Tōei renaming Kai

[Vegetto95]

I always wondered... what was the reason that Tōei decided to call Dragon Ball Kai Dragon Ball Kai despite it strictly being a "remake"/refresh of the Z anime that skips past the entirety of Dragon Ball, and yet they instructed Funimation (and I'm assuming every other international distributor in other countries outside the US, though I don't know that for sure, so please correct me if I'm wrong) to call the series Dragon Ball Z Kai in America?

I mean, I'm an adherent of the Japanese version of the franchise first and foremost and basically ignore 99.9% of anything Funimation has to say about the franchise, therefore I always refer to the series as Dragon Ball Kai... but it DOES technically make more sense to call it Dragon Ball Z Kai and it always just seemed like a very weird and arbitrary decision on Tōei's part (though certainly not the worst in recent DB history... y'know, considering their BAFFLING decision to instruct Funi to use their dub spellings in the subtitles for the Japanese version on their DVDs and Blu-rays...)

[MasenkoHA]

Even though it was commemorating Dragon Ball Z's 20th anniversary and it was really only a recut of Dragon Ball Z it was still being touted as "The Akira Toriyama Cut" and truer to the manga, so perhaps Toei thought "well the manga is just called Dragon Ball" and didn't think the Z was necessary.

But in America (and I think most other counties in the West?) even the manga is called Dragon Ball Z for that portion and the franchise as a whole is usually addressed as Dragon Ball Z so Toei probably wanted brand name recognition.

This is all guessing though, I don't think there was ever an official reason given.

[Vegetto95]

That would definitely make sense, considering Funimation's EXTREME over-emphasis on Z over every single other part of the franchise has been so highlighted and prevalent over the last almost 27 years that even Tōei, which normally doesn't pay all that much attention to its properties outside of its own home borders, would notice lol