Dragon Ball Z, Minus Z, Plus Kai, Plus Z Again
FUNimation announcing they have Dragon Ball Kai is about as shocking as sitting in an underground rubber house during a lightning storm. But I don’t think anyone expected them to change the name, and I’m almost glad they did.
Not that I’m a big fan of changes like this, but I think “Dragon Ball Z Kai” is a much more logical name for the series, since that’s exactly what it is. The “Kai” simply means “revised,” and this is only a revision of Dragon Ball Z. It was even promoted as a celebration of Z‘s 20th anniversary. But just “Dragon Ball Kai” means “Dragon Ball Revised,” which in turn means “the other two shows suck.” GT does indeed suck, but the original suffix-less Dragon Ball kicks Z through a conveniently placed rock formation that then shatters into pieces. FUNimation’s new name takes that away and makes me less likely to rant, and almost creates hope that the original DB could get Kai‘d too (though I’m not sure if that’s a good thing).
Of course, I’ve often said that I’d probably only buy Kai if FUNi released cheap Blu-rays, and I guess they’re going to be doing just that. But the name change comes with a new logo, and a new logo means altering the video. Altering the video is something I’m definitely opposed to, but if it’s just the logo, I could live with it. Blu-rays offer much better angle options than DVD does, so ideally, they should leave an unaltered Japanese credits track somewhere (with or without the original logo), rather than only using blank or English versions. But I don’t exactly know FUNi’s track record with that sort of thing. I think I’ve heard they don’t use angles on Blu-ray, either…? Which seems silly, but only two people besides me seem to care whether a North American release has Japanese text or not anyway.
But Kai in general is just a lazy way of putting Z in HD, so I’m not really in any hurry to buy it, either way. The third Z Dragon Box comes out that month, and I want that a lot more. Maybe if there’s a really awesome sale I’ll snatch it up, but for now, it’ll just rot on my Amazon.com wishlist for an eventual purchase.