Dragon Ball Z Kai Review

Dragon Ball Z Kai Anime Review

Dragon Ball Z Kai is a remake of the original Dragon Ball Z series by Akira Toriyama. Since it is a remake, then the plot is the same except drastically shortened. Some entire story arcs, episodes and filler episodes of endless training was not included in the Kai Series. To a point, some “intense” fighting scenes was severely shorten, that included the Super Saiyan 3 Transformation by Son Goku. Keep in mind that Dragon Ball is the prequel and was produced in 1984, so it is an older anime. For old fans however, the American release of the show is just completely fantastic!

Dragon Ball Z Kai Summary

Since Dragon Ball Z Kai is a remake, it follows the same plot of the original Dragon Ball Z. However, it is nearly two thirds shorter since it leaves out a lot of the “filler” episodes and scenes. The main character of the series is Goku, a young man with amazing powers and even a tail! He learns from his evil older brother Raditz that he belongs to a warrior race called Saiyan from the planet Vegeta.

He states that Goku was sent to Earth as a child to conquer the human race, but he had a severe head injury from his crash landing, causing him to forget his mission and become good instead. Goku refuses to help Raditz carry out his original mission and he later meets many other enemies from space, including the Prince of Saiyan, Vegeta.

Although Dragon Ball Z Kai is a remake, there is still currently no Dragon Ball Z Kai Games on the market so far, only still Dragon Ball Super Games and the latest series of Dragon Ball Z Games available.

Plot (Shonen)

The plot is adequate as a whole, but rather good if you do not mind the fight, defeated, grow stronger, and fight more theme. It mainly focuses on friendship and bettering yourself, although as the series progresses, it becomes less of a kid show and includes more mature fight scenes. Parents do not worry. Both Nicktoons and Toonzai have edited the content and scenes to suit a younger audience.

As it gradually drifts more toward action, the “training” episodes become more common. Fortunately, one wonderful feature of Dragon Ball Z Kai is that most of these long episodes filled with nothing more as leveling up type of episodes was removed.

Soundtrack

One of the great things about Dragon Ball Z Kai is the remastered sound and special effects, including re-recordings of the voice track by the original cast! However, some of the sound effects do sound rather cartoony–such as the “flying sound effect” for Vegeta and Nappa when they first arrive.

The opening theme song for the series is Dragon Soul by Takayoshi Tanimoto and is upbeat and actually very catchy. Tanimoto also performs the ending theme for the first 55 episodes, titled Yeah! Break! Care! Break!. The second ending theme is Kokoro no Hane (Wings of the Heart) performed by the all-female group Team Dragon from AKB48.

Artwork

The artwork definitely has the look of an older anime, but that does not necessarily have to be a bad thing! The shading and coloring for example are vivid and well defined, especially since new frames for Dragon Ball Z Kai were produced by digitally tracing over frames from previous footage to reduce the visible damage to the old animation.

Most of the artwork is simple and rather basic, but try to remember that this is a fighting show, not a beauty contest. Sometimes the eyes get out of shape after a particularly hard beating, and due to their massive muscles, some characters tend to have tree trunk necks.

Dragon Ball Z Manga

Dragon Ball Z was originally serialized in Shonen Jump in 1984. There are also 42 volumes of the manga which was released by Viz Media. In December 25, 2006, Toriyma and One Piece author Eiichiro Oda teamed up to make a single chapter crossover titled “Cross Epoch.”

While the plot may be rather repetitive and the look a bit outdated, Dragon Ball hasn’t been around for twenty years for nothing! The story is heartwarming, the action is thrilling, and the art is simply classic. This is a wonderful remake that did the revolutionary original shonen series justice and then some. And it’s not just for old fans either—newcomers to the series of all ages will enjoy this timeless saga!