Ball, and Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta was easily its strongest character. That made him the strongest in Dragon Ball history until the Dragon Ball Super era, a run of 17 years. Today we have Beerus, Whis and the Grand Priest, but those characters didn't exist in the 1990s or the early 2000s, before the Dragon Ball renaissance.

Dragon Ball GT episode 60 was hard to find, and worth it

The episode to go back to is Dragon Ball GT episode 60. When I was tape trading in the 1990s, trying to collect the entire series in fansub form, this episode was almost impossible to find. It was worth it if you got your hands on it.

It sits in the middle of the climactic battle with Omega Shenron in the Shadow Dragon arc. Vegeta agrees to do the fusion, and while their children distract Omega, he and Goku perform the Fusion Dance. This time, unlike seemingly every other time, they get it right and form the true Gogeta, not the fat or skinny variety.

Nobody has ever explained Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta's red hair

So we have Gogeta in Super Saiyan 4, but he has red hair. To this day we've never gotten an explanation for why. We don't know.

Please don't claim they were teasing Super Saiyan God almost 20 years before anyone came up with the idea. That makes no sense. Nobody had the idea for Super Saiyan God until around 2013, so it's a dumb thing to believe. We still don't know why Gogeta has red hair.

Gogeta hurts Omega Shenron with his eyes and punches too fast to see

Omega Shenron tries to attack him, and Gogeta knocks him away with his eyes. This spiked up villain is the strongest enemy they've ever faced in Dragon Ball, and Gogeta hurts him with a look. That's an omen of things to come.

The dragon then comes in and tries to punch Gogeta but gets knocked away. You'd assume Gogeta pushed him back with energy. He didn't. Gogeta punched him in the nose, and we see Omega bloodied. Gogeta acknowledges that he didn't punch him once but three times. He punched so fast that you couldn't tell. I've slowed that moment down looking for the punch, and it isn't there. That's crazy, especially for 1997.

Gogeta then offers to slow it down for him, and he does, hitting him three times and kicking him away. I have a big smile on my face thinking about it, because this is "one of the biggest one-sided thrashings that a character has ever gotten." I'd also like to thank Gogeta for slowing it down for the audience.

Omega Shenron's energy blasts feel like a massage to Gogeta

For practically the whole episode Gogeta is pounding him. At one point the dragon fires yellow energy blasts into Gogeta's chest. They keep hitting him, and he looks like he might be hurt, but he isn't. He's waiting to see what damage they can do, and they do none.

Gogeta tells him he loved it, that it felt terrific, and asks if he can do his back next. Gogeta took the strongest villain's attacks on his chest and mocked him, treating it like a massage and asking for his shoulders to be done next. That's awesome.

The party popper finisher and the kicked away negative energy ball

Gogeta then offers to show Omega his signature finishing move. He makes five clones of himself and prepares a Kamehameha, and it turns out to be party poppers and streamers. I'm not kidding. This is genius.

Gogeta tells him he can beat him with one finger, and that's all he needs. Omega makes a giant energy ball out of the power of the seven Shadow Dragons, confident it will defeat Gogeta. Then he condenses it into a smaller ball made of pure hatred and pure negative minus energy. Gogeta kicks it out into space like it's nothing.

Not only did he kick the ball, he said he converted all of that condensed negative energy into positive energy with his own energy. That's crazy. Who would have thought Vegeta would be half of a being with that much positive energy? Talk about a change, and talk about development.

The Big Bang Kamehameha and why the fusion ended in under 10 minutes

Gogeta then performs his real finishing move, the Big Bang Kamehameha. Even before it hits, Omega is already hurt and grimacing in pain, and then he gets nailed with it. The Dragon Balls fall to the ground, and the battle seems to be over. Things are never what they seem in Dragon Ball, though. He's still alive, but he has lost the power of the Dragon Balls and reverted to his Syn Shenron form.

Gogeta is about to do it again, but before he can finish the move he unfuses. They wonder why, since the fusion should last 30 minutes and it hadn't even been 10. They figure out that Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta used up too much power, probably with the Big Bang Kamehameha, and fooled around too much. That's why the fusion lasted less than 10 minutes. Because of that, we get four more episodes of GT where they struggle against Omega before finally beating him.

That was the last time we saw Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta in an official Dragon Ball capacity, not counting video games and Heroes. It was a fun time, albeit very brief.