Dragon Ball Z Kai-Collection 1-Episodes 1-13 (Blu-ray) (2009)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Trailer-Bonus Trailers Featurette-Clean Opening and Closing
Rating
Year Of Production	2009
Running Time	312:00 (Case: 325)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Yasuhiro Nowatari
Studio Distributor	FUNimation Ltd Madman Entertainment	Starring	None Given
Case	Amaray-Opaque-Dual
RPI	$64.95	Music	Kenji Yamamoto Shinichi Fukumitsu Niki Cooper

     Dragon Ball Z Kai is the "rebuild" of the most popular anime of all time, Dragon Ball Z. In Japan this series holds a special place in pop culture; loosely based on Journey to the West, it's anime that set the standard for subsequent shonen series (like the vastly inferior Bleach and One Piece) and remains important many years after its completion. It's something of an honour to have the series remastered and reanimated in this new "Kai" form but, like the other current popular anime rebuilds - the new Evangelion movies - this suffers from the rushed pacing and unnecessary new scenes that subtract from rather than add to an already successful narrative.

     I've written at length before about the series and its importance here, and this Blu-ray set covers part of the first 'saga', The Saiyan Saga, in which Goku and friends face an alien threat as two super-powerful aliens descend upon Earth intent on enacting genocide. Some of the series beats are the same, but the compression of the entire narrative into half the original length doesn't just cut out some filler material, but also important character development; for example, Piccolo's growing attachment to the son of his dead-foe, Gohan. New material has characters directly telling each other what is occurring rather than just showing it; Piccolo's story arc suffers the worst, as characters frequently talk about how he's changing rather than letting his character develop naturally. And that's the tip of the iceberg - the pacing is a mess (six months pass in a single episode whereas other episodes last only minutes) and various monologues reveal that half of the cast of characters seem to already know what is going to happen in future events, which is condescending, poorly-plotted and lousy.

     The entirety of this Dragon Ball Z Kai Collection 1 set is a mess. Rather than covering the entire saga as with the prior DVD sets (or dividing the arcs in a logical fashion) this collection just ends, suddenly, in the middle of a pivotal fight. The transfer quality is the worst I've ever seen on a Blu-ray and the extras are non-existent. There's also a forced unskippable trailer at the beginning of both Blu-rays, the bane of anyone who collects DVDs or Blu-rays. In addition to the series itself being a misfire, there is nothing here to recommend to fans, nor to people who have never seen the anime before; with the 'definitive' editions of the Dragon Box available in Japan - the entire anime in complete sets - there's really no excuse for something of this low quality.

Video

     The video is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio in full 1080p high definition. There are unconfirmed rumours that Japan does not release the best quality transfers of anime outside of the country due to DVDs and Blu-rays being significantly cheaper on the international markets, thus giving fans incentive to buy the expensive Japanese sets solely to get the best quality video and audio. This dreadful video transfer all but confirms this rumour - I've never seen such awful video quality on a Blu-ray.Dragon Ball Z Kai Collection 1 looks terrible - a disastrous mix of badly focused images, washed out colour and nasty interlacing the likes of which Blu-ray was supposed to eradicate.

     As a mixture of new and remastered animation, the series is supposed to look better than all prior releases, but instead looks far worse - the distinction between the newly animated scenes and the older shots is obvious in that most of the remastered scenes look awful, with scratchy broken lines and artefacts. The new animation is brief and suffers from being occasionally out of focus and washed out - this is most obvious just by looking at the subtitles below, which look great over the top of the awful video transfer. Cutting between the worse and worser shots is distracting and makes watching the already-disappointing series more unpleasant.

     There are English subtitles that are very accurate to the original source and voice work.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The audio is presented in Dolby TrueHD English 5.1 and Dolby TrueHD Japanese 2.0.

     The audio fares much better than the video, with two very good options for fans of both English dubbing and original Japanese audio with English subtitles. The English Dolby TrueHD track uses the surrounds not only in the big fighting sequences, but also in small scenes of dialogue and music. I only wish the Japanese track was surround as well - there's something lacking about falling back on stereo sound (even great quality stereo sound) when a full surround is much more explosive, especially in larger battle sequences. I am not so fond of the new soundtrack done for the Kai series, which doesn't seem to understand the highs and lows of the onscreen action - I much prefer the original soundtrack, but at least the new music is well presented here.

     The dialogue is strong on both tracks; my preference is the original Japanese audio but the new Funimation dub is quite good, featuring all of the original US voice cast who do a spectacular job with their characters. Piccolo and Vegeta are particular stand outs, as are Goku and Krillin, behind whose US vocal talents are perfect for their characters and do a great job adding weight to the scenes.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Textless Opening and Closing

     The opening and closing animations presented here in 1.33:1 without the credits.

Bonus Trailers

     A collection of awkward trailers for other Funimation releases, some with the wrong aspect ratio, nearly all with bad dubbing. One of these is forcibly played when the Blu-ray is put into the player and cannot be skipped. Awful. And that's it - nothing else, no booklet or art or interviews or documentaries; nothing.

     Dragon Ball Z Kai Collection 1 is the unneeded update to a classic anime presented in a poor package that doesn't do the original justice.

     While the audio transfer is quite good, the video transfer is the worst I've ever seen on a Blu-ray. There are basically no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall