A fresh page from V-Jump details even more information on the upcoming Dragon Ball Kai:

The opening stuff is the standard fare we have come to expect from the earlier announcements (like “Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Start of Dragon Ball Z’s Broadcast!” and “The Son Goku Legend, Once More!! And its name is… DRAGON BALL KAI”). However, the interesting material appears under the header “The four points that make up the world of “Kai”!”:

• The story will be developed speedily!
  “Kai” starts from the invasion of the Saiyans. This version will be re-edited to hew more closely to Akira Toriyama’s original story, so the story’s development will progress all the faster!
• The opening and ending songs will be completely renewed!!
  The opening and ending songs will together be made anew! Furthermore, in “Kai”, the background music will be newly recorded. Let’s enjoy “Kai”, where even the music has been powered up!!
• Through digital processing, the image will be made vibrant!!
  All the grime, damage and noise remaining on the “Z” film will be removed! In HD, the image will be even clearer. We’ve carefully made the ultra-powerful “Kai” world even more impressive!
• An all-star voice cast will record the lines anew!!
  The original main cast, centered around Masako Nozawa as Son Goku, will reunite, yo. They’ll breathe life into the characters again, to support their appeal!!

So there you go. We once again are left with just as many questions as we have answers, but we are heading in the right direction. While it does not blatantly say, “Yes, we are specifically cutting down filler material”, it heavily implies something along those lines. We just have the phrasing “renewed” for the music, without any confirmation on whether or not it is Shunsuke Kikuchi’s original score as-is but re-recorded to match the higher fidelity of the newly-recorded voices, or if it is a completely new adaptation of that score. Along those same lines, the true nature of the OP/ED themes are up in the air.

We will not leave you hanging with that, though. Our buddy Wasted Wisher popped in again with a couple additional remarks:

Don’t know anything about the intro and ending song yet, or anything past episode 1.
All of the scenes that were being worked on so far are not being cropped…in fact, quite the reverse, they’re being extended. The old format of the original footage is too small to fit the standard frame sizes used for anime nowadays. So all the artwork has to be extended outwards to fit the new frame sizes; this includes both the animation itself and the background art.

Wasted Wisher has not led us wrong in the past yet, so we have faith that the trend continues!

The upcoming “refreshed” version of Dragon Ball Z being produced in HD for Japanese television (now called Dragon Ball Kai, so we will just call it that from here on out) will apparently have the following new content going for it:

– A brief look at the last moments of Bardock and Planet Vegeta
– An overview of young Goku’s growing up years (Dragonball, the pre-Z period) up until his triumph over Piccolo at the Tenkaichi-Budokai.
– The all-too-brief and yet still somewhat triumphant return of FARMER WITH A SHOTGUN!

And sadly (although that really all depends on how you look at things…)
– Goku’s winky has disappeared!

That’s right, through the miracle of “we’re just not gonna draw it anymore”, Li’l Goku is no longer going to be allowed to show off “Even Littler Goku” on TV. But don’t worry, they won’t do anything so blatant as to digitize tighty-whiteys on him.

We are pretty confident with the inside-scoop, but we will see for sure how it plays out on April 5th.

It appears that the new “refreshed” version of Dragon Ball Z will actually be getting its very own title, as confirmed in this week’s Weekly Shōnen Jump — Dragon Ball Kai. Toei will be dropping the “Z” and replacing it with “Kai,” based on the kanji 改, meaning “renewed” or “revised”.

There is not a whole lot of additional information, but you will notice that the two screen shots in the image are indeed semi-cropped, similar to FUNimation’s “faux”-remastered box sets. Keeping in mind that Toei’s promotional materials for the “Dragon Box” versions of the movies are all shown in 4:3 despite the products being 16:9, we should not yet jump to any conclusions. At the same time, it will/would be incredibly disheartening to see Toei go such a cheap route. However, we did receive word from our buddy Wasted Wisher way back when that:

it seems that TOEI is going to be re-drawing some scenes from Dragonball for broadcast on high-def tv. The touch-ups will include some re-done background art (most likely to broaden certain scenes for widescreen)

Will it be a combination of cropping and actual extension, as opposed to FUNimation’s sets which did not create actual new footage? I suppose we will have to wait until April 5th…!