Trachta, take a look at this cel. Anyone reading should also take a look. Notice anything?
![Image](https://i.slow.pics/JE3QCdM5.png)
Maybe not? I'll zoom it in a bit.
![Image](https://i.slow.pics/lI315dYv.png)
Look at the outline around the beard and his ear in this cel. Looks a tad brown right? If I were the kind of person who wanted to color correct Dragon Ball to look like exactly the cels, and I used this cel to reference this scene, there is really only one of two possible conclusions I can draw from this:
1. The colors of the cels have aged a bit, especially the black outline in the area I mentioned. I would then realize the cels are not 100% accurate 100% of the time. There may be "good cels" and "bad cels" but it might be harder to tell, and perhaps most importantly; no one has access to cels for every scene of Dragon Ball, let alone "perfect" cels for every scene. Therefore, some reasoning must be made beyond scans of cels.
2. As you said, age did not change the color of the cel. This means the animators decided for one scene to make part of what is normally a black outline, a brown outline instead. Therefore, if I want the scene to look like the cel, I should change the color of the outline in this one part.
If someone can't figure out which conclusion is correct, I don't know what to tell you.
I implore you or anyone else to actually compare Kai to original cels. I actually don't hate the colors of Kai, but they are lighter and more pastel compared to Dragon Ball Z cels. Here's an example I found from the first episode:
![Image](https://i.slow.pics/uuMyLJbj.png)
Let me get ahead of some potential comments:
1. Yes I know it's not the exact same frame. I saw that cel and recognized it was from the first episode, but the specific scene was cut in Kai. Clearly it is the same characters with a similar background. If Kai matched the cels, we would expect these colors to match. Don't get me wrong, it's close, but Kai is lighter overall. Certainly not the "true colors".
2. "Didn't you just say you can't trust the cels 100%???" Sure. But the specific claim is the Kai reflects the "true colors" of the show. Either the cel is off, Kai is off, or both.
3. Please do not post that nonsense picture claiming DB Kai has different colors in the USBD, JPBD, and DVD and that I compared "The wrong one." I, and other people, have compared the raw BD/DVD images and found that comparison image to be totally inaccurate. It was likely a result of a poor encode. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're fine.
Please don't ever say things or think like this. Not as a fan of some show, but as a person. If you think "I haven't personally heard of something like this happening in a industry I don't work in, so it's probably not true." is a terrible way to learn and grow as a person.
Here's a website in English that talks about the classic animation process https://japanesegallery.com/anime_and_m ... els-cel-ga
I'll take out some important quotes for anyone who doesn't feel like reading the entire page:
"The paints used in cel production are manufactured in slight variations of the desired colour in order to compensate for the extra layer of transparent cel added between the image and the camera; for example a slightly brighter colour would be used for a bottom layer cel to offset the dulling effect of the cels on top."
And later...
"...sometimes promotional cels that are produced by the relevant production studios (such as Naruto’s Studio Pierrot and Studio Ghibli) as one-off collectibles, but the key difference is these will not have been used in the production of show, and often the backgrounds will have been printed out as opposed to painted."
I'll leave it at that.