Dragon Ball Z Being Re-edited and Re-dubbed for HDTV

B · Post by B » Sun Mar 01, 2009 3:46 pm

The season sets aren't necessarily bad either. The reasons I do not purchase them may or may not be the same as why, say, VegettoEX doesn't.

The way I see it, cropping isn't bad; you just have to be level-headed about it. Whining about a peice of cloud being gone and that Toei should be verbally smacked around like a wife who doesn't have her abusive husband's dinner ready like FUNi was is ridiculous.

Forgotten Hero · Post by **Forgotten Hero** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 3:52 pm

TheGreatness25 wrote:But you gotta admit that this will be an argument that loyalists bring up. Loyalists always put down the FUNimation stuff and now, I don't see anything wrong with the dubbies having something to sling back at them. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a good thing, but it will happen and as long as it's not turning into huge arguments it's fine. It's just an observation. That a lot of people are accepting this, when, really, what it kinda is, is the Season Sets with the brightness turned down, a new opening, and cut out scenes.

Perhaps this new film will be similar to the season sets, but do they, dub-fans, really know that? I was just lurking the internet for half an hour by searching Dragonball Kai on google. All of the pages were of small blogs or fan sites jumping all over themselves because of the idea of new stuff. But that's all they knew, the series was re-airing again. They praised it, like some of us did, right away. It's obvious that most, I guess, anime fans are so quick to praise any Toei does with their products that they forget to even double check the actual information in question.
I know we are special here in that we want to know everything and anything, but these sites and blogs either don't care to know or just plain can't get the information they want.

Velasa · Post by **Velasa** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 3:54 pm

... Oi. I wish they'd just reanimated things at this rate, because this is gonna be one ugly battle.

The colors? They look lovely. It'll be interesting to see things with less filler as well, see how things move and change. But the cropping..... I'll never agree with cropping. Never bought the Bricks despite not having that hunk of the show in Japanese because of cropping, and I'm not going to like it because Japanese people are doing it either.

Forgotten Hero · Post by **Forgotten Hero** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 3:58 pm

Velasa wrote:... Oi. I wish they'd just reanimated things at this rate, because this is gonna be one ugly battle.

The colors? They look lovely. It'll be interesting to see things with less filler as well, see how things move and change. But the cropping..... I'll never agree with cropping. Never bought the Bricks despite not having that hunk of the show in Japanese because of cropping, and I'm not going to like it because Japanese people are doing it either.

I really don't mind cropping, but my question is why? Why crop now? Toei, you've been doing the film stuff right for a long time...Why do something idiotic now? Please don't turn into Funimation...Everyone is turning into Funi...Why god WHY!!!

JulieYBM · Post by **JulieYBM** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:00 pm

It's not as terrible as FUNimation's cropping and the original is still available. Just ignore Kai if it matters that much to you.

Forgotten Hero · Post by **Forgotten Hero** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:03 pm

JulieYBM wrote:It's not as terrible as FUNimation's cropping and the original is still available. Just ignore Kai if it matters that much to you.

If you could clear some stuff up for me, what exactly have they done to the current master they are using? I know it's cropped and it's in HD. What have they done to it that is maybe similar to what Funimation has done.

JulieYBM · Post by **JulieYBM** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:08 pm

Forgotten Hero wrote:
JulieYBM wrote:It's not as terrible as FUNimation's cropping and the original is still available. Just ignore Kai if it matters that much to you.
If you could clear some stuff up for me, what exactly have they done to the current master they are using? I know it's cropped and it's in HD. What have they done to it that is maybe similar to what Funimation has done.

I don't know what they've done to the footage. It would seem likely it is the DBOX footage simply redefined (I don't know the technical terms) for...Blu-Ray level definition? Truly, I don't know.

TheMajinRedComet · Post by **TheMajinRedComet** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:17 pm

I am a little worried that they took the dragonbox (480p) masters and upscaled it to 1080, I really hope they made a brand new transfer from the Dragonbox stock at a HD resolution. Its hard to tell from Youtube.

Vekurotto · Post by **Vekurotto** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:17 pm

"God in heaven if this is cropped and has different music in the end please stop me from going to Japan and kicking the President of Toei Animation's ass."

That's my prayer for what looks like it's gonna be for something so dumb that you think Funimation would've done it. They might as well kick Nozawa out now since they're obviously trying to make something that's not Dragon Ball at all.

Forgotten Hero · Post by **Forgotten Hero** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:22 pm

JulieYBM wrote:I don't know what they've done to the footage. It would seem likely it is the DBOX footage simply redefined (I don't know the technical terms) for...Blu-Ray level definition? Truly, I don't know.

Ok thanks, at least I know that we don't know.

Vekurotto wrote:"God in heaven if this is cropped and has different music in the end please stop me from going to Japan and kicking the President of Toei Animation's ass."

That's my prayer for what looks like it's gonna be for something so dumb that you think Funimation would've done it. They might as well kick Nozawa out now since they're obviously trying to make something that's not Dragon Ball at all.

Umm...It's still gonna be Dragonball. It'll still have great voice actors and music and more stuff. Give it a choice.

JulieYBM · Post by **JulieYBM** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:24 pm

If people can call Sparking METEOR's score Dragonball how can they not call the promo's music Dragonball?!

linkdude20002001 · Post by **linkdude20002001** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:30 pm

I'm really looking forwards to Kai. The cropping actually looks good and so do the colors. In FUNimation's release of DBZ, it looks old and decrepit, while Kai looks new and amazing. Plus, the music sounds like it might be good; It reminds me of One Piece.

ChibiGoku · Post by **ChibiGoku** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:35 pm

Honestly guys? Toei has Dragon Ball Z on air in Japan, currently airing on Tokyo MX, BS Fuji, and countless reruns on Animax. Dragon Ball Kai is not Dragon Ball Z to them. If it was, I'm pretty sure Toei would have pulled it from the networks that are currently broadcasting it and put Dragon Ball Kai in it's place. As it stands, they are two seperate products. The original isn't going away just because this new product is coming out. DBZ will always be there in Japan. Dragon Ball Kai will probably also be there for years to come, along side the previous.

Really, there's no worry about them replacing one or the other. If you don't like it, don't watch it or buy it. If you do, well, support it.

Sorry if this comes off rude in any way for being the "new guy" around here, but that's my honest opinion on this subject.

sangofe · Post by **sangofe** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 4:53 pm

TheGreatness25 wrote:Wait. Didn't they say they were not going to crop and they were just going to add footage to the sides? Yeah... I can see that worked out splendidly. Though the selective cropping is nice, they kinda lied about it too.

No, that was never said by Toei.

Marty Kirra · Post by **Marty Kirra** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:13 pm

I'm not really a fan of what's going on here. I firmly believe that a total reanimation would've been a better idea than cropping and doing whatever else they've done.

They're not doing anything particularly spectacular here. I was hoping that after the special we'd get a more modern, revitalized series. The special was absolutely beautiful and amazing. I'm sure it wasn't wrong for me to expect that the announcement of a "refreshed" Dragon Ball Z an announcement for a "reanimated, redubbed, and reedited" Dragon Ball Z.

But if this leads up to a new Dragon Ball series, I'm up for it. I'm just not really all too excited for Kai as it is.

SonGokuGT · Post by **SonGokuGT** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:13 pm

The colors look really nice. I think that the cropping is something I can deal with since it's done as SELECTIVE unlike FUNimation's automated crop-fest. The picture quality will also be kept intact since these seem to be carefully remastered. The one thing I don't like is that the barckground music seems to have been completely rewritten. I was hoping for a re-recorded version of Kikuchi's original DBZ score. I won't judge it, but I'm still a little disappointed.

B · Post by B » Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:19 pm

Vekurotto wrote:"God in heaven if this is cropped and has different music in the end please stop me from going to Japan and kicking the President of Toei Animation's ass."

Yeah, replacing orchestral music with orchestral music would just murder this franchise.

In short:

Hero 004 · Post by **Hero 004** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:23 pm

This is so, so exciting. It's like TOEI is 1up-ing FUNimation. Well they're actually 5 up-ing them with what a REAL re-mastered Z should be! It's a great idea to not only add some footage (Bardock? Yay!), but take away some filler as well.
I really, really, really hope that this makes it to the U.S. after it's done in Japan. If I get DVD versions of this series, then I'll have an old, grainy, full screen version of DBZ and a new, clean, widescreen version. But the kind that I want to have, not the FUNimation season sets which, to me, will be even more pointless if Dragon Ball Kai makes it over.

MajinVejitaXV · Post by **MajinVejitaXV** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:29 pm

Wow, this is hilarious. I get the feeling that FUNimation supporters were pissed the past two years about all the shit people (rightfully, in my opinion) gave FUNimation about their 'remaster' job, and now that Toei is doing something that has some similar qualities they're taking the opportunity to strike back at the 'elitists' that bashed their fandom.

Problem is, it really doesn't work.

When FUNimation did their job, while their promotional materials were bashed, most of us did decide to wait until the final release to make a final decision about their work. Mainly because their promotional materials were highly inconsistent, but still...

Meanwhile, we've seen two ads and a commercial now, and people are flipping their shit. I mean, seriously? A 15 second ad? That's the great evidence people are using? I mean, yeah, I knocked on FUNi's bullshit explanation with their picture of Kaiosama back in fall of '06, but that was mainly (if not entirely) because of their logic being so full of holes. This is literally people going, "Ah-ha! SEE, SEE?! THEY'RE DOING THE SAME THING!" Based on 15 seconds. Bravo.

Let's seriously look at this though:

Toei: Released the entire series, painstakingly remastered with a new telecine from the generation zero prints in the correct aspect ratio.

FUNimation: Made three aborted attempts to release the show, from digibetas, then made a new telecine from later generation prints with an 'autopilot' cropped remaster job, as shown in their own extras (which were so powerfully derided that FUNi stopped putting them on the sets). This is the only version legitimately available in English speaking territories.

__________

Toei: Decided to 'refresh' (their words, not mine) the series with a new version, using existing materials and some additional animation, for HD broadcast and release. This version, per official word (Wasted Wisher doesn't count, since people liked to use his quotes as being directly representative of Toei), will have the original cast re-record their parts entirely, have the music re-recorded (not re-scored, at least per what we've been told) and having pacing changed among other things. This version will be cropped, but it appears it will be done in such a way that scenes will be reframed and animation added to make the scenes fully fit a 16:9 frame.

FUNimation: Decided to 'remaster' the series by acquiring film prints from Japan. Using a local post production house, FUNimation telecined the prints at 1080p and had automated cleanup and color correction performed. The prints were also scanned in such a way that they were cropped to 16:9, always preserving the picture at the center of the film creating some framing issues. FUNimation also had their cast do some new ADR work, however they also left some vocals from the original broadcasts and some from the UUE sessions. As a result, the dub included is a hodgepodge which sometimes has jarring variation. FUNimation also added the original Japanese score as an option, along with the original broadcast score, however not all songs were included in their entirety due to unknown issues.

__________

I'm not going to keep going on and on, but seriously...this is just goofy at this point. If people are this eager to "stick it to the purists" or whatever, wait until the show airs. I'm not fully on board yet, I'm just interested to see what happens. If they do a job comparable to FUNi, then fuck them too. If they do a better job, and it does appear more effort is being put into it just from what we've seen, then who loses really?

-Corey

Super Sayian Prime · Post by **Super Sayian Prime** » Sun Mar 01, 2009 5:30 pm

You know, it always annoyed me when people questioned FUNimation's remaster. Since it is a remaster, as a remaster is simply using the source master and making a copy of it, usually to update the format type, or to allow a restoration to occur. They took their old film and mastered it into HD, therefore it is a remaster. You can call shit if they called it a restoration, but AFAIK they never did.

Kanzenshuu

Dragon Ball Z Being Re-edited and Re-dubbed for HDTV

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