Dragon Ball Kai (2014)

Still recommended but...

The pacing isn't nearly as good as the original Kai run. This could be due to the fact that the Buu Saga is just really bloated to begin with. While it's still a very solid cut/remaster of the original, I found myself kind of feeling impatient by the end. That being said, there are still some really epic moments in this. Kai is still my preferred method of rewatching from this point onward. Unless I just WANT to watch some of the filler(looking at you Driving Test episode). Music is ok. You don't get the jarring parts from the redrawn scenes, because they ... are nonexistent in TFC. Although alot of those looked spectacular in the original run of Kai.

I've probably brought nothing to the table with this review, more or less for my own reference. Kthnxbye

Just an amazing story no matter how many times I've seen it.
Sadly this remake is even worse than the previous Kai series.

Reasons for it being worse (for me at least);

- The "HD" which is basically just a cropped version of the original Dragon Ball Z because they had to make it 16:9. - Also removing a lot of detail from the scenes which just makes some scenes look bad.
- The soundtrack and especially [Dragon ball Kai 2014 OST - 19. Effective Attack] it felt like I was watching some sort shitty action movie from the 80's / 90's.
Another one that got on my nerves ... was the intermission part, even though it's short it felt like I was watching a sitcom.
- I have no idea what happened to Chi-chi's VA but from the moment the 2014 Kai series started you could notice the raspy voice, especially when she starts shouting at people. - Didn't mind it as much after a while.
- The sound in general was overall bad from time to time, I have no idea how to explain it other than it sounding "tinny".

With that I just can't recommend the 2014 Kai series to anyone, if only for their "HD" marketing, at least the first Kai had redeeming qualities, especially for a newer viewer.

Dragon Ball Z Kai is an inferior version to Dragon Ball Z lacking what made it so great to begin with. The selling point over the original DBZ is that it is closer to the manga as Z has too much filler and suppose to have awful pacing. This has been all addressed in the a review of Dragon Ball Kai.
Dragon Ball Kai (2014) is adapting the Boo Saga which comes with two problems already. For many who liked Kai, the selling point was the lack of the Boo Saga adaptation as many wanted Dragon Ball to end with Cell's defeat. Now that the Boo ... saga is adapted, that positive is out of the window. Even with the faster pacing, the Boo Saga is the longest and most tedious Dragon Ball Saga moving at a snails pace meaning despite being a shorter watch, it still suffers from the same problem as its predecessor.

Another thing is the massive amount of censorship which is the cause of events happening during the run of Kai. So many scenes that were amazingly build up and show a display of power were cut down making them automatically inferior.
In addition the censorship removes other things like an entire scene from the manga building up the guys who wanted to kill Boo with guns. Thus rendering the point of a faithful adaptation pointless as not all manga content is viewable in animation form.

Overall, Dragon Ball Kai is already just a soulless cashgrab and barely worth calling decent, but the Boo Saga adaptation is in every way a lesser version of its manga counterpart.