King Kai’s plan to revive the Great Elder among Frieza’s victims is based on chance, but the censored version makes his success more believable.
In 2010, dragon ball z kaI aired in English for the first time. There was only one problem; was airing on Nicktoons and the CW4Kids Toonzai block. As a result, American audiences had to watch the show with many things changed, censored, or omitted altogether. This led to eyes that appeared puffy instead of swollen shut, glowing balls instead of halos, and coughing up saliva instead of blood. They also removed all swearing and as many mentions of death or murder as possible. This last point caused some slight changes in the story.
One of the biggest changes is the way characters make wishes in Dragon Balls, especially resurrection wishes. Since there was an apparent limit to how often the censors would allow words like “dead” or “murdered,” the wishes that involved reversing these results had to be reformulated. This doesn’t sound like much, but there is a deceptive wish that King Kai had made to the Balls to bring back Frieza’s victims. The original wish was designed to exploit an intricate loophole; the censored version not only changed the loophole, but also gave a more reasonable explanation of its end result.
Understanding the gap will require an analysis of the situation. It all started in episode 50, “Freeza at full power! Shenron, grant our wish!” During Goku’s final battle with Frieza, Kami telepathically contacted King Kai. The Guardian of Earth informed the Lord of the Worlds that Mr. Popo had finished collecting the Earth Dragon Balls and that he planned to return the wish to the victims of the Saiyan invasion of Earth. The gears in King Kai’s head begin to turn upon hearing this.
King Kai asked Kami about the circumstances under which people could be revived. He learned that multiple people could be brought back with a single wish as long as they shared specified conditions (for example, being killed by the same person). The two went so far as to theorize that if the conditions involved indirect causes of death, even more people could return.
With Kami’s established rules in mind, King Kai ordered him to make a wish on Shenron to bring back all those who were killed by Frieza and his men. His logic was that among the victims should be the Great Elder, whose life was shortened by the pain he felt at the loss of his people; this would make his death the indirect result of Frieza’s killing spree. The plan worked, but the logic of the wish was questionable. Even King Kai admitted that the Great Elder’s return through this wish was “a big if”. In fact, the episode ended on a cliffhanger just as Shenron was granting the wish, leaving fans wondering if it would work.
Kai from DBZ The censored version of this conversation worked to change the way the wish was made. Instead, King Kai asked if a resurrection wish could apply if the person “confronted” the villain in question and lost, but his fate was not necessarily sealed because that villain killed them. This way, even if they died from indirect causes, they could still be brought back with the same desire to revive the villain’s victims.
With the new logic established by the censored version of this scene, a new wish was made: “to bring back everyone who was harmed by Frieza and his minions.” With this reformulation of the wish, even those who didn’t fight Frieza directly would be able to return. Anyone who was “harmed” by him or his men could be called one of his victims.
This version of the escape was especially important in the case of the Great Elder. While he was physically unable to fight, Frieza “harmed” him in the sense that he lost the rest of his career. Thus, he counted as one of Frieza’s victims and thus could be revived.
Nor did it interfere with the logic behind his official death. In the original version of this wish, he was given back the time that had taken his life from pain; when he ran out of time, he passed away again. While the idea of him dying of grief was lost in translation, it could still be interpreted as a natural death in the censored version. So his dying again shortly after returning still makes sense.
For all the strange choices made to censor DBZ Kai, this is one of the only ones that actually turned out better. The original version of this scene makes sense, but the logic was full of holes that made it feel like it shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. The censored version had a strong logic that worked for the way the story was presented. This version of the scene was reasonable and kid friendly.
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