My hatred of Dragonball Kai

[vegetaslegacy15]

I think Christopher Sabat is a great Voice actor. I loved all the voices he did in the original DBZ dub he did.

Well yeah a lot are the same but the ones that are not just ruin it for me. I guess to me voices are more important to me than music. But I must say I do think the music is not half bad.

[AgitoZ]

I do however not really care for Bulma, Cell, and Android 18's new voices, I prefer the older ones and felt very in line with their personalities imo.

FYI Cell is still played by Dameon Clarke.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Kai really has no point. Its just an edited DBZ with the purpose of filling Toei's pockets with minimum effort.

And it saddens me that many fans don't see it for what it really is. If all the fans had been outraged from the start with what they decided to do, maybe in the future they would be more inclined to do worthwhile things with the franchise to earn their money.

I would agree that it has no point in Japan. And many other countries for that matter, where it is basically a rehashed version of something that already happened--and was done more effectively before--with minimal effort put into it. However, the English dub is another story. It was a chance for FUNimation to do it right this time, and I believe that they did (although the arguement could be made by others that they didn't do enough, it was enough for me). Somebody posted an interview recently with Chris Psaros, the former owner of DBZ Uncensored, and he said that Kai was essentially a wasted effort, but the one beautiful thing to come out of it was the English dub. Those are my thoughts exactly.

They didn't need Kai for that. They could have done a brand new accurate dub for the Dragon Boxes or yet another release, like this bluray release.

A complete redub of DBZ, done with the care given to the Kai dub, would be nothing short of awesome. It is, however, impractical for a number of reasons. I'll list a few of them.

1) The money. The money that would be needed to hire all the voice actors, the director, the audio engineers, to dub a 291-episode TV series that already has an existing dub would be financially impractical, especially given how badly the anime industry is doing. And that's just the TV series. Let's not forget the TV specials and the movies.

2) Product familiarity. We may not care for the old dub of DBZ, but there are plenty of people who still do. There are even people who hated that Sabat re-dubbed some of his lines for the orange brick sets, saying that his Drummond impression sounded better. Many a hardcore subbie will try to downplay the success of the English dub for Z, and will say that the original Japanese version is the only version that can be universally enjoyed. In spite of this, I would argue that the original U.S. dub, mangled though it was, is astronomically more popular. Is that unfortunate? Yes. VERY. The fact remains, though. FUNimation would be unwise from an economic standpoint to piss off an entire legion of potential customers by taking the version that they love and completely discarding it.

After all, lots of people don't like the changes made in Kai. Go to YouTube and you will find hate comment after hate comment after hate comment from people who think that Colleen Clinkenbeard, Monica Rial, and Chris Ayers put on performances that were, in the words of the average YouTube poster, "gay." Again, I hate that that's the case, and have thought to myself many a time, "HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY THINK THE Z DUB WAS BETTER?" My frusturation, however, doesn't change the facts that I have an issue with. Like how the orange bricks are selling infinitely better than the Dragon Boxes, that most people hate the original music and prefer Faulconer's material, and that most people don't care enough to learn about the changes made from the original Japanese version to the English version.

Kai was the perfect excuse for FUNimation to make a new dub. It wouldn't be wasting their time financially, but they could still keep the old product that has kept them--and by extension, the R1 anime industry--afloat. For that reason, Kai is rather bittersweet for me. It was a wasted effort in many ways, but man do I love the dub.

[Luke Groundwalker]

I do however not really care for Bulma, Cell, and Android 18's new voices, I prefer the older ones and felt very in line with their personalities imo.

FYI Cell is still played by Dameon Clarke.

I'm aware of who is voicing who, I'm just speaking of voices themselves. Vegeta is still being voiced by Chris Sabat but sounds different.

[AgitoZ]

I'm aware of who is voicing who, I'm just speaking of voices themselves. Vegeta is still being voiced by Chris Sabat but sounds different.

Well then your problem must lie with the performance. It's really the same voice just with better acting. So I don't know what to tell you.

As for Vegeta it's definitely more tolerable but still completely inappropriate and you can still hear hints of Drummond. But that's a different discussion.

[Fionordequester]

...That most people hate the original music and prefer Faulconer's material...

Speaking as someone who prefers the dub of Z to the original (well, so far anyways, I haven't watched all of Z in Japanese), I don't hate the japanese soundtrack, as a matter of fact, I think that Shunsuke has some awesome themes, like this one at 3:32....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYdGBreRCdc

...It's just that, outside of tunes like that, it just seems so bland compared to Team Faulconer's track. And even though I haven't watched all of Z in Japanese, I HAVE watched Dead Zone (or at least the 2nd half of it, don't remember if I watched the 1st half), History of Trunks, Cooler's Revenge, Return of Cooler, the 1st half of Season 3, Season 5 of Dragon Ball Z Kai, and Season 9 starting with Gotenk's vs. Super Buu and ending with Goku's triumph over Kid Buu. That's what I'm basing my opinion of the Japanese soundtrack on.

I know that Team Faulconer' music isn't perfect either, but the individual songs themselves are better, even if the placement was sometimes suspect. However, I will say the Shunsuke Kikuchi was better than Kenji Yamamoto....

Man that guy was a disappointment, I really thought he might prove to be something special after watching the first few Episodes of Kai. But then I just kept on hearing the same old music, over....and over....and over....and ooooovvveeerrrr...........and over again. I didn't even need to hear that he plagiarized a bunch of stuff to think of him as inferior to Team Faulconer and Shunsuke after watching this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot3fnCxeEc4

I never in a million years thought you could possibly screw up a scene any worse than how FUNI screwed up Gohan's SSJ2 Transformation, but somehow, Kenji, or whoever was doing the music placement, found a way to do it with Goku's SSJ Transformation. At least with Team Faulconer, you could make the argument that "Hyperbolic Time Chamber" fit because of how Gohan behaved later, but I can't possibly think of a defense for this...

Then it turned out he plagiarized a bunch of stuff, and by that point, I was pretty much done with him. It's sad really, I watched most of the rest of Kai in Japanese just to hear what the soundtrack sounded like, and it still wasn't even that great, outside of a few awesome songs that we almost never heard. Just whose bright idea was it to use that completely inappropriate insert song for when Perfect Cell was destroying the militiary anyway?

[jjgp1112]

I thought Yamamoto's score was awesome, regardless of some of the plagiarized songs. I think after a certain point, the Kikuchi score got really bland and uninspired, especially since there were two Broly sequels and the majority of the music from those movies were just redone, slightly worse versions of the motifs from Movie 8. Yamamoto's score has the some of the same elements as Kikuchi's score but with a really fresh, modern spin and I thoroughly enjoyed many of the songs.

Also, you can't blame Yamamoto for music placement.

[Fionordequester]

Well, see, I did really enjoy Kenji's songs....at first. But when you start hearing the same 3-4 songs multiple times per Episode, every Episode....well, you start to get a little tired after a while. Plus, there were times I felt the score just flat out emphasized the wrong aspects of a scene, such as when Gohan was supposed to blast Nappa, but chickened out instead, and the previous example I mentioned of Perfect Cell. And even when the really awesome songs started coming in, it sometimes felt like the songs were simply there rather than enhancing what was going on on the screen. This for example...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHz0llkK ... re=related

My issue with the Kai version here is that while the song itself is indeed awesome, it just keeps on playing at the same intensity regardless of what's going on onscreen. The music in FUNI's version is calm and slow at first, but then rapidly speeds up when the androids do something threatening, calms back down after they do it, then ramps right back up after they start doing violent things again. The music, to me, just has more impact this way, even if the song itself is slightly worse than the one Kenji used.

Of course, it probably doesn't help that every time I hear a new song in the Android/Cell Saga's that's really awesome and well composed, I can't help but think, in the back of my mind "alright, this is kinda cool....I wonder if Kenji plagiarzed this to"? It's not as though it's just "a few" songs that Kenji has plagiarized, he's been doing this for 20 years, since at least when he plagiarzed "Battle Point Unlimited", if not even longer than that.

[ohaimynameiserik]

I'm really having a hard time grasping why this thread hasn't been closed yet...

[Fionordequester]

Why would it be? There's still discussion, right?

[AgitoZ]

Why would it be? There's still discussion, right?

Not really since the majority of it consists of "groble, groble I hate Kai, Nostalgia FTW!". Please note this is massive hyperbole.

I mean the entire the thread is about hating something, and something that's been discussed to death. Not to mention now cancelled. And really if you hate Kai so much just watch the original DBZ. It's still there and it's not going anywhere.

[Fionordequester]

I don't hate Kai. I love Kai. I just disliked the soundtrack that came with it, and even that's (sort of) fixed now.

[Tanooki Kuribo]

...One thing i do sort of like is they took out some of the bad filler. Even though I believe they left the fake Namek filler.

No, the fake Namek filler was taken out.

[vegetaslegacy15]

...One thing i do sort of like is they took out some of the bad filler. Even though I believe they left the fake Namek filler.

No, the fake Namek filler was taken out.

Really? I didn't even know lol. I guess I must of forgot they skipped it. OR it could of been when I was watching abridged

[Soul]

I'm sorry bro, someone has to say something, and this'll be my only reply to this thread. But did you honestly make an account for this forum? To bitch about the english dub of a series, that around these parts? Is mainly for talk of the Japanese, the 'original' version of the show? Regardless, have you sat down and actually listened to the 'acting' in Kai? Let some of that ignorant nostalgia go bro. If you compare the original dub of Z to Kai? Open your ears and hear the difference in quality.

[rereboy]

...

Yeah, it was more advantageous for them and because of it, an opportunity, but, like I said, they didn't need Kai to do it.

They are completely different and separate things (the american Dub and Kai itself), if they really wanted to do a new Dub, there was nothing stopping them.

So, I have a hard time counting that as something positive for Kai itself. Maybe for Kai in US and that's it.

[sangofe]

I don't hate Kai, but I don't love it -- sure, it is a lazy product from Toei, and they should have been doing more efforts, but there has come out good things from it like a good french dub.

[jjgp1112]

I'm sorry bro, someone has to say something, and this'll be my only reply to this thread. But did you honestly make an account for this forum? To bitch about the english dub of a series, that around these parts? Is mainly for talk of the Japanese, the 'original' version of the show? Regardless, have you sat down and actually listened to the 'acting' in Kai? Let some of that ignorant nostalgia go bro. If you compare the original dub of Z to Kai? Open your ears and hear the difference in quality.

Wow...can you be just a little more tactful next time? You're acting like nobody's allowed to have differing opinions and if they do, they're wrong.

[Soul]

Eh, my bad, I'm replying off my phone and whole touch keypad irks me.
Look, I didn't mean people can't have differing opinions, itd just I'ms tired of going back and for with Z dub fans who 'hate' Kai due to nostalgia and not giving it a fair chance. Especially without giving decent reasons why they don't like it outside of 'its too different, the voices suck!' Etc. Actually anyone pefering Linda Young's Freeza over Ayres' boggles my mind and are wrong! Lmao! Okay, I'm... Somewhat joking but I digress..
Damn, so much for not replying.

[vegetaslegacy15]

I'm sorry bro, someone has to say something, and this'll be my only reply to this thread. But did you honestly make an account for this forum? To bitch about the english dub of a series, that around these parts? Is mainly for talk of the Japanese, the 'original' version of the show? Regardless, have you sat down and actually listened to the 'acting' in Kai? Let some of that ignorant nostalgia go bro. If you compare the original dub of Z to Kai? Open your ears and hear the difference in quality.

No I did not make this account just to complain bout Kai. I made it to talk about DBZ which is a show I have loved since I was like 10. I just happened to be in an unreasonable mood when I started this thread.