Dragon Ball Z Kai TV Anime Series - Dragon Ball

Dragon Ball Kai is a recut and remastered version of the highly successful Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z. While there is debate as to what the Z in Dragon Ball Z refers to, the term “Kai” refers to renewal or modification of something. Dragon Ball Kai was produced for the 20th anniversary of Dragon Ball Z. The first episode was broadcast in Japan on Fuji Television on April 5th, 2009. The 9 A.M. to 10 A.M. time slot it occupied was shared with award-winning anime One Piece and the pair were marketed as Dream 9, in reference to the time they both aired. The international dubbed version has a slightly extended runtime and clocks in at 167 episodes to the original Japanese 159.

Development and Production

Dragon Ball Kai was also dubbed into English by Funimation under the supervision of Chris Sabbat, one of the main voice actors of the English cast (as the voice of Vegeta). Unlike previous iterations of the series, which were usually broadcast by Cartoon Network, the North American broadcast of Dragon Ball Kai was premiered by Nicktoons Network in May 2010 until it was broadcast on The CW’s Toonzai block in August of the same year. The series then appeared on Adult Swim’s Toonami block in 2014. The two former broadcasts were cut and edited to suit a younger audience whereas the latter was uncut and suitably aired at a later time.

Originally, the series was to end before the Majin Buu saga. The time slot that Dragon Ball Kai occupied was taken over by a new anime adaptation based on the popular manga Toriko. Voice overs were, however, recorded in both Japanese and English as the Majin Buu saga was produced initially for exclusive international release. After some time, the Toriko anime was canceled and the Majin Buu saga of Dragon Ball Kai was broadcast in its place.

Changes from Dragon Ball Z

The series was refurbished in a number of ways, including noise reduction, damage reduction, re-recorded voices, and a new aspect ratio. To achieve the new aspect ratio, a lot of careful cropping was carried out to make sure that no important details from the original images were cut. With the remastering of the series, Dragon Ball Z would also be available in high definition, making the image far clearer than in the original. Many “filler” arcs that were originally created for the series, like the Garlic Jr. saga, were also removed. Although almost all of the filler material was removed, the scenes involving the past villains watching the battle with Majin Buu in Hell remained. This scene featured Frieza with his organic body, whereas in Dragon Ball Super, he appeared in hell as his Mecha-Frieza form.

Music for the series was also improved and replaced the original score, however, due to legal issues, a lot of reworking was done on the scoring and background music during and after the release. The series features new opening and ending themes featuring original animation of the series’ characters in both the Japanese and international versions. As opposed to a generic unchanging opening theme, the Dragon Ball Kai opening follows the series and introduces characters as they are introduced in the show, as can be seen from the Android saga onwards. The two new opening themes, “Dragon Soul” and “Kuu-Zen-Zetsu-Go”, and closing theme “Yeah! Break! Care! Break!” are all provided by the artist Takayoshi Tanimoto.

Since most of the original Dragon Ball Z series’ master audio tapes were lost or unusable, Voice lines for Dragon Ball Kai were re-recorded by most of the original cast. Some of the roles were recast due to various reasons, however. Furthermore, many sound effects were also updated or reworked to improve the audio quality of the show.

In addition a lot of gore was removed from the series including Goku and Raditz's death. Several errors involving colors are also fixed in Dragon Ball Kai. During the Saiyan saga, Piccolo is seen to be bleeding red in the original series, though it is changed to purple in Kai. Another color change can be seen when Vegeta and Nappa are shown on a planet at a bonfire eating. The color scheme of Vegeta features a lot of brown and red. This is recolored to match the color scheme he shows when he arrives on Earth and thereafter. Nappa, however, does not merit the same degree of recoloring, but still has minor differences, like the color of his pauldrons. During the Majin Buu saga, Toei decided that, instead of outsourcing their mastering, that they would do it in-house instead. This led to the image retaining a slight greenish tint and the new original animation that was previously outsourced was removed.

Music Controversy

Kanji Yamamoto, the designer of the music for the Dragon Ball video games, was responsible for the new background music and scoring of Dragon Ball Kai. His score was used for the original run of the series until it was discovered that he had been plagiarizing music from popular and famous bands and composers. After his resignation from the position, subsequent airings of the show and its televised reruns had the background music replaced with the score from the original Dragon Ball Z series. The opening and closing themes remained unaffected by this change. The English version was also plagued by the plagiarism scandal, resulting in DVD releases being delayed to replace the background music with the original Dragon Ball Z music. Norihito Sumitomo, the composer responsible for the music in the most recent Dragon Ball movies and Dragon Ball Super, finished composing new music for the remainder of Dragon Ball Kai’s Majin Buu saga.

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Akira Toriyama