Dragon Ball Z Kai (TV Series)

Dragon Ball Kai is a revised version of the anime series Dragon Ball Z produced in commemoration of the original's twentieth anniversary. It began broadcasting on Fuji Television on April 5, 2009. It features remastered high definition picture, sound, and special effects as well as a re-recorded voice track by the original cast. As most of the series' sketches and animation cels had been discarded since the final episode of Dragon Ball Z in 1996, new frames were produced by digitally tracing over still frames from existing footage and filling them with softer colors; this reduced visible damage to the original animation. Some frames were selectively cropped, while other frames feature new portions added to scenes that were hand drawn to conform to the designated picture ratio. Much of the material original to the Dragon Ball Z anime, including whole story arcs, will be left out, reducing the episode count from 291 episodes to a hundred total. The first episode earned a viewer ratings percentage of 11.3, ahead of One Piece and behind Crayon Shin-Chan. The second had lower ratings, 9.8%, finishing at third place among anime shows of that week. The third had similar ratings of 9.6%, finishing behind One Piece at fourth position. The series uses two pieces of theme music: an opening theme, titled "Dragon Soul" and an ending theme, titled "Yeah! Break! Care! Break!". Both pieces are sung by Takayoshi Tanimoto. Although the story footage is taken from existing material, the opening and closing sequences were made from scratch using different animation methods. The score for the series was provided by Kenji Yamamoto, a video game musician who composed the music for several Dragon Ball Z video games, as opposed to Shunsuke Kikuchi, the composer of the original's score.