What was the point of Kai?

[Baggie_Saiyan]

So, back before I sold my Kai Blu-Rays I noticed that Krillin's cloths still changed. I though the whole point of Kai was to correct all mistakes like this as well as cutting filler.

Honestly when I got Kai it was one disappointed after another. The Video quality for a blu-ray wasn't impressive. So I heard it was supposed to be a modern refreshed version of the show yet it was in 4x3 AR?
Not to mention the horrible redrawn scenes tarnished the experience.

The English dub was the only saving grace for Kai imo. Say what you will about Filler but I enjoy it, and so cutting it to closely follow the manga wasn't a good idea imo. The filler is what set's the manga and anime apart. Gives us two different experience's of the show.

To me it feels like Kai was a cash grab by Toei. I was hoping Kai would be animated like the pre-buu saga Opening Credits. Then it probably wouldn't feel like Toei were pulling a quick one and are actually putting effort in giving us a modern approach at the later half of Dragon Ball.

[VegettoEX]

The actual point?

Toss out as cheap a product as possible to set up a new generation of fans that they would be able to exploit down the line with another run of merchandise.

Toei's own words (OK, they never said "exploit", but they basically did). Yeah, they wrapped the whole thing up in wonderful marketing speak about being closer to the source blah blah blah, but that really had nothing to do with it. All Kai was ever intended to be was a cheap product to take from their back catalog and make as quick and easy a buck off it as humanly possible. There was no gracious, artistic, humble intent behind it as a project at all.

It did exactly what they wanted it to do. Sorta.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

So in a nutshell, the only reason behind Kai was to make a new generation of fans that merchandise can be sold too?
That's disappointing.

Do we know how well merchandise sold, then? I hope it wasn't as much as they were expected.

[VegettoEX]

Yes, we tracked all of that information incredibly well over the years.

In a nutshell, whenever Kai was on TV in Japan, merchandise sales continued to tank. The instant it went off TV, merchandise sales went back up.

It's easy to confuse correlation with causation, but there's definitely something to it there. People weren't interested in the same old crap. Dragon Ball Heroes with all of its collecting and new avatar characters and new transformations and constant upgrades were what clearly brought the merchandise sales back up, along with legitimately new material found in Battle of Gods.

Dragon Ball Kai at best did not help at all, and at worst contributed to further merchandise sales downward spirals.

[kei17]

So in a nutshell, the only reason behind Kai was to make a new generation of fans that merchandise can be sold too?
That's disappointing.

What's disappointing about it? You are too romantic if you think that they produce TV shows for artistic reasons.

[JEFFMAN219]

So, back before I sold my Kai Blu-Rays I noticed that Krillin's cloths still changed. I though the whole point of Kai was to correct all mistakes like this as well as cutting filler.

Honestly when I got Kai it was one disappointed after another. The Video quality for a blu-ray wasn't impressive. So I heard it was supposed to be a modern refreshed version of the show yet it was in 4x3 AR?
Not to mention the horrible redrawn scenes tarnished the experience.

The English dub was the only saving grace for Kai imo. Say what you will about Filler but I enjoy it, and so cutting it to closely follow the manga wasn't a good idea imo. The filler is what set's the manga and anime apart. Gives us two different experience's of the show.

To me it feels like Kai was a cash grab by Toei. I was hoping Kai would be animated like the pre-buu saga Opening Credits. Then it probably wouldn't feel like Toei were pulling a quick one and are actually putting effort in giving us a modern approach at the later half of Dragon Ball.

Dragon Ball Z Kai on blu ray looks really nice and looks way better then those new blu ray season sets.

[TheBlackPaladin]

As others have said, the real point was just to make as cost-effective of a hit show as possible by taking an old hit show and re-packaging it in the most minimal way in an effort to present an old hit as being new. When, in fact, it's only "new" in the weakest sense of the word. This, above all else, is why I've never been particularly interested in the Japanese version of Kai. It's just the same old stuff, repackaged...and the original package was better (in my opinion, of course).

The English dub on the other hand, is a different story. I know some fans still weren't completely satisfied with it (but I was), but regardless of whether you found it satisfying or not, it was legitimately new. Which is why, whenever someone speaks about Kai, even though this is not technically correct, the first thing I imagine in my head is the English dub, and I have mentally registered Kai as an English-speaking show, whereas I think of the Japanese version first when I hear DBZ and mentally register DBZ in my head as a Japanese-speaking show.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

So in a nutshell, the only reason behind Kai was to make a new generation of fans that merchandise can be sold too?
That's disappointing.

What's disappointing about it? You are too romantic if you think that they produce TV shows for artistic reasons.

Even the DB manga was made because Toriyama needed money (he said so). He didn't wake up one day and said "I want to tell the world this story no matter what!"

[ABED]

So in a nutshell, the only reason behind Kai was to make a new generation of fans that merchandise can be sold too?
That's disappointing.

What's disappointing about it? You are too romantic if you think that they produce TV shows for artistic reasons.

Even the DB manga was made because Toriyama needed money (he said so). He didn't wake up one day and said "I want to tell the world this story no matter what!"

To be fair, I'm sure he enjoyed what he was doing.

Unfortunately, I think there's this negative feeling people have towards people doing stuff to make money. They believe it to be an impure motive.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

So in a nutshell, the only reason behind Kai was to make a new generation of fans that merchandise can be sold too?
That's disappointing.

What's disappointing about it? You are too romantic if you think that they produce TV shows for artistic reasons.

Even the DB manga was made because Toriyama needed money (he said so). He didn't wake up one day and said "I want to tell the world this story no matter what!"

I get that. But I don't get why that had to cash in on from Kai. DBZ was done and dusted for a quite a few years, and it's kind of sad that they still need(ed) Z to make money.

[dbboxkaifan]

Instead of Toei Animation shoving out a half-assed product they could have used that time to remaster properly Dragon Ball Z in HD but no, that didn't happen sadly.

I'm surprised there's some people who love Kai to death and would want to see more like it as if it were a superior or even great product overall. I did enjoy Kai from the Saiyan arc to Freeza's arc and that's it, I ain't much interested on the Buu arc although I may order it in the future.

[Hellspawn28]

So in a nutshell, the only reason behind Kai was to make a new generation of fans that merchandise can be sold too?
That's disappointing.

It's Toei. They make shows for kids and hope to sell a lot of merchandise. Just look at their other shows like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider. Toei even said that ratings are a after thought for their TV shows and they tend to look at sales of toys and other merchandise the most.

[TheBlackPaladin]

It might be extra-disappointing to us non-Japanese viewers because we think of the show as the main product. In Japan, that wasn't the case with Kai, or any of the Dragon Ball animes...all of them were made to sell toys. The show wasn't really thought of in Japan as a product for consumption in and of itself. Even the Dragon Boxes, as I understand it, are thought of as something of an unnecessary/glorified collector's item in Japan (ie, "It's just the show, why do you want the show?").

One thing I will say in their defense though. I think every country has shows that were made primarily to make money, and it speaks volumes of the skills of the people at Toei that their shows which were made purely to make money are still often leagues better in quality than our shows which were made purely to make money.

[Hellspawn28]

It might be extra-disappointing to us non-Japanese viewers because we think of the show as the main product. In Japan, that wasn't the case with Kai, or any of the Dragon Ball animes...all of them were made to sell toys.

The market in Japan and US is very different. In Japan, One Piece's main target audience is kids in Elementary School under the age of 10 and the same goes with DBZ. DBZ main target audience are teens and young adults in the US since it seems like the only people who tend to buy DBZ stuff most of the time are people who grew up with the show. While you have Kai on the CW, Bandai America hasn't made any action figures or any toys for the show. The last time I saw DB toys for kids was back in 2004 when GT was on Tooanmi. In America, we don't have any toys for kids anime other then Pokemon, Digimon, Beyblade, Tenkai Knights and a few others.

[ABED]

One thing I will say in their defense though. I think every country has shows that were made primarily to make money, and it speaks volumes of the skills of the people at Toei that their shows which were made purely to make money are still often leagues better in quality than our shows which were made purely to make money.

I don't think they were made PURELY to make money, and care to give examples of how their shows were better than our's?

[DBZGTKOSDH]

To be fair, I'm sure he enjoyed what he was doing.

Of course he did, doing it for money doesn't mean that you do it without enjoyment.

[Hellspawn28]

AT was a manga artist, he enjoy drawing and hope he can have a good career by making a good amount of money. All comic book artist in America, Japan and other parts of the world make comics for money since that's their career.

[lansing]

For one reason, they want a blu-ray release of the show, high resolution, better quality (debatable) with HD scan and remaster.

The filler is what set's the manga and anime apart. Gives us two different experience's of the show.

I strongly disagree. The whole point of fillers were to extend the show when it supposed to stop. It served no purposes except keeping the broadcast ongoing. It has nothing to do with the manga and it's not going to affect anything to the story.

Yes I agree that the remaster quality wasn't up the expectation, but when you compare it to the old dvd, it surely outweighed them.

[ErikB]

So it's occurred to me reading this thread...
Kai is a series that came out of a lack of artistic integrity that was then treated with artistic integrity by a company with an old history of having no artistic integrity.

Well, at any rate, I'm happy it exists. So I suppose I could say that Kai's point was to provide people with similar feelings to mine with a preferred version of the series. But really, the point was to make money.

[penguintruth]

It's a shortened version of an overly long, overly padded long-running action shonen series.

Is it cheaply done? Yes. But it's better than sitting through 291 episodes of DBZ, no matter what language it's in.