New Dragonball Z Live-Action Adaptation

With the memories of 2009's Dragonball: Evolution most likely repressed the Dragonball series' more adherent fanbases, California-based production studio Robot Underdog has been in production of its own take on the franchise. With roughly a year's worth of production work leading up to it, Robot Underdog released the Pilot episode of their series entitled Dragonball Z: Light of Hope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opji5DgE_nQ​

Similar to the endeavor undergone in the making of Evolution, RUD's adaptation is attempting to translate the iconic anime series into a live-action format. Beyond that and the production necessities that need come with it, similarities pretty much cease. Light of Hope is a project engaged in, by-and-large, by a cast and crew of Dragonball fans. Rather than crafting a new storyline, they've gone the avenue of adapting an existing piece of the franchise into the live-action medium. Interestingly, they've chosen a less-often seen story arc as the premise for their series, namely the History of Trunks special.

It's an intriguing choice on two accounts: that the History of Trunks and its accompanying media anime episodes, etc.) were really only visited briefly in the series, and are absent the series' primary protagonist, Son Goku.

A few of Become's thoughts...

Casting
On account of sheer looks Light of Hope's ensemble manages to stay faithful to the appearances of their respective characters.The closest-to-anime of these are Anton Bex and Amy Johnston as Son Gohan and Android 18 respectively. I definitely see Bex as an accurate image of Son Gohan, and Johnston is pretty much a bull's eye for Android 18. Tyler Tackett as Android 17 doesn't quite strike me as being as visibly foreboding as his character could be, and Jack Wald as Trunks seems a little young.

Acting
I'm no actor but... The cast seems to have their performance in good order. But there really hasn't been too much in the way of dialogue to draw any concrete conclusions.

Costuming
For some reason, live-action adaptations of pretty much any video game, cartoon or anime series comes across as (at least a bit) campy in the vein of costuming. The costumes for Johnston's Android 18 and Jack Wald's Trunks are less so than Bex's Gohan and Tackett's Android 17. I'd chalk that up to the former pair's characters simply having outfits that are more easily translated into real life in a serious manner. Admittedly, Tackett's costuming has its merit, and the character in the series proper did have a bit of an awkward outfit anyways (considering his status a bloodthirsty killing machine). Bex's costume is a more thrift-store looking getup, and could be made truer to Gohan's anime outfit from History of Trunks.

---Hopefully I've expressed myself well enough on this.
More Thoughts to Come; Likely With Discussion---​

 

I've been hesitant to really pass judgement on the acting, since I think a lot of that has to do with the pilot script seeming to focus more on the fight scenes. The choreography wasn't bad though; I'd say they could do to work on the camera work through them though.

 

Recent updates have shown that the cast and crew have taken to the production phases for the next episodes.

From this past March: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dptDCv7upow
And from April 29th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsZxrEzSuHs&list=PLIF1rSknrGBY5mDWaxDXt1LS7-aGRbpKg&index=2

They have every intention of keeping this going. From the more recent update, they had received enough donations to move forward with Episode 2, and are looking to get the last bit they'll need to put out a third episode as well.