Is it worth watching along with DBZ?

Actually , no.

Z had a lot of fillers , but not only full episodes , there was a lot of scenes as well.
The most well known ones are those on Namek , where Goku and Freezer are face to face staying still for whole minutes , or when the episode suddenly switch to another character, like with the father of Bulma on earth , to switch back to Goku and Freezer around the end of the episode.

Such cases are not counted as fillers on list made by fans , but they still are.
Kai removed all of that , and kept only what was shown in the Manga , aside from 1 or 2 scenes. (Like when Goku stays under water)



Kai is literally the true version tho , it's the same as the original Manga.

You can says the same about every other Animes with fillers , they add more content after all.
But that really does sounds like you are blinded by nostalgia...

It has nothing to do with pseudo-elitism tho.

The Animes are merely adaptations, derived product. The original work is the one who built everything of the story, by the vision of the Author himself. You may prefer the adaptations (i do too for a lot of cases, especially Dragon Ball), but that doesn't change the fact that the Manga is the original source material.

It would be a different case if the Anime is an Anime-original story, a Spin-Off expanding the universe, and extending the Canon (with the approval of the original Author, of course). Or even with WebNovel & their Light Novels fixes. With the WebNovels being amateur-ish works, polished and then professionally published works, using the WebNovel as a merely draft for it, kinda hard to choose which one is the real story without the opinion of the Author himself.

That's a whole another subject.

As far as i know (i didn't read the Manga, but only saw a few panels), the adaptation of Bocchi The Rock was made with a lot of love from the staff, and really sublimed the Manga a lot, almost even "giving it an heart". It's no surprise people prefer it over the Manga, maybe even thinking that the latter is straight up bad.

I have a similar opinion about Kara no Kyoukai.
I liked the Novels, but the Movies adaptations skipped a lot of dialogues (Novel adaptation...), accentuating the confusion, suspense, and mysteries of the story. While it's not very good from an adaptation standpoint, i believe it goes even better with the story and its tone (with on top of that incredible animation, musics, characters design, ect.). But how it happened in the Novel still is the real point of view of the Author of his story, and nothing will ever change that. (Nasu is a very peculiar Author, so it's really not the best example... He really would re-write everything if we allowed him to.)

And still, we are only talking about a few changes or deletions here, but it may be a complete re-interpretation of the original work.
The only perfect example i have on top of my mind is the Movie Scarface, with Al Pacino (a Movie that i love, and which profoundly impacted me).
Many aren't aware, but it's in reality a total re-interpretation of a Movie from 1932, which itself is an adaptation of a Novel from 1929. While they both are about the ascension of a small gangster, all the setting is completely different (the historical period, the location, and the illegal products, mostly). To me, the Scarface of Al Pacino is no doubt better than its counterpart from 1932, or the Novel, but the real story, how it "really happened" for the creator, is the "countepart".

I understand what you mean, but i fail to see the connection with what i was talking about with the "real version" of a story ?

Unless you are simply referring to their crazyness about their head-Canon ? In this case, near all people i came across were simply joking, and not actually really delusional. I tend to avoid the 10 year olds kids on internet and their social networks such as Tiktok/Twitter tho, so maybe i'm wrong.



If the staff successfully sublimated the source material, experiencing the "superior" version first may disarray when switching to the "downgraded" one.
Many people uses words when thinking of another definition, and not the one you could expect of tho. For example, them saying the Manga is bad could really well in reality mean that they simply don't like it as much as the Anime. Such thing is extremely common, especially with buzz-words. (It's not rare to see threads on MAL with users saying "So mid. 8/10.", when they just like the entry without loving it.)

I mean, the only differences are the pacing, the soundtracks, and the dimensions of the screen. The spirit and vibe of the show itself is the very same, but these three changes can makes it feels different, especially if you have nostalgia for the old version. How much different it will feels, is up to you.

Well, it depends on what you consider the "spirit" of the work.

The story and characters are the exact same. While some scenes were censored, some other were also added, more or less counter-balancing it. The soundtrack and voice acting match well. The storyboarding is great.

The only major difference is the pacing, especially of the fights. The Manga is fast paced, and the majority of the fights ends really quickly. Meanwhile, the Anime expands (a lot !) on them, by adding hundreds of exchanges. (Kai reduced it, but it's still more present that in the Manga.)
Honestly, yes, the Manga had these pictures of tall guys, shirtless, covered in blood and sweat, fighting themselves to death with punchs and lasers, but it's something that really was exacerbated in the Anime.

@RobertBobert As someone who has re-watched both DBZ and DBZ Kai many times in the past, I say this: if you already decided to watch DBZ, the original one, in the nearest future, then go for it. The main difference between the two shows, for a someone new to DBZ part of the story, is the amount of episodes. It's because DBZ has a decent amount of filler content of various kinds (I will explain it briefly below), and DBZ Kai stays more faithful to the story flow as it was portrayed in the manga.

If you won't feel like checking up the manga after finishing watching DBZ, i.e. out of curiosity or to see how the story looked like in the source material and to admire Akira Toriyama's marvelous paneling and art, then you can give DBZ Kai a try after completing watching DBZ. As I said before, it's closer to the story as seen in the manga, due to all fillers getting removed. I'm talking here about both filler episodes and arcs, and filler moments intertwining non-filler scenes. It's also free from many stretched out moments known from the original. They had their charm, though I think you'd enjoy watching them portrayed from slightly different perspective when it comes to pacing.

After checking our anime affinity, I see you've already started watching DBZ. I hope you have been enjoying it so far.

People who are so salty about Kai and recommend to just "watch DBZ without filler eps" must've forgotten that filler eps and arcs weren't the only type of anime original content appearing in the original DBZ, lol.

Anyway, if someone might stumble upon this thread with similar thoughts in their mind, I sat that either way of consuming DBZ content is good. Dragon Ball is Dragon Ball, after all. You just need to decide which version you might find as funnier to watch. Both of them are great pieces of anime, although truth to be told, not to sound like a manga elitist, the manga is, of course, superior. ;]