Your opinions on Kai

[Tullece]

I've never seen Kai, but will be buying tomorrow the Season sets 3 + 4 on bluray because there on sale at amazon and the Andriod/cell arc is my favorite. How is kai as a whole, is it a lot better without the filler? Whats good, whats bad?

[B]

Pros:
-Infinitely better dub
-Brisk pacing
-Better ending theme(s)

Cons:
-Hit and miss attempt at presenting a 20-year-old show in high definition
-Yamamoto plagiarism debacle has lead to a replacement score and questionable music arrangement

The dub scripting post-Freeza arc gets a little lazy and bare-bones, but it's till streets ahead of the Z dub that I couldn't list it as a real con. Some people feel the voice performances on the Japanese side of things can't live up to Z, but I've never enjoyed Nozawa (Goku specifically) and Furukawa (Piccolo) more, to single them out. There are a few recastings(again, Japanese) for characters since Z; not counting deceased actors; such as Dende, Nappa, and the Ginyu Force. The Majin Buu arc is slowly but surely coming out.

Overall, yes, it's much better without the filler, but comes with its own baggage. We'll never get a perfect animated adaptation of this material, ever.

[TheBlackPaladin]

B pretty much nailed it as far as specifics/individual items.

My personal, general conclusion would be that the only reason you'd want to get "Kai" is if you want to hear the dub. If you're just interested in the original Japanese version, then it was already done better in "Dragon Ball Z." The Japanese version of "Kai", while certainly not bad by any means, lacks a sort of life and enthusiasm to it. I can't help but notice it, especially when I hear DBZ audio clips back-to-back with Kai audio clips. I attribute this to the fact that the Japanese voice actors are literally doing the exact same thing again, whereas the English voice actors were craving for an opportunity to do a better dub, and their enthusiasm translates into their performances.

[theoriginalbilis]

For me at least, as much as I love the original Z, I can watch a whole fight or a chunk of episodes and cover much more ground when watching Kai. Also, I find it much easier to indoctrinate newcomers to the Dragon Ball franchise with Kai.

[AnimeMaakuo]

Anyone who honestly thinks Kai was made for some artistic reason is only fooling themselves. It’s cheap, proven content for Toei to pair with One Piece on Sunday mornings — a glorified rerun. And it’s an excuse to not have to remaster all 291 episodes of Dragon Ball Z in HD (and probably not the other 217 episodes of non-Z animation either). Its very existence is an insult to my intelligence. Visually, it doesn’t impress me at all, and most of the newer animation looks horrible and out of place. The music is decent, but the original score is definitely superior. “Dragon Soul” isn’t even as good as the Gekiranger theme. And though I love that most of the living actors have reprised their roles, in most cases, they give subpar performances.

[ABED]

How does it insult your intelligence?

I enjoy HD content, but I can't imagine that a 30 year old series would look that much better.

Was DBZ made for "artistic reasons"?

I love the English dub, and the pacing is very much an improvement. It's not perfect but it works fine.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

As I see it: Original digital masters (probably those prepared for Dragon Box) were grain filtered, color corrected, upscaled and blurred. It's not "HD remaster" but "SD destroying".

I enjoy HD content, but I can't imagine that a 30 year old series would look that much better.

16mm film + hand made drawings can look ten times better than Kai (Blu-ray Level sets).

Was DBZ made for "artistic reasons"?

Music is masterpiece. Series has this epic atmosphere that I can't even put into words. Great story and characters, hand made drawings, great music (real orchestra), amazing performance by voice actors, unique special effects - it has artistic value. Modern technical standards are nothing, compared to this.

How does it insult your intelligence?

Because he knows how and for what reasons Kai was done.

[ABED]

DBZ has artistic value, but let's not kid ourselves, it was made because the manga was popular. Kai and Z were made for the same reasons - money! There's nothing wrong with that.

There's some great art in Z, but there's also some real garbage. It was made on the cheap. There's also a lot of filler which meant they were pumping out content for the sake of filling airtime. It wasn't made for the sake of art. Hell, I don't even think Toriyama made it because he was in it for the sake of the art. He enjoyed what he did but he also went as long as he did for money.

Kai was made on the cheap but considering how expensive it would've been to reanimated, I would rather this than nothing.

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

Pros:

-Better overall pacing.
-Much better English dub.
-Stereo audio in Japanese version.

Cons:

-Music scandal.
-Redrawn scenes don't mesh well with the original animation.
-Moves a little too quickly at times.
-Some non-filler material was removed in earlier episodes (watch Kai episode 2 while reading the manga for the most extreme example of this).
-Returning Japanese cast show their age at times, and some don't sound as into their roles as they did back in the DBZ days, and recasts don't always live up to their predecessors' original performances (in my opinion).
-Still a few questionable casting choices in the dub (Chichi, Kaio, ReaCoom, etc).

That's about all that comes to mind right now.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

Kai was made on the cheap but considering how expensive it would've been to reanimated, I would rather this than nothing.

And that's why we want only properly telecined old material. Have you watched all Dragon Ball series? Did you noticed that this all filler-thing(I mean also long battles) is making "the moments" more epic? For me it works. As I'm always saying: More Dragon Ball = better. Let's leave modern standards to the new series/movies. You can record early Rolling Stones albums in better quality - who will put them above original? It's similar case with DB for me.

BTW, we all know that DB series was made for money (like everything in this world). There is simply many arguments to release it properly restored, someday.

[ABED]

Kai was made on the cheap but considering how expensive it would've been to reanimated, I would rather this than nothing.

And that's why we want only properly telecined old material. Have you watched all Dragon Ball series ? Did you noticed that this all filler-thing(i mean also long battles) is making "the moments" more epic ? For me it works. As I'm always saying: More Dragon Ball = better. Let's leave modern standards to new series/movies. You can record early Rolling Stones albums in better quality - who will put them above original ? It's similar case with DB for me.

BTW, we all know that DB series was made for money (like everything in this world). There is simply many arguments to release it properly restored, someday.

I have seen all of Dragon Ball, several times over. A lot of the filler doesn't add. There's some nice humorous moments, and a few added attacks but overall, things often take longer than they need to. The fight against Freeza is better without the fat. The constant cutaways to Earth or Bulma are distracting and don't add anything of real value.

Please refrain from "we". There's no universal consensus. I never thought we'd get Kai, so it's like a nice treat. I'd love to see a proper restoration as well, but seeing as how it's prohibitively expensive, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Not everything is made for money. Many books are written for the joy of writing a story.

[dbzfan7]

Easily the best english dub. If your watching for english voices and want the most accurate portrayal, then Kai is the best experience. If you are on the Japanese viewing end, the voices aren't as good as the original, but the pacing is still much better. I feel Kai moves at the right pace as I feel something is accomplished pretty much every episode, while in Z I felt nothing happened in a lot of episodes.

[Metalwario64]

As I see it: Original digital masters (probably those prepared for Dragon Box) were grain filtered, color corrected, upscaled and blurred. It's not "HD remaster" but "SD destroying".

Uh, are you talking about Kai? Kai was scanned in HD. If you think it was an upscale, or not HD, then that leads me to believe you know nothing about film.

Sure, the blurring kinda negates the need for it to be in HD (though in SD it's close to the first 5 North American Dragon Boxes), but you can't look at the 35mm episodes and say it's an upscale.

[DBZ Mick]

I guess I'm the only one who likes the Japanese cast in Kai? While I do feel some don't do as good a job as they were in Z (but come on it's almost 20 years later) they still do amazing. The women seiyuu sound still amazing while I find sometimes the men don't quite have it in them as much (Furukawa sounds pretty good most of the time though).

I like Kai mainly because it's much better paced and if one can't afford the Dragon Boxes the picture is pretty good too.

[DemonRin]

Honestly the biggest draw for Kai for anyone is and should be the better Pacing, at least for me. The Dub is another huge leap up, I'm incredibly glad the series got a redub and that they're actually doing a (Mostly) faithful job this time, but the pacing is the REAL appeal to Kai as far as I'm concerned.

DragonBall Z, for everything I love about the series and continue to love about it, was outright poorly handled in many areas. Watch the current broadcast of One Piece right now by Toei. (the same animation house) They're making the exact same mistake, and it's really unfortunate, but they're dragging things out to almost a crawl where each episode it feels like almost nothing is happening period.

It should never take 19 episodes for Son to beat Freeza. that is just absolutely ridiculous and a change that NEEDED to happen as far as I'm concerned. That alone I think justifies the existence of Kai. The stellar Dub is just a very nice icing on the cake.

The only things you have to put up with in Kai are the lazy remastering that looks NICE, don't get me wrong... It's watchable and all that, I won't say it ruins the experience or anything... but the blur effect they put on a good deal of it kinda takes away from the intent of viewing this content in HD... Tho, to be fair, watching it on Blu-ray directly is INFINITELY better than any encode I'm sure people have found online. It just flat out looks crisper on Blu.

Back in the Orange Brick days, everyone noticed that the damage the DVNR did ruined the picture less and less with each box set release as the episodes in question (as well as their masters) got newer and newer. I HOPE that translates over to the Boo arc not needing as many filters to bring it up to par, and hopefully this won't be as big a problem with the rest of Kai when it finally comes out.

[sonikku956]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... JeM#t=106s

This is one of the few Dragon Ball related things to make me tear up ;_;

[Duo]

Too much filler bleeds in during the Freeza fight and the Cell Game, but otherwise it's a pretty good presentation of the series. Getting through it quick is definitely nice, and I can see why many would prefer it over the original Anime.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I guess I'm the only one who likes the Japanese cast in Kai?

Oh no, no, no, a lot of them were still good! It's just that, comparing it to DBZ, it really sticks out (to me, anyway) as being good rather than great. That's all. Yes, the passing of twenty years and the fact that they're doing pretty much the exact same thing over again are completely logical and understandable explanations as to why it's just good...but it doesn't change my opinion that it's only...just good.

Kanzenshuu (then Daizenshuu EX) said in their review of the Kai dub that the English version needed Kai more than the original Japanese version ever did. I completely agree. I don't mean to speak for everybody, but for me, if it weren't for the new (and thankfully improved) English dub, I'd have little to no interest in Kai. The Japanese cast already nailed it in DBZ, so I'm convinced that if you want to listen to the anime in Japanese, then DBZ is the way to go. Conversely, if you want to listen to it in English, Kai is the way to go.

[DemonRin]

I honestly wonder why some fans have like, nothing but bile and contempt for Kai...

Like, I can get not liking it, but why do some people react to the mere mention of Kai like Toei personally kicked their dog?... Not saying anyone here in this thread has, but it recently happened at Arlong Park (One Piece Forum) for example when Kai came up in the Dragonball thread...

[theoriginalbilis]

I honestly wonder why some fans have like, nothing but bile and contempt for Kai...

Because it's either too similar to DBZ (VAs now sounding "tired", reuse of old footage), thus they find it redundant/unnecessary; or it's "too different" from their precious, "perfect" vision of DBZ is (censored violence, different voice actors, different script and music in the case of the English dub.) Different = bad. Too similar = bad. They refuse to see that Kai rectified many flaws from the original anime. On the flip side, it also retains many of the original's flaws. I don't want to incite anything, but I have noticed that at least on the internet, it's the English dub fans that seem to have the most vitriol towards Kai (even Kai is the most accurate English dub released.) For the most part, fans of the Japanese version are at most indifferent towards Kai.

There's always something to bitch about (like I'm doing now) and that's why fandoms can suck sometimes. Look at comic book fans and their reactions to comic-based movies... I'm glad Kai exists. I see Kai as an alternate cut, it's not replacing the original version at all. It's not perfect, but damn, I'll pop in a disc of Kai and get more done then I would watching a disc of Z.