Our buddy kei17 has reached out to a friend who lives in Akita Prefecture, Japan, to find out exactly what measures Toei Animation has taken with the musical score. It should be noted that in Akita Prefecture the broadcast of Dragon Ball Kai is 17 days behind that of the most recent episode and airs on a Wednesday at 4:30PM. Here is the reply he received from @syoujikimura:

Yesterday, in Akita the episodes up to Gohan’s awakening have been broadcast, but the opening title display, the sub-title BGM, and then all the BGM throughout the show has been changed to the Z stuff. The OP, ED, CM opening and closing, and the seiyuu’s voices have been left the same as in Kai.

So it appears that Toei Animation is not taking any risks and is entirely replacing Kenji Yamamoto’s Dragon Ball Kai score with Shunsuke Kikuchi’s original Dragon Ball Z score. The only pieces left intact are the opening theme (“Dragon Soul”), the ending theme (“Kokoro no Hane”), and the eyecatch music, which are based on “Dragon Soul”. Note that none of these remaining themes were composed or arranged by Yamamoto, which is most likely why they were retained.

Something we have talked (and joked) about for years has been the blatant plagiarism from Kenji Yamamoto in various bits of music for the franchise. Some pieces have taken inspiration, but others have been flat-out “stolen” — examples such as Cell’s theme from Super Butōden 2on the Super Famicom (Pink Floyd’s “One of These Days”) and “Battle Point Unlimited” from Dragon Ball Z TV Episode 120 (Propaganda’s “The Murder of Love”, among other of their songs) come to mind.

From its inception, there have been “copying” allegations from fans about Yamamoto’s score for Dragon Ball Kai, his first foray into solely scoring a TV adaptation of the series (previously only having composed and arranged additional vocal songs while Shunsuke Kikuchi handled BGM composition for the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z TV series, as well as scoring various video games).

Our buddy kei17 noted for us that Toei has finally acknowledged this practice, specifically with regard to Dragon Ball Kai. In an official statement posted on their website yesterday, Toei noted (thanks to Rachel for the translation):

この度、当社が製作したテレビアニメーション作品「ドラゴンボール改」に収録された音楽著作物の中に、第三者の権利への抵触の可能性が疑われる楽曲が複数存在することが判明いたしました。当該楽曲は「ドラゴンボール改」の背景音楽として使用されており、とり急ぎ、「ドラゴンボール改」の背景音楽から当該楽曲を差し替える措置を講じております。

また、事実関係の迅速な調査と今後の対応策に関する関係者との協議を進めております。

The existence of multiple suspicious musical pieces which may infringe on the rights of third parties has been confirmed within the musical compositions recorded for “Dragon Ball Kai”, an animated television work produced by this firm. The relevant musical pieces are used as background music in “Dragon Ball Kai”, and measures are promptly being taken to replace the relevant musical pieces from the background music of “Dragon Ball Kai”.

Also, we are proceeding with a swift investigation of the facts, and discussion of countermeasures with concerned parties in the near future.

The most likely culprits, in our opinion, are the BGM tracks named “The Ebb and The Flow” and “A New Foe Rears His Head” which are essentially the tracks “War” by James Horner from the Avatar score and the Terminator Salvation opening theme by Danny Elfman, respectively. Both of these pieces were included on Dragon Ball Kai Soundtrack III & Songs and are used in the series beginning in the “Artificial Humans & Cell arc” around the time that Trunks appears (coincidentally, just about where the television broadcast of the English dub happens to be these days). Keep in mind that Toei themselves have not actually named specific pieces of music, so while this is not quite “speculation” or “rumor”, it should be held in check.

kei17 noted that some Japanese fans are reporting that music in subsequent broadcasts of the show in Japan are already being replaced, and while we have been unable to confirm this ourselves, has possibly been done with music from the original Shunsuke Kikuchi score from Dragon Ball Z.

Fallout from this has been years in the making, and it will be fascinating to see how this is handled. This would seemingly explain why the fourth soundtrack collection for the “refreshed” TV series was canceled for a second time, though it questionable whether or not it has affected the continuation of the series, which we appears to be coming to an end this month.

UPDATE: Well, this clinches it — Toei’s official website for DragonBall Kai (as well as Fuji TV’s own site) now solely list Shunsuke Kikuchi as staff under “Music”:

More on this as it comes in!

The latest (read: second) listing for Dragon Ball Kai Original Soundtrack Collection is now also categorized as “Canceled” on a few retailer sites such as CDJapan. Will another disc for the series ever see the light of day? Only time will tell, at this point.

I feel like I have to preface this news by stating that we here at the site have no particularly strong opinions any which way on what the future may be for Dragon Ball Kai. It is not an adaptation we particularly loved, but it was quasi-new, brought a fresh group of fans in, gave us more material to talk about, etc.

That all being said, we have been closely following its performance, especially in Japan. From the exponential drop in sales figures, merchandise branding, Toriko taking its time slot next month, and everything in between, it has been a fascinating ride — a ride that is likely over. All we have had to go on up until now has been speculation and a few educated guesses, but now it seems as if confirmation is getting out there that Dragon Ball Kai is over.

Our Japanese buddy kei17 posted up a page from the magazine TV Pia on our forum that contained a short interview with Takeshi Kusao, the voice actor for Trunks:

In addition to some minor tidbits about how he went about doing the synchronized voices with Masako Nozawa for Gotenks in the past and how much he learned from her (such as ad-libbing breathing that was not in the script), the article provided two very significant items:

(1) Takeshi Kusao notes that he hopes, if there is an opportunity, that they can also remake the Majin Boo story arc

(2) The article specifically notes that there are only four episodes of Dragon Ball Kai left

There you have it, folks — four episodes puts us right in the ball park to be ending with Episode 98 (the end of the “Artificial Humans & Cell arc”) on 27 March 2011. This is the first we are seeing with someone involved with the series’ production actively stating that it is coming to a close, and I expect that while we may see more, information will likely be limited and vague. Will they return to do the Majin Boo arc at some point later down the road? What does this mean for the international licensees? Any fallout from this turn of events is likely only just beginning.