Don’t stop, don’t stop, we’re in luck now! Gyt here, and this time I bring you a review of one of FUNi’s most highly anticipated releases of the year - Dragon Ball Z Kai, Part One.
Let’s start from the top though. FUNi hasn’t exactly done the best in explaining just what this show really is, so casual fans are probably freaking out, thinking another sequel has finally come out. That’s not the case here at all. In February 2009, Toei announced Dragon Ball Kai, which is essentially Dragon Ball Z without the filler (for the most part). They took the scenes from Dragon Ball Z (and a select few from Dragon Ball), cleaned it up even nicer than the Dragon Box, drew a few new scenes to throw in, and essentially, called it a new show. So essentially, Kai isn’t a new show at all. It’s Z abridged, and with a new soundtrack and, partially, voice cast.
So in-of-itself, Kai isn’t anything that special - it’s just something to watch to enjoy the story of Z without it taking almost 300 episodes to get through. However, Kai represents something really good and special for FUNimation - a chance for FUNi to finally dub this portion of the story right. Even the most hardcore of dub fans can’t deny the simple fact that at it’s best, Dragon Ball Z is still FUNi’s worst dub. This time though, they have over ten years of experience to bring to the roles they’ve come back to. As such, I’ll be covering the dub more than the show itself, as the story is nothing new at all.
Oh, and the reason you’ll see me refer to the original version as ‘Kai’ and the dub as ‘Z Kai’, is simply because FUNimation changed the title for the US release. Z Kai, while annoying to remember to say, actually makes much more sense, as it’s the Z portion of the anime this series covers.
To start off, music for the show is all going to be dubbed. We haven’t hit any insert songs in the first thirteen episodes, but reports say those will be dubbed too. For now though, we have ‘Dragon Soul’ sung by Sean Schemmel and ‘Yeah! Break! Care Break!’ sung by Jerry Jewell. Sean’s performance of Dragon Soul isn’t the best in the world. It’s really good, but something about it does seem off if you’ve grown used to the original song. You also can’t shake the feeling that Goku is singing the song to you. I do like Sean’s Dragon Soul better than Jerry’s Y!B!CB! though, but that’s not to say Jerry’s singing is bad - I’m just that much in love with the original song, so it would have taken an awesome song dub to make me like the dub one more. Both songs are handled better than Ouran’s dubbed songs thouh, I think, but they’re not up to the standard of One Piece’s songs.
As for the voice cast itself, most people are turning in pretty much the same performance as usual, though the script being so much closer to the original makes all of those performances seem that much better. Stealing the show as usual though is Sonny Strait’s Krillin, which seems to be the role that keeps getting better and better with each recording, as it gets closer to Strait’s natural voice. I’ve never had a problem with Sean Schemmel’s Goku outside of his first work on the character, but he’s blowing all his past work out of the water here. He’s making Goku sound much younger this time, more on par with his work in the last of Dragon Ball. Vegeta still sounds the same, albeit pulled back to a more believable vocal range. Of the characters still voiced by the same person, I’d say Piccolo sounds the most different, more like Sabat’s natural voice at times, like Zoro in One Piece.
Now we come to the re-casted people. This is where I call a major, MAJOR foul on FUNimation. It seems like they didn’t even tell the people they’ve re-casted about the new show, or that they’d been replaced. And just who did they replace? Anyone that hasn’t been involved in voice acting in years outside of the DB franchise - Stephanie Nadolny (Kid Goku/Kid Gohan), Tiffany Volmer (Bulma), Monika Antonelli (Chiaotzu & Puar), & Bradford Jackson (Oolong). They also re-casted the Narrator who was previously Kyle Hebert, but that was primarily to have each series have a different narrator.
To start with the biggest re-casting, Kid Gohan (and Baby & Kid Goku in the first episode) is now played by Colleen Clinkenbeard of Luffy in One Piece fame. And that’s pretty much what you’ll be hearing when you watch it, Luffy. She doesn’t use near as much rasp as she does with our favorite Straw Hat, but it’s still unmistakably him. While Colleen’s Gohan does sound much more like a little boy than Nadolny’s, the change is too big for me to really get used to yet, and it still doesn’t sound like an actual little boy.
Monica Rial surprises me greatly as Bulma. She sounds almost identical to Vollmer at first listen, though after the first few episodes, you can tell it’s Rial. Still, it’s really easy to accept her as the character, and considering how much I was worried about her as the character, I was pleasantly surprised.
There’s not much to say about Brina Palencia as Chiaotzu and Puar, as this re-casting isn’t exactly new, it’s just the first time she’s gotten to play them in animation and not a game. That may be why it’s much easier to tell it’s her and not Antonelli now, whereas in the games you had to really listen to tell. That only leaves one major character re-casting to talk about, Bryan Massey taking over as Oolong. I’m not really familiar with Massey’s work, and the only other role I know for him is the Freezing Alchemist in the first episode one of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. So I’m hoping he’ll improve, and also hoping that he’ll turn out to be a quality actor in other things; but he makes a terrible Oolong, in my opinion. I think it may be that he’s trying to hard to sound like Jackson, and it’s horribly stunting his acting ability.
I’m unsure completely on how I feel about Doc Morgan as the Narrator. I never minded Hebert’s ‘monster-truck announcer’ voice for it, but hearing one more in the vein of Brice Armstrong’s ‘grandfather reading a story to his grandchildren’ voice for Dragon Ball’s narration is nice. Unfortunately, he’s not entirely used to this kind of work yet though he’s done commercial work before apparently, as he keeps changing his talking speed mid-sentence all the time.
The only other voice to point out is Gregory the cricket, which is also a great example of how not even Kai is completely filler-less. He’s still voiced by John Burgmeier, but they cranked up the helium effect way too high on his lines. Either that, or they routinely hit him between the legs before each take. I’m hoping it was the helium effect.
So overall, Kai’s dub is definitely pretty good. There’s some annoying directing done on a few lines, like how Raditz seems to have to yell every single word he utters, a problem Nappa shares in a few scenes but not too many. It’s enough to hurt, but still not enough to cause it to be bad. That said, if you don’t like FUNi’s dub of DBZ, you should give Kai’s crack at it a chance. But if you’re the kind of person who only enjoys the sub of it, do us all a favor and just stick with that.
If I sound overly hostile on that last part, it’s because certain fans in the DB fanbase have annoyed us dub fans recently with their incessant whining. They have every right to complain about the old dub and the new one both, but it’s possible to phrase it without being a jerk. This is something one fan in-particular, by the name of penguintruth, seems incapable of doing, seeing as how he’s even harassed Sean Schemmel over it. Him aside though, essentially this is the same cast as always for DB stuff, so if the voices rubbed you the wrong way even with the thought of an accurate script, you probably are best suited sticking with the sub on this one, because not a whole lot there has changed.
In the end, I give Dragon Ball Z Kai: Part One, a 4 out of 5. It’s the furthest from anything new for an old fan, but if you always wanted to check out this part of the story and the never-ending episode count ran you off, this is the perfect chance. Live your life like a Kamehameha!