Kai Episode 102 (27 April 2014)

[SSJ Electric Fury]

By the way, this guy is he a family member of Tao Pai Pai? If not then he's just a random somewhat lookalike Tao Pai Pai but tad fatter.

So I'm not the only one who noticed that when watching this episode, then.

As others have said before, the green tint makes people's skin look unnatural. I, for one, don't think I'll get over it anytime soon, if this continues.

It expresses everyone's excitement about his return, and it would have worked well if Goku's not dead and Gohan and Krillin's first reactions were all, but look at them starting crying right after that.

Exactly. Once Kuririn's eyes water up, there's a jarring difference between what's being conveyed through the characters (and what the viewers are supposed to feel) and what feeling the music conveys.

[Blade]

It almost makes me want to throw up when I think about kids around the world getting this. Motoyama should be ashamed of his lack of talent.

But at this stage with his previous repertoire serving as ample demonstration of his abilities and suitability (or lack of both), does the fault lay more with the unskilled handyman, or the people who continue to put work in his hands?

I think the more and more we see of the Buu arc of Kai, the clearer it becomes that the failures of the end product started right at the top of the tree through either lack of care in distributing the key decision making roles for the day-to-day production or total ignorance, or indifference, at observing the quality of the product being produced. You can't help but feel they either weren't keeping track of what was going on, or they simply weren't interested in doing anything about it.

[Ajay]

Put together a joint review of #101 and #102 - http://dbtaizen.tumblr.com/post/8413717 ... 102-review

I don't think I even have the energy to keep doing this anymore. This Kai revival has been nothing short of abysmal.

[dbboxkaifan]

Put together a joint review of #101 and #102 - http://dbtaizen.tumblr.com/post/8413717 ... 102-review

I don't think I even have the energy to keep doing this anymore. This Kai revival has been nothing short of abysmal.

That was great but what's with the love for Q-TEC now? I'll admit they did somewhat of a decent job for the old Dragon Ball Kai but other series were less fortunate because of the excessive DNR that Q-TEC used on them.

Gallery of Q-TEC's Galaxy Express 999 remastered series on Blu-ray: http://someimage.com/9BCU

I'd rather take FUNimation's Level Blu-ray remastering over this if Toei were to hire Q-TEC to remaster Dragon Ball Z in HD.

[Ajay]

I enjoyed Q-TEC's work on Kai a lot and so I wish they were back for consistency's sake.

I would also take the Level Sets restoration over Kai but that wasn't really relevant to my review nor the purpose of Kai in the first place.

I definitely don't speak for all of Q-TEC's work when I say that I enjoyed what they did for Dragon Ball.

[kei17]

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke" is the most appropriate phrase to describe this show in a nutshell so far. Though I never think that Z is perfect and the staff at the time was the best, the current Kai staff is just so incompetent that the "being faithful to the manga" purpose they were talking about now sounds really vain and high-blown. They are obviously short of the level needed to officially tinker with the great predecessors' creations. Don't talk about "improving" old stuff if you don't have any enough skills. You have no right to do it.

[JulieYBM]

"Don't fix it if it ain't broke" is the most appropriate phrase to describe this show in a nutshell so far. Though I never think that Z is perfect and the staff at the time was the best, the current Kai staff is just so incompetent that the "being faithful to the manga" purpose they were talking about now sounds really vain and high-blown. They are obviously short of the level needed to officially tinker with the great predecessors' creations. The whole stuff is just like some bad fan project run by unskilled people.

To say nothing of the fact that a few of the core staff have no previously recorded credits. I wonder if everyone working on this series is using pseudonyms or are just businessmen?

[Ajay]

Don't talk about "improving" old stuff if you don't have any enough skills. You have no right to do it.

Who's that referring to?

[kei17]

Don't talk about "improving" old stuff if you don't have any enough skills. You have no right to do it.

Who's that referring to?

The Buu Kai staff.

The producer was proudly talking about how they improved some things and made it closer to the original manga, but what the hell is this? Everything else falls below minimum standards for a commercial anime show. There are so many things to be dealt with before some really minor nitpicking things like Goku's halo or something.

[Ajay]

Ahh, I see. I thought it was in relation to my review or dbboxkaifan's post so I was a bit confused as to where it came from! Apologies.

Makes total sense now and I entirely agree. There's zero point fixing minor details if you can't even get the original footage looking anywhere near up to the standards you'd expect of a modern remaster.

Incredibly embarrassing talk. Such a shame.

[Metalwario64]

The producer was proudly talking about how they improved some things and made it closer to the original manga, but what the hell is this? Everything else falls below minimum standards for a commercial anime show. There are so many things to be dealt with before some really minor nitpicking things like Goku's halo or something.

Wow, so the producer really said those things. The person who originally posted that said his Japanese wasn't perfect and that he could be wrong, and that whole boast about Buu's arms and Goku's halo in one shot sounded unbelievable to me, so I was skeptical.

Now that you've confirmed it, I'm curious as to how they'll fix those errors. Will they be redrawn (probably terribly), or crappy digital paintjobs like the FUNi-Ocean dub?

[ShinGaijin]

Will they be redrawn (probably terribly), or crappy digital paintjobs like the FUNi-Ocean dub?

Well, it depends ...what is the cheapest method to redraw those scenes ?
Joking aside, does anyone checked if they did a selective cropping ? here's a little comparison (not from me) :

Spoiler:

It looks like a dead center cropping, as in the orange bricks, and nothing more...
I can't find words to express my disappointment, really...crappy remastering, crappy music (while I personally think that Mr.Sumitomo is a very good composer)...
That **** isn't Dragon Ball Kai anymore.This ode to mediocrity is the product of incompetence, ignorance, negligence, total disrespect for a work and its fans.
My english skills are limited, I'm sorry about that guys, I just hope that my modest opinion is understandable, and my deep disgust as well.God save the Dragon Boxes.

[qjz123]

Will they be redrawn (probably terribly), or crappy digital paintjobs like the FUNi-Ocean dub?

Well, it depends ...what is the cheapest method to redraw those scenes ?
Joking aside, does anyone checked if they did a selective cropping ? here's a little comparison (not from me) :

Spoiler:

It looks like a dead center cropping, as in the orange bricks, and nothing more...
I can't find words to express my disappointment, really...crappy remastering, crappy music (while I personally think that Mr.Sumitomo is a very good composer)...
That **** isn't Dragon Ball Kai anymore.This ode to mediocrity is the product of incompetence, ignorance, neglect, total disrespect for a work and its fans.
My english skills are limited, I'm sorry about that guys, I just hope that my modest opinion is understandable, and my deep disgust as well.God save the Dragon Boxes.

They definitely did selectively crop the show the scenes you posted were pretty much impossible to crop without losing something so there really wasn't anything Toei could do there(other than redrawing it).

[Ajay]

Pretty crazy how much horizontal is gained this time. Not that it really matters but it does make the cropping more versatile.

[TheBlackPaladin]

The producer was proudly talking about how they improved some things and made it closer to the original manga, but what the hell is this? Everything else falls below minimum standards for a commercial anime show. There are so many things to be dealt with before some really minor nitpicking things like Goku's halo or something.

Yeah, in hindsight, I wonder if that was them going into damage control. Like, "Well..........ummm.......yeahit'sgotagreentintweknowsorryaboutthat BUT LOOK, we fixed Goku's halo!"

[Hujio]

Yeah, in hindsight, I wonder if that was them going into damage control. Like, "Well..........ummm.......yeahit'sgotagreentintweknowsorryaboutthat BUT LOOK, we fixed Goku's halo!"

I wouldn't really say it was damage control because those comments were made prior to the show being broadcast. No one had even seen it yet.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Even though it looks awful with the green tint, it looks great when filtered. I hope they will fix that with the home releases, but I doubt it. I find it really sad that the bootleg releases of Kai are superior to the official releases (Yamamoto music for 1st half, no green tint for 2nd half, all in HD & widescreen), at least IMO.

[baneofdemon22]

Like every episode so far, I really enjoyed this episode. It feels very different on all ends, and that makes it more interesting for me.

[Blade]

I personally want to see Toei make some form of lurid, outlandish excuse for the green-tint - just so we can say that their belittlement of the fandom is totally complete.

"Hey guys! Don't worry about that green - it's just 'Scouter Vision' to provide everyone with the experience of what the show would look like if being watched behind a green scouter. We'll also be releasing super-collectible blue and red tint editions too!"

[kei17]

The terrible score on this episode made me wonder how it would have been with the Kikuchi score, so I made my music placement just out of curiosity. http://yahoo.jp/box/YwgOlW