*Sigh*........I mean.....really?
Really?
You know, before the music scandal happened, I would have laughed this off as a coincidence, but now I can't help but take these musical similarities more seriously (in the sense that I'm not as quick to doubt the plagiarism as I used to be). Sumitomo better be damn careful. If he gets caught for plagiarism too, I don't know if that makes Toei dumb for hiring a second plagiarizing composer, or him dumb for knowing why his predecessor was fired and doing the exact same thing.
RocktheDragon wrote:All in all, it's obviously clear where Toei's priorities lay and Dragonball Kai, more now than it has ever been, is a low cost cash-cow turned TV schedule stop-gap.
I'm just genuinely curious, and don't mean this disparagingly, but do you find this low cost approach to Kai problematic? I think that any exposure that the DB franchise can get is a great thing, a fantastic thing! It's much better than the alternative of this not getting produced at all. And it makes the DB brand have a better presence in Japan, and more importantly, throughout the globe.
I think this approach to DB Kai will serve as a means to an end, and it'll be much more of a good thing than bad after everything is said and done.
I would definitely agree with this. However, I would also point to this as a good example of why I can't get
that excited about the Japanese version of Kai. From the get-go, Kai struck me as an excuse to bring back an old hit. It was too blatant an effort on Toei's part--for me, anyway--to make money, rather than an effort to do something original and unique with the
Dragon Ball franchise, like a new series or a new movie (which thankfully we did eventually get in the form of BoG). It's not really new though. It's pretty much the exact same thing as before, and while there is some new stuff, there isn't enough new stuff for me to think of it as something new.
The English dub, on the other hand...that's very new. Totally different in almost every way. Which is why I'm more excited for the English dub than the Japanese version. The Japanese version is good, but I've already got a good Japanese version of this story in the form of DBZ. With the English dub, I'm getting a proper English version of the story for the first time.
Still, I agree with the overall point. Cheap and low-budget an effort as Kai was and is, anything to give a shot of adrenaline into the anime industry is a good thing, and Dragon Ball is probably the perfect franchise to do this with!