Movies 1 and 2 Blu-ray and DVD Editions

[ultimateemail5000]

I didn't see a thread about the BD releases so I thought I'd make one. I just got this on my door step yesterday, and the quality on the disc is great. They don't look like they were done by the same person who remastered the series. Unless it was just the way the film was. Also the insert songs that involve Gohan being drunk, and day dreaming about Piccillo, were either re-composed without vocals(just like how they re-made the DB opening and closing theme songs), or they just used the instrumental versions. To me that's exceptable, and way better then Funimations very poorly done guitar string solo on their movies 1-3 boxset. Any rate, this is worth picking up if you have a blu-ray player.

[NeptuneKai]

Also the insert songs that involve Gohan being drunk, and day dreaming about Piccillo, were either re-composed without vocals(just like how they re-made the DB opening and closing theme songs), or they just used the instrumental versions.

No .gif can describe my anger right now.

[Metalwario64]

Let's just hope they do that for Spirit Vs. Spirit in Season Six...

[Kaboom]

Let's just hope they do that for Spirit Vs. Spirit in Season Six...

Same here/ Hopefully, they'll get rid of Gohan's dialogue, but I suppose that's expecting too much.

Then again, Solid State Scouter technically has "vocals," and that ended up being kept, so you never know. We could be surprised.

[bkev]

It wouldn't bug me as much if they hadn't already used the songs for the Pioneer editions; they obviously have access to it, don't anyone bother defending them by saying they don't.

Anyone care to clip this and up it to youtube?

[MagicBox]

Also the insert songs that involve Gohan being drunk, and day dreaming about Piccolo, were either re-composed without vocals or they just used the instrumental versions.

Hmmm, I'm not really sure how to feel about that. All I know is that I'm pretty tired of FUNimation promising the Japanese music in the dub and then holding back when it comes to vocal songs. I'm not talking about cases like "Battle-Colored Warriors" or "Mind, Power... Ki" where we can't be 100% sure if FUNi even had those songs to work with in the first place, but with "Head-Cha-La" and the two movie insert songs, which have been frikkin' used in previous English dubs, there's no reason for FUNi to exclude them.

*sigh*, it's better than what we had before, and I guess while not totally ideal, it's still the best the English dubs of the first two movies are ever going to be. The instrumental versions of "Tenkaichi Gohan" and "Piccolo-san Daisuki" are a thousand times better than Menza's and Johnson's music for those particular scenes, so we do have an improvement, and we should be grateful for that to at least some degree, I guess. Plus, it's better than FUNi removing the songs entirely, which is what I was honestly expecting to happen. I'm still disappointed, though.

Oh well, at least all of these problems are eliminated when I switch over to the Japanese version.

Two more questions from me, ultimateemail, if you could kindly answer them:

Does FUNi at least keep "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" for the openings in the English-dub-with-Japanese-music tracks? How about "ZENKAI Power" and "Ikusa" for the two ending songs? Do they all make it into the dub safe and sound?

Glad to hear the picture quality is better than expected. Hopefully the regular DVD release turns out just as problem-free in that area.

[ultimateemail5000]

Does FUNi at least keep "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" for the openings in the English-dub-with-Japanese-music tracks? How about "ZENKAI Power" and "Ikusa" for the two ending songs? Do they all make it into the dub safe and sound?

Cha-la is still replaced with Funimations official US theme song, while the ending credit song's are still intact, completely in Japanese.

It wouldn't bug me as much if they hadn't already used the songs for the Pioneer editions; they obviously have access to it, don't anyone bother defending them by saying they don't.

I kind of feel the same way. Although I'll accept what they did at the same time, I just don't understand why they would make these changes.

There's also one thing I forgot to mention, durring the Cha-la sequence in Dead Zone, instead of Gohan running on Shenron, and every warrior flys by him. They replaced that sequence with a shot of open land. I'm not sure if that was in the pioneer intro or the UUE, just once again another "why would they do that?" question that will never be answered.

[MagicBox]

Cha-la is still replaced with Funimations official US theme song, while the ending credit song's are still intact, completely in Japanese.

Well now I'm extremely disappointed. At least the ending songs are unharmed. But still, why replace "Head-Cha-La?" They let it stay in the Burdock special. There's two dub tracks now; there's no reason for crap like this. Keep the dub music in the dub music track and give us the true opening, FUNi.

There's also one thing I forgot to mention, durring the Cha-la sequence in Dead Zone, instead of Gohan running on Shenron, and every warrior flys by him. They replaced that sequence with a shot of open land. I'm not sure if that was in the pioneer intro or the UUE, just once again another "why would they do that?" question that will never be answered.

I think that's how the original first animation for "Head-Cha-La" went, with certain scenes being land shots, before the more popular second version of the opening emerged in episode 22 or something. I believe there was a scene of the Kinto-un flying across a dark sky filled with lightning as well, if I'm not mistaken.

EDIT: Found it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNcDJQ4-qwI

It's like that, right?

The opening's like this in both the dub and the original version? So wait, are you saying Toei finally gave FUNi a creditless version of the first animation for the opening?

[Castor Troy]

Most obvious reason was that Funi was lazy and never noticed the vocal songs were on the japanese vocal track rather than the BGM track. When they removed the japanese vocal track to insert the dub track, they probably didn't notice they removed the songs.

It looks like funi doesn't even spot check after the finished product. Then again, I can't blame them if they're forced to watch DBZ footage all day.

[Levlik]

I'm not the least bit surprised the insert songs are gone, but hey, I'd rather have instrumentals than either silence or Menza's music. It's times like this I'm glad I own the Pioneer DVDs for movies 1 and 2.

One quick question, though: Is the commentary track from the 2005 release of Dead Zone intact, or has it been cut? I've always wanted to hear it, but never bothered picking up the new DVD.

[Conan the SSJ]

In the Japanese version, when Gohan collapses after knocking Garlic Jr. into the Dead Zone, is there a Hannah-Barbara type sound effect? Because there was for the redub/First Strike release. Same question applies for the dub w/t JP BGM and dub w/t Menza BGM tracks (the latter had the real *thump* sound effect that the Pioneer and Dragonbox Japanese versions do).

There's also one thing I forgot to mention, durring the Cha-la sequence in Dead Zone, instead of Gohan running on Shenron, and every warrior flys by him. They replaced that sequence with a shot of open land. I'm not sure if that was in the pioneer intro or the UUE, just once again another "why would they do that?" question that will never be answered.

That's how the opening sequence is supposed to be. DBZ movie 1 used the same intro that DBZ episodes 1-21(?) used, which FUNi didn't get for either digi-beta or film masters for those series releases. FUNi didn't replace anything, they're presenting it uncut. If it weren't present, that'd be a bad thing.

[ultimateemail5000]

Yeah that is the intro. I couldn't remember if I saw that opening or not, guess I forgot about it.

I can't remember if the Hannah-Barbara sound effects were included. I was listening for them, but I don't remember if I heard or not. I'll check later, I know exactly where those SFX are. But if I'm not mistakened, I don't think they are intact.

[Conan the SSJ]

I can't remember if the Hannah-Barbara sound effects were included. I was listening for them, but I don't remember if I heard or not. I'll check later, I know exactly where those SFX are. But if I'm not mistakened, I don't think they are intact.

Thing of it is, it's just one sound effect in particular. You may catch it when Gohan's eyes glaze over with his collapsing sound, as already said, after he's knocked Garlic Jr. into the Dead Zone. The sound effect was originally in the Pioneer dub, along with numerous other different sound effects. But this specific one somehow made it to the Japanese version of the "Ultimate Uncut"/First Strike release, while its dub (w/t Menza music obviously) has the real *thump* sound effect as heard in the Pioneer and Dragonbox Japanese versions. It's quite confusing, I know, but it'd be much appreciated if we could get news on how the new encoding of DBZ movie 1 fares in this small area.

[theoriginalbilis]

I don't have the Blu-ray, but I did get the DVD release in the mail a couple days ago. I will say this, even though the TV series "remaster" looks like crap most of the time, I noticed NO problems with the video quality of Movies 1 & 2.

- The colors are a lot closer to the Dragon Box transfers, especially when compared to the older DVD releases of these movies. (The Pioneer DVDs, the First Strike box set.)

- I noticed nothing of significance missing due to the cropping either, due to the movies being framed for 16:9.

- Nothing notable in the way of bad compression, artifacts, or macroblocking.

Here's some screencaps from Movie 1 (uncompressed, of course.)















My opinion? If you can't get ahold of the Dragon Box versions, this is still a very high-quality DVD/Blu-ray release. Plus the fact that it has the Japanese audio w/ subtitles, and the dub w/ both music tracks. Even though, I hate the fact they didn't leave in the insert vocal songs, they used instrumentals of them instead. But the dub does leave in ZENKAI Power & IKUSA at the end of the movies though. I recommend this set either way.

I'll try to post some caps from Movie 2 later tonight.

EDIT: To answer the "sound effects" question, on this release, there is no Hanna-Barbera sound effect in Movie 1 for neither the dubs nor the Japanese track. Everything is the original M&E.

But Movie 2 has a peculiarity with it's dub track. Specifically, the dub w/ JPN music track. They used the M&E audio from the Ocean/Pioneer dub of Movie 2. What I mean, is that the original music is intact, but it has those "changed" sound effects from Ocean's dub, even though the vocal track is obviously FUNi's cast.

If you've seen the Ocean dub of Movie 2, you know what I'm talking about. But on the dub w/ US music track & the original Japanese track, these extra sound effects aren't there at all. Very strange... but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the movie at all.

[MagicBox]

Okay, so what we know so far:

Pros:
- The ending vocal songs are left intact.
- The added sound effect has been removed from the Japanese track of movie 1.
- Video Quality has gotten a major upgrade, and nothing of concern has popped up as of yet.

Cons:
- "Head-Cha-La" has been removed from both movies in the dub.
- Movie 2 has the added sound effects from the Pioneer release.
- The insert songs have been removed and replaced with instrumental versions.

Dammit, I knew some problem would come up that was harmless enough for me to still buy the set, yet major enough to make me regret doing so at the same time. The old Pioneer dub sound effects? C'mon, FUNimation! They couldn't have been stupid enough to add the sound effects into the old background music track they got from Toei a decade ago and not keep a clean, unedited copy, could they?

The screencaps do look good, though. So, I gotta ask, how distracting are the sound effects? I haven't seen the Pioneer/FUNi dub in years, so I don't remember at all. Are they added in every few seconds, or is it a rare occurance that we hear an added sound?

I have another question. I'm not sure how much of a dub fan you are, theoriginalbilis, but by any chance, if you've watched the dubs in their entirety, did you notice any script differences between this release and the "First Strike" boxset? The Ultimate Uncut release scripts for these two films were about as perfect as one could hope for, and I'd hate to see anything changed for the worse due to FUNi's "revised" English dialogue gimmick.

Also, is the commentary kept, or is this a barebones release?

[ultimateemail5000]

If he means the Hannah Barbara sound effects, they are not distracting at all. I only remember 1 in Dead Zone. When Gohan falls over there's a cartoonish falling noise, that is taken out on the re-re-re-release of movie 1. In Movie 2 there's a dream sequence fade noise that was added, I believe I heard it. It can be heard when Gohan wakes up after his music note. Last but not least, Movie 3 made a weird noise when Goku stands up at the table. That's all the Hannah Barbara sound effects I heard in those movies. Not a big deal really.

[Kaboom]

Also, is the commentary kept, or is this a barebones release?

I'm particularly interested in this question, as well. It's not THAT important, but since I've picked up the Pioneer release of movie 3, and am going to get these, I'll have well-dubbed with Japanese BGM versions of the first 3 movies, and can sell my First Strike set. I kinda like the commentary, so I'd like to know if they kept it (I can do without it either way, though).

[bkev]

Well, I guess it's custom DVD time! I'm just gonna put my movie 2 Ocean dub audio with the FUNi DVD.

It beats France's movie set for sure.

[Kendamu]

I already have the Pioneer versions and, flaws and all, I still love them to death. I might grab FUni's versions once I have money again. Depends on how far I get along in collecting TMNT stuff that I want to get this year.

[Slickmasterfunk]

Those shots look amazing. I didn't even know this was out yet, so I'm going to have to go to Best Buy and get this on my shelf next to the movies 8 and 10 Blu-ray!

EDIT: Just realized it doesn't come out officially until the 27th. Where did you guys orders yours to get them so early?