Dragon Ball Z Kai is an excellent recut of the original Z for everyone who enjoys them some Dragon Ball, especially Z. If you also prefer the manga, or just hate the majority of DBZ's slow-paced extra segments, or worthless filler episodes, This is the version to watch. It has every piece of canon material from the manga, with some short filler either due to animation from the original Z being unable to be changed, or the staff leaving some in for whatever reason that could've been removed, but didn't. It leads to a faster-paced storyline that's been streamlined a bit for many fans of Z. Though there ARE a few redrawn scenes to replace damaged frames. Some are simply trace jobs, while the others are completely new. They fit decently though.
This is also the version of Z to get for excellent home releases. If you didn't know, Z has some of the most horrendous home releases I've ever seen. Terrible color correction, terrible remastering all around, really, plus cropping the show to 16:9, leaving us who want to enjoy the show as it was produced out of luck unless we track down the Dragon Boxes, which are LONG out of print & expensive on sites like eBay. This series was properly remastered frame-by-frame in Japan for High Definition airings & releases in its original 4:3 aspect ratio, minus The Final Chapters, which was done by a different team several years after the first part finished airing. Still, it's much better than FUNimation's remasters, I'll tell ya that. If you wanna get someone into the franchise, this is definitely the way. Personally, I DO wish that they reanimated everything from the ground up, but I understand why they did it as they did.
Then there's the English dub. Minus some recastings (Kid Gohan, Kid Goku, Bulma, Frieza, & a lot of secondary & tertiary characters voiced by Chris Sabat in Z) because of actor/actress availability in the intervening years prior to 2009, all of the main voice actors returned to reprise their roles & they sound GREAT! Sean Schemmel especially, since he now gets Goku's character completely. Yeah, they didn't simply reuse audio from Z, they rerecorded everything from the ground up. The added benefit of this, other than improved acting, is that since FUNimation's a better dubbing company since 2003 when the Z dub finished airing, they have the resources to not only get better translations prior to dubbing but they also have access to better writers for their dub scripts! This means no mistranslations, other than the oddly-put line of dialogue, & some dubisms returning either out of keeping with pre-established terms from previous dubs, or some inconsistencies with attack names that were changed in earlier dubs from the original Japanese. Safe to say, if you're an English dub fan, the dubbing is phenomenal! There IS one thing I have to bring up though. In The Final Chapters, the series' recut of the Buu Saga, there's a scene recapping the events of the Cell Games from the previous arc. Prior to broadcast, it was teased that Team Four Star, of Dragon Ball Z Abridged fame, would be voicing the actors in the reenactment of the events. When it finally aired & was released to home video, it was discovered that they were replaced with the original Z audio from the same scene last-minute. It's speculated it's because the people at Toei found out & forced the change in dialogue. The original audio for the scene was accidentally released on X-Finiti & subsequently released to the internet after a fan recorded it. It's a shame because I love DBZA & it's a shame that the audio couldn't be kept, but that's the business, I guess. On the Japanese side of things, the original Japanese cast, though there were some recastings due to actors either dying or not wanting to come back, rerecorded their dialogue as well, mostly because Toei junked the original audio masters some time after the show aired for some reason before they could really use them on future releases. If you want a clearer-sounding DBZ in Japanese, this is good for that as well. I should also mention that the music has undergone a bit of controversy. Originally, for the first run of the show, Kenji Yamamoto, who also did the score for the Budokai games, composed the score for the series. However, it was eventually found out that he intentionally ripped off the scores for Avatar & Terminator Salvation without Toei's knowledge. His score was subsequently replaced on both sides of the Pacific with the original Shunsuke Kikuchi score from Z for the first part. The Final Chapters uses a new score composed by Norihito Sumitomo, who also composed the scores for Battle of Gods, Resurrection F, & went on to do the score for Dragon Ball Super. Some of his compositions don't fit, but most of the rest reminds me of Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury's score with how they were synthesized. Kind of fitting, I think. As for the openings & closings, most of them are great. 'Dragon Soul's' a great theme song, especially when sung in the English dub by the legendary Vic Mignognia. Final Chapters is no slouch either. 'Fight It Out' is also pretty good & goes with the whole retro vibe you get from the show, considering it originally ran from 1989-1995 & the original animation reflects that. Though the Japanese Final Chapters theme that was a part of the Japanese broadcast, 'Kuu-Zen-Zetsu-Go' was no slouch in being awesome either.
Altogether, I enjoy Kai. It's, definitely, my version of Z, especially since I don't care for the Z dub too much. I recommend it to everyone who likes good TV.
