Dragon Ball Kai/YMMV

• Alas, Poor Villain: Astoundingly, Ryusei Nakao manages to make Frieza's suffering as he laid dismembered and begging for Goku's help invoke the pity and sorrow that the latter felt from the audience this-time-round; living and breathing the character for the last 21 years helped him to bring a genuinely pathetic vulnerability and sincere "humanity" to his performance. Kenji Yamamoto's choice to use a heartbreaking cello score during the recut made the scene a borderline Tear Jerker.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Up to Eleven in Latin America, to the point that fans reportedly boycotted the series. The reasons? The massive censorship that the series had, but especially Toei Animation's replacing of most of the beloved original cast of the dub (which sadly brought lots of bullying and apparently even death threats against both the new cast and the director). The fallout from this also caused Toei to restructure their Latin American division and they would eventually bring back most of the original cast for the Kai dub of the Majin Buu Saga, much to the fans' rejoicing.
• Arc Fatigue: Even in Kai's heavily-edited form, the Frieza Saga still drags on quite a bit. It's actually significantly shorter than both the Cell and Majin Buu Saga, but it’s much less varied, making it feel monotonous as a result. It doesn't help that it has one of the few major filler plots to be retained. It’s still much, much better than what it was like on the original, unedited version of the show.
  • The Majin Buu Saga is guilty of this once again, taking up the entirety of Kai's final 3 seasons. What didn't help matters was the fact that the show's budget had shrunk considerably during the years Kai spent on hiatus after the end of the Cell Games Saga, causing a ton of filler material from the original DBZ to be left in as a result - including some that ended up creating major plotholes.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Dameon Clarke coming back as Cell with an improved performance, an updated Dragon Ball Z adaptation with experienced and new cast members who arguably fit the roles better than their predecessors and lack of filler.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • As noted elsewhere, the French dub is more faithful, as the dubbing team acknowledged that the original dub of DBZ was a mistake.
  • The Latin American Spanish Kai dub of the Saiyan, Frieza and Cell Sagas was met with very negative reception due to the rampant censorship and, most importantly, the fact that none of the original voice actors from the beloved DBZ dub reprised their roles. In the Kai dub of the Majin Buu Saga, where possible, all characters are dubbed by their original voice actors, and those that didn't (either by retirement or Author Existence Failure) got the voice actors that reprise them in Super. The negative reception mellowed out after this, but how the dub was before The Final Chapters can be seen as Never Live It Down to some.
  • The series in general helps with much of the Archive Panic that ensues for latecomers who attempt to watch the original DBZ, due to the latter's length and large amounts of filler.
• Broken Base/Nostalgia Filter/They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
  • Some hardcore Dragon Ball Z fans have denounced Kai as dishonoring the original series by removing much of the character inherent in the extended stories, while others enjoy the much faster-paced plot, due to most of the filler padding out fights and other scenes to a snail's pace.
  • People who grew up watching FUNimation's original DBZ dub decry Kai's change of dialogue (even though Kai's dubbed English scripts are far more accurate), the changes in voices (even though Kai benefited from Sabat, Schemmel and company gaining a decade of voice acting experience since the original dub), and the loss of Bruce Faulconer's music (which was intensely disliked by fans of the original Japanese DBZ back in the day).
  • The infamous "Cell Games Reenactment" incident that got Team Four Star blacklisted from working with FUNimation. Some fans are mad that their audio was cut before the episode aired, thinking that their performances should have been left intact, since it's their usual shtick of making fun of the series, just turned Up to Eleven, and they enjoy the self-parody the dub team tried to sneak in. Others are glad, however, because they are tired of the references of them and DBZ Abridged, or just don't like their shtick.
  • The news that The Ocean Group is in the works for a Canadian broadcast release has threatened to start up the Ocean vs. Funimation war once again.
• Crowning Music of Awesome/Ear Worm: Dragon Soul and Ginyu Tokusentai!
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series was much more successful overseas than it was in Japan, where it was seen as a pointless re-edit of DBZ for the show's 20th anniversary. It was only because of its success in the West that Toei decided to do a Kai version of the Majin Buu Saga. This likely has to do with the West's lower tolerance for Padding and Filler compared to Japan, making Kai a much more appealing proposition. The English dub also helped in this regard in terms of the acclaim it received. In comparison, the Japanese version was seen as a HUGE step down due to a significant portion of the voice cast either phoning in their performances or getting replaced by other seiyūs (e.g. Hideyuki Hori, Shozo Iizuka, Hirotaka Suzuoki and Tomiko Suzuki, the latter two having succumbed to Author Existence Failure).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Colleen Clinkenbeard was often mistaken as the voice of Gohan due to her role as Monkey D. Luffy. No guesses as to who she voices in Kai.
  • Nappa at one point said he hates the media in the Abridged Series, he actually says this line in the show, making this a possible case of Ascended Fanon.
• Narm: Sure, Gohan's screams are properly full of emotion... but some of them carry on so long that it loses the intended effect.
• Seasonal Rot: Just like its original DBZ iteration, the Kai re-edit of the Majin Buu Saga is considered to be this, thanks to the forced 16:9 cropping and a ton of filler from the original DBZ version being left in.
• Superlative Dubbing:
  • The English dub is close to flawless, since most of the voice actors have been voicing these characters for over a decade, on top of the scripting and translating being more accurate. The uncensored version in particular served as a template for subsequent dubs in the franchise.
  • The French dub team acknowledged that the original dub of DBZ was a mistake and delivered a dub that's very close to the Japanese original.
• Tough Act to Follow: A specific example with the English dub of the opening, "Dragon Soul" (especially the version sung by Vic Mignogna). It's generally considered to be an excellent and catchy localized Anime Theme Song to the point of Superlative Dubbing for some people, and subsequent English-dubbed Dragon Ball opening and ending songs haven't been able to live up to it for many fans, either due to awkward translation and lyrics (if dubbed by American artists) or for awkward, narmful Engrish (if dubbed by the original Japanese singers).