Techincally Kai is completely pointless.

[Turtle bits]

Most everything is labeled with the kai logo, i never said it was as huge as the early 90's, heh.

Sorta comparable to the G2 era of transformers, they reaired rhe show i believe, but sold new toys. My whole point being, kai was a cool idea, but it had a marketing campaign behind it.

[AgitoZ]

My whole point being, kai was a cool idea, but it had a marketing campaign behind it.

No it wasn't. The merchandise was repackaged, rehashed, and and ignored by the general public. That's the whole reason it got cancelled.

[Turtle bits]

When I said cool idea, I meant the idea behind making it true to the manga, etc etc.

There was resold stuff, but there was a lot of brand new merchandise, gashapon sets out the ass, the MG grade model kits, (the first wave of normal goku's didnt have the kai label, but they later did along with the SS one.)

Again, I'm just arguing that was the plan, I'm not even arguing for its success, which id say, did well regardless, DB stuff seems to always sell well there, now theres much less of it though, like you said, its probably due to its cancellation.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

The merchadise got restarted in Japan in late 2002, correct me if I'm wrong. When Kai came out, they just took the Kai logo.

[Turtle bits]

I'm saying thats part of kais purpose, at least, it stands to reason that they intended to jolt the brand with ”kai” whether it was needed or not, whether it
was successful, i have no idea.

^That seems about right, they got new swag when we did for a while, until kai I'm unsure if things kept steady sales wise. Again, I imagine that was at least most of kais intended purpose.

[TripleRach]

As I recall, Japan started getting a lot of new DBZ CD releases in summer 2002, followed by the start of the kanzenban line later that year, the release of the first PS2 game, and the first Dragon Box in early 2003. And there was a pretty steady stream of new merchandise and media releases in Japan ever since then.

But according to the merchandise sales figures we have, sales for the Dragon Ball franchise have been dropping the past few years; sales were actually better before Kai started, and kept getting worse as it aired. People probably got tired of spending money on the series by the time 2009 and Kai came around.

[Turtle bits]

....wow, interesting...seems Kai only hurt things for the series, or never helped. DBO hasnt been released in japan i believe, maybe..then it'll gain sone popularity back, if not, its had incredible runs

[Aoi]

I wouldn't say that. It might not have been a big success in Japan but it did get a lot of new people from around the world interested in the Dragon Ball franchise. I only have one - two friends who watch anime and they tell me all the time that they would give their right arm for shows like One Piece or Naruto to get the same treatment Dragon Ball got with "Kai". This series is a rare privilege to have.

[KingofWisdom]

If it wasn't for Kai getting a dub (and a pretty good one at that), I wouldn't have cared for it at all. But because of it, I feel like this is the first time we've been able to watch the anime without it being butchered for the English release. The removal of filler is just icing on the cake for me. It's a total shame that the Buu saga never made it in, but I still feel like this is the definitive animated version for everything preceding it. I was looking forward to it too, hoping that fat Buu would be recast (like Freeza was) and would no longer sound like a mentally challenged child.

[DBZAOTA482]

Not entirely, I couldn't bring myself to rewatch the Frieza Saga in the original Z version because of the absurd amount of useless filler (this is coming from someone who usually tolerates the pacing in the show) plus Kai helped FUNimation redeem itself in quite a amount of people's eyes, and it introduces new fans to the series.