Dragon Ball Z Kai

Dragon Ball Z Kai is an excellent recut of the original Z for everyone who enjoys them some Dragon Ball, especially Z. If you also prefer the manga, or just hate the majority of DBZ's slow-paced extra segments, or worthless filler episodes, This is the version to watch. It has every piece of canon material from the manga, with some short filler either due to animation from the original Z being unable to be changed, or the staff leaving some in for whatever reason that could've been removed, but didn't. It leads to a faster-paced storyline that's been streamlined a bit for many fans of Z. Though there ARE a few redrawn scenes to replace damaged frames. Some are simply trace jobs, while the others are completely new. They fit decently though.

This is also the version of Z to get for excellent home releases. If you didn't know, Z has some of the most horrendous home releases I've ever seen. Terrible color correction, terrible remastering all around, really, plus cropping the show to 16:9, leaving us who want to enjoy the show as it was produced out of luck unless we track down the Dragon Boxes, which are LONG out of print & expensive on sites like eBay. This series was properly remastered frame-by-frame in Japan for High Definition airings & releases in its original 4:3 aspect ratio, minus The Final Chapters, which was done by a different team several years after the first part finished airing. Still, it's much better than FUNimation's remasters, I'll tell ya that. If you wanna get someone into the franchise, this is definitely the way. Personally, I DO wish that they reanimated everything from the ground up, but I understand why they did it as they did.

Then there's the English dub. Minus some recastings (Kid Gohan, Kid Goku, Bulma, Frieza, & a lot of secondary & tertiary characters voiced by Chris Sabat in Z) because of actor/actress availability in the intervening years prior to 2009, all of the main voice actors returned to reprise their roles & they sound GREAT! Sean Schemmel especially, since he now gets Goku's character completely. Yeah, they didn't simply reuse audio from Z, they rerecorded everything from the ground up. The added benefit of this, other than improved acting, is that since FUNimation's a better dubbing company since 2003 when the Z dub finished airing, they have the resources to not only get better translations prior to dubbing but they also have access to better writers for their dub scripts! This means no mistranslations, other than the oddly-put line of dialogue, & some dubisms returning either out of keeping with pre-established terms from previous dubs, or some inconsistencies with attack names that were changed in earlier dubs from the original Japanese. Safe to say, if you're an English dub fan, the dubbing is phenomenal! There IS one thing I have to bring up though. In The Final Chapters, the series' recut of the Buu Saga, there's a scene recapping the events of the Cell Games from the previous arc. Prior to broadcast, it was teased that Team Four Star, of Dragon Ball Z Abridged fame, would be voicing the actors in the reenactment of the events. When it finally aired & was released to home video, it was discovered that they were replaced with the original Z audio from the same scene last-minute. It's speculated it's because the people at Toei found out & forced the change in dialogue. The original audio for the scene was accidentally released on X-Finiti & subsequently released to the internet after a fan recorded it. It's a shame because I love DBZA & it's a shame that the audio couldn't be kept, but that's the business, I guess. On the Japanese side of things, the original Japanese cast, though there were some recastings due to actors either dying or not wanting to come back, rerecorded their dialogue as well, mostly because Toei junked the original audio masters some time after the show aired for some reason before they could really use them on future releases. If you want a clearer-sounding DBZ in Japanese, this is good for that as well. I should also mention that the music has undergone a bit of controversy. Originally, for the first run of the show, Kenji Yamamoto, who also did the score for the Budokai games, composed the score for the series. However, it was eventually found out that he intentionally ripped off the scores for Avatar & Terminator Salvation without Toei's knowledge. His score was subsequently replaced on both sides of the Pacific with the original Shunsuke Kikuchi score from Z for the first part. The Final Chapters uses a new score composed by Norihito Sumitomo, who also composed the scores for Battle of Gods, Resurrection F, & went on to do the score for Dragon Ball Super. Some of his compositions don't fit, but most of the rest reminds me of Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury's score with how they were synthesized. Kind of fitting, I think. As for the openings & closings, most of them are great. 'Dragon Soul's' a great theme song, especially when sung in the English dub by the legendary Vic Mignognia. Final Chapters is no slouch either. 'Fight It Out' is also pretty good & goes with the whole retro vibe you get from the show, considering it originally ran from 1989-1995 & the original animation reflects that. Though the Japanese Final Chapters theme that was a part of the Japanese broadcast, 'Kuu-Zen-Zetsu-Go' was no slouch in being awesome either.

Altogether, I enjoy Kai. It's, definitely, my version of Z, especially since I don't care for the Z dub too much. I recommend it to everyone who likes good TV.

I am proud to be a fan of Dragonball Z. This perfectly captures the spirit of the series just like the manga. As someone who frequently goes to Books-A-Million, I managed to read all the Dragonball Z manga volumes. I didn't get the episodes of the show on DVD or anything. I just watched them whenever they were on. It was really hard to catch them all because there were just so many of them. It's also great that this version is uncensored. Then again, I heard it's STILL technically a kid's show in Japan.

It's probably just a different culture thing. Of course, this might just be the fact that it's airing on Adult Swim. It's easy to see this classic series done at a much better pace. I still love the original series. They even managed to work a little bit of filler into this show. It shows how anime works and what it is in its raw form. As I haven't most of the original episodes of the show, this was a real treat. ****

I've enjoyed Dragon Ball Z for over a decade, along with everything else Dragon Ball and this is no exception. Dragon Ball Z Kai is enjoyable, and even though I enjoy (and dislike) some of the filler in DBZ, Kai is in no way to be classed as terrible for taking most of it out - some minor bits have been left in.

The dialogue has improved, I like Frieza's new voice actor and the original voice actors have improved slightly. Gohan's new voice actress I was fine with it at first, but it did start to annoy at times, now after a while, I have sort of got used to it again.

When it comes to the music, I prefer the Japanese version of: "Dragon Soul", "Yeah! Break! Care! Break!" and "Wings of the Heart" I really enjoy "Saiyan Blood" and "Only A Chilling Elegy." I enjoy all of the music in Kai even if Kenji Yamamoto "borrowed" it, I also enjoy Shunsuke Kikuchi and Bruce Faulconer's music so I don't really have an argument over music.

DBZ is there when I want to hide away for days - DBZK is there when I want to watch it quicker. Then I also have the option of Dragon Ball and Team Four Star ;3 It's Dragon Ball, I like it all, even GT.

It's not just for young children. The DVD's are uncut (there is blood, a little less blood than Z but added "swearing"), the television version is censored for a reason.

The Buu Saga, is on the way! I hope they keep the worms in, I guess they won't though :(

One thing I am annoyed about is that the UK will have to wait or may never get the Dragon Boxes of any of the series' or the movies. Unless bought from overseas at high cost.

dragon ball Kai is the same as dragon ball z, but its uncut and remastered and HD all together there's only 100 episodes in total when dragon ball z had around 200 episodes the story is all the same but all the fillers are all cut out so there will hardly be any wasted talking and mostly fighting I'm a really big fan of dragon ball I've seen all the episodes and the movies. So I'm a big fan i recommend this to everyone if you want to start watching dragon ball z start on dragon ball Kai Dragonball Kai is the best anime ever made and always will be you should also watch dragon ball and dragon ball gt there are all 10 out of 10

I am what you may call a Dragon Ball person.

I started to watch the original series back in the late 80's when they were being aired in France before most other countries besides Japan itself.

I was done with the all thing when it wasn't even being aired in the US.

I watched it again and again and again along the years as well as all the movies and specials that exist.

In fact, Dragonball was part of my youth and the benchmark for all animations afterwards.

So, when i learned about Kai and the fact that they were cutting stuff off and leaving a lot of the fillers in th trash can i had a "purist" reaction and refused to watch it as i considered that the original work should be preserved intact in my mind.

Nevertheless, with the appearance of the new movie Revival of F, i decided to give it a try as it was the only Dragonball material i had never seen.

Well, i must say that this is a lot better than the original.

Even if some fillers were fun and interesting, i agree that the pace of the Manga was much more proper for a Shounen anime of this kind. This Kai version shows this perfectly.

This new version is action packed like it should have been and settles many stuff like plot holes and other inconsistencies created by the original Z series by the fillers.

These fillers were being made up out of the manga because at the time, Akira Toriyama was actually late in the manga comparing to the anime. This show was so popular that the animation was ahead of the ink and they had to invent stuff and exaggerate the time of power ups and stare contests between fighters.

The Kai version is so much better, I recommend everyone to see it and forget about the original because, well, a good 1/4 of it is made up material without story validity.

Dragonball seems to be more alive than never with Kai reaching the end of the series and new movies of legit material being produced by Toriyama.

It's staggering to see myself, 25 years after the first Dragonball episodes i saw as a kid, still trembling of joy at the sight of new Dragonball material.

To me, this is undeniably the greatest anime franchise that ever existed.