Dragon Ball Z is back on TV in the form of Dragon Ball Z Kai airing on Nick Toons. Kai is a condensed version of the original Dragon Ball Z series cut to be more like manga by removing most of the filler and creating a new script. Because the show is cut down without the filler, it moves quickly from one scene to the next, getting right to the fights and important parts of the story. I happend to catch a couple of episodes here and there and found myself getting abosorbed in Dragon Ball Z all over again.
The first episode I caught had Raditz arriving on Kame island, confronting his brother Goku, Goku learning that he’s an alien, Gohan being taken by Raditz, Piccollo showing up to team up with Goku, and then Goku and Piccollo taking off for Raditz and beginning the fight at the end of the episode. Normally, all of this would have taken 3 episodes to tell. In a later episode I saw, Earth’s heroes are just about to fight the Saibamen, when Yamcha shows up and kicks ass by defeating a Saibamen only to be killed when it latches onto him and explodes, all in one episode.
Most of the voice cast of the dub has returned showing their years of experience since the original dub and gives a good performance that feels true to the original version like most anime is done today. Chris Sabat still does Piccolo, Yamcha, and Vegeta, and at one part I mistook Yamacha’s off screen voice for Piccolo because Piccolo now has a better, more natural sounding voice than the deep, gruff one he had before, and his voices along with the rest of the cast are acted very well. Colleen Clinkenbeard (Luffy in One Piece) voices Gohan and fits young Gohan’s cries, but I miss the previous voice actress who also voiced Goku in Dragon Ball. Overall, the voice acting is really good, and acted well with the new script like the emotional impact of when Goku is in agony over his son being kidnapped and not being able to do anything about it. The new narrator reminds me of the original Dragon Ball Z dub that sounds like an old man telling a story than Funimation dub of DBZ that tried to pump you up about the next fight.
It has been a while since I’ve seen the Sayian Saga since only seeing the Ocean Group dub of the first 2 seaons, but it wasn’t just seeing these old episodes again, the show gives a bigger impact because its cut tighter now. The musical score sounds very upbeat and fitting of the action, and very emotional during a character’s death. Along with the music, the faster pace of the show because of the cut filler keeps momentum as Raditz explains the Sayians will eradicate the Earth and takes Gohan, to Goku resolving to team up with Piccolo and the action that soon follows, never stopping to stall for time. The visuals look slightly blurry to me because it looks like they filtered the video to look a little more modern and colorful. I think if they had totally redone DBZ with new animation, it’d be lacking that old style, grainy, cel-art look (you can even see the video shaking) that’s representative of the time Dragon Ball Z was originally made.
Watching Dragon Ball Z Kai on Nick Toons is like being a kid again when I watched Dragon Ball Z on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It’s funny how a show I watched when I was younger that helped get me into anime has been renewed for a new generation to experience it. I was a bit skeptical of Kai at first after seeing a few clips online, but watching the dub on TV has me interested in Dragon Ball Z again.
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