The project originated after Kazuhiko Torishima halted supervision of Bandai's Dragon Ball merchandise over quality concerns with the Data Carddass line; Bandai's Keisuke Furusawa proposed rebroadcasting a remastered, filler-cut version of the anime as a stopgap and promotional tie-in while the merchandise issue was fixed.

According to Kazuhiko Torishima, Bandai originally asked Akira Toriyama if a completely new Dragon Ball anime could be made to boost merchandise sales, but Toriyama declined to write a new story, leading instead to the creation of a recut version of Z that stayed closer to the manga.

The title 'Kai' was personally chosen by Akira Toriyama himself, and according to producer Takao Koshita it carries the wish for fans to 'watch Dragon Ball Z again, anew'.

Many characters were recast for Kai, especially those whose original voice actors had retired or passed away, and new actors were often used even when the original actor was still active; this casting was largely carried over into later games and films starting with Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (2009) and Battle of Gods (2013).

In March 2011, Toei Animation announced that composer Kenji Yamamoto's new score for the first arcs infringed on third-party copyrights, forcing the music to be replaced retroactively with Shunsuke Kikuchi's original Dragon Ball Z score for reruns and home video releases; suspicions of plagiarism had already circulated online as early as May 2010 via videos on Niconico.

For the Majin Buu arc (second season), composer Norihito Sumitomo took over the score, and he continued scoring the franchise's new anime installments through the 2018 film Dragon Ball Super: Broly.

The first episode of Dragon Ball Z Kai set a series premiere ratings record for its total viewer numbers, and among tweens and boys aged 9-14, when it debuted on Nicktoons in the United States in May 2010.

Due to news coverage of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the intended 98th and final episode of the first season was never broadcast on television in Japan and was instead released direct-to-video in August 2011, with episode 97 becoming the de facto TV finale.

Episode 1 uses footage from the TV special 'Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku' to establish Goku's connection to Frieza in the prologue, an element that did not exist in the original Z broadcast.