I’ve always been a big Dragon Ball Z fan, since I was little when I first saw Gohan vs Cell in Japanese all those years ago back in 1995. I mean I have a Dragon Ball Z Fan site called Majin-Planet.com yeah know?

So when Dragon Ball Kai came out I was thrilled a new way to watch the series without all the boring bloat that we all love to call Anime Filler. It was all gone and while I think Dragon Ball Kai and the English version Dragon Ball Z Kai didn’t get notice as much as I think it should have, I believe it opened the doors for future anime’s to do the same thing.

What is the difference between the versions?

Besides the fact they cut the filler content out, they also remaster it in many ways and touched up the picture. They re-did the script and worked episodes to be closer to Akira Toriyama’s original story in the manga.

Dragon Ball itself ran nearly 500 episodes including Z and GT, for Z itself it was near 290 episodes if I’m not mistaken somewhere near that number. Dragon Ball Kai did it in 98 episodes. It was originally set to be 100 episodes, but was cut short due to the horrific tsunami that struck Japan the prior week. The series ended in 98 episodes as of August 25, 2011. The last episode however did not air on TV but was included on the DVD set.

Some other changes was the voice acting which includes some new voicing for some characters, the English version of Kai also followed suit with characters like Bulma, Gohan and Frieza. While there was some difference in the script, most of the voice acting was okay, Gohan’s voice actor was horrible for me but not unwatchable.

In terms of story, it flows much better, while you will notice some filler still, it’s only small amounts that had no real impact on the story. I’m sure it was just added to fill the time needed for the slot. Such as Gregory’s appearance at King Kai’s planet. For you manga readers, Gregory doesn’t exist in the manga at all but him being there didn’t affect the story telling.

Overall, I think Dragon Ball Z Kai was amazing and I really hope they do follow threw and do the Buu Saga as I feel that could easily be done in 50 some episodes and it would be awesome. Are you a Dragon Ball Z Fan? If you are maybe you wouldn’t mind checking out the Dragon Ball Z Personality Test.