New Fans

[HourglassIndigo]

While Dragon Ball Z has been popular since the early 2000's with the original dub, I've seen many people in my age group (15-18) still love and keep up with dragon ball. I think kai's popularity and effect on the dragon ball community in the west is underappreciated. I'm 16 and was introduced to DB through kai when I was 10. What do you guys think? Am I overstating how popular kai was? Or do you agree that it introduced lots of fans that still watch to this day?

[Nejishiki]

As far as the West is concerned, Dragon Ball is never off the air for too long, somewhere. The constant exposure is beneficial, yet Dragon Ball Kai did its share to keep their target demographic in the loop. That's not getting into the older demographic supporting the series with merchandise. You'll eventually become us and Shueisha shall scheme again to capture the new, young target demographic.

[nickzambuto]

Give it a few more years and we'll find out. The kids who got into the series thanks to Kai probably aren't old enough to go around internet forums yet. It was the same way when the FUNi dub was actually airing, millions of kids were becoming lifelong fans, but the actual Internet had no idea and made it look like everybody hated the dub.

[Hellspawn28]

I think Kai did help made younger people get into the series. Someone who was seven years old in 2010 watching Kai is now old enough to join Kanzenshuu at the age of 13 right now. I don't think Kai was as big as DBZ was in the late 90's and early 2000's due to more people having more access to syndication and Cartoon Network while Nick Toons is a network that most people don't have. Not to mention DBZ had more marketing and we never got any major merchandise for Kai in the US. Probably due to the poor merchandise sales in Japan and Bandai America probably felt iffy doing a toyline for Kai in 2010-2012. Not to mention Bandai America's toyline for DBZ in 2008 and DBE in 2009 seem to bombed. The market for DBZ is way lower compare to it was in 1998-2003.

[simtek34]

I started watching Kai in 2010 when I was 6 years old on 4Kids. And now, I am a huge fan. I wrote my whole story on a thread about how you got into the series about a month ago
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34979&p=1137706#p1137706

[sintzu]

Kai on Toonami gets 300000 more views than the other shows and the 1st Kai's popularity in the west was the reason the Buu arc got a Kai version which was made for the west and it wasn't intended to be aired in Japan.

The only people who'll deny Kai's popularity and impact on the franchise are the Z funi dub fanboys.

[Shounen]

You're right. Even if Kai was redundant, it had a positive impact on the popularity of whole DB and gained new fans.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I think Kai needs more time for the new fans to reflect on it as many who started the show when they were 6-9 or even younger are still pretty young and would only be starting to join internet forums and such, but I could definitely see it becoming a "nostalgia show" for them.

Who knows, with the Kai Buu saga and (inevitably) Super dub on the way a lot of the younger fans who "grew out of it" or took a break may get back into the series only to be excited for more material to come and enjoy the franchise's resurgence as most of us are.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I started watching Kai in 2010 when I was 6 years old on 4Kids. And now, I am a huge fan. I wrote my whole story on a thread about how you got into the series about a month ago
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34979&p=1137706#p1137706

I dont know if I told you this but hearing your story MAKES ME MEGA ULTRA HAPPY! I always loved Toonzai and Vortexx and I'm glad they did give you an entry into Dragon Ball! 4Kids truly redeemed themselves with Dragon Ball Z Kai. They got rid of that jackass Alfred R Khan and focused on intruducing little kids into anime like they did with Pokemon, I know the edits were dire but they were not One Piece levels of ruin.

Here are some ratings data for Toonzai on TheCW4Kids!

Final K6-11 Ratings for Saturday, April 16, 2011 Broadcast Networks only (Live + SD Data):
Source: Disney Research from Nielsen Media Research Data
CW (Toonzai) 1.1/5 Avg. (7a-12p)
Magi Nation 0.2/2; Magi-Nation 0.5/4; Sonic X 1.0/6; Sonic X 1.4/7; Yu-Gi-Oh 1.2/5; Sonic X 1.4/6; Dragon Ball Z Kai 1.5/6; Dragon Ball Z Kai 1.6/6; Yu-Gi-Oh 1.1/4; Yu-Gi-Oh 5D 0.7/3


That's over 250.000 viewers 6-11 years old. And on one good day they got over 1 million viewers!

I'm really eager to see more Toonzai fans join Kanzenshuu!. That's going to be awesome!