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The official logo for Dragon Ball Kai.
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]
Series information
New ending credits with new animations of the villains.
The series is being extensively "refreshed" for Japanese TV. It is not new animation, but simply a remastering of the original film. 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.
Comparison of aspect ratios from Dragon Ball Kai (left) and Dragon Ball Z (right). Click to enlarge.
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, Raditz, Saibamen, and Vegeta (though some of them are shown only as silhouettes).
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. There is no confirmation of a U.S version yet.
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 it's full 20 min. Non-confirmed reports have stated that the series will be cut down from 291 episodes to approximately 100.
Trivia
Old palette.
New palette.
- 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. 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.)
References
- ↑ http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-02-06/dragon-ball-z-to-rerun-on-japanese-tv-in-hd-in-april
- ↑ http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-02-19/japan-remastered-dbz-to-be-called-dragon-ball-kai
- ↑ http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-03-02/toei-confirms-dragon-ball-kai-is-edited-to-follow-manga