Dragon Ball Z Kai

Dragon Ball Z Kai, known in Japan as Dragon Ball Kai, Doragon Boru Kai; lit. "Dragon Ball Revised", is an anime series that is a high-definition remaster and recut of Dragon Ball Z, done for its 20th Anniversary. It premiered on Fuji TV on April 5, 2009 at 9:00am just before One Piece and ended on August 25, 2011 with 98 episodes, and the two shows are being marketed together as 'Dream 9', which refers to the hour in which they both air. Two issues of Shonun JUMP have included some primary information about the series.

The "Kai" in the series' name means "updated," "modified," or altered." Interestingly, despite the series being only a director's cut of Dragon Ball Z, The Z has been completely removed from the title (at least in the Japanese version).

FUNimation Entertainment has been dubbing Dragon Ball Kai into English for a North American release, under the release title of Dragon Ball Z Kai (more information can be viewed below). On April 26, 2010, 4Kids Entertainment announced the series has currently aired on The CW's Toonzai block in its 2010-2011 season. The show has also been airing premieres on the Nicktoons since May 24, 2011, and ended on January 1, 2012. This is quite a change, as all the Dragon Ball series have almost always appeared on Cartoon Network in the United States. 

A new anime series based on the Toriko manga has since debuted in April 2011, and took over the Dragon Ball Kai time slot at 9 AM on Sunday mornings before the One Piece anime series.

Toei Animation stated that the Dragon Ball Kai episodes would be edited to more closely follow Akira Toriyama's original story in the manga, resulting in a faster moving story, and to remove any damaged frames. Dragon Ball Kai minimize the filler material produced for Dragon Ball Z's original production run. On the broadcast episodes, only a few minutes of filler material with no impact to the story have been left in (like Gregory's appearance at King Kai's planet, who wasn't present in the manga), probably to help the chapter reach its full 20 min.   

Happinet (the Japanese company releasing the series on DVD and Blu-ray) announced the Japanese DVD and Blu-ray release would have an end point of "99 Episodes (tentative)" meaning the current planned and announced episode count will end at 99. Actually, Dragon Ball Kai was supposed to last for 98 episodes, but everything had originally been thrown off an entire week due to the horrific earthquake that struck Japan the prior week. The series ended in 98 episodes as of August 25, 2011.