Toei Animation Admits Plagiarisms in BGMs of Dragon Ball Kai

by dtshyk
Mar 10, 2011 5:30 AM | 28 Comments

Toei Animation announced that more than one background musics of Dragon Ball Kai were suspected to infringe the copyrights of third parties. They have already replaced those musics with the original BGMs of Dragon Ball Z.

Toei Animation had assigned the music of Dragon Ball Kai to Yamamoto Kenji instead of Kikuchi Shunsuke. Yamamoto Kenji's other musics have also been suspected to be plagiarized works. (ref. niconico video)

Source: Toei Animation (PDF file)

20 of 28 Comments Recent Comments

What? Plagiarism on DBZ Kai? NOT GOOD!

Mr-Guts said:
this Plagiarisms thing is becoming a big issue day by day

Speaking about plagiarisms... I think things are going too far:

SPACE BLACK KNIGHT!!! Oh yeah! CHARMURO FTW (Sarcasm Mode)!!!
Where Gundam is on pure ACID! In a So Bad It's Good show of nonsense.

(gag dubbed though)
LOOK! Even Marvel villains are involved as well. Not only did they manage to plagiarize Gundam, but also Marvel as well. Anything added???

And hello to Space Thunder Kids for your amusement to the point of turning it into another wonderful cringe fest.

ENJOY CRINGING TO THE FULLEST!

...

Jul 19, 2011 10:04 AM by HyperCobaltMax

Oh gaaaaawd.
Does this mean it's going to be done......AGAIN?

Jul 15, 2011 11:04 AM by Sabinlerose

We don't give a fuck about plagiarisms, we want the last arc !

Jul 14, 2011 11:46 PM by Harout

And the world keeps on spinning.

Apr 8, 2011 10:37 PM by Hias

jix said:
now i think Toei really did go cheap on making Dragon Ball Kai
not newly animated, not showing the buu arc...

One reason they might have cut the Buu part is that Toriyama had clearly gotten tired of the series by then and it devolved into outright gag manga.

There's a pretty good "this series is over" bit at the end of the Cell part, anyway, so good riddance.

Apr 8, 2011 10:19 PM by Fronzel

FOE-tan said:

supermegasonic said:
so is this the main reaon why i'm hearing rumours of Kai not even going past the cell arc?

Nope. It's not going past Cell arc because Toriko is confirmed as taking Kai's timeslot for the spring season.

so this is not only stupid for quality reasons (Cell arc sucked, Buu arc was at least fun) but guaranteed decreased ratings reasons.

Mar 15, 2011 8:39 PM by kkslider5552000

Who gives a crap?! You can't make music these days without taking something from something else.

So what if he "plagiarized." Goddamn record industries. The composer did absolutely nothing wrong.

Mar 11, 2011 8:24 PM by Banshee-IV

ios said:
now i think Toei really did go cheap on making Dragon Ball Kai
not newly animated, not showing the buu arc that sort of canceling the show and now they just copied musics

Wait what the f... Buu arc isnt gonna air

Mar 11, 2011 11:13 AM by aksdmklsmalas

supermegasonic said:
so is this the main reaon why i'm hearing rumours of Kai not even going past the cell arc?

Nope. It's not going past Cell arc because Toriko is confirmed as taking Kai's timeslot for the spring season.

Mar 11, 2011 4:11 AM by Rosa_FOEtida

so is this the main reaon why i'm hearing rumours of Kai not even going past the cell arc?

Mar 10, 2011 10:19 PM by supermegasonic

Japa Stole my music!

One of them, ara "War" from Avatar.

Mar 10, 2011 8:33 PM by PaninaManina

DB kai plagiarizing DBZ

Mar 10, 2011 8:21 PM by guruguru19

I never though Yamamoto's music was as great as Shunsuke Kikuchi's original DBZ OST, but at least it was better than that soulless garbage Bruce Faulconer cooked up for the English version of DBZ.

Mar 10, 2011 7:12 PM by penguintruth

this just gets worse and worse

Mar 10, 2011 4:46 PM by Corpse69

Wow, that's just sad... but personally, I love the fact that, instead of plagiarizing music from some obscure source (thus increasing the possibilities that he would get away with it), he was just like "Screw that, I am going to steal songs from Avatar and Terminator Salvation. Clearly, no one will notice it!"

Mar 10, 2011 4:17 PM by Threepwood

Ha. So they plagiarised Dragon Ball instead of Saint Seiya. LOL

Mar 10, 2011 3:09 PM by mikhailn

That's pretty depressing...to have to resort to such measures is really low.

Mar 10, 2011 2:06 PM by Gone__Forever__

Ha. So the plagiarism issue is with Dragon Ball and not Saint Seiya. Cool

Mar 10, 2011 12:46 PM by mikhailn

I thought that every anime soundtrack was stolen from paying homage to another work. Usually composers are not paid generously and have tight deadlines for creating music.... which is often why you hear parts of classical works (whose copyrights have expired) or blatant style/melody imitations of other artists. Even most of the truly original artists tend to mimic the same "sound" as their previous works with variation in melody. It's safer and more profitable.

At least 95% of the music you hear is heavily influenced by or plagiarized from another work.... since actual originality puts so much pressure on time and budget. I'm not saying that's an excuse, but that immense pressure tends to lead artists down the path of theft..... the same way a student with only a few hours to write a report might try to grab excerpts from wikipedia.

Mar 10, 2011 12:38 PM by saka

And this isn't fully Toei's fault. Seems like when it rains it pours. This one is certainly a more grave charge than the idiotic Saint Seiya patent infringement.

Mar 10, 2011 12:10 PM by Leon-Gun

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