Quality of the new frames.

[Blade]

One of the big things about Kai is that, not only were the original animation frames remastered, but damaged frames were also redrawn. Whilst Toei have clearly intended to mimic the original art style, the new digitally drawn frames are nevertheless still very easy to spot in comparison to the originals - and in my opinion, often stick out like a sore thumb.

When Kai first started I, like many, was excited at the prospect of new animation frames being drawn by Toei - however as I continued to watch the series I became more and more annoyed by the quality, or indeed lack of, in many of the new frames. Not only does the new digital lack cohesion with the original, but quite often it is extremely poorly drawn. All in all I feel that, for the most part, Toei's art department have expended the minimum resources and time possible when creating the new frames.

What does everyone else think? Have Toei done a good job with the new frames? Should they have instead created the new frames using art techniques that mirrored the original as opposed to going digitial? Or should have simply done more to repair the damaged frames, as opposed to outright replacing them?

[theoriginalbilis]

I posted a topic about this same issue (complete with screencaps) a few months ago, and was pretty much shot down/dismissed immediately.

Guess people really don't like the redrawn frames overall at all.

While I don't think the redrawn (i.e, traced) shots look that bad, they definitely stick out like a sore thumb when compared to the softer, grainier, more detailed footage of DBZ. It's obvious Toei spent the absolute minimum they could on reanimating frames.

A similar situation happened in the mid-2000s when the Zeta Gundam series was re-edited into theatrical movies. Some shots were removed/reordered, and others were flat out reanimated. And not just traced over like Kai, I mean, totally reanimated from scratch. But these stick out even more obviously than the stuff in Kai. Especially since they were reanimated with a theatrical film budget.

I think reanimating the entire show similar to how the JSAT special/Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans/EoB look would've been the ideal move, but of course, everyone here thinks that.

[Ajay]

They look awful but I understand why they were needed.

I'm sure for many scenes they could have taken more effort to preserve the original image but then, regardless, you still have new frames to bridge the gaps needed where new scenes were needed for editing's sake.

Ideally true cel animation would have been preferable but with modern technology, artists and methods, it would still feel out of place regardless.

They picked the most cost effective way and whilst it does stick out horribly, I doubt the alternatives would have worked significantly better.

[Saago]

What I've never understood is the randomness of some of these redrawn frames. I understand why they are there when there is a need to change something in the frame (cover up Goku's hole in the chest, change the color of Vegeta's clothes when he first appears, modify some of the visual effects, etcetera), but there are a number of redrawn frames which seem to have been inserted just for the sake of it. There are no changes. I'm thinking, for example, of the scene in which Piccolo talks to Nail before they fuse: throughout all the conversation, you have this face shot of Nail which was sometimes redrawn and sometimes wasn't. The weirdest thing is that, even if they kept going from original to redrawn, both were, if I remember correctly, exactly the same. What was the point of those? I have heard sometimes that they redrew some frames that were too damaged to be used, but hadn't they already used all the frames for the Dragon Boxes? Besides, even if that were the case, even if that face shot of Nail was damaged beyond restoring, they could have just cut-and-pasted the shot they had used five seconds before.

[Puto]

The Dragon Boxes were remastered in SD; for Kai, they had to do it all over again, so I figure it was cheaper to reanimate some shots than fix them properly.

[NitroEX]

If they're going to reanimate anything it should be the awful Last House(?) episodes with the badly drawn characters and choreography. That footage doesn't age well at all and when I rewatch Z I tend to skip them if I can tell they're done by that studio.