@eerie:
"Lost momentum."
To who? To the japanese viewers? That's why they cancelled?
Lost momentum to the spirit of the manga.
If the entire series had been filler free as it was intended and originally advertised, it would have fit about 110 episodes pretty easily, and they would have gotten the entire series to fit into the time it ran. By cutting out episodes that were pure filler (like Garlic Junior, Otherworld tournament, Gohan in High School, and random training episodes) they should have been able to ditch some 60 or 70 episodes whole cloth, and by trimming the pace down on the padded recap "lets just stare at each other and taunt while powering up for 20 minutes" or "lets spend an entire episode on Frieza transforming into his final form which took one panel in the manga" episodes, they should have been able to easily cut the count in half from there.
The average manga chapter of 19 pages equals about 6 or 7 minutes of screen time normally paced. Less if its heavy fighting, more if its a lot of dialogue. Basically, on average two chapters fit comfortably per episode, three chapters per episode if its fight heavy. If they'd only done the manga material and kept up their early pace, the heavily padded 291 episode original would have easily trimmed down to about 110 episodes of decent pace.
Math ahead.[hide]
Instead the padding was back in force come Freeza, and especially Cell. By cutting filler they were done with the original 39 episodes in 17, which was the first 45 chapters of the manga, about 2.6 chapters per episode. (And that was with them still leaving in a lot of filler, like stuff with Bardock, Gohan getting lost, and Krillin visiting Chichi. Trimming that stuff out they could have gotten to 3)
They were done with the entire Freeza saga by episode 54, which was originally episode 107, chapter 135 of the manga. At that point they were able to cut Garlic Junior entirely, which put them at 118. So 78 chapters in 37 episodes, or down to only 2.1 chapters per episode, and that's with the fillerific 10 episode Garlic counted. Not counting, thats 68 chapters in 37 episodes, a much less impressive 1.8 chapters per episode . (While still leaving in some utter worst filler in the series crap filler like Bulma the frog.)
And then, between episodes 54-100 they were only able to manage the Cell saga, which in the manga was chapters 136-226. A lot of material, a little shorter than Frieza and Vegeta combined. But that's 90 chapters in 50 episodes… again a pace of 1.8. They barely trimmed the filler fat on it at all. If they'd kept the pace they'd had on Vegeta (which was still leaving in a lot of fat) they should have been able to get through it in 30-35 episodes instead of 50.
Instead they went "nah, forget putting effort into this" and just left it bloated and to fill out the run.
325 chapters of the "Z" saga. 3 chapters per episode, (nearly the pace they had for the first few episodes, and with filler still) comes out to 109 episodes, just a little more than they did. A more bloated and with filler 2 episodes per chapter comes out to 162. A lot more episodes than they did of Kai, but still easily only half the extremely bloated original anime run of 291 episodes.
For the record, the Buu saga in the manga was 98 chapters, a little longer than Cell, It should have been doable in 35-40 episodes... and had Cell ended around episode 80 like it should have... [/hide]
Basically at the start of Kai they were easily fitting nearly three manga chapters per episode, and that was with filler still in there. By the middle of Frieza, they were down to 2 chapters per episode, and by Cell it was less than that.
Still an improvement over the series original pace of 1.1 chapters per episode, but not by much.
