Funimation's 30th anniversary collectible home video release

[SqueakyBoots]

Panel was a washout. Damn. No idea as to when they are going to announce more info.

Elaborate? Washout is a pretty vague term, at least to me...

Funimation's twitter account spent the entire day yesterday live tweeting the Code Geass movies. I'm going to assume whatever their panel was did not feature any new announcements.

[KBABZ]

Panel was a washout. Damn. No idea as to when they are going to announce more info.

Elaborate? Washout is a pretty vague term, at least to me...

Funimation's twitter account spent the entire day yesterday live tweeting the Code Geass movies. I'm going to assume whatever their panel was did not feature any new announcements.

Gotcha. Oh well.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Truth is, i really hope that isn't the case because it's been ages since we had a proper release with the original aspect ratio and the picture being left as is without an automated smear fest.

Assuming that the 30th Home Release isn't a premium package of the Blu Bricks with a statue (GOD I hope it's not that!), it wouldn't make sense to make a product that caters to that existing customer base. Anyone who hasn't bought the Blu-Bricks will likely be holding out due to the reasons many of us have: 16:9 crop, horrible grading, and overly-extreme DNR. With the 30th Anniversary this year AND Toei doing a rescan of the series (if indeed they are, I don't think it's been confirmed that they have), it'd be a great reason to push out a more definitive issue of a product you're already selling.

Yes, i have my fingers crossed that this new release isn't simply a straight repackage of the Season BD's. If FUNi and Toei are in a joint collaboration on this it just wouldn't make sense for them to do that. I guess we will have to wait and see until the specs are released for us to truly know what it is we are getting here.

It's about time they give the series it's due and put out a release that isn't utter garbage in terms of the video quality, we have really been long overdue for it.

[Scsigs]

There is another announcement date that would be very problematic to 4/1

Maybe it WILL be April 3, 4/3, to go along with the Dragon Balls where we'll get the first wave announcement for the set for the earliest information on the video & audio quality, with more to come later on. Then those might also take a double meaning with them keeping the series in 4:3 due to these remasters being in HD already &, thus, don't need to be cropped by FUNi like Kai 1.0.

My man, that's just how Akira Toriyama intended for Dragon Ball Z to be seen. /s

What could possibly go wrong between a company that censors their content and one that crops series/movies really poorly? Let's hope for the best, still.

Gotta love cynicism.

[KBABZ]

Yes, i have my fingers crossed that this new release isn't simply a straight repackage of the Season BD's. If FUNi and Toei are in a joint collaboration on this it just wouldn't make sense for them to do that. I guess we will have to wait and see until the specs are released for us to truly know what it is we are getting here.

It's about time they give the series it's due and put out a release that isn't utter garbage in terms of the video quality, we have really been long overdue for it.

For me, I can see Toei's involvement being one of two things:

Repackage: If it's a repackage of the Blu Bricks, then Toei is there mainly for work on the included book, and to make it seem like they're more involved with the US side of the celebrations.
Rescan: If it's the rumored Toei HD rescan, then Toei's involvement will help make the set look like a bigger deal than Funi's own remaster for the Blu-Bricks. And/Or, Funimation's assistance will mean that this set (or a version of it) will see a more global release, meaning that this same set may be sold in Japan as a multi-region (or maybe even region-free) bilingual offering, supporting both Japanese and English audio and menus.

As a side-note, despite their deservedly bad reputation with remasters, I've always wondered why Toei hasn't used Funimation for that type of service in the past. We know from the Ultimate Uncuts and the Level sets that they ARE capable of turning out great scan remasters from third-generation masters, so could you imagine what they'd be capable of if they could do a great remaster from the original master?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Yes, i have my fingers crossed that this new release isn't simply a straight repackage of the Season BD's. If FUNi and Toei are in a joint collaboration on this it just wouldn't make sense for them to do that. I guess we will have to wait and see until the specs are released for us to truly know what it is we are getting here.

It's about time they give the series it's due and put out a release that isn't utter garbage in terms of the video quality, we have really been long overdue for it.

For me, I can see Toei's involvement being one of two things:

Repackage: If it's a repackage of the Blu Bricks, then Toei is there mainly for work on the included book, and to make it seem like they're more involved with the US side of the celebrations.
Rescan: If it's the rumored Toei HD rescan, then Toei's involvement will help make the set look like a bigger deal than Funi's own remaster for the Blu-Bricks. And/Or, Funimation's assistance will mean that this set (or a version of it) will see a more global release, meaning that this same set may be sold in Japan as a multi-region (or maybe even region-free) bilingual offering, supporting both Japanese and English audio and menus.

As a side-note, despite their deservedly bad reputation with remasters, I've always wondered why Toei hasn't used Funimation for that type of service in the past. We know from the Ultimate Uncuts and the Level sets that they ARE capable of turning out great scan remasters from third-generation masters, so could you imagine what they'd be capable of if they could do a great remaster from the original master?

At least i hope it's the second one of the two, that would make more sense for the 30th anniversary than just simply repackaging the current BD's but i guess we will just have to see when the release is announced.

[thaman91]

For me, I can see Toei's involvement being one of two things:

Repackage: If it's a repackage of the Blu Bricks, then Toei is there mainly for work on the included book, and to make it seem like they're more involved with the US side of the celebrations.

Would you be able to call them the Season Blu-rays rather than "Blu Bricks"? Because there's a Dragon Ball DVD release that we call the Blue Bricks, so your naming can possibly create some confusion.

As a side-note, despite their deservedly bad reputation with remasters, I've always wondered why Toei hasn't used Funimation for that type of service in the past. We know from the Ultimate Uncuts and the Level sets that they ARE capable of turning out great scan remasters from third-generation masters, so could you imagine what they'd be capable of if they could do a great remaster from the original master?

The Level Sets were great, however the Ultimate Uncuts were not a remaster, but rather just a straight up transfer of their old tapes.

[KBABZ]

Would you be able to call them the Season Blu-rays rather than "Blu Bricks"? Because there's a Dragon Ball DVD release that we call the Blue Bricks, so your naming can possibly create some confusion.

I started calling them that after seeing a few users here do it. Maybe if I add a hyphen, so Blu-Bricks? Y'know, like Blu-Ray?

The Level Sets were great, however the Ultimate Uncuts were not a remaster, but rather just a straight up transfer of their old tapes.

Ah, gotcha! For some reason I felt like the UUEs and Levels were that identical in their history.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Would you be able to call them the Season Blu-rays rather than "Blu Bricks"? Because there's a Dragon Ball DVD release that we call the Blue Bricks, so your naming can possibly create some confusion.

I started calling them that after seeing a few users here do it. Maybe if I add a hyphen, so Blu-Bricks? Y'know, like Blu-Ray?

The Level Sets were great, however the Ultimate Uncuts were not a remaster, but rather just a straight up transfer of their old tapes.

Ah, gotcha! For some reason I felt like the UUEs and Levels were that identical in their history.

I have said before that if FUNi had used their existing digibeta masters back in 2007 for the season sets albeit with a little touching up, it would have been a much better situation than what they did with the cropping and automated DNR'ing.

[Metalwario64]

Would you be able to call them the Season Blu-rays rather than "Blu Bricks"? Because there's a Dragon Ball DVD release that we call the Blue Bricks, so your naming can possibly create some confusion.

I started calling them that after seeing a few users here do it. Maybe if I add a hyphen, so Blu-Bricks? Y'know, like Blu-Ray?

The Blu-ray sets don't use the brick style packaging though, or am I mistaken?

[Shaddy]

The joke is that like the orange bricks, they're shit. I think it'd make more sense to just call them the HD Orange Bricks, but whatever.

[Char Aznable]

Did FUNi put the Blu-ray or orange brick version on FUNimation Now? I checked out one the episode where Freeza transforms to his second form on it of curiosity recently and my only thought was how shitty it looks. They wouldn’t actually have the gall to rerelease that and call it a special 30th anniversary edition, would they? Then again like I said, I’m pessimistic about this.

[Metalwario64]

The joke is that like the orange bricks, they're shit. I think it'd make more sense to just call them the HD Orange Bricks, but whatever.

The reason they were called the orange bricks is because the shape and size of their packaging were akin to bricks.

Calling the BD sets "HD Orange Bricks" makes even less sense, because they're neither orange, nor bricks.

[KBABZ]

The Blu-ray sets don't use the brick style packaging though, or am I mistaken?

No, but they're the Blu-Ray equivalent, right? The collection is orange and one big box, so maybe that's the Orange Block? I dunno, names are weird.

The joke is that like the orange bricks, they're shit.

Yeah, pretty much this.

[JohnnyCashKami]

I tend to call them "Season Blu-rays" and "Season DVDs" but it is more precise to identify it as "Orange Bricks on Blu-ray" or/and "Orange Bricks on DVD" (due to the picture quality).

Curse FUNimation for making those abhorrent products. Then again, average customers absolutely love them whether on Blu-ray or DVD.

Please, please don't screw this up, TOEI. Worst case scenario, there's always the Japanese and American Dragon Boxes Z.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I tend to call them "Season Blu-rays" and "Season DVDs" but it is more precise to identify it as "Orange Bricks on Blu-ray" or/and "Orange Bricks on DVD" (due to the picture quality).

Curse FUNimation for making those abhorrent products. Then again, average customers absolutely love them whether on Blu-ray or DVD.

Please, please don't screw this up, TOEI. Worst case scenario, there's always the Japanese and American Dragon Boxes Z.

I mean if worse comes to worse i have most of the FUNi Z Dragon Boxes myself and still looking for the last two that i still need which is volumes 4 and 7, so in any case i still have my definitive release of the series regardless of how this anniversary set turns out. Though i would still really like for this to be a proper HD remaster in the original 4:3 aspect ratio because we are long overdue for such a release.

[ZodaEX]

I tend to call them "Season Blu-rays" and "Season DVDs" but it is more precise to identify it as "Orange Bricks on Blu-ray" or/and "Orange Bricks on DVD" (due to the picture quality).

Curse FUNimation for making those abhorrent products. Then again, average customers absolutely love them whether on Blu-ray or DVD.

Please, please don't screw this up, TOEI. Worst case scenario, there's always the Japanese and American Dragon Boxes Z.

What makes a "Season Blu-ray" precisely called an Orange Brick, that doesn't make a "Level Set" precisely called an "Orange Brick"?

[JohnnyCashKami]

The remasterization and picture quality, it's equally as bad if not even worse. Season 9 on DVD looks fairly acceptable and would've been more or less decent had it been 4:3:AR.

[ZodaEX]

The remasterization and picture quality, it's equally as bad if not even worse. Season 9 on DVD looks fairly acceptable and would've been more or less decent had it been 4:3:AR.

Okay II get it. I guess I just feel the term is pretty confusing seeing as how from the outside of the box, the Orange Brick Blu-rays and the Orange Level set blu-rays look almost identical. It might confuse a consumer into thinking all orange brick-shaped DBZ releases are bad. Just seems like an unnecessarily confusing term to call it by for that reason.

[American Pelican]

If you need to use a pejorative, "Blue slabs" is one I remember seeing back when the sets were first coming out.