Dragon Ball Discussion

[The Imaginatrix]

I looked back over four pages and there were no general Dragon Ball/DBZ discussion threads that had any recent replies. So I'm starting one now. I hope that nobody minds.

I mentioned on another thread in a different section that I'm wary of watching Dragon Ball Z Kai, because of how it's about a third of the length of the original series and they must have cut so much from it, not just filler. There's no way the original anime had 200 episodes of filler material. I grew up watching the FUNimation dub, and I've loved the characters forever. They actually got me into writing fanfiction even though I didn't know what fanfiction was at the time. I was a total novice and the stuff I wrote back then was absolute crap, but if it wasn't for those stories I wouldn't have had the necessary manure to fertilise my creative garden and it wouldn't be thriving the way it is now. I even liked DBGT, though it was short and the only really cool concept was the Shadow Dragons. Seriously, there needed to be a reason for them to stop using the Dragon Balls to fix everything.

Favourite characters from the franchise: Goku, Vegeta, Krillin, Bulma, Gohan, Piccolo, Dende, Future Trunks, and good Buu. Most of the others are okay, but I wanted to slap Roshi so many times and Mr. Satan really does not live up to his namesake in either the brains nor threat-posing department. (Honestly, I got used to thinking of him as Hercule, but learning his actual name didn't make him scary or anything. It just made me laugh.)

Okay, ramble over for the moment. I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's toes by posting this.

 

[Kit Chan]

I'm wondering when the new movie is getting dubbed and when they finally make the Buu saga for Kai.

 

[FANG-TAN]

There's no way the original anime had 200 episodes of filler material.

Oh yes there is. Do you realize how easy it is for an anime studio to catch up to a weekly manga? Very easy. Even scenes that don't seem like filler were partly filler, as certain scenes during fights are dragged out to be longer than they're supposed to be (i.e. prolonged kiai charges, extended smack talk, flashbacks, etc). We even have contradicting crap like Vegeta throwing a fit and flying off while everyone was on Earth during the Son Goku/Freeza fight, only to canonically still be there the next episode. Toei pulled every trick out of their hats to keep themselves from overtaking the manga permanently, including making filler content that would be disregarded either way.

They also ended Kai off at the conclusion of the Cell saga, so they didn't really skip anything - they just didn't finish it. The only problems with Kai are that, and the fact that the Shunsuke Kikuchi score was not as appropriately used as it was in the original Z series (no "Tamashii VS Tamashii" for Gohan's SSJ2 transformation? Blasphemy!), and skipping over everything leading up to the Siayan arc (in Japan it's Dragon Ball Kai, meaning a revision closer to the Dragon Ball manga, not "Dragon Ball Z" Kai...).

...on the other hand, it's the only faithful dub of anything Dragon Ball-related we've ever gotten, aside from the first few DBZ movies by Pioneer and FUNimation's Dragon Ball dub.

 

[The Imaginatrix]

There's no way the original anime had 200 episodes of filler material.

Oh yes there is. Do you realize how easy it is for an anime studio to catch up to a weekly manga? Very easy. Even scenes that don't seem like filler were partly filler, as certain scenes during fights are dragged out to be longer than they're supposed to be (i.e. prolonged kiai charges, extended smack talk, flashbacks, etc). We even have contradicting crap like Vegeta throwing a fit and flying off while everyone was on Earth during the Son Goku/Freeza fight, only to canonically still be there the next episode. Toei pulled every trick out of their hats to keep themselves from overtaking the manga permanently, including making filler content that would be disregarded either way.

They also ended Kai off at the conclusion of the Cell saga, so they didn't really skip anything - they just didn't finish it. The only problems with Kai are that, and the fact that the Shunsuke Kikuchi score was not as appropriately used as it was in the original Z series (no "Tamashii VS Tamashii" for Gohan's SSJ2 transformation? Blasphemy!), and skipping over everything leading up to the Siayan arc (in Japan it's Dragon Ball Kai, meaning a revision closer to the Dragon Ball manga, not "Dragon Ball Z" Kai...).

...on the other hand, it's the only faithful dub of anything Dragon Ball-related we've ever gotten, aside from the first few DBZ movies by Pioneer and FUNimation's Dragon Ball dub.

I still loved the FUNimation dub growing up, and even if there was a lot of filler it helped me relate to the characters better than tons of action and nothing between-times to lighten the mood. You're entitled to your own opinion on the matter.

And it technically is Dragon Ball Z Kai, since it only summarises the part of the story designated Dragon Ball Z. If it included the original Dragon Ball as well, that would be another story. It makes little difference to me what you call it. I'm not going to watch it. Aside from my avertion to abridgements, Bulma's voice made me cringe. I'll take the filler-laden awesomeness I grew up with over that any day.

 

[FANG-TAN]

I still loved the FUNimation dub growing up, and even if there was a lot of filler it helped me relate to the characters better than tons of action and nothing between-times to lighten the mood. You're entitled to your own opinion on the matter.

Prolonged charge-up scenes and fights are hardly good ways to lighten the mood, and Toei's filler didn't really help people relate to the characters seeing as Toei comes up with them out of the blue and easily disregards those fillers after they've served the purpose of creating a good distance from the manga, so it's really contradicting (though that filler with Son Goku and Piccolo trying to obtain driver's licenses was pretty damn good!). For example, it was totally out-of-character for Vegeta to be happy to hear that Goku "died" during Namek's destruction. His whole friggin' character is his obsession to defeat and surpass Goku himself, which he can't do if the guy is dead. Contrast that to canon scenes where he's relieved to hear that Kakarot is alive and well so he has a chance to challenge him once again. I don't see how such filler material could possibly help you relate to the characters any better than canon material from the actual author. They may have been necessary back in the 80s/90s when the anime was being aired weekly with new episodes and the manga was still ongoing, but fillers are unnecessary in a modern day revision.

However, again, the music is a lot better used in the original Dragon Ball Z than Dragon Ball Kai, and a handful of the original seiyuu aren't present in the revision, so that's more than enough reason to watch select episodes of the original over Kai. Conversely, as I've said before, the Kai dub is worth watching simply because it's the closest to Dragon Ball we've ever gotten in North America besides the FUNimation dub of the original Dragon Ball anime and the Pioneer dubs of the early DBZ movies.

Meh on the FUNimation DBZ dub, but I guess if that's your nostalgia you're free to prefer that. Of course, that wasn't the original point of my reply. My point was to clarify that a lot of the original Dragon Ball Z was filler.

And it technically is Dragon Ball Z Kai, since it only summarises the part of the story designated Dragon Ball Z.

It was the anime that was called Dragon Ball Z. The manga was still Dragon Ball (except for Viz's cruddy English releases). Dragon Ball Kai was billed as a manga-faithful cut of the anime, made to be more faithful to the manga by removing the useless filler and padding. With this in mind, encompassing everything from the beginning (everything up to Piccolo Daimao/23rd Tenka'ichi Budokai saga) to the end (Majin Boo saga) of the manga story is only right if they were really going for that idea. For the former, all we got was a clip show at the beginning of episode 1.

Again, one negative point against Kai. At least FUNi renamed it Dragon Ball Z Kai, so the dub gets some points there.

I'm not going to watch it. Aside from my avertion to abridgements

Except it's not abridged. It's the original length of the story, bar Dragon Ball and the Boo saga.

Note I'm not *forcing* you to watch it nor am telling you that you should like the Dragon Ball Kai English dub better than your old FUNimation dub, I'm just saying that there's no real *good* reason not to try it out aside from a rather unfair bias to your childhood nostalgia, such as voice actors and music. For the record, I actually watched most of the FUNimation dub of DBZ/DBGT before I decided that I hated it.

 

[Enzap]

Oh yes there is. Do you realize how easy it is for an anime studio to catch up to a weekly manga? Very easy. Even scenes that don't seem like filler were partly filler, as certain scenes during fights are dragged out to be longer than they're supposed to be (i.e. prolonged kiai charges, extended smack talk, flashbacks, etc). We even have contradicting crap like Vegeta throwing a fit and flying off while everyone was on Earth during the Son Goku/Freeza fight, only to canonically still be there the next episode. Toei pulled every trick out of their hats to keep themselves from overtaking the manga permanently, including making filler content that would be disregarded either way.

They also ended Kai off at the conclusion of the Cell saga, so they didn't really skip anything - they just didn't finish it. The only problems with Kai are that, and the fact that the Shunsuke Kikuchi score was not as appropriately used as it was in the original Z series (no "Tamashii VS Tamashii" for Gohan's SSJ2 transformation? Blasphemy!), and skipping over everything leading up to the Siayan arc (in Japan it's Dragon Ball Kai, meaning a revision closer to the Dragon Ball manga, not "Dragon Ball Z" Kai...).

...on the other hand, it's the only faithful dub of anything Dragon Ball-related we've ever gotten, aside from the first few DBZ movies by Pioneer and FUNimation's Dragon Ball dub.

This sounds like just about every other shonen anime out there. *coughcoughNarutocoughcough*

Honestly I like the original Dragon Ball more than Z. There seems to be a lot more emphasis on the characters and comedy than just shooting energy blasts. Every fight feels the same in Dragon Ball Z, they just make it "bigger" each time.

 

[FANG-TAN]

This sounds like just about every other shonen anime out there. *coughcoughNarutocoughcough*

Probably for Naruto and Bleach (and definitely "Yuugiou Duel Monsters", but it makes me sick to compare that anime to Kazuki Takahashi's manga series), but shounen anime like Yuu Yuu Hakusho and Fullmetal Alchemist hardly had a problem with keeping a nice pace comparable to their manga counterparts.

Honestly I like the original Dragon Ball more than Z. There seems to be a lot more emphasis on the characters and comedy than just shooting energy blasts. Every fight feels the same in Dragon Ball Z, they just make it "bigger" each time.

I'm on the fence as to whether or not I agree with this. The emphasis on fighting large-scale villains using plot arcs started with the Piccolo Daimao saga in Dragon Ball, which is widely agreed to be one of the best sagas in the whole manga, and every villain after him still had their own unique qualities that made these conflicts have their own unique feel. I mean, the Majin Boo arc was basically a deformed lovechild of the early manga's comedy focus and the later manga's focus on battles - completely different from the bleak atmosphere of the Artifical Humans saga and the intergalactic Space Pirate-esque Freeza saga.

But I agree that the fights themselves got pretty stagnant mid-Freeza, where the emphasis on tactics and clever use of techniques suddenly just vanished (but to be fair, the anime made these fights a lot more harder to sit through than they were originally). The human characters got shoved to the sidelines, which is a shame, since I feel that characters like Tenshinan and Kuririn still had loads of potential to participate. Piccolo was the only character that could keep up with the Saiyans, but even he eventually fell to the wayside some time after his fusion with Kami. Piccolo during the Majin Boo arc was simply a disgrace.

 

[Allishinca]

I've been a long time Dragonball fan and I recently watched Kai earlier this year.

For some back story, I grew up watching Dragonball Z on TV and I own DragonBall Z DVD Series #03-#16, plus the Vegeta Saga, and the first three orange boxes of the remastered season box sets (although I do plan to buy more despite the strange cropping issue). I own other things to, like the movies and specials, but it's mostly these episode DVDs that I find myself watching over and over, both in the English and Japanese versions.

I wasn't interested in at first Kai because I truthfully enjoyed some of the filler episodes; The episode in the Trunk's Sage about Vegeta training was one of my favorite episodes as a kid. I was aware that Kai had much more serious English dialog with all the stupid jokes taken out, and that's what enticed me to watch it. Some of my favorite scenes in the Funimation Dub are complete ruined by lines such as:

"The mother of all meteors appeared to claim my ship and my life." (Vegeta, Android Saga)

"That Android's toast."
"More like, burnt toast." (Krillin and Piccolo, Android Saga)

And I was pleased that these gags weren't in Kai. The dialog was serious and professional, and I admit I had no complaints at all with the script. I was watching Kai online, so I had an odd experience in that some episode used the English names of attacks, and others used the Japanese names. I believed this is because some episodes were DVD rips and others were TV rips, and it just made things strange. I'm not really picky about attack names. I did smile when Krillin said Kienzan instead of Destructo Disk, but I'm really okay with it either way. I was annoyed that they still referred to death as "going to another dimension." This appeared to me to be present even in the uncut episodes, showing no large dialog changes between the two; In contrast to the Funimation dub, which would change things like "Mess him up, kid!" to "Kick his butt, kid!" in the uncut version (spoke by King Kai, Trunks Saga), Hercules' name being changed to Mr. Satan, or "If I could fly, I'd still be chasing you" to "If I could fly, I'd be kicking your butt!" (Spoken by Goten in the Saiyaman Saga). Now, I could be wrong about the edited and uncut dialog changes in Kai as I explained I was watching those episodes online and they were not clearly marked as one or the other, but I did feel like that phrase appeared in episode that did not appear otherwise altered, so I assumed it was simply the product of lazy development. Also, "Hyperbolic Time Chamber." Yup, still there. Why not change it back to the Japanese title of "Room and Spirit and Time?" Especially when they were changing all the attacks back to their Japanese names? That was one thing I really wished they would change, and they didn't.

While I did really like the dialog, I hated the voice acting in Kai. In some cases it was because the voices changed, such as King Cold's. His Funimation voice was so flamboyant and just had so much personality and range. His Kai voice was terrible, flat, and poorly acted. This also allies to Perfect Cell, who had a very regal voice in the original Funi Dub, but nothing special in Kai. Heck, the whole reason I liked Perfect Cell was because of his English voice in the Funi Dub! In other cases it was just because the sound-a-like voice actors they choose to replace some characters spoke continuously in monotone, and by this I mostly mean Frieza and Future Trunks. In the Trunks Saga, there is this interesting scene (after Frieza's flashback about how he survived Namek's explosion) where he shouts "My oh, my, wont he be surprised when he returns home and finds no one here to welcome him but me!" (Funi Dub); It's interesting because he shouts this while the camera pans around him dramatically. In Kai, he just mouths threats in this scene so unenthused, not matching the energy and dynamic motion this scene has to offer at all. Trunks new VA is equally bad. For an comparison, I recommend watching the scene before Vegeta unleashes his Big Bang attack on Perfect Cell:

Krillin: Forget his Pride!
Trunks: But I can't! I don't think you understand how much honor means to my father. It's the only thing that keeps him going, It's what makes him a warrior. Oh sure, some might see it as arrogance, but I think, down at the core it's much more noble than that. I believe that's what my mother saw in him, and it's what I see too.
Krillin: I didn't know (only Funi Dub)
Trunks: How could you? (only Funi Dub)
Krillin: Well, for your sake, I hope he passes out soon.

This scene is interesting because the dialog is almost identical in both the original Funi dub and in Kai. There is only two big difference, one being the two extra lines in the original dub (noted for reference), and the other is that the Kai version has horrible voice acting. I can't explain this any better than seriously, watch the original Funi version and then the Kai version side by side and you'll see the difference. Even more confusing, I believe Eric Vale is still currently employed at Funimation, so as to why he did not simply reprise his role as Trunks we can only guess.

And speaking of scenes, there is one in particular I wanted to talk about, and that's when Gohan goes Super Saiyan for the first time in the Room of Spirit and Time. This scene might count as filler as I believe it did not happen in the Manga. My Dragonball Z manga are in storage and are not with me at my current location, so I cannot check them, but I'm somewhat certain he just emerged from the Room of Spirit and Time and was a Super Saiyan. So anyway, I don't really like Gohan, but this is one of my favorite scenes, and not just in the original Funi dub! The Japanese version had amazing music in this scene so I was really looking forward to it in Kai, Japanese track and all! And then I finally saw it and was amazingly disappointed; The music was terrible! And this isn't even a dub issue, this is because some of the original Japanese music was changed in the Japanese version of Kai. Why they changed the amazing music in this scene, I have no idea.

Finally, there are two scenes that Kai that I did really like. The first is after the battle with Vegeta and Nappa, when Bulma and the others arrive to pick up Yamcha, Tien, and the others dead bodies. The episode I saw had an incredibly depressing vocal track playing in the background. I do not know if this was the plagiarized music or not, but it so perfectly wrapped up the trauma of one of the most brutal battles in DBZ; One that many of their friends did not survive, and the pain of the loved ones they left behind. This is also a scene that I hadn't been exposed to much before. It was cut from the original American broadcast. Funi DVDs started at the Ginyu saga (well after that scene), and the Vegeta Saga (which was Funi redubbing the Saiyan Saga uncut) was canceled before it reached that episode. I had witness it in the orange boxes, but it definitely did not leave as much of an emotional impact on me as it did in Kai. The second scene done better in Kai occurs in the Frieza saga, when Goku begins speaking with Vegeta and then suddenly remembers that he's dead, triggering a long hallucinogenic scene between him and naked Vegeta. The dialog here was beautiful and was way better done then the original Funi dub. It really drew me into a scene that, in the original version, hadn't really interested me at all.

If there was one thing I really did enjoy about the abridge part of Kai, was the Namek saga. I don't find many things redeemable about the Namek saga in the original Funi Dub. It dragged on so slowly that my head cannon for the longest time was that Gohan, Krillin, and Bulma were on Namek for more than a year. I watched through Kai and it put the timeline so nicely in perspective: They group arrives, their ship is broken, Goku recovers within the following days, leaves Earth and arrives on Namek in only a week (!), and then they all fight and go home. I seriously though they were on Namek for a year and it wasn't until Kai that I realized they weren't even there for a month! Also, I really hate that filler episode with Bulma protecting the four star Dragonball from the giant underwater crab. I feel like every time I use to tune into Toonami or Toonami Midnight Run that episode would be playing. That was one bit of filler I'll happily live without.

Unrelated to dialog and scenes, The music in Kai suffered due to plagiarism, leaving us with the Japanese track. I do really like Bruce Falconer's music, but I don't mind that original Japanese music even with it's oddly long stretches of eery silence. Still, I feel like it really hurt some scenes, such as when Vegeta goes Super Saiyan for the first time. By the time I was getting to the end of the Cell Saga, I was getting tired of the Japanese tracks to the point were it was actually distracting me from the show. I understand that there were some legal issues there and very few options, but still I think it really hurt Kai as in independent production.



In conclusion, Kai has very well written dialog and sticks close to the Japanese lines, but it suffers from poor music and bad voice acting. It has some good points, such as the Namek saga and the two scenes I liked, but mostly I prefer the original Funi dub by comparison and probably wouldn't spend money on a Kai boxset.

 

[Kit Chan]

The scene that got hurt the most by the plagiarism claims (which interestingly only came from the viewers, not the artists themselves) in my opinion was the Final Flash scene. The Kai music version of the scene was so good that someone on youtube edited the English version of the scene to have the Kai music.

I wonder if someones started a project to restore the Kai music because in my opinion it was one of the best things about Kai (although there were a few good tracks from the original Z in both Japan and the dub).

Edit: Found the youtube video I was referring to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuWZ_tm_COc

 

[Chibster]

The first Dragon Ball series is my favorite! Goku was so cute as a kid and the series was so funny! XD