Episode #0367 (10 August 2014)

[VegettoEX]

Episode #0367 (download MP3) (rss feed) (subscribe in iTunes) (YouTube version)
59:16; 96 kbps, mono; 40.9 MB

Episode #0367! VegettoEX, Hujio, and Herms review the North American theatrical English dub debut for the film "Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods". Has FUNimation's experience and new initiatives with "Kai" set the stage for this film? What leftovers from the early days made their way into the final product? Listen in for the full scoop!

Referenced sites:

• "Battle of Gods" North American Debut Coverage
• "Battle of Gods" Grosses $1 Million Opening Night in the U.S.
• "Battle of Gods" Special Extended Version Documentation
• What is the name of the God of Destruction? (It's "Beerus"!)

Enjoy!

[Ajay]

Great episode.

I'm definitely looking forward to the experience of the film hitting the cinemas here. I can't imagine the UK fanbase will be quite as passionate as the American one but either way, it should be fun. Fortunately, my first theatrical experience will be in Japanese at the Scotland Loves Anime fest so that should be an absolute blast if everyone there is a fan of the original language too. Will definitely catch a dub screening too though!

Pretty positive thoughts all around on the dub from you guys though - that's really reassuring! Although I've been very iffy on a lot of the clips they've put out so I guess we'll see how I enjoy it as a full product.

That's interesting that 'Beers' was used and credited to Steve Simmons. I figured at this point everyone had pretty much settled on Beerus. Was never a fan of Beers (as valid as it is).

I still find it so surreal that a new Dragon Ball film is in cinemas around the world. Crazy.

[Vegard Aune]

You brought up the resolution of the film... Yeah, Battle of Gods was definitely not a 1080p production. Actually from what I can tell, very few anime-movies are done at that high a resolution. Actually off the top of my head... the only examples I can think of are the K-On! movie, and Studio Ghibli's films... Then again don't Studio Ghibli still use traditional, hand-drawn animation stored on 35mm film? But it's like, while I was in Japan I saw five anime-movies in theaters; Studio Ghibli's then latest films The Wind Rises and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, Battle of Gods, the AnoHana movie and the third Puella Magi Madoka Magica movie. The last three films were clearly not done in 1080p. Like, the Madoka-movie looked freaking amazing, but the lineart still looked rather fuzzy on such an enormous screen, and I've since taken screenshots from the BluRay to check in my usual method of checking such things (basically just downscaling a 1080p screenshot to 720p, then scaling it back up again, and seeing if it looks any different) and confirmed that, yeah, it was not full HD. And that movie pretty obviously had far more time, effort and money put into it than Battle of Gods, which practically eminates cheapness in every aspect.

[Gaffer Tape]

So glad I've finally seen this so I can now stop avoiding every time this subject comes up. I missed so many podcast episodes because I didn't want to spoil anything until I saw the movie.

[sailorspazz]

Man, listening to you guys' experience makes me want to go out and watch the movie again! (there's a local independent theater that's still tempting me with showings through the 17th...and for only $5...hmmmm) Though I doubt I could recreate that amazing opening night experience. I imagine the crowd will be smaller, which would at least mean I could hear some lines I missed due to uproarious laughter the first time around. But I'll probably be good and wait for the DVD release (and in the meantime, watch it in Japanese some more ).

It's something I forgot to mention in the "post your experience" thread, but I kinda felt the same way you guys did regarding watching the theatrical version after having seen the extended version. Especially since this is the first time I've watched this version after watching the extended edition a couple times, there were several scenes where I found myself thinking "man, that was a sudden jump. Definitely could've used that extra padding." And I definitely missed the fun extra scenes like Rock-Paper-Scissors with Beerus and Oolong. With the UK release supposedly being the extended version, we should be getting the same version in America, and I look forward to seeing the dubbed versions of those scenes, too (and, unlike the olden days, I won't feel the need to play the Japanese version subtitles along with the English dub to see if they're being accurate!)