Dragon Ball Z "Seasons" On Blu-ray: News & Discussion

[Metalwario64]

Larger artwork for S4 & 5

Spoiler:

Freeza is sliced up -- No reasoning whatsoever (Trunks should have been back there)
Artificial Human No. 16 aiming at Trunks -- He doesn't like to hurt good innocent people so this is rather odd again
Dr. Gero seems to be screaming -- "Don't leave me, Vegeta!"

Not to mention the overall poor drawings, proportion issues (Piccolo looks really thin), Trunks' hair sits on his head oddly, and 16, one of the tallest characters in the arc, if not the tallest, looks really short and stubby.

[kei17]

Out of curiosity, I compared the framings of different releases.

(Click for larger image)

[Sin]

This might sound stupid, but does that mean the Dragon Boxes are missing roughly as much footage horizontally as the Season Blu-Rays are missing vertically?

[Ajay]

This might sound stupid, but does that mean the Dragon Boxes are missing roughly as much footage horizontally as the Season Blu-Rays are missing vertically?

The white bar is how much width the Season sets have over the Dragon Boxes. The black is how much height the Dragon Boxes have over the Season Sets.

Given that Dragon Ball was meant to be seen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the horizontal gain is ultimately meaningless as the framing was done with a larger vertical view in mind.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

This are generally known as Music & Effects tracks (M&E for short).

And they look like this:

Spoiler:

(© Kami Sama Explorer Museum)

16 mm magnetic tape:

Spoiler:

Minoru Yokota (assistant of the person responsible for sound effects) is working on some early Dragon Ball Z episode:

Spoiler:

(© Kami Sama Explorer Museum)

Larger artwork for S4 & 5

Spoiler:

Freeza is sliced up -- No reasoning whatsoever (Trunks should have been back there)
Artificial Human No. 16 aiming at Trunks -- He doesn't like to hurt good innocent people so this is rather odd again
Dr. Gero seems to be screaming -- "Don't leave me, Vegeta!"

Not to mention the overall poor drawings, proportion issues (Piccolo looks really thin), Trunks' hair sits on his head oddly, and 16, one of the tallest characters in the arc, if not the tallest, looks really short and stubby.

Don't forget about HORRIBLE look of the digital colouring.

Out of curiosity, I compared the framings of different releases.

(Click for larger image)

Spoiler:

I knew that sooner or later, somebody will do a professional framing comparison. Now we can forget about convincing people that 16:9 is bad (although, it was already pointless).

[dbboxkaifan]

Superb comparison that is to see which has the most picture of all and that ends up being the Level BDs over the Dragon Box Z / Dragon Ball Kai 4x3 AR Version but to be honest we're not missing too much as if it were Widescreen.

I guess that with TVs (Curved TVs and all) being Widescreen even more so if it's remastered again (cropped) then more footage will be eliminated. At some point they'll have to move on from re-remastering Dragon Ball Z.

[Big Momma]

And they look like this:

Spoiler:

(© Kami Sama Explorer Museum)

16 mm magnetic tape:

Spoiler:

Minoru Yokota (assistant of the person responsible for sound effects) is working on some early Dragon Ball Z episode:

Spoiler:

(© Kami Sama Explorer Museum)

This is amazing. Where do you guys find some of this stuff? I've never run across it on the site.


EDIT: I just came across "Kami Sama Explorer Museum" and saw the previous thread made about it/the flickr account. Could anyone tell me why people got in "trouble" for making previous threads?

[Puto]

This might sound stupid, but does that mean the Dragon Boxes are missing roughly as much footage horizontally as the Season Blu-Rays are missing vertically?

The white bar is how much width the Season sets have over the Dragon Boxes. The black is how much height the Dragon Boxes have over the Season Sets.

Given that Dragon Ball was meant to be seen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the horizontal gain is ultimately meaningless as the framing was done with a larger vertical view in mind.

Nope. You're doing it wrong.


Black: How much horizontal resolution is lost in the Dragon Boxes.
Blue: How much horizontal resolution is lost in the Level Sets.
Red: How much vertical resolution is lost in the Blu-ray Season Sets.

Did these by stacking the lost footage on both the left and right and top-bottom in both cases, then painting them over in the right colours.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

Given that Dragon Ball was meant to be seen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the horizontal gain is ultimately meaningless as the framing was done with a larger vertical view in mind.

As kei17 explained before, the footage at the sides was not only meaningless but sometimes it was meant not to be seen. The staff knew that the sides will not be shown on screen and they didn't care much for what will appear there.

EDIT: I just came across "Kami Sama Explorer Museum" and saw the previous thread made about it/the flickr account. Could anyone tell me why people got in "trouble" for making previous threads?

I have no idea but I guess that they posted scans of things that are still in print (available to buy). Flickr states that all scans from Kami Sama Explorer Museum are shared under a Creative Commons license.

[Ajay]

Nope. You're doing it wrong.

Uh, Excuse me? Exactly how am I 'doing it wrong'?

Take a look here: http://i.imgur.com/muPhpvK.jpg

The black bars show how much gain there is for Dragon Box sets compares to the Season sets vertically. And the white bars show how much gain there is for the Season sets against the Dragon Boxes horizontally.

You take those distances and stack them as I did and you get my chart. What is 'wrong' about that? How exceptionally rude. We essentially had the same method. Just because you made a chart that better highlights the differences doesn't negate my efforts. The hell is wrong with you?

As kei17 explained before, the footage at the sides was not only meaningless but sometimes it was meant not to be seen. The staff knew that the sides will not be shown on screen and they didn't care much for what will appear there.

Yup, that's exactly what I was getting at.

[xmysticgohanx]

As kei17 explained before, the footage at the sides was not only meaningless

I can say the same thing about the footage at the top and bottom. I still have yet to see evidence of bad cropping on the season sets.

[Ajay]

As kei17 explained before, the footage at the sides was not only meaningless

I can say the same thing about the footage at the top and bottom. I still have yet to see evidence of bad cropping on the season sets.

You only have to look at the four panel shot to see one example. The cropping certainly isn't bad, it's just not done nearly as well as what Toei did with Kai, not to mention the general ethics behind doing it.

[eledoremassis02]

I can say the same thing about the footage at the top and bottom. I still have yet to see evidence of bad cropping on the season sets.

The cropping is a huge improvement from the orange bricks. They were framed for 4:3 so some things will get cut off.


Again though, these are overall a huge improvement cropping wise. How did kai handle this?

[Ajay]

Again though, these are overall a huge improvement cropping wise. How did kai handle this?

The camera was placed further down the frame so you have far less of Raditz's hair in view. You could actually see Gohan crying.

[dbboxkaifan]

I can say the same thing about the footage at the top and bottom. I still have yet to see evidence of bad cropping on the season sets.

This is easier than you think.



Cropped out: Ten's face



Cropped out: Ten, Lunch and Yajirobe.



Cropped out: Mr. Popo and Yajirobe's face



Cropped out: Dragon's eyes

There's plenty of other moments which they've done bad cropping, one being Nail's mouth is cropped.

[JackyBoi99]

Sorry to go off topic, but I finally got to watch an episode on the new season blu rays and wow........it is the sharpest that dragon ball z has ever looked, the colours are super bright and the background jittering was incredibly distracting.

[JackyBoi99]

Very poor release

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Out of curiosity, I compared the framings of different releases.

(Click for larger image)

This is a "this is how seriously Dragon Ball fans take their stuff" joke just waiting to happen here. But I cannot find the proper way to phrase it...

[Puto]

Uh, Excuse me? Exactly how am I 'doing it wrong'?

Take a look here: http://i.imgur.com/muPhpvK.jpg

The black bars show how much gain there is for Dragon Box sets compares to the Season sets vertically. And the white bars show how much gain there is for the Season sets against the Dragon Boxes horizontally.

You take those distances and stack them as I did and you get my chart. What is 'wrong' about that? How exceptionally rude. We essentially had the same method. Just because you made a chart that better highlights the differences doesn't negate my efforts. The hell is wrong with you?

Then how on Earth did I end up with a huge difference whereas you got them nearly identical?

Either way, I apologise if I sounded rude. Wasn't my intention.

[Ajay]

Then how on Earth did I end up with a huge difference whereas you got them nearly identical?

Either way, I apologise if I sounded rude. Wasn't my intention.

Because we're not comparing the same thing. You're comparing total loss for each release whereas I was comparing gains in each direction compared to each other rather than the entire frame.