This seems to be the all-purpose general Kai thread, and since I just recently caught up with most of the episodes, I'll post my overall thoughts here.
In a word - disappointing. I really wanted to like this series, but I just can't muster any excitement over it anymore. While it seems pretty okay at first glance, what kills it for me isn't one big problem like censorship, it's a bunch of small stuff that combine into one big ball of crap.
First, the pacing. I realise that's the selling point of the show, but it's all over the place. Sometimes it ruins the emotional impact of the scene, like in the case of Piccolo's death, or Chaozu's sacrifise, to which they included a flashback IN THE SAME EPISODE. Sometimes it makes the fight scenes go by too quickly - filler isn't bad when in consists of punching people in the face (although that may be my faulty memory talking).And sometimes it just looks silly - like when Nappa deflected Gohan's blast, they did about 6 cuts in 2 second.
Then there's the animation. Yeah, I know it's a 20 year-old show. That's not the problem. Sometimes it's distracting when they combine a bunch of episodes done by different studios, and the quality changes midway, but whatever, it can't be helped. No, the real issue here are the cheap tricks Toei uses to make the animation look less dated - the redrawn Flash-animated crap, and the weird "ghosting" effect that is supposed to make the motion seem more fluid. It fails in all respects and actually looks worse than DBZ ever did. It utterly ruined some scenes for me, especially the Galick-Gun vs Kamehameha one. On the other hand, when they refrain from doing this, it ends up looking so much better (i.e. the first half of Goku vs Nappa fight or 3xKaioken Goku vs Vegeta). They should just leave it alone.
Third - the voice acting. It's pretty solid overall, and I actually prefer new actors for Tenshinhan and Nappa to the old ones (and I feel kinda bad for saying this
). But here are exceptions. Ryo Horikawa is awesome for the most part, but when the scene calls for angry Vegeta (see: the entirety of episode 14) he falls flat compared to his original performance. I guess it's the age, and the fact he performs some of these lines for the 30th time. Yajirobe's voice, on the other hand, sounds dumb all-around. But the real cream of the crop of the crap would be Nozawa's Gohan. She tries to make him so high-pitched and cute, that he ends up sounding like a retarded baby. There is one scene in particular, in episode 8 or 9, where Gohan is shocked after Chaozu's death. And he goes "Goo-goo-goo, nya-nya-nya!". This is not what sobbing sounds like. These are not noises actual people make.
And finally, the music. Very "meh". It gets repetitive, beacuse there are too little pieces, and they're too similar to each other. I know Kikuchi had it easier, having more time to compose his soundtrack and being able to reuse pieces for the music and original DB, but still. It reminds me of the Saban dub score - this droning background noise that doesn't enhance the experience in any way. And it's a pity, because I usually like Yamamoto's music, especially his Super Butoden tunes. I think he tried too hard to emulate Kikuchi's score.
So yeah. Kai - good concept, sloppy execution. Also, this post - too long.
