One of the original DBZ directors says FUNi Blu-rays where "what it was supposed to look like to begin with"

[eledoremassis02]

I think it was a non-issue for them because they expect grain to be there, it's no lie that at that time is was just apart of the medium. And again "Kai" was sort of that refreshed version in Japan in which these same directors worked on that so would that mean Kai is how DBZ shouldnt look? To be honest, we don't know exactly what he's mentioning (for all my know Cook could be confusing this with the level sets *his overall history of DBZ seems to be a tad off too)

Neverthe less maybe grain is important? I read Bruce Timm is halting Batman TAS on Bluray because he doesnt want it touched up. He wants grain, dust, dirt, finger prints, etc because thats what comes with hand animation, it's apart of it.

[Gaffer Tape]

the Dragon Boxes are SD with distorted color palettes (see: the green sky in the Goku vs. Vegeta battle.)

I won't deny the DBoxes have problems with faded colors, but the green sky in that case ain't one of them. It's dusk. It's supposed to look like that. Even the color chapter of the original manga has the sky looking like that. Things like the overly pink skin tones are examples of a good baseline to adjust the colors, but anyone trying to make the Goku/Vegeta fight with a bright blue sky is going to be pushing the blues as hard as FUNimation did on their original digibeta releases.

[thaman91]

Things like the overly pink skin tones are examples of a good baseline to adjust the colors, but anyone trying to make the Goku/Vegeta fight with a bright blue sky is going to be pushing the blues as hard as FUNimation did on their original digibeta releases.

Are you saying that the original FUNi singles had their colors altered? How do you know this? I had been under the impression that their colors more accurately reflected the broadcast colors (besides the crushed blacks). Ajay said this in another thread regarding which release had accurate colors:

To be perfectly honest, none of them are super accurate. The Dragon Boxes weren't corrected, so you're getting warped colours from aging film. The Orange Bricks and Season BDs are over bright and saturated in an attempt to appear modern. The Level Sets are far too muted. The singles are probably your closest bet, but they're not the best quality and aren't easy to come by.

Would mid-90s FUNi really go through the effort of altering the colors?

[Jinzoningen MULE]

Would mid-90s FUNi really go through the effort of altering the colors?

It was a little later than the mid-90's, but they would and they did. Ajay probably didn't know any better whenever he told you otherwise.

[thaman91]

It was a little later than the mid-90's, but they would and they did. Ajay probably didn't know any better whenever he told you otherwise.

Ok well what about the Rock the Dragon set? The colors on it look slightly different than the singles. Maybe those represent the unaltered colors on FUNi's masters?

[Jinzoningen MULE]

It was a little later than the mid-90's, but they would and they did. Ajay probably didn't know any better whenever he told you otherwise.

Ok well what about the Rock the Dragon set? The colors on it look slightly different than the singles. Maybe those represent the unaltered colors on FUNi's masters?

No clue, but that set is such a tiny piece of the show that it's hardly worth getting, especially now that they're so expensive. Dragon Boxes really are your best bet for Z, they're not 100% accurate, but they're the best way to own the series by most measurements.

Kai 1.0 is probably the closest you could ever get to the original broadcast colors, but I doubt that's what you're looking for.

[Puto]

You could try the original French dub-only censored DVDs, which are from the French broadcast tapes dating back to the early 90s. They really wouldn't have bothered tampering with colours back then.

[Ajay]

Would mid-90s FUNi really go through the effort of altering the colors?

It was a little later than the mid-90's, but they would and they did. Ajay probably didn't know any better whenever he told you otherwise.

Incorrect. They're relatively untouched compared to their initial TV broadcast, actually. In the post (which was made recently, by the way, not that that makes any difference; this has been an obsession of mine for years), I said they were the closest colour-wise out of what's available for Z.

The original background and the Japanese broadcast:
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]

Dragon Box, Kai, Funi's singles:
[spoiler]

Gamma-corrected:
[/spoiler]

As you can see, none of them are right, but the singles are closest, despite being too dark -- an inherent issue with those masters. Once you get later on in the series, this becomes less of an issue. Examples are from the Boo arc, but they vanish midway through Freeza, really. Either way, the point is the colours underneath that crush are better and more consistent than the Dragon Boxes. Considering I was being asked about what colours were most accurate, not what was the best release, I stand by that answer. If you want reasonably accurate colours and aren't too fussed on video quality, you go with the singles if you're not interested in Kai.

The Dragon Boxes have great dark detail, comparatively little crop, and look wonderful, colours aside. Anyone remotely interested in video is going to go for those. If you're not and you just want something that looks close to what you remember on TV, the singles are there for you.

Either way, no, this isn't a Funimation thing. Let's not spread misinformation.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

You're 100% right. For some reason, I was projecting my memory of some Android Arc DVD's I owned ages ago onto this. I apologize, I'm running on relatively little sleep atm.

[thaman91]

As you can see, none of them are right, but the singles are closest, despite being too dark -- an inherent issue with those masters. Once you get later on in the series, this becomes less of an issue. Examples are from the Boo arc, but they vanish midway through Freeza, really. Either way, the point is the colours underneath that crush are better and more consistent than the Dragon Boxes. Considering I was being asked about what colours were most accurate, not what was the best release, I stand by that answer. If you want reasonably accurate colours and aren't too fussed on video quality, you go with the singles if you're not interested in Kai.

The Dragon Boxes have great dark detail, comparatively little crop, and look wonderful, colours aside. Anyone remotely interested in video is going to go for those. If you're not and you just want something that looks close to what you remember on TV, the singles are there for you.

Very interesting. So the key takeaways here seem to be:
1.) best video quality = Dragon Boxes
2.) most accurate colors = FUNi singles
(By the way, what is your take on the Rock the Dragon set? Those do look slightly different to the original singles. Are those more accurate or less?)

I guess the ideal scenario would be if we got something with Dragon Box video quality that was color corrected to match the FUNi singles (but with less black crush of course).

[Ajay]

(By the way, what is your take on the Rock the Dragon set? Those do look slightly different to the original singles. Are those more accurate or less?)

They're very similar, really. They just have slightly better encoding.

[Gaffer Tape]

Either way, no, this isn't a Funimation thing. Let's not spread misinformation.

From Kanzenshuu's own Dragon Box review: "FUNimation’s first masters were much closer to their true selves, but heavily pushed toward the blue spectrum; greens became blues, while blues themselves became blacks." And the corresponding comparison image seems to bear that out. I totally agree that, given a choice, I'd definitely take the colors of the singles over what FUNimation has done later, but (and while I admit I am color blind so am certainly neither an expert on the subject nor have gone to great lengths you have, Ajay, to catalogue this information) it's hard for even me to deny that the singles are pushed a bit too heavily towards blue.

I will admit, though, I mistakenly overstated the extent to which those singles did push the blues in comparison. Looking at your own screencap, the singles still have the greenish-tint sky during the Goku and Vegeta battle, whereas the orange bricks (if memory serves), pushes it all the way to blue.

[Ajay]

From Kanzenshuu's own Dragon Box review: "FUNimation’s first masters were much closer to their true selves, but heavily pushed toward the blue spectrum; greens became blues, while blues themselves became blacks." And the corresponding comparison image seems to bear that out. I totally agree that, given a choice, I'd definitely take the colors of the singles over what FUNimation has done later, but (and while I admit I am color blind so am certainly neither an expert on the subject nor have gone to great lengths you have, Ajay, to catalogue this information) it's hard for even me to deny that the singles are pushed a bit too heavily towards blue.

I will admit, though, I mistakenly overstated the extent to which those singles did push the blues in comparison. Looking at your own screencap, the singles still have the greenish-tint sky during the Goku and Vegeta battle, whereas the orange bricks (if memory serves), pushes it all the way to blue.

Love and respect everyone behind the scenes on this website, but I'd disagree with that assessment as it seems based on "The Dragon Box master restores the original color scheme and full detail in all areas without compromise.", which as many discovered later down the line, is patently false. I remember looking back at old forum posts and seeing that being quite a common thought back then. If you're writing from a position where you believe the Dragon Boxes are the 'true colours', you're absolutely going to accuse it of being too blue.

If I were to review the singles, I'd say they're a bit too purple, which is why Goku's undershirt seems tinted that colour later. Of course the aforementioned crush is a major issue, too. You're right on the money with the Orange Bricks, though. They're very blue, and though I'm not super well versed in that release, I do recall screenshots from later down the line where that continued to be the case. It certainly is with the new Blu-rays! Gohan in the Boo arc looks like a ghost!

[Puto]

Just for the record, here's the same shot that was compared in that Kanzenshuu article, on the very first French DVD singles (which had their original censored cut, using their old TV broadcast tapes from the early 90s):



As you can see, this release also has a bluer sky than the Dragon Box.

So really, what's more likely, that every single release by every single company acting independently throughout the world that doesn't use Dragon Box-sourced masters just happened to decide to all push the colours towards blue, and that VHS tapes recorded from Japanese TV just happened to exactly fade towards that exact same shade of blue, or that the one version of the footage that has a greener sky and is known for having problems with colour in other episodes is the one that's wrong? Occam's Razor, folks.

[Gaffer Tape]

So really, what's more likely, that every single release by every single company acting independently throughout the world that doesn't use Dragon Box-sourced masters just happened to decide to all push the colours towards blue, and that VHS tapes recorded from Japanese TV just happened to exactly fade towards that exact same shade of blue, or that the one version of the footage that has a greener sky and is known for having problems with colour in other episodes is the one that's wrong? Occam's Razor, folks.

While I agree with your sentiment, what you're arguing against is an idea I was never espousing in the first place. Please forget the Raditz battle scene. That just happened to be next to the line I quoted. To reiterate, this whole confusion opened up was because I was complaining about a certain trend in Dragon Ball color discussion that is often used as a justification for the kind of work that was done on the season sets: the green sky in the Goku versus Vegeta fight. "See, this is an example of how the Dragon Boxes have faded colors. The sky's green here instead of blue!" Except while they're using a legitimate criticism (the Dragon Boxes do have faded color issues that lead to greenish tints), they're using it to criticize a relatively unique scenario where the earth's sky is actually supposed to be green! And yet in the various DBZ season sets, the blues have been pushed so hard that that the Goku/Vegeta sky is now a happy, midday blue. My point originally was, that if you're going to criticize the Dragon Box colors (and I was never trying to push the idea those colors are correct, let's be perfectly clear on that), or advocate a color correction, make sure it's an actual valid one.

My mistake, which I already stated two posts ago, was using the singles as my comparison rather than, say, the orange bricks. I have no idea why I went for that example over the much more obviously glaring example. Obviously the conversation is free to go in the direction of how the singles handled the colors. I still feel like Goku's undershirt looks a little too dark to what it should be (which is the only thing I was paying attention to when I mentioned that comparison image at all), but that's a completely different topic from my original point.

Ajay posted a huge ton of examples from the Vegeta fight. And in the Japanese broadcast tapes, Kai, the singles, the Dragon Boxes, and the original manga, there is one thing in common. The sky in the Goku/Vegeta fight has a greenish tint to it. In other words, if I may paraphrase you to bring this more around to what I was talking about in the first place: So really, what's more likely, that every single release by every single company acting independently throughout the world that doesn't use Season Set-sourced masters just happened to decide to all push the colours towards green, and that VHS tapes recorded from Japanese TV just happened to fade towards a similar same shade of green, or that the one version of the footage that has a bluer sky and is known for having problems with colour in other episodes is the one that's wrong? Occam's Razor, folks.

[Puto]

I'm not denying that the sky is supposed to be a bit greenish in that scene, either (though not Namek-green like the Dragon Boxes, either). And yeah, the Season Sets are way too blue there. Only thing I was arguing is that no, the colours in the singles weren't tampered with.