Kenji Yamamoto

Kenji Yamamoto composed the original background music and arranged theme songs for Dragon Ball Kai, the revamped version of Dragon Ball Z, covering episodes 1-95. In March 2011, Toei Animation publicly disclosed that Yamamoto's musical compositions had potentially infringed unidentified third-party copyrights, resulting in his dismissal. All music he created for the series was then replaced with scores from Shunsuke Kikuchi's original Dragon Ball Z soundtrack. Yamamoto also contributed to multiple Dragon Ball video game soundtracks across titles including the Budokai series, Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout, and others.

Yamamoto is a J-pop composer and arranger who has worked extensively on anime, tokusatsu, and video game soundtracks since the 1980s. He was a member of Healthy Wings, a collective of composers specializing in Super Sentai productions. Following the plagiarism incident and his dismissal from Dragon Ball Kai, his public activity became largely unknown. His career illustrates the complex issues surrounding music composition and intellectual property in anime production.