Anyone catch this?

[penguintruth]

I disagree. It's their show. If the fans want a better copy of it, they need to express their desire for one until the company who made it decides to give us one. Getting some second-hand reproduction that's "remastered" by someone else, especially an outfit that made its bones changing and warping the show, is a slap to the face to the original product as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, Toei allows Funimation to do basically what it will with it, but that doesn't mean they should. I've had about enough of their "improvements" for a lifetime. Took them over a decade to even put out a competent dub for show.

[Perfect]

I disagree. It's their show. If the fans want a better copy of it, they need to express their desire for one until the company who made it decides to give us one. Getting some second-hand reproduction that's "remastered" by someone else, especially an outfit that made its bones changing and warping the show, is a slap to the face to the original product as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, Toei allows Funimation to do basically what it will with it, but that doesn't mean they should. I've had about enough of their "improvements" for a lifetime.

This seems like a false dilemma. The rights are not exclusive to Toei (which is their own logical and smart decision), therefore other companies have the right to do so if they please (if they're allowed). The fans plea and wait or nothing is the dilemma, whereby even assuming that if millions of fans did cry out to Toei (in any medium), there'd be no guarantee. If it's not going to make back the amount of money it took to create it and more, it just won't happen. The alternative is to let the concrete take its course--operate as it lives. Hence the dilemma is false and fallacious. Then again, its an adherent to an appeal to tradition, which doesn't make much sense, and if FUNimation wasn't the conclusion, I almost feel your sentiments would be different; in which case it would just be a structural error--a formal fallacy. Then again, to make that assumption would risk grasping straws, so I'll hold there.

Toei allows FUNimation to do as they please as Toriyama allowed just about everybody to do as they pleased. They should release a remastered version if they're competent and the original distributor isn't doing anything, thereby benefiting from the market (supply and demand). The level sets were professionally done and looked amazing, the hues were just tad bit too dark, but far superior to anything Toei released within this millenia. While I blew hundreds on my Dragon Boxes, I'm content with them and likely wouldn't buy another version of the series. That's solely due to the fact I'd rather have the collector's edition, as opposed to something new and modified for posterity and money (whether it's from Toei or FUNimation). The season sets were garbage, sure, but they sold extremely well. They shouldn't have done that to the fans, but they should have for the sake of making money. I'd imagine the shitty job they did on them allowed little expense to be paid on their making, hence more green for them and ultimately larger budgets for latter Dragon Ball products.

It isn't Toei's show so long as they've handed out the licensing, at least pertaining to the contracts signed (hence Toei has to allow certain things to go down). If someone can do it better than them, good, let them. It's not their responsibility, and it's not Toei's, such is not indigenous as an entitlement to any fan. FUNimation's no more in the wrong as Anabasis Investments was for being the studio that produced First Blood's movie adaptation.

[MCDaveG]

I recently bought the Cowboy Bebop set from Japan, and man oh man, that is great. Sure it's 1080i for some strange reason, but the quality of the picture and audio blew me away.

Isn't that set obsenely expensive?

I'm thinking about importing the UK set, which will be the same thing.

Anyway, the Cowboy Bebop remaster is something that was done by the Japanese. I will leave remastering anime to the Japanese. Which is why I refuse to (knowingly) buy any of Funimation's remastered stuff (unless it's the only possible option, and even then reluctantly). It's not their place to remaster anything. They didn't make the show. I'm not interested in how they think I should watch it.

I think the Level Sets are too dark, anyway.

Shhh, off-topic, I have the UK set of Cowboy Bebop and it looks wonderfull on my HD TV

[penguintruth]

Your basic argument is "Hey, let's let them screw up until finally they get something right."

We're not grading on a curve here. The fans have been very patient with Funimation (well, the ones who weren't immediately dazzled by their bullshit version of the show and only object now when they actually show it some respect, the crazy DBZ fan logic in America), and again and again they've shown little but disdain for the product and its fans.

"Sure," you might say, "but you don't have to buy everyone one of their products. Just wait until the one that does it right comes out and in the meantime let them do as many releases as it takes to get to the right one." Not terrible reasoning. When Funimation pimps its fortieth release of DBZ it means more money for them to do things more precisely and respectfully later on, sure. But when they decide that what they do is improving the show and present it as if it is their show to do it with, it damages the integrity of the work.

Funimation has a responsibility to the product, to at least ATTEMPT to respect it as a work of art. Fine, they're in the business of making money. But arrogantly dragging the show through the mud and telling us how much better it is for doing so isn't to be praised, it's to be criticized.

Funimation can spearhead as many remasters as they want, but it's not their place to improve on a show that they didn't write, didn't animate, didn't direct, didn't fund, didn't produce, didn't have a damn thing to do with other than marketing it to North America. Sometimes I think the only reasons I give them my money at all for this franchise is because theirs are the DVDs and Blu-Rays that will play in my machines and I cannot speak Japanese.

[Perfect]

Your basic argument is "Hey, let's let them screw up until finally they get something right."

You're grasping straws. [See final paragraph]

We're not grading on a curve here. The fans have been very patient with Funimation (well, the ones who weren't immediately dazzled by their bullshit version of the show and only object now when they actually show it some respect, the crazy DBZ fan logic in America), and again and again they've shown little but disdain for the product and its fans.

FUNimation's handled the series better than most companies have handled anything anime related in the US, especially in latent years. Dragon Ball fans are extremely lucky, to say otherwise is objectively wrong.

"Sure," you might say, "but you don't have to buy everyone one of their products. Just wait until the one that does it right comes out and in the meantime let them do as many releases as it takes to get to the right one." Not terrible reasoning. When Funimation pimps its fortieth release of DBZ it means more money for them to do things more precisely and respectfully later on, sure. But when they decide that what they do is improving the show and present it as if it is their show to do it with, it damages the integrity of the work.

It doesn't matter how many releases they make, looking at your original statement, it isn't their place due to their nationality (which is fallacious); and later competence which has improved immensely. It is their show to do it with so long as they're within the bounds of their licensing agreement, it doesn't matter what you say. The integrity was never damaged, so long as the ends justify the means, as they do in this case.

And with that I'm off for the night.

Funimation has a responsibility to the product, to at least ATTEMPT to respect it as a work of art. Fine, they're in the business of making money. But arrogantly dragging the show through the mud and telling us how much better it is for doing so isn't to be praised, it's to be criticized.

They have a responsibility for releasing what they were given initially, which was trash. They went out of their way to make it better, and they excelled on some releases and failed on others before they actually copped out something worth while. In the case of Kai, they didn't screw up on releasing it, because Toei didn't given them a shoddy worn product. You're misunderstanding perspective here. It is to be praised from a financial point of view, not as a fan. Such a stance allowed for glorified releases. And for the record, they did attempt to "respect it as a work of art" even before the season sets. Attempt you assert as a key word, which ultimately breaks your argument on the grounds of either ignorance or looking the other way. Had the focal point in the latter half of the sentence been to accomplish, then you would have had something.

Funimation can spearhead as many remasters as they want, but it's not their place to improve on a show that they didn't write, didn't animate, didn't direct, didn't fund, didn't produce, didn't have a damn thing to do with other than marketing it to North America.

It doesn't matter if they didn't do those things, it's fallacious and illogical. It mentions nothing of competence and adheres to a strict bias, which contributes to being fallacious. By your broken logic, it's not a studio's place to adapt a movie unless the original author wrote the screenplay or direct it (or something ridiculous as you've stated), because it isn't inherently their work. The fact they didn't do anything of the aforementioned has nothing to do with quality, hence the LP I mentioned quite sometime ago. It is their place to do so if they please to do, so long as they're competent (either financially or productively) and within legal bounds.

[penguintruth]

I have no interest in this franchise as a financial entity. I have interest in it as a piece of art. If the product doesn't reflect the art respectfully, I couldn't care less how successful it is.

The free market doesn't fix everything. It doesn't fix the degradation of creativity. And it doesn't fix the arrogance of secondary rights holders.

[VegettoEX]

Thanks for the heads-up, Krycek7o2. I'm a little bummed you went and disparaged a fellow community member in your response over there, though. There's absolutely nothing wrong with explaining what you feel are faults or mistakes in the production of a product, much like folks are continuing to do in this very thread about several FUNimation products.

I, for one, also notice and occasionally get annoyed with the audio being slightly out of sync on the Dragon Box sets. I also come from an editing background, where particularly in the AMV world, things like timing beats and clashes frame-accurately is incredibly important. When a hit isn't on the frame it's supposed to be, I notice it. It's like when you've never seen interlacing in your life, but as soon as someone points it out to you, it can never be un-seen. The sound being off was a pain in the arse trying to do my custom "Bardock+" video editing project.

You've also got plenty of people talking about the audio being out of sync in the dub versions of movies. This isn't some weird, "no-one could ever care about this" type of thing. People notice stuff.

[omegalucas]

The image says "Episodes 1-31". That doesn't with Dragon Ball, since episode 31 is the first two connected filler episodes with Goku and Chi-Chi, so I wouldn't call it a 'season finale'.
Lets check the other series: in Z, 31 is the famous beam struggle between Goku and Vegeta, so it's right in the "middle" of the Saiyan Arc; in GT its right in the middle of the Baby Arc, ending with the appearance of Uub; in Kai its the arrival of Goku in the Freeza Arc. None of these episodes are the end of a 'season', at least not in the way FUNi has done before with earlier releases...

[VegettoEX]

Well yeah, FUNimation's never had a firm grasp on what a "season" is, but DB TV episodes 1-31 is certainly what the first blue brick went through. That lines up.

My biggest problem here is that I can't independently confirm that page indeed says what the screen shots say it said (if that follows ). Nothing like Google Cache has the original version of the page archived.

[PhoenixEX]

batmaniscool70 (the one who screen-grabbed the first image) from the Blu-ray forums says:
"I went to bed and when I got up it was changed. But I did not close the original tab I had open. So I took a screen grab.
So what is going on. Is there going to be a dragon ball blu-ray? or was it just a mistake? Did anyone else see this? Can someone answer me?"

Why open up a new tab and retype the web address when you could just have refreshed the original tab? I call fake.

[VegettoEX]

I'm not saying to call it a fake. It's certainly possible. It's likely, even, that FUNimation has a new DB product up its sleeves.

But I can't report on this without being able to verify it myself. That has nothing to do with the individual that first posted about it, and it does not speak to their character at all. I do not know them, have no rapport with them, etc.

I do question the logic of having the page up and then loading up a new page to refresh it. I do question it being at the bottom of the list in an easily-removable location. That's all just possible coincidence, though.

[PhoenixEX]

I agree and I would love if this were to be real as I myself prefer the Blu-ray sets over the Dragon Boxes, but it just seems to good to be true. I mean why would FUNimation even remove it? Do they plan on surprising us by releasing a trailer first?
Remember the whole Sparking Omega fiasco? Someone could easily be trying to start something like that up again. I guess time will tell if this is real or not. Or maybe someone should just message FUNi themselves and see what they say.

[Ryuman]

I agree and I would love if this were to be real as I myself prefer the Blu-ray sets over the Dragon Boxes, but it just seems to good to be true.

I wouldn't get your hopes up, seeing as the episodes included line up with the Blue Bricks.
EDIT: And the fact it specifically says "Season 1"

[Gokuden]

Hello Daimakku,

That is not how Blu-Ray works son, all these 'old animes' you've seen in the past were originally recorded at higher resolutions than even 1080p (like 2000p, 4000p, or 8000p, etc) in large film, they were then downscaled for viewing on ye olde tube box, from there you lost all the detail that came with the original 'master' recording of their proper object.

So you're wrong son, you've been viewing DragonBall all these years with a vast amount of quality loss to your unknowing.

I recommend doing some research before spouting stuff like that, which may sway public opinion on this release the wrong way.

Blu-Rays are the ''Beyond Super Saiyan'' of the AVS community.

[Krycek7o2]

Thanks for the heads-up, Krycek7o2. I'm a little bummed you went and disparaged a fellow community member in your response over there, though. There's absolutely nothing wrong with explaining what you feel are faults or mistakes in the production of a product, much like folks are continuing to do in this very thread about several FUNimation products.

I, for one, also notice and occasionally get annoyed with the audio being slightly out of sync on the Dragon Box sets. I also come from an editing background, where particularly in the AMV world, things like timing beats and clashes frame-accurately is incredibly important. When a hit isn't on the frame it's supposed to be, I notice it. It's like when you've never seen interlacing in your life, but as soon as someone points it out to you, it can never be un-seen. The sound being off was a pain in the arse trying to do my custom "Bardock+" video editing project.

You've also got plenty of people talking about the audio being out of sync in the dub versions of movies. This isn't some weird, "no-one could ever care about this" type of thing. People notice stuff.

I know it was out of line. I do apologize for that. I guess it was one of "those moments" to be honest. Now that I know of the sync issues, well a few months ago, it's tad annoying, but I'm still able to switch my brain off to not notice.
And I've done my fair share of complaining, so to me actually go out and complain about complaining is just idiotic. Trust me, I think I've complained about releases a bit more than just related to DB, so I am bit embarrassed by that remark.

As for the AMV world, I completely understand. But as any release, not everyone can be pleased. I know that, it's just (at least to me, and I know I can ignore these comments) that make out a company to be the end-all bad guy, which is bit a annoying.

[Craddle]

Picture credit from the Blu-ray forums: batmaniscool70

It was pretty weird. I heard of it through the BD forums and went over to check it out.
It was originally posted here: http://www.funimation.com/news
But then it was updated/changed a few hours later.

In case you don't see it: Dragon Ball Season 1: BLU-RAY!!! And not...

Anyone here have any investigative skills?

On the first image you will notice it has "No comments" the second image has "99 comments." However if you go to FUNi's blog, those "99 comments date back to Sept. 22 2011. So how could they not be there? I think this was photoshoped by batmaniscool70. I will talk to Rojas today to find out if he really did post this and take it down.

[kei17]

I recently bought the Cowboy Bebop set from Japan, and man oh man, that is great. Sure it's 1080i for some strange reason, but the quality of the picture and audio blew me away.

They had to leave it interlaced because the show was a mixture of cel animation in 24p and digital animation in 29.97i.

[Sin]

I doubt it was a photoshop, it'd be easier to just edit the webpage and add another row and input the information.

Another thing to notice is that the text saying 'Dragon Ball - Season One - Blu-ray' is the same format as other hyperlinks, and since all of the other titles in the table link to an Amazon listing it would imply that that title too linked to one.

However looking on Amazon there are no new listings to correspond. So I'm pretty convinced this is a fake having looked at all of the things people have said and drawing up my own conclusion. I pretty much just agree with everything VegettoEX said, I'd need more verification or at least for someone credible to vouch for this information.

[Krycek7o2]

I recently bought the Cowboy Bebop set from Japan, and man oh man, that is great. Sure it's 1080i for some strange reason, but the quality of the picture and audio blew me away.

They had to leave it interlaced because the show was a mixture of cel animation in 24p and digital animation in 29.97i.

Its that really it? Because I've heard conflicting reports on that. A couple guy at another site have been analyzing the footage and have stated that the digital animation was indeed 24p.
It'll be easier if I copy the message.
Here's quote:

The CG is 24fps too. The true 30p/60i parts comes in really small segments across some episodes. Generally, the first 20 episodes are linear full 24fps. From 21 to 26 there are some segments with 30p parts, some other that have wrong pulldown (moving character has one kind of pulldown, while the moving background have another kind of pulldown) and 2 episodes where the pulldown pattern change at every scene change (but can be re-built to 24fps with some work).

[kei17]

I doubt this is really happening because the original DB is less popular than DBZ in the US. They won't bother to pay a lot to remaster it in HD.

Its that really it? Because I've heard conflicting reports on that. A couple guy at another site have been analyzing the footage and have stated that the digital animation was indeed 24p.
It'll be easier if I copy the message.
*snip*

I've checked it out and it turned out that the ending was done in 29.97p. They made every entire episode interlaced only for the sake of the freaking ending which is just a slide show.