Anyway, as for the topic itself... good grief. It's as if Kai can't NOT be a clusterfuck at any given time. One of the reasons I gave up on Kai a long time ago was just because of how impossible it was to actually own it. First there were two different aspect ratios. Then there were two different musical scores with various TV airings and home releases having different cutoff points for the change, different placement of music within each score, and now-out-of-print home release versions. It is now absolutely impossible to purchase anything even remotely resembling what was originally broadcast.
But with phase 2 of Kai and a new composer (as underwhelming as I find his music to be so far), I figured all of that was behind us, and all I'd have to be disgruntled about was the U.S. release being retitled and having FUNimation's dirty text all over it. Only now I find out there are two completely different versions of the show? And that the originally produced version was superseded by a recut version, technically making it the original version now?
On one hand, I do find myself rather relieved. Watching Phase 2 Kai as it's been broadcast has been a largely unpleasant experience for me. Its pacing has just been beyond terrible. It's nice to know now there's an actual reasoning behind it, and it's not just that they don't know how to edit. But really? Two different versions of the same show? It's almost as if Toei has been watching FUNimation closely over all these years, through their '96 edited dub, the orange bricks, the Faulconer score, and all the other crap they've pulled and finally said to themselves, "Pfft. Amateurs. We can do a much worse job than that!" Every day, Kai reminds me more and more of the freaking English dub of Z.
