Dragon Ball Rewatch, Week 34 - DB episode 151-153 & DBZ 1-2

[Robo4900]

• Totally ignore it and go the Z route by just continuing the story as normal.
• Use the start of the first Wedding Arc episode with Armstrong's narration, then transition to Herbert finishing his dialogue using the end of the Kai recap where Raditz's pod flies in.

For the record, a mixture of these two is the one I favour the most for your hypothetical Kai edit, as it would most smoothly carry on from T1C, and evoke a feeling closer to the idea of it being an accurate take on the manga's story (since the manga was one continuous story, whereas Kai mostly ignores the entire first 194 chapters, and doesn't follow on from DB very well because of the stupid recap).

Though KBABZ, you mis-typed; you mentioned Hebert, the Z narrator, rather than Morgan, the Kai narrator.

Honestly using the Bardock special to start the first episode just made it looks like Freeza is the big bad of the series as a whole and Goku vs Freeza is the “endgame” of the series

Remember that Kai was originally devised to just cover the Saiyan and Namek arcs; Androids/Cell came later, and the Buu arc wasn't done because of the earthquake/tsunami.

I didn't know that.

[MyVisionity]

A lot of people just remembered the BLT dub and made that connection when DBZ started. Goku, his ape form, Chichi, Grandpa Gohan, Bulma, Roshi, Kinto Un, etc. were all introduced in that first arc. So in many ways it was a direct continuation coming into the 96 dub.

[MasenkoHA]

Honestly using the Bardock special to start the first episode just made it looks like Freeza is the big bad of the series as a whole and Goku vs Freeza is the “endgame” of the series

Remember that Kai was originally devised to just cover the Saiyan and Namek arcs; Androids/Cell came later, and the Buu arc wasn't done because of the earthquake/tsunami.

I believe the intention was always to do around 100 episodes which would have taken it to the end of the Cell arc.


https://www.kanzenshuu.com/2009/02/06/r ... -in-japan/

[MasenkoHA]

A lot of people just remembered the BLT dub and made that connection when DBZ started. Goku, his ape form, Chichi, Grandpa Gohan, Bulma, Roshi, Kinto Un, etc. were all introduced in that first arc. So in many ways it was a direct continuation coming into the 96 dub.

Except Funimation. Because they were banking on Saban getting them better time slots and wider national coverage. They ignore that those who saw Dragon Ball’s 95 would have known Goku accidentally squashed his grandpa and instead blamed Vegeta.

There’s no reference for who the hell Krillin and Piccolo are outside of a toy for Kid Krillin being made by Bandai.

There’s also some other changes like ditching the Harmony Gold borrowed term bleeper and calling it the more accurate “Dragon Radar”

[ArmenianPepsi]

That time that was dedicated to the Bardock stuff could've been use to flesh out the abridged summary of what happened in OG DB instead.

Agreed. I know it's a bit off-topic, but for a while now me and Robo have been figuring out the best way to cover this portion in a good fashion for when I eventually do Kikuchi Kai hopefully maybe someday. We came up with a few ideas:

• Totally ignore it and go the Z route by just continuing the story as normal.
• Cut out the Bardock opening and instead expand the Dragon Ball recap to include the 21st, 22nd and Red Ribbon arcs more fully with select voice clips from those episodes. The Bardock opening would be moved to the Z Kai episode where Frieza realizes that Goku looks like Bardock.
• Use the start of the first Wedding Arc episode with Armstrong's narration, then transition to Herbert finishing his dialogue using the end of the Kai recap where Raditz's pod flies in.
• The forest filler with Gohan would be cut no matter what so Episodes 1 and 2 would probably be combined in some fashion.

Including the Bardock opening is cute for those in the know, but it totally breaks the important storytelling regarding the backstory of the Saiyans and their relationship with Frieza by spoiling two of the biggest twists in the story early!

I think all those options are pretty valid approaches, but if I had to narrow it down i'd go with either option 1 or 2.

The prospect of having Kikuchi TFC is so tantalizing as well

[Planetnamek]

I think PlanetNamek meant from the perspective of Funimation “essentially” skipped Dragon Ball to go straight to Z l, so focusing so much on Gohan lost in the woods wouldn’t make a great first impression.

But man I’ll never understand the “you don’t need Dragon Ball, you can start at Z” people imagine never seeing Dragon Ball and just starting with Z


Oh so Goku is some super strong dude who flies on a cloud and he has a son and he used to have a tail like his son but it was removed when he was a child and he started martial arts under this old man named Master Roshi. This Krillin guy was his classmate I guess? They have the same gi. And this Bulma girl is their tech friend or something because she has a dragon radar and she used to go on adventures with them looking for dragon balls. And her boyfriend is some dude named Yamcha?

And the green alien guy is named Piccolo and I guess he’s evil? He doesn’t seem so bad though. Oh and apparently Krillin and Roshi have died before because Goku said they were restored to life before?


And yeah, that’s what happened in counties that got the Funi dub but something tells me nobody cared about the plot all that much.

Yeah that's what I was referring to, if Funi had stuck with original DB before Z, obviously skipping episode 1 wouldn't make sense. But since they hadn't yet finished DB at the time, skipping all the forest stuff was arguably for the best, as those who hadn't seen DB would've likely been put off by all the faffing about in the forest.

[KBABZ]

I didn't know that.

I drew this conclusion from the main marketing material at launch, which focused primarily on the Saiyan and Namek arcs with no hint of Androids or Cell. I suspect they hoped for 99 episodes but set out to test the waters with these first two arcs.

[Matches Malone]

That time that was dedicated to the Bardock stuff could've been use to flesh out the abridged summary of what happened in OG DB instead.

I agree. On top of wasting time that could've been better used to recap the original, it completely spoils Goku's origins. They should've just used the recap of Bardock when Freeza remembers him before fighting Goku.

I didn't know that.

I drew this conclusion from the main marketing material at launch, which focused primarily on the Saiyan and Namek arcs with no hint of Androids or Cell. I suspect they hoped for 99 episodes but set out to test the waters with these first two arcs.

No anime is made with 100s of episodes green lit from the start. Kai, like any other anime, probably got the OK to make 50 or so episodes, and once they were considered a success, they got the OK to continue on with the Cell arc. After that however, the powers at be decided it'd be best to move on with something else (Toriko), so we didn't get Buu in the initial run.

[KBABZ]

No anime is made with 100s of episodes green lit from the start. Kai, like any other anime, probably got the OK to make 50 or so episodes, and once they were considered a success, they got the OK to continue on with the Cell arc. After that however, the powers at be decided it'd be best to move on with something else (Toriko), so we didn't get Buu in the initial run.

True but Kai is itself directly based on the most popular anime of all time so I think it was considered a more surefire bet. In any case my point was that they'd focus on the Saiyan/Namek arcs as a contained storyline in case it failed, hence why it shows Bardock so dang early to set Frieza up as the Big Bad of Kai.

[MasenkoHA]

There were reports of Kai being planned for approximately 100 episode run before it started airing and it corresponded to what we actually got (98 episodes with the last one unaired in Japan)

Like KBABZ said the popularity of Dragon Ball Z probably gave Toei and Fuji tv the go ahead for a two year commitment, plus it was essentially reruns with s gloss of cheap paint.

[KBABZ]

Like KBABZ said the popularity of Dragon Ball Z probably gave Toei and Fuji tv the go ahead for a two year commitment, plus it was essentially reruns with s gloss of cheap paint.

I mean, there was more to Kai than that. Outside of the remastered footage practically everything was redone, including shot editing, music, sound effects and dialogue. Certainly not as much as Z but it wasn't exactly a rerun put through the Waifu filter.

[MasenkoHA]

So I was glancing over this Nicktoon edits guide of the first episode of Kai http://dbzkedits.3gkai.com/?p=39
and two things caught my attention


Funimation (or I guess Ocean since they did the edits for the Nicktoon version right?) actually translated the Japanese writing for Tenkaichi Budokai in the recap. I know this sort of thing isn’t unheard of in tv edited dubs but considering the dub never once called it the Tenkaichi Budokai I’m surprised it didn’t get left as is or get translated as “World Martial Arts Tournament”


Bulma’s dialog about why Yamcha isn’t around in the tv edited version is the exact same thing she said in the 1996 Z dub and 2005 redub. And I’m not sure why? Essentially the idea is the same and there’s nothing really wrong with the uncut dialog. If anything the edited version is worse because she calls him an idiot instead of a jerk. Perhaps Funimation originally recorded the dialog with the “Yamcha took another girl out” bit carried over from the Saban version and then decided to redub it with more accurate dialog for the home video release?

[Robo4900]

So I was glancing over this Nicktoon edits guide of the first episode of Kai http://dbzkedits.3gkai.com/?p=39
and two things caught my attention

Nice to know that site's back (I swear it was down for ages). I may draw on that for today's trivia section.

Funimation (or I guess Ocean since they did the edits for the Nicktoon version right?) actually translated the Japanese writing for Tenkaichi Budokai in the recap. I know this sort of thing isn’t unheard of in tv edited dubs but considering the dub never once called it the Tenkaichi Budokai I’m surprised it didn’t get left as is or get translated as “World Martial Arts Tournament”

Yes. This confirms that Ocean's localised name for the tournament in their Kai dub is "Tenkaichi Budoukai", which suggests they used more accurate names this time around.

It's been said that Ocean's Kai dub uses entirely their own scripts, no relation to Funi's. It's also been said that Namek is pronounced closer to how it's pronounced in Japan, and at conventions since recording Kai, I've seen a few actors such as Brian Drummond say Goku more like the Japanese do, with emphasis on the second syllable.

Bulma’s dialog about why Yamcha isn’t around in the tv edited version is the exact same thing she said in the 1996 Z dub and 2005 redub. And I’m not sure why? Essentially the idea is the same and there’s nothing really wrong with the uncut dialog. If anything the edited version is worse because she calls him an idiot instead of a jerk. Perhaps Funimation originally recorded the dialog with the “Yamcha took another girl out” bit carried over from the Saban version and then decided to redub it with more accurate dialog for the home video release?

I have no idea why they have two versions of that line. It's very weird. Though, to me, the edited line always struck me as being the clearer explanation of the situation between Bulma and Yamucha, thus is the better line.

[Android19]

As someone who grew up watching the Ocean dub, watching the Ultimate Uncut version is a surreal experience for me to say the least. It's so weird seeing all these scenes of Gohan in the forest after all these years, but I like it as it adds more tragedy to this being the end of an era of a piece and Gohan being forced to ultimately grow up a lot faster then anticipated.