Dragon Ball Z Kai on Crunchyroll

[M16U3L2015]

Recently, Crunchyroll has added the uncut version of Kai in Japanese and English (for now only in Latin America, I don't know if it has been added in other regions).

The interesting thing is that they used the 16:9 master for the first 98 episodes with the credits and title cards in Japanese but using the international logo.

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Also, if the audio is set to English, the Japanese texts are still displayed without forced subtitles.

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Only Spanish and Portuguese versions use English texts as they use the censored Nicktoons master.

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And surprisingly, in The Final Chapters, if you set the audio to Japanese, a master with Japanese text and credits is used.

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Also, unlike the first part, in TFC the texts are shown localized depending on the language.

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[Dragon Ball Ireland]

It was added to Crunchyroll UK two weeks ago.

Sadly it was cropped too:



There is Japanese text on the OP and ED, which I guess is neat but doesn't outweigh the cons:



Apparently the English dub is slightly out-of-sync compared to the Blu-Rays, but for me, the worst part of course is there was no option for the Ocean dub (expected but still unfortunate) as that would really make Kai worth watching rather than just using the same Funimation dub that's been widely available for 14 years.

Such a shame because Kai was meant to arrive in March but it got postponed till just recently. You'd think that would have been plenty of time for quality control.

Kai should be coming to the Dutch streaming services GoAnime and Videoland on Friday, I fear they will get the same masters. If anyone wants to report these issues the former can be reached at info@goanime.nl and for the latter there's a range of contact options here.

[TechExpert2021]

It seems that Crunchyroll did an okay job at bringing DBZ Kai to their namesake flagship streaming platform.

It's better than what they did to DBZ Kai on Hulu in which they gave Hulu a mix of uncensored and Nicktoons-censored episodes of the series.

It was added to Crunchyroll UK two weeks ago.

Sadly it was cropped too:

At least, the good thing is that the 16:9 cropping of DBZ Kai isn't as problematic as the 16:9 cropping seen in the DBZ Orange Brick DVDs and Season BDs.

[bkev]

Here's an odd one. Do we know if these are straight 16x9 crops of the 4:3 Kai masters or do they include the 16:9 redraws specific to the Japanese TV broadcast?

[MasenkoHA]

Kai can’t seem to catch a break huh? As far as I know the physical media release has been out of print for a while now. Crunchyroll fucked up and gave Hulu a mix of the home video masters and the Nicktoons masters. And now they decided to use the widescreen version for their own site instead of the preferred full screen version.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

As far as I know the physical media release has been out of print for a while now.

Only season 4 seems to be, 1, 2 and 3 can still be purchased new from Amazon. I guess if anyone who owns a multi-region player and can put up with inconsistency on their shelves the UK season 4 is an option.