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Dragon Ball always has a way of bringing itself back to the spotlight with something new even when a new story isn’t always on the table, and that was the case for Dragon Ball Z Kai. Originally making its debut in Japan on April 5, 2009 (and April 6, 2014 for its second half) Dragon Ball Z Kai offered a remastered version of its classic anime series and ended up being the best version of the series to actually see in action. With updated visuals, pacing, and more, this was the first version of Dragon Ball Z that many fans got to see.
Dragon Ball Z Kai Premiered 17 Years Ago Today
Dragon Ball Z Kai came out under some surprising circumstances when it released back in 2009 in Japan. With no new releases for the franchise in a while, and nothing seemingly on the horizon, licensors had put in a request for some new Dragon Ball materials of any kind to help merchandise sales. But with Toriyama not wanting to craft any new story at the time, Toei Animation decided to take a different route and instead remaster the original TV anime series for a new broadcast.
Dragon Ball Z Kai then not only updated the original series’ visuals to better hit for the high definition demands of late 2000s television, and even included new opening and ending theme sequences to better fit the new package. The voice stars behind the original returned to re-record for their respective characters, and new music was added to better flesh out the experience. But the most important change for this new version of the series was that it was stripped down to better reflect the pacing of Akira Toriyama’s original manga story.
Dragon Ball Z‘s original incarnation was a massive hit with fans, but one thing that they agreed on was that did unfortunately pad out its runtime. There was a lot of original material crafted specifically for the anime series in order to meet its weekly episodic release demands, and that meant that it often held back much of the story from continuing as fast along as it should have. With all of this filler trimmed out and updated visuals for the anime, Dragon Ball Z Kai was the best version of the anime (even if a contingent of fans preferred the original).
