I started this edit as someone who’d only really watched Dragon Ball Z through Kai but was interested in some of the extra material only in the original anime. My goal with Dragon Ball Kai Gaiden is to make these filler scenes from throughout the series feel more like meaningful side stories rather than just time wasters. To essentially inject the great moment-to-moment pacing of Kai, with some fun side stories. To do that, I removed a lot of the dead air, meandering scenes, and entire plotlines, particularly here with Gohan, that I felt didn’t add much and were expressed better elsewhere. By doing this I managed to cut what was 12 episodes in the original DBZ down to only 6, while in this section Kai only had 2 episodes. Not only did I shorten the arc, but I also rearranged certain storylines (such as the Planet Arlia Filler) to fit better with the canon material and give the overall structure a better flow than the original DBZ version. I think what I came to in the end strikes a nice balance of fleshing out the pre-Saiyan training while not having it drag on for too long.
In simple terms, think of DB Kai Gaiden as “DLC” for the original Kai that you watch inbetween certain episodes.
To achieve my goal, I not only had to cut and edit the filler down but also made sure it fit better with Kai by creating new recaps, endings, and eye-catchers. With the newly made recaps, I didn’t want to use Kyle Herbert’s narration, AI voices, or anything like that so the narrator has been replaced by simply using dialogue and SFX from the episode to summarize the previous episode. I think it works overall since it’s sorta like how it was in the original DBZ sub which used the narrator more sparingly in the recaps. The new endings are done the same way but that’s more similar to how it was already done in Kai so the difference is not so apparent. I think the eye-catches are the most interesting because I actually drew new ones specifically for this project based on the different filler arcs. They’re not perfect or match exactly with the official ones but I think they’re fun and add to the overall vibe of the project.
This project is only available in the dub since that’s how I watch Dragon Ball in general, plus it would add a lot to the editing load if I attempted a Japanese version as well. However, attempts are made throughout to remove extra or dumb lines from the Funimation dub, though not all. Each episode comes with two audio tracks: Kikuchi and Yamamoto. Both versions use the full range of tracks from each score, and for Kikuchi depending on the scene I used the original placements or did my own thing. It’s been really fun getting to play around with both soundtracks and seeing what I can come up with, though I personally prefer Kikuchi. I also decided for this project to keep the footage consistent by replacing all the Dragon Ball Z Kai footage with upscaled Dragon Box footage, which surprisingly wasn’t as hard to sync up as you’d think. Though it won’t be consistent during a watch-through of Kai it’ll look a lot nicer and it's not like Kai didn’t have ups and downs when it came to video quality. In the upcoming arcs of this project, I plan to use Neo Raws 16mm footage now that I have acess to it.
For this project, I also had to come up with a numbering system for the episodes. Whole numbers represent episodes that are meant to replace existing Kai episodes, so you would watch my version of Episode 6 instead of the official Kai Episode 6. Episodes with decimals (for example 5.2 or 7.1) are additional side episodes that fit in between the normal Kai episodes. These should be watched after the episode they branch from; for instance, in this arc you would watch Episodes 5.1–5.3 after the official Kai Episode 5.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with how this turned out; I can safely say this is the best editing I’ve done so far, despite the number of hurdles I had with my editing software. Though not perfect, I will definitely be adding these episodes to my next full watch-through of Kai and hopefully some of you will too! Next, I plan on working on filler stuff from pre-Namek (Yes, even Fake Namek) so look forward to that! Also, I will look into getting some English subtitles started for the episodes I already have completed.
Detailed Episode List and Changes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17IR ... p=drivesdk
Feel free to leave any questions or feedback you have in the comments, I’d love to hear whatver ya’ll have to say about the edit!
For a download link please DM me or check my Reddit profile. As always, support the official release!
Episode 7.1 of this arc leads directly into the vanilla Dragon Ball Z Kai Episode 8, in whatever format or with whatever score you decide! If you’re looking for some other DBZ Kai fan projects I’d recommend:
Dragon Ball Kai Z-Cut by ATOMIC_Kai
Several DBZ Kai rescores by Diccolo-420