News
Dragon Ball Z Kai to Air on TheCW4Kids on Saturdays
posted on by Egan Loo
The American anime distributor Funimation and the anime licensing company 4Kids Entertainment have announced that the Dragon Ball Z Kai action anime series will air on Saturdays during the 2010-2011 television broadcast season on TheCW4Kids programming block. Before the regular season premiere, TheCW4Kids will run "sneak peeks" of the anime during the summer, and the program will also be streaming from the www.4kids.tv and www.4kidstv.com websites.
Dragon Ball Z Kai is already slated to launch on Nicktoons, a spinoff of America's Nickelodeon television channel, in May. The television series condenses the 1989-1996 Dragon Ball Z anime series to more closely follow Akira Toriyama's original Dragon Ball manga. In addition to a digital high-definition remastering and a re-recorded soundtrack, Dragon Ball Kai also updates selected scenes with new effects or re-animated footage. The series premiered under the name Dragon Ball Kai in Japan last April, and it has consistently ranked among the top 10 anime in viewer ratings every week since.
Funimation had licensed the series for North America, and it plans to ship the first part of the series on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on May 18. The distributor already licensed both the Dragon Ball Z television series and the earlier Dragon Ball television series for North America. Funimation reassembled most of its original Dragon Ball Z cast for the English dubbing of Dragon Ball Z Kai, except for four new cast members. Viz Media publishes the original manga in North America.
Thanks to Daizenshuu EX for the news tip.
Update: More background information added.
Image © Bird Studio/Shueisha, Fuji TV, Toei Animation
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