Season Four set arrives 2/19/2008

Strongbad456 · Post by **Strongbad456** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:42 am

I just wanna add that while the greatness25 is refusing to accept the flaws of the set, you guys refuse to accept the good things about the set. And I agree with him, the Funi picture is better in those 2 comparisons he posted. He and many others agree that Funi's set looks good and is worth the money. People have opinions and arguing won't change that. The thread wasn't made so people could argue over pointless things. It's for discussing the 4th season box set.

Toniofalcon · Post by **Toniofalcon** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:56 am

Uhh, I think Toei knows more about how DB's supposed to look than FUNI...

This is the response to what's his name's anti-Dbox argument.

TheGreatness25 · Post by **TheGreatness25** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:50 am

Wow. So I take it none of you have read a damn thing I said? Here's what I have said but I guess you didn't read all of it, so I have to break it down into groups or something:

FUNimation's "Remastered" Release
The Good
- Picture Quality: Easy on the eyes, nice and relaxing, smooth, clear.
- If you watched the whole series on a 4:3 TV, the cropping should not bother you because the overscan on a 4:3 TV cropped nearly as much (a tiny portion of the bottom is cropped more on the release.)
- The PRICE: To get 30+ episodes on 6 DVDs for $40.00 is a great deal and since it is a new RELEASE, it's uncommon to find an Anime release for such a price.
- If you watched the series on a 4:3 TV and therefore won't be bothered by the cropping, it gives you a full picture on an HDTV, which is the TV of the future and will be owned by everyone pretty soon. It gives you the full picture rather than having it stretched out, zoomed in (similar mind you), or with black bars on the sides.

And welcome to my opinion that many of you seemed to overlook simply because...I don't know, you didn't read what I wrote early on?

The BAD
- If you watched the series on your computer or an HDTV, you will notice a huge chunk of the top and bottom of the picture cut off.
- For the FUNimation dub fans, it does not contain the opening or the closing from the US version, only the music from the Ultimate Uncut series for the closing.
- For a new release, to have the 5.1 surround sound removed after it was included in the Ultimate Uncut series is pretty bad. They have it for the US voices on the original Japanese track, but I think everyone agrees that it sounds absolutely weird and does not mesh well together.
- The set looks cheap, the orange is displeasing, the Dragon Ball Z logo only appears after you take the jacket off, but if you do that, the set unravels.
- The Picture: Although crisp and very nicely cleaned up, sometimes the lines get washed out, removed, and sometimes blurred into one another.

I guess nobody read the parts where I talked about the lines disappearing and the whole, "if you weren't watching DBZ on a 4:3 TV, yeah there's a huge chunk missing" part. Guess everyone is used to bias one-sided opinions that include, "I think ALL of this is great and ALL of that is crap" rather than a real unbiased opinion. Whatever.

Dragon Box
The Good
- The whole series released in the set.
- The full picture is visible without being cut, but at the same time, it is touched up to take the dirt away.
- Great collection for the DBZ fans.

The Bad
- Colors are tinted too much.
- Picture is darker than original.
- Comes only in Japanese audio with no English subtitles, which enables you to not understand what they say unless you speak Japanese and unless you want to "guess" what they're saying because you saw the series already. Like FUNimation or not, but at least if you get theirs, you can ignore the US dub, but still have original subtitles.

Yeah I'm sure TOEI knew how to make DBZ more than FUNimation, but the tinting and the brightness do not go well. Even before the FUNimation dubs were made, any episode you can download off the internet, or any footage you've ever seen of DBZ from Japan, and any video game, when have you ever seen the tinting and the brightness brought to that level?

Now once again, I don't care about people not liking FUNimation or whatever, but I'm just giving an UNBIASED opinion. I don't know if anyone caught it or not, but when I said things like, "I bet if TOEI would release the Widescreen version, everyone would praise it" was to elude to people just...well being fanboys. And hey, that's fine. But I don't know why, but it irritates me when someone completely trashes FUNimation over stupid things. Like the voice acting. Give the guys a break. They worked hard, going to record voices for hours at a time, destroying their vocal cords, trying to make distinctive voices to portray that character in. And after years of them working on it, everyone says how much they suck. It's a spit in the face for them because I got news for you, voice actors don't make jack. Their money isn't worth anything basically, they're not rich, so they destroyed their voices so that people can disrespect them? And FUNimation's Widecreen release. Yes, it's a pure lie in terms of it is cropped and it is cut and the colors are messed with and it's really not the way DBZ was meant to be seen. HOWEVER, it is kind of jump-starting the series into the future. Maybe in 5 years they'll want to show it on Cartoon Network HD or something and what version do you think they'd show? The old grainy dirty 4:3 version that would look pretty bad compared to everything else in HD? Someone payed money to have this whole thing done and a lot of it mind you, just to be disrespected again simply because everyone thinks that they're a bunch of guys trying to cheat you. Oh yeah, they're definitely trying to cheat you. Sure. They have lots of other thing other than Dragon Ball to think about too. So give credit where credit is due, or at least have an unbiased opinion. Because as great as the Japanese version is, they have like the same 2 songs playing in each episode, their voices are not unique to the character (other than Goku's, Gohan's, etc), when they scream it sounds weird, and the opening and closing is a campy happy little song and then when the episode starts it's like a complete opposite and becomes a violent action show.

Captain Awesome · Post by **Captain Awesome** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:45 am

TheGreatness25 wrote: I'm just giving an UNBIASED opinion.

How are you?, have you even seen the dragonboxes in motion?, or is all of your objective reasoning based on some ugly jpegs?, you're giving your own HONEST opinion that is very much biased towards the set you own, and the set you enjoy.

TheGreatness25 wrote:I bet if TOEI would release the Widescreen version, everyone would praise it

Actually many people complained about the fact the movie boxset was going to be cropped, even though they understood why (the whole animated in 4:3 thing with the intention to be cropped to 16:9)

Anyway, I really don't understand what you want from people here, people have their opinions, but please don't act like anyone here owes the Funimation voice cast anything, they get paid for their work, some people like it, others don't, I personally don't think these people compare to what I would call "professionals" (Billy West, Maurice Lamarshe, Frank Welker, not to mention the Japanese cast) they just don't compare in terms of skill and experience, which is MY opinion.

I guess my rambling point here is, stop trying to convince anyone of anything, it really, really isn't going to work, especially with your argument

Post by **Kaboom** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:55 am

TheGreatness25 wrote:Wow. So I take it none of you have read a damn thing I said?

Yeah, welcome to DaizEX.

ect5150 · Post by **ect5150** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:57 am

TheGreatness25 wrote:- Colors are tinted too much.
- Picture is darker than original.

Stop. Here is the assumption you're making : "what the original looks like." People claim the DragonBox colors are more accurate because they are closer to the original animation cells people have purchased. Comparing those cells to FUNIs releases, the colors are different.

A while back, someone posted some scans of these animation cells (or links to those animation cells). The colors are DragonBox colors, not FUNI colors. I forgot who posted them, but after seeing those cells myself, it was only then that I decided to purchase a DBZ single to test it for myself. After that, I won't go back to FUNIs stuff. There is that much of a difference and comparing the colors to the animation cells, DragonBox is best.

Then the issue simplifies into "Do you want the original or no?"

One another note, I posted that DBox shot in JPG strictly because some people complain about threads getting 'download heavy' because of lossless pics (never again I guess). But comparing encoding quality, DBox does win again. The new widescreen releases are encoded properly, and have very little macro-blocking and errors, the old 4:3 releases were riddled with them (Gohan vs. Cell anyone?), but the DBox has no-macroblocking and only a small level of MPEG artifacts.

Captain Awesome wrote:Agreed, this stuff has already been debated to hell, without people re-hashing what has been said a million times before, only with slightly better punctuation.

Yeah, but posters like TheGreatness25 have been here for about 2 weeks (Joined: 19 Oct 2007). And these issues really aren't stickied... how many of us expect new forum members to read EVERY SINGLE THREAD from the past to the current before posting? Its not realistic.

Maybe we need a thread called "Ultimate Battle 22 - Widescreen vs. 4:3 vs. Dragon Box" and leave all the comparison shots / arguments in that thread so new comers can have it as a reference and the rest of us can add to it as needed. I would personally love it if the Boss (read as Mike) started it.

Then he could effectively ban any thread that started into the old 'war' again and tell us to take it into that thread. Seems reasonable enough, no?

EDIT - I found the thread that has the screen shots posted, however the images are no longer hosted. They were originally posted by DBW, I wonder if he could help us out. I would mind having a permanent copy of them either.

TheGreatness25 · Post by **TheGreatness25** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:10 am

I just hope you guys understand that when I "argue" (or as I like to call it, debate) with you, it's not out of anything personal or because I'm getting angry or whatnot. I'm just showing my opinion. I hope that I'm not causing anyone to be more on-edge than they should be because that is really not my intention, and if I come off as an "asshole" or whatever, then I apologize. I may repeat myself several times because sometimes it just feels as if either people don't read or don't understand the point I am trying to get across.

Vegard Aune · Post by **Vegard Aune** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:25 pm

TheGreatness25 wrote:The Bad
- Colors are tinted too much. REPLY: No. It was made that way.
- Picture is darker than original. REPLY: It IS the original. FUNI'S image is BRIGHTER than the original.
- Comes only in Japanese audio with no English subtitles, which enables you to not understand what they say unless you speak Japanese and unless you want to "guess" what they're saying because you saw the series already. Like FUNimation or not, but at least if you get theirs, you can ignore the US dub, but still have original subtitles. REPLY: The Dragonbox is a japanese DVD, released in Japan for japanese fans. There's no reason for it to have english subtitles.

I'm not trying to be a downright FUNi-basher here, in fact, I think they did a really nice job with DB and GT, and those old DBZ-singles, while overpriced and poorly encoded, still seem fairly good. But seriously, enough with the "Season-sets exceed every other release of the show ever!!!!"-stuff already. They don't. By the way, the whole overscan-thing is completely invalid, because, while it is much smaller, HD-TVS HAVE OVERSCAN TOO. The only way to get the full image is using a computer.

TheGreatness25 · Post by **TheGreatness25** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:31 pm

Well on my HDTV, the overscan is barely noticeable. The only thing I noticed was a tiny portion overscanned to the left. Other than that, everything looks right.

I don't think the Widescreen is the greatest release ever, but I mentioned it somewhere, what if they want to show the series again in years to come? 5 years from now they want to show DBZ. Do you think on Cartoon Network HD (everyone will have an HDTV by that time, come on), you think they'd show the 4:3 DBZ? No way. I guess it's kind of thinking into the future.

Kaze no Mune · Post by **Kaze no Mune** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:02 pm

TheGreatness25, your complaints for the DragonBox masters are silly and unfounded, as pointed out by Vegard Aune. I was actually going to do the same, but he got to it before me.

Originally, the Funimation boxes didn't get to me very much at first. But now, after having watched the third "season", I'm starting to get a bit pissed off with them. The cropping, the poor transfer, and the bootleg quality box it comes in. I guess you're getting what you pay for, but I hope someday Funi (for whatever odd reason) lets go of the DB/Z/GT licenses and some other company gets the DBox masters. Or Funi gets the masters, outsources them, and releases... *gasp* a quality product for people who have stuck with them all of this time.

As I buy more and more DBZ on DVD, I'm wishing more and more for a quality product...

achassi · Post by **achassi** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:36 pm

Getting back on-topic

Vekurotto · Post by **Vekurotto** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 5:12 pm

I want to get this outta the way first,

ADDED TO THE BAD LIST:THE REDUB

-Why the fuck, does Funimation want to screw over their own fans that actually liked the dub? Now I'm hearing things like, "Vegeta's voice is too deep", "Goku should have been redubbed", "What's with the quasi-redub where some people are redubbed and others aren't?" Here's a tip,

"If you can't do all of the redubbing for every single character, then don't do it at all. Why? Because it feels cheap and half-assed in the end."(Season Set Redub).

And what kind of anime or cartoon company partially redubs shit just for the basis that the voices sucked in the beginning. I never once saw 4kids, when they had Pokemon, redub Ash's voice of the first 10 episodes because he sounded different. Never have I heard anybody tell Dan Castellaneta to redub Homer Simpson in the first season of the Simpsons or asked Mila Kunis to redub Meg in Family Guy so they can sound like how they did in later seasons. This redub thing is just shit for everybody as far as I'm concerned. Newcomers and longtime fans.

TheGreatness25 wrote: The BAD
- If you watched the series on your computer or an HDTV, you will notice a huge chunk of the top and bottom of the picture cut off.

1. If you watch it on any TV or any display setup you'll notice that a large chunk of picture is gone.

TheGreatness25 wrote:- For a new release, to have the 5.1 surround sound removed after it was included in the Ultimate Uncut series is pretty bad. They have it for the US voices on the original Japanese track, but I think everyone agrees that it sounds absolutely weird and does not mesh well together.

2. That not called, "not meshing well with the music". That's just called "bad voice acting", and it's still apparent with the dub's music track(unless you blindly insist that the dub's music "makes" them better, which it doesn't), since the exact same thing is said on both musical tracks. There should be no reason for anybody to say that a musical score makes voices sound bad. And I dare anybody to argue that fact with me if you think otherwise. If the voices were good to begin with, they are good in all circumstances. If they were bad to begin with they're just bad. Simple as that. End of story.

Back on topic:

Good thing this set has the episodes that I liked watching dubbed.

However, "Big Bang Attack" must be spoken by Chris Sabat, since he insists on going out of his way to scre..urh, redub, Vegeta's voice.

Raki · Post by **Raki** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:35 pm

There is nothing wrong with the Dragonbox. Many of us here would be willing to sacrifice thousands of cows just for a US Dragonbox release. I admit the season sets are heavily flawed. But the only reason i purchased the orange abominations is because they are cheap,and i don't own DBZ already. These sets and their content are a direct slap in the face to all of the people here,and around the US who bought every DBZ release Funimation put out. The least they could do is repay them by getting the Dragonbox masters,and doing the Season sets from them. That way Funimation gets the money they worship,and the fans get DBZ remastered for the 21st Century.

Toniofalcon · Post by **Toniofalcon** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:50 pm

TheGreatness25 wrote:Long ass essay

tl;dr

(too long, didn't read ).

Though I skimmed through and it did look biased. Especially the part about the DBox only having the Japanese language tracks. You were just looking for a " bad " there.

Captain Awesome · Post by **Captain Awesome** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:15 pm

Raki wrote:There is nothing wrong with the Dragonbox. Many of us here would be willing to sacrifice thousands of cows just for a US Dragonbox release.

Meet me in the paddock at midnight.

Post by **Kaboom** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:51 pm

Captain Awesome wrote:
Raki wrote:There is nothing wrong with the Dragonbox. Many of us here would be willing to sacrifice thousands of cows just for a US Dragonbox release.
Meet me in the paddock at midnight.

Are we having a barbeque?!

Hironobu Timex · Post by **Hironobu Timex** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 12:56 am

Vekurotto wrote:I want to get this outta the way first,

ADDED TO THE BAD LIST:THE REDUB

-And what kind of anime or cartoon company partially redubs shit just for the basis that the voices sucked in the beginning. I never once saw 4kids, when they had Pokemon, redub Ash's voice of the first 10 episodes because he sounded different. Never have I heard anybody tell Dan Castellaneta to redub Homer Simpson in the first season of the Simpsons or asked Mila Kunis to redub Meg in Family Guy so they can sound like how they did in later seasons. This redub thing is just shit for everybody as far as I'm concerned. Newcomers and longtime fans.

Its less of a redub and more of a revised English audio track as advertised. Nothing more than that. If it were a real redub then they'd be starting from scratch or something. I'm betting in future releases there'll be less and less changes.

I personally find the new audio options in the show's entirety to be a whole lot of fun. It's really the only reason I buy these sets.

Captain Awesome · Post by **Captain Awesome** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 1:52 am

SSj Kaboom wrote:
Captain Awesome wrote:
Raki wrote:There is nothing wrong with the Dragonbox. Many of us here would be willing to sacrifice thousands of cows just for a US Dragonbox release.
Meet me in the paddock at midnight.
Are we having a barbeque?!

Well if your idea of a barbecue is beseeching the devil to grant us a US/AU release of the Dragonboxes by bathing in the freshly spilled blood of thousands of cattle..

Then sure..we're totally having a barbecue

russ869 · Post by **russ869** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 3:04 am

It doesn't seem like you could tell what the original colors were unless you saw some original animation cell or somehow had TV rips of the original Japanese television broadcast. So I'm definitely going with ect5150 if he's seen the cells.

Captain Awesome wrote: ...only with slightly better punctuation.

Extra emphasis on the SLIGHTLY.

Many of us here would be willing to sacrifice thousands of cows just for a US Dragonbox release.

You know, some of us just do that for fun. ...Oh c'mon, I can't be the only one.

SatoSky · Post by **SatoSky** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 6:05 am

russ869 wrote:It doesn't seem like you could tell what the original colors were unless you saw some original animation cell or somehow had TV rips of the original Japanese television broadcast. So I'm definitely going with ect5150 if he's seen the cells.

Captain Awesome wrote: ...only with slightly better punctuation.
Extra emphasis on the SLIGHTLY.

Many of us here would be willing to sacrifice thousands of cows just for a US Dragonbox release.
You know, some of us just do that for fun. ...Oh c'mon, I can't be the only one.

No you're not the only one.

Kanzenshuu

Season Four set arrives 2/19/2008

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