Dragon Ball Z: Kai - Finally Watched

So with the new Dragon Ball Super film crushing the box office right now, I thought it'd be the perfect time to talk about something I've wanted to discuss on this channel for a while, and that is that I finally watched Dragon Ball Z Kai. And speaking of that box office, I said in my review for that movie that anime fans come out to support anime. They go to the theater and support it. Never underestimate us, and people constantly do. And Dragon Ball Super Super Hero opened at number one at the US box office, something that has not happened to an anime film since 1998 when the Pokemon movie hit number one. So there's no better time for me to talk about Dragon Ball Z Kai. If you don't know what Kai is, it's a filler-less version of Dragon Ball Z. It was edited, cut down, the animation was enhanced, new music was added, and there's a lot of controversy around that music that we'll discuss briefly. All of this done in an effort to make it more closely resemble Akira Toriyama's original manga. For years, I have been a Dragon Ball Z original television broadcast purist. That's how I first saw it. Those old VHS tapes that I bought. I saw the original Ocean dub first. Then later the early Funimation dub, which they later went back and enhanced for the Orange Brick DVD releases, I believe. I watched this show when it first aired on Toonami. I was one of those kids in school that was extremely excited to get home to watch it. I've talked about that extensively in the past. I made a whole video about the history of Toonami where I got to interview people like Christopher Sabat and Steve Blum, who have been integral in Toonami and Dragon Ball Z as voice actors. And I was there to hear Goku say this. And I thought it was really fucking cool. And in some ways, it is. You know, it's got a place in my heart and it's always going to be there. There's a major feeling of warmth for that and I'll always love it. But as I got older, I would sometimes watch the original broadcast version, and I found myself getting bored despite my incredible love for the show. I mean, I've got Shenron on my fucking arm, for God's sakes. And I was also becoming increasingly disenchanted with the home media releases. Most of them cropped the show into a 16 by 9 format, and I am never for cropping anything. You always should watch it in the original aspect ratio that the artist intended, whatever that might be, whether it's 4 by 3 or something insane like that movie Lucy in the Sky where there's a billion aspect ratios. There were the Dragon Boxes, but those weren't in HD and they were also extremely expensive. Finally, recently, Funimation has actually released this show in 4 by 3 on Blu-ray. I've got this anniversary set collection thing that's got them all and I can watch any episode I want to of the original broadcast. And it's very, very nice to finally look at them in the original 4 by 3 the way they're meant to be seen. Dragon Ball Z Kai was in 4 by 3 and the animation was enhanced and some things were improved. For instance, the color of Vegeta's hair and his outfit now has continuity throughout the earlier episodes of his appearance. But what I couldn't get behind in Kai originally was that I just didn't love the music. Now, I'm a big fan of the original broadcast music. I've recognized its cheesiness and its techno-y sound, but I love it. I always have. I also love the original Japanese score. Despite my extreme nostalgia and love for the original broadcast music in the United States, I can say that objectively the original Japanese score is the best. It makes the show feel considerably more epic. I feel that that score provides a sense of scope that the original broadcast score simply doesn't. So I just couldn't get behind the new score from Dragon Ball Z Kai. I listened to some of it online, then I watched some of my key moments that I love from the show, and I just didn't like the musical choices. Then there was a massive controversy where it came out that the composer for Kai was in fact plagiarizing a lot of the music. And because of that, they had to go back into Kai and re-release it with the original Japanese score. And they had to wipe all of that plagiarized music out of Kai. All of a sudden, I could watch Kai with what I feel is the best musical score available for Dragon Ball Z. But I still didn't watch it because, you know, life. You have a lot of stuff to do. Dragon Ball Z is not a short show. Then something amazing happened. COVID! I was depressed. Everybody around me was getting really sick. It was awful. And my wife and I, you know, we were just locked in our house and we didn't know what we were going to do. I didn't know what was going on with movie theaters. It was a terrible, really depressing time for so many people around the world, including a very good friend of mine who, for various reasons related to the pandemic, amongst other things, lost his living arrangements and suddenly wound up potentially homeless. So my wife and I extended an invitation for him to bunk up with us until he was able to find a new place. And we suddenly realized we kind of liked having him around because we were very, very lonely and everybody was locked down and we weren't seeing any of our friends. And we at least had our friend there to break up the monotony of isolation. So we suddenly found ourselves with a lot of free time and he's an anime fan and he had never seen Dragon Ball Z. And I thought, holy shit, this might be the moment. But I wasn't exactly sure what version of Dragon Ball Z to show him because I have nostalgia for the original, but I'm also a realist. I know that showing him endless episodes where Bulma tries to find a Dragon Ball at the bottom of a pond on Namek when Goku and Frieza are fucking fighting over there, that's going to bore the shit out of him. Then something else happened. Toonami on Saturday night aired a marathon of Dragon Ball Z Kai. They showed some episodes right out of the Cell Saga where Trunks and Vegeta are fighting Cell. And my buddy watched some of those and he was like, that was fucking awesome. We need to watch more of that shit. And I said, yes, my friend, we do. So my friend and I started watching Kai and this was really fun for me because not only did I get to watch Kai for the first time, but I got to experience it through the emotions of someone who was seeing it for the first time. I got to see his reactions, hear how excited he got whenever something awesome happened, and it felt like it was a new and fresh experience. Not just that it was Kai, but that I was seeing the story directly impact someone right next to me. That happens with movies sometimes where you have your own experience with the film and then it feels new when you get to share it with somebody else. As someone who's seen the original DBZ so many times, I was able to look at Kai and really see just about everything that they had improved upon. The animation, of course, is much better and it is in 4x3 where most U.S. releases are cropped 16x9. But what honestly blew me away about Kai and is the primary reason that I will now say that Kai is the best way to watch DBZ, it's the script. The script is without a doubt better and it is a vastly superior dub performance as well from everyone in the cast that returned. And the moment that confirmed it for me was when I got to the Cell Games saga and I thought to myself, I need to show my friend Gohan versus Cell with the original U.S. music. I just need him to hear that and feel that the way that I did. And I had this experience in my head, this experience that I had when I was a teenager, and I thought I have to give him that. And so we watched Kai all the way up until the Cell Games. Then I got my U.S. Blu-rays and I put those in and we switched over to the U.S. broadcast version and I felt the air just vaporize from that cut. Every single time the original DBZ edit cut away from Gohan and Cell fighting to get Hercule and that announcer telling the exact same joke over and over and over again that Hercule or Mr. Satan had stomach pains and didn't want to fight and they just kept reusing that same joke over and over, episode after episode after episode, that's when I realized that I preferred Kai. Because the pace of Kai is just unbeatable. It feels like reading the manga. So immediately we went back to Kai and I was like, okay, yeah, that's what I needed. I needed to know that. I needed to feel that and I've experienced it and let's just watch Kai from now on. All that being said, there is actually one moment in the original DBZ that I do prefer over Kai. To illustrate, I want to show you the version from Kai first. Here Vegeta is facing an opponent for the very first time that's challenging to him. He's never fought Frieza at this point and this is really his first encounter with someone who he might actually be afraid of. And I feel that much better in the original cut. Yes, Goku freezes up there for a long time and you're kind of like, why doesn't Vegeta just attack or run away? But that's what I love about it. He is frozen in fear by the awe of this being that he never knew existed that is besting him in every way and he doesn't understand it. He can't comprehend it. His pride is so, so strong that he legitimately has no idea why another person besides Frieza could ever best him. But there are still a few episodes of the original DBZ that I miss and after my friend finished Kai, I shared those with him. There's an entire saga that is considered filler and is not in Kai because it's not in the manga and that is the Garlic Jr. Saga. I really like this saga. It has a lot of similarities to the new film Super Hero. Goku and Vegeta are both off world, leaving Gohan and Piccolo to fight off Garlic Jr., a villain borrowed from the very first DBZ film Dead Zone, one of my favorites. And I also like the tournament when Goku's dead and he faces off against Pikkon, who is a really awesome dude and a very underrated character. And of course, there's the classic filler episode where Goku and Piccolo try to get their driver's license, which I believe was actually referenced in the new Super Hero film when Piccolo crashes through a billboard and says he never got his license. Now I do want to mention the final chapters. So Dragon Ball Z Kai was actually cancelled after the Cell games and the Majin Buu stuff was just not even touched. And to me, that's actually the stuff that requires Kai the most, because that stuff just went on and on and on and on. But then because of Kai's popularity, I believe not so much in Japan, but actually more so in other countries, the final chapters were eventually picked up and the Buu saga did get the Kai treatment. Here's where things change dramatically. It's no longer in 4x3. The Blu-rays are in 16x9 cropped again. They're also really long. It kind of felt like the filler was still there and it just didn't have the pace. Something was off. And this is where I think Kai took a massive misstep, because whatever happened between Cell games and the cancellation and then picking it up again, it didn't feel the same. But that portion of Kai was a massive disappointment. So with my friend, I actually watched all the way up until Vegeta's big sacrifice. And I said, hey, man, here's the Blu-rays. Watch them on your own time. And he finished the show and he had a great time. And we were able to go and see the Dragon Ball Super superhero movie together. And it was our first time ever actually experiencing a new Dragon Ball property that neither of us have seen. So it's been a really fun journey to have taken that with my friend. And I was so glad that I finally got to experience Kai. Despite the fact that the Buu stuff was disappointing to me because I feel that that's where Kai was needed the most, I really loved watching everything else. And I can confidently say that it is the only way that I'll watch Dragon Ball Z from now on moving forward. This is something I'd like to do more of in the future when there's something that I never got around to that I probably should have watched much sooner. I'll make a video about it from the perspective of seeing something that's been talked about a lot. I did the same thing with Squid Game. I did finally sit down and actually watch all of Dragon Ball GT. I had seen large portions of it before in episodes here and there over the years, enough to know that it was not my thing. But I may talk about that even though it's a mostly negative thing and I'm trying to be very positive and supportive on this channel. Since it's an older anime from the 90s, I don't really think it's necessarily that big of an issue if I come out and say Dragon Ball GT isn't very good. I think most people know that. So maybe I'll talk about that one day too. That could be fun. Because I have a fun story about why I finally got around to watching Dragon Ball GT and that kind of compels me to want to talk about it. So maybe I'll do that sooner rather than later, especially with the new movie crushing it at the box office. Thanks so much as always for watching and if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.