Dragon Ball Z Kaiedit

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Dragon Ball Kai (ドラゴンボール改　「カイ」) is an anime series that is an HD Remaster and Recut of Dragon Ball Z done for its 20th Anniversary. It premiered on Fuji TV on April 5th 2009 at 9:00am just before One Piece, and the two shows are being marketed together as 'Dream 9', which refers to the hour in which they both air. Two issues of Shounen JUMP have included some primary information about the series. ^[1]

Contents 1 Series information 2 Funimation (English Version) 3 Episodes 4 Trivia 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Series information

The series is being extensively "refreshed" for Japanese TV. This is not a new animation, but rather a remastered edit that runs through certain events of Dragon Ball Z. Part of this is reformatting and extending the picture to 16:9 Widescreen. Through digital processing, the image is made vibrant. All the grime, damage and noise remaining on the "Z" film is removed, making the image much clearer in HD.

A comparison with the original video side-by-side shows considerable cropping to achieve the 16:9 aspect ratio. However, it seems carefully done to avoid missing anything important. The original image is not stretched, just cut where it would be more appropriate, being a "tilt and scan" or "reverse pan and scan" of the original Dragon Ball Z footage.

Dragon Ball Kai includes a complete re-recording of the dialog by most of the original Japanese voice cast, as well as completely new sound design with updated sound effects. The opening and ending themes are completely new. Takayoshi Tanimoto performs the series' new opening and closing themes, "Dragon Soul" and "Yeah! Break! Care Break!". This new opening and closing credits have newly animated appearances by Frieza, Zarbon, Dodoria, The Ginyu Force, Nappa, Vegeta, and Raditz. There's also a new artwork clip after every intermission, such as one of Cui and Vegeta in episode 19. Unlike the original Dragon Ball Z, which only had 2 sets of eyecatchers for the entire series, in Kai it changes every few episodes to feature an appropriate character ensemble/situation.

The "Kai"　改「かい」 in the series' name means "updated," "modified," or "altered."^[2] Interestingly, despite the series being only a directors cut of Dragon Ball Z, the Z has been completely removed from the title.

A trailer was released on March 1, 2009.

Toei announced the DVD and Blu-Ray version are to be released in September, 2009 in 4:3 aspect ratio.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Funimation (English Version)

Navarre revealed during its Q3 2010 earnings conference call, on the morning of February 2nd, that its North American anime distributor FUNimation has licensed the Dragon Ball Kai fighting anime series for release in the "latter part of the upcoming fiscal year." However, it is re-titled Dragon Ball Z Kai. FUNimation has confirmed the license with ANN, and it hopes to provide more details soon.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of Dragon Ball Kai episodes Toei Animation stated that the Dragon Ball Kai episodes would be edited to more closely follow Akira Toriyama's original story in the manga, resulting in a faster moving story, and to remove any damaged frames.^[3] Dragon Ball Kai will minimize the filler material produced for Dragon Ball Z's original production run. On the already broadcast episodes, only a few minutes of filler material with no impact to the story have been left in, probably to help the chapter reach its full 20 min, and Gregory's appearance at King Kai's planet, who wasn't present in the manga. Non-confirmed reports have stated that the series will be cut down from 291 episodes to approximately 100.

[edit] Trivia

• Among other things, Vegeta's unique palette while on a random planet in the beginning of the series has been altered, however, Nappa's armor is still different from the armor he wears on Earth (although it is possible he has more than one suit of armor.) Piccolo's blood in the Raditz fight has also been recolored to the proper purple color. (In Z, he was drawn with red blood in this fight which was inconsistent with the rest of the series.)
• In the ending credits Launch is shown along with the rest of the cast. This is interesting because all the scenes from Dragon Ball Z she was in were filler that have been cut out.
• Some (but not all) of the gory moments have been edited to a degree along with nudity. In Dragonball Z when Piccolo fires his special beam cannon attack at Raditz and Goku, he creates a hole through both of them and a heavy amount of blood is shown, while in Dragonball Kai, no blood is seen at all, save for the holes that Piccolo creates in the centers of their bodies. More recently, in the scene where Krillin blasts a hole through Vegeta, only blood stains are seen in Kai while in Z there is blood coming out of the hole. Similarly, when Vegeta is executed by Frieza, we don't actually see the beam penetrate his chest. Nudity is notably edited as well such as in the first episode of Kai, when ever Goku (as a baby) is shown, his genitals are covered up by making objects that he is siting on appear to be covering his genitals. In a similar manner in episode 4 of Kai, Gohan's genitals are edited as well by using his tail to cover him when he is shrinking from his Great Ape state to his normal self. All these edits are made quite possibly because Japan's television broadcasting laws have become stricter since Dragonball Z has first aired.

• Episode 16 is the first episode in the series that includes several instances of completely new animation spliced in with the original. More than likely this was done to bridge gaps left behind when filler material was removed, so as to keep the length and pace of the episode intact; however it is also possible that this was done to replace damaged frames. This is seen again in Episode 21 at time indexes 14:25 through 14:50 and again, numerous times, interlaced with the original animation, starting at 18:44 and lasting until 21:44 (the end of the episode). The style of the animation should be considered "neo-classic" for it is designed to blend in seamlessly with the existing animation.

Confirmed episodes of Dragon Ball Kai to have new animation inserted include: 16, 21, 22, and 24 through 36.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Dragon Ball Z Kai Site by FUNimation
• Dragon Ball Kai Blog
• Opening Sequence
• Ending Credits
• Canal DBK PT-PT
• Dragon Ball Kai Episode List