Pirating Dragon Ball (discussion)

[Jord]

I don't see why people think it's okay to download copyrighted material for free like the DragonBall series when people like me have had to pay for it. It's just entertainment and you're not entitled to it, even if you don't like the way the series was or is released.

[Android 21]

I’m not going to pay to watch a mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing. If they put a bit more consistent effort into it, I might actually consider doing so.

Isn’t crunchyroll free anyway? Why is this still an issue?

[mute_proxy]

I don't see why people think it's okay to download copyrighted material for free like the DragonBall series when people like me have had to pay for it. It's just entertainment and you're not entitled to it, even if you don't like the way the series was or is released.

It's not okay, but that doesnt make me or anyone alse care, really.

[Jord]

I don't see why people think it's okay to download copyrighted material for free like the DragonBall series when people like me have had to pay for it. It's just entertainment and you're not entitled to it, even if you don't like the way the series was or is released.

It's not okay, but that doesnt make me or anyone alse care, really.

I know. If the companies want to discourage pirating they should take action. In Europe, especially Germany, movie companies are already fining people for torrenting their movies. That would be a step in the right direction to combat piracy.

[mute_proxy]

I know. If the companies want to discourage pirating they should take action. In Europe, especially Germany, movie companies are already fining people for torrenting their movies. That would be a step in the right direction to combat piracy.

I think majority of Europe are into pirating, don't think that can be controlled with fines. Banning certain torrent pages, maybe

[Bajosexto]

I don't see why people think it's okay to download copyrighted material for free like the DragonBall series when people like me have had to pay for it. It's just entertainment and you're not entitled to it, even if you don't like the way the series was or is released.

The series isn't released. If it were legally available to me, I would definitely buy it. But it isn't. Does that justify pirating the series? No. Pirating is stealing. It's wrong, selfish, etc. But at least understand why I would do it. (Haven't pirated the series yet)

Has anyone suggested just, I dunno, not watching the show if you can't get it legally? Just move on with your life?

I dunno, just a thought.

It's really easy to tell people to not watch and just move on if a show/movie is not legally available to. (Especially when you have 3 complete home realese of Z) But let's be real. Would anyone really not pirate the series if no home release of Dragon Ball, Z, and GT existed? Would you really just go, "Fuck it. I guess I won't watch Dragon Ball ever again."?

[Metalwario64]

I watch new episodes of Super on YouTube every week. I know those uploads are not official, but Super is literally the only anime I watch. I'm not going to subscribe to a service for one show.

When they start bundling collections on Blu-ray, I'll buy them.

Dragon Ball Super is free on Crunchyroll and FUNimation's site...

[rereboy]

I don't see why people think it's okay to download copyrighted material for free like the DragonBall series when people like me have had to pay for it. It's just entertainment and you're not entitled to it, even if you don't like the way the series was or is released.

It's not okay, but that doesnt make me or anyone alse care, really.

I know. If the companies want to discourage pirating they should take action. In Europe, especially Germany, movie companies are already fining people for torrenting their movies. That would be a step in the right direction to combat piracy.

That doesn't really work. Want to combat piracy? It's simple: create a way for consumers to EASILY get their product with quality and at a price that doesn't bother the consumers. That's why it's been concluded that Netflix has managed to greatly decrease the traffic of piracy online. Now, that actually works.

[NintendoBlaze53]

It's not okay, but that doesnt make me or anyone alse care, really.

I know. If the companies want to discourage pirating they should take action. In Europe, especially Germany, movie companies are already fining people for torrenting their movies. That would be a step in the right direction to combat piracy.

That doesn't really work. Want to combat piracy? It's simple: create a way for consumers to EASILY get their product with quality and at a price that doesn't bother the consumers. That's why it's been concluded that Netflix has managed to greatly decrease the traffic of piracy online. Now, that actually works.

So why doesn't Crunchyroll or VRV decrease anime piracy?

[rereboy]

I know. If the companies want to discourage pirating they should take action. In Europe, especially Germany, movie companies are already fining people for torrenting their movies. That would be a step in the right direction to combat piracy.

That doesn't really work. Want to combat piracy? It's simple: create a way for consumers to EASILY get their product with quality and at a price that doesn't bother the consumers. That's why it's been concluded that Netflix has managed to greatly decrease the traffic of piracy online. Now, that actually works.

So why doesn't Crunchyroll or VRV decrease anime piracy?

It certainly does. Without them the piracy would be much greater.

If you are asking why piracy exists at all, well, there will always be people who really don't have much money to spare and thus if they couldn't see it for free they simply wouldn't see it, period (the companies don't actually lose any money with them because they wouldn't spend money regardless), those who could actually pay for it but they aren't nearly interested enough in the product to actually spend money on it and thus would only check it if it's free (the companies also don't lose any money with them), those who will always try the cheapest option regardless of the money they have and the interest they have on the product (the companies lose money with those), and those that live where the service isn't that easy to get, either because it's not that available or because in that place the price is high enough to bother consumers (they lose money here due to those factors).

[linkdude20002001]

I despise pirating. It means less money for the good people who made the product you love. If you like something, support it!
This said, if someone likes the Dragon Boxes and they are out of print, then they should go right ahead and download them. "Funimation has other releases" you say? ...So? If I'm a fan of the Italian dub, I'm gonna download the Italian dub, not buy Funimation's DVDs and BDs that don't have it. If I'm a fan of the Dragon Boxes, I'm gonna download the Dragon Boxes, not buy the "season" sets.

I already bot all of Funimation's Dragon Box Z sets, but I had always been holding out for a release of the movies and TV specials. It's obviously not going to happen anytime soon that I can count on, so I really ought to work on getting rips from the Dragon Box the Movies set with FUNi's subtitles added to them. Speaking of...

Funimation's DB releases... It's just downright offensive! I've been watching thru DBZ in Japanese for the first time (I started in 2009, but only made it to the Androids arc), and when it came time to watch TV Special 2 (Gohan and Trunks), I rememberd a bit too late that I only ever ownd it on VHS, and only Lord knows where that ended up. I'd've gone out to buy it that instant, but it's not that easy. What Funimation sells simply isn't the TV Special that I love, but a version they took a dump on and cut to pieces. This shouldn't be how it is. I want to support the things I LIKE; things that are important to me and want to see more of. If I bot FUNi's current release, first of all, I'd be tossing it into the trash (noöne deserves the misfortune of owning it), and then second, I'd be telling FUNi "DBZ with blury, melty filters and the top and bottom chopt off is what I want". I can't have that. For over a decade now (not counting LIMITED edition releases), DBZ fans have been only been able to purchase 80% of DBZ, with the other 20% being left on FUNi's cuttingroom floor...

[Robo4900]

For over a decade now (not counting LIMITED edition releases), DBZ fans have been only been able to purchase 80% of DBZ, with the other 20% being left on FUNi's cuttingroom floor...

It's more like 70/30 actually, though it depends on the shot; in order to make the framing somewhat functional, they have to sometimes put the widescreen view somewhere zoomed in within the picture, giving less picture than just the straight centre-crop the season DVDs used. Though one could argue that, despite the season DVDs being a straight centre-crop -- meaning 70% of the picture is kept, while 30% is thrown out -- you lose a lot of important information because of how poor the framing ends up being because of the centre-crop, and though many shots are much worse off than they would be in a smarter crop, this is largely insignificant compared to the amount of lost detail due to the excessive over-brightening/over-contrasting, which ends up doing so much more damage than cropping alone could do, so arguably it's effectively something like 60/40, or even 50/50, if you consider certain areas of the picture to count as more important than others(Which is kind of how framing a shot works...) and you account for the blurring. And of course, that's without going into the weird watercolour look the BDs took on for a lot of the backgrounds due to the poor filtering, the excessive blurring added by the poor transfer not accounting for the lacklustre quality of the film prints Funimation possesses, which ends up meaning the first couple of "Seasons" at least don't contain any more detail than Funimation's original DVD single releases, and then there's the lost lines in the DVDs due to the primitive DNR processing.

So, realistically, both of the season releases lose something over 30% of the picture. The precise percentage is impossible to accurately gauge without figuring out exactly how the shot was reframed in the BDs, the weird watercolour side-effects of the BD processing, etc., and for the DVDs -- while they are definitely 30% mathematically -- the number can be thought of as effectively being higher because of how important some of the lost information is, and due to how bad the blurring, overcontrasting, and the primitive DNR can all get, the number can't easily be calculated.

So... It's actually worse than it looks at a glance.

Admittedly, the very last season or so of the Blu-Ray release does look better; the picture's sharper, there's some grain visible, and the backgrounds aren't quite so bad, but the picture's still cropped, and as I say, this is only the last season or so... Unfortunately, this makes this a case of too little too late. If the transfer had been on this level for the whole run, but in 4:3, I'd actually say it was a pretty good release. Hell, even if it was still widescreen cropped, a release of that quality would still be a just about okay release for the cheap price you get it for, if it was like that for the whole run. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

As recently as a few weeks ago, I've been pretty hard on this whole situation, I even posted in this very thread that I would endorse piracy of the show. I was, admittedly, pretty stressed about general stuff at the time, and vented it here. In my current more calm demeanor, while I wouldn't say I'd recommend people pirate the show, I wouldn't criticse anyone for doing so, given how bad the official releases are. And it really is a shame that they were actually pretty close to geting such a good release out; that last season of the BDs was actually not too bad, as I say, and if the whole run had been like that, I wouldn't be quite so against them. Just make it 4:3, and you actually have a pretty worthy HD release.

Ultimately, I think my advice for people who, like myself, are annoyed at Funi's handling of Z, is that if you do pirate Dragon Ball Z, at least do buy the Dragon Ball "Season" DVDs, or the manga, or the GT "Season" DVDs, or Kai, or Super. Much as I criticise the Dragon Ball and GT DVDs, they're not bad for standard-def DVD releases. Kai is visually the best the show has ever looked, and while TFC is a dissappointment, the dubbing work on it is very good, it's miles ahead of the Season BDs/DVDs of Z, and for the manga, the VizBigs are pretty good, and the Full Colours are really awesome.
My point here is: While I can understand choosing to pirate Z to avoid the poor releases, you should still support the official release somehow, and by buying the other official releases, the sales of the other media, and lower sale of the Z media would send some sort of message(A lot of us would have to buy the DB, GT, and Kai releases to do this, but if enough people can be encouraged to do so, maybe Funi will notice). Would that message make any impact? Most probably not, but you'll probably feel a lot better for it. Who knows, maybe Funi would hear something, and start using the Dragon Box Z masters as the default standard-def option on their streaming services. I know they do that with the last season or so of Z in Japanese, so who knows. It's a long shot, but it can't hurt to try.

[linkdude20002001]

You're not making me feel any better, Robo! :p
But I appreciate your post. It was an informative read, and I liked the visual comparisons and examples.
Aren't the Dragon Ball "season" sets pretty bad too, tho? I rented the first one and greeted with blurry video, and the whole thing felt way too zoomd in. Gave me the feeling of claustrophobia(?). Or maybe just a phobia of people being unwantedly too close to my face. I dunno. PLUS they removed the alternate angles (so no Japanese credits), and their English ones are garbage. They only mention SEVEN of the staff members who made the show, leaving out over 50 names in just episode one! That's so unbelievably disrespectful. As a result, I bot the "saga" sets instead, which were secondhand and thus gave Funimation zero profit. Their other shows translate the Japanese credits. Why can't they put in the same effort for DB?

Just so people know, tho, I bot all the releases I thot were good and I wanted to support: Pioneer/Geneon's DBZ Movie Triology boxset, the DBZ DVD singles, the DB "saga" sets, the Dragon Box Z sets, and Kai when it's not released as "seasons". I also own the comic in various forms: Special "Manga-Style" Edition, Viz Graphic Novels, Shonen Jump Graphic Novels, and Full Color. And I sure as hell support each and every bit of Dr Slump as I can: Viz's release of the comics and Eastern Star's release of the first three movies.

[Luso Saiyan]

What if someone from a third world country pirated it to show it to unprivileged children? I know this hasnt happened but what would you say then??

Wether that someone showed it to "unprivileged children", his dog or Bill Gates is irrelevant. It was pirated. Taken away without permission. It's still theft and it's still selfish.

Nobody has the right to view a work of art against the owner's wishes. Not a soul. It's not a right, it is a privilege that is wholly dictated by that owner.

I take it you're one of those people who think DRM is completely just and that Barbera Streisand was in the right for trying to prevent that picture of her estate to be visible online.

The owners are well within their right to protect their works however they want, yes. And as a consumer, you have the right to criticize their methods or not. What you don't have the right is to steal or access the artistic work without permission.

Bottom line is that nobody is entitled to someone else's work/property/labour unless they had the latter's consent. That fact doesn't change no matter how many times one tries to justify their actions.

[sangofe]

I’m not going to pay to watch a mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing. If they put a bit more consistent effort into it, I might actually consider doing so.

Isn’t crunchyroll free anyway? Why is this still an issue?

Why are you on this forum if Dragon Ball is a "mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing"?

[Professor Freeza]

I’m not going to pay to watch a mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing. If they put a bit more consistent effort into it, I might actually consider doing so.

Isn’t crunchyroll free anyway? Why is this still an issue?

Why are you on this forum if Dragon Ball is a "mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing"?

He's talking about Super specifically.


As if post Namek Z was anything better than Super/

[sangofe]

I’m not going to pay to watch a mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing. If they put a bit more consistent effort into it, I might actually consider doing so.

Isn’t crunchyroll free anyway? Why is this still an issue?

Why are you on this forum if Dragon Ball is a "mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing"?

He's talking about Super specifically.


As if post Namek Z was anything better than Super/

Is he? His post doesn't say so. Although it's easy to assume so with his CR comment.
And I still think it's strange that someone seemingly hating Dragon Ball would bother to be on this forum and talk about the show. And even more baffling that they say they would never pay for the show.

[Android 21]

Why are you on this forum if Dragon Ball is a "mediocre Japanese cartoon with horrendous writing"?

He's talking about Super specifically.


As if post Namek Z was anything better than Super/

Is he? His post doesn't say so. Although it's easy to assume so with his CR comment.
And I still think it's strange that someone seemingly hating Dragon Ball would bother to be on this forum and talk about the show. And even more baffling that they say they would never pay for the show.

I’m not a “he,” and yeah, I was talking about Super. I love most of Dragon Ball and have always accepted it’s not perfect. However, Super has set the bar quite low. It’s better now, since the art and animation have improved since the start of this arc, but the writing is still awful. If I turn off my brain completely for 20 minutes, it’s enjoyable. But I find that difficult to do and often end up annoyed while watching. I certainly wouldn’t want to pay for it.

If they really cracked down on unofficial streaming and uploading of content, I’d just stop watching altogether. Though it doesn’t really matter now, since Super’s just about done with.

[Professor Freeza]

He's talking about Super specifically.


As if post Namek Z was anything better than Super/

Is he? His post doesn't say so. Although it's easy to assume so with his CR comment.
And I still think it's strange that someone seemingly hating Dragon Ball would bother to be on this forum and talk about the show. And even more baffling that they say they would never pay for the show.

I’m not a “he,” and yeah, I was talking about Super. I love most of Dragon Ball and have always accepted it’s not perfect. However, Super has set the bar quite low. It’s better now, since the art and animation have improved since the start of this arc, but the writing is still awful. If I turn off my brain completely for 20 minutes, it’s enjoyable. But I find that difficult to do and often end up annoyed while watching. I certainly wouldn’t want to pay for it.

If they really cracked down on unofficial streaming and uploading of content, I’d just stop watching altogether. Though it doesn’t really matter now, since Super’s just about done with.

Again. Super ~ Anything Post DBZ did.

[Robo4900]

You're not making me feel any better, Robo! :p

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But I appreciate your post. It was an informative read, and I liked the visual comparisons and examples.

Cheers, man.

Aren't the Dragon Ball "season" sets pretty bad too, tho? I rented the first one and greeted with blurry video, and the whole thing felt way too zoomd in. Gave me the feeling of claustrophobia(?). Or maybe just a phobia of people being unwantedly too close to my face. I dunno. PLUS they removed the alternate angles (so no Japanese credits), and their English ones are garbage. They only mention SEVEN of the staff members who made the show, leaving out over 50 names in just episode one! That's so unbelievably disrespectful. As a result, I bot the "saga" sets instead, which were secondhand and thus gave Funimation zero profit. Their other shows translate the Japanese credits. Why can't they put in the same effort for DB?

Yep, they are blurry. They're only zoomed in a bit, but yes, they are indeed zoomed in. It's because the left and right edges of the video they have are black and have dot crawl, which exposes the fact their only video source for Dragon Ball is DigiBeta tapes, which aren't the absolute best thing ever. A kind of similar thing applies to GT too, although the zooming is only by about 4 pixels, since Funimation's GT video master came from an early stage of the video restoration for the Dragon Box scan(Dragon Box, DVD single, DVD "Season").

Still, the point is they're cheap, and they're not that bad. The singles overall have the problem that they're awfully compressed, and unless you're willing to import the Australian singles, or for Dragon Ball, the UK's yellow "Seasons"(Both of which have a fault in the sub track of Dragon Ball episodes 71-73 and 80; the second half of episode 71, the first half of episode 73, and the entirety of episode 72 don't play in Japanese, and episode 80 uses dubtitles), that leaves you with just the US "Seasons", and the US singles.
Ultimately, the choice is yours, though the lower price of the "Seasons" is a pretty big factor here, I imagine.

The credits and title cards are an annoyance, but I believe the credits issue applies to all their releases, and honestly, I consider those to be minor issues, especially in comparison to the fact that all of Funi's releases of Dragon Ball only ever use the first OP/ED animations. And there's nothing you can do about that; the seasons, the singles, and the Australian and UK releases all have this issue too.

Just so people know, tho, I bot all the releases I thot were good and I wanted to support: Pioneer/Geneon's DBZ Movie Triology boxset, the DBZ DVD singles, the DB "saga" sets, the Dragon Box Z sets,

Like DB and GT, the singles are very expensive to collect, and rather poorly compressed, in fact the Z DVD singles are almost as bad as the Dragon Boxes in terms of pricing. Sure, the price of the individual DVDs doesn't seem that bad at a glance, but the overall price you end up paying is pretty ridiculous, especially when you consider you're only getting episodes 68 onwards in their uncut form with a Japanese track available, and the singles that cover the Saban run are the worst release of the Saban dub(US DVDs: Blurry, poorly-compressed, censored audio on episodes 1 and 2, most of the next episode previews are missing, the wrong title card is used for episode 1. Australian DVDs: PAL blending, PAL ghosting, censored audio on episodes 1 and 2. Rock The Dragon DVDs: Very blurry, washed-out colours, missing the episode 10 next episode preview, the first two movies are the censored TV edits).
So, aside from collectors' purposes, the Z DVD singles really aren't that good.
And these days, the US Dragon Boxes are impossible to attain. Unless MangaUK does a PAL reprint, the English Dragon Boxes are not worth trying to get.

and Kai when it's not released as "seasons".

Kai's "Season" sets are utterly fine. Getting the "Part" sets means the music score suddenly switches over at episode 53. Even if you use the Yamamoto Revival project for episodes 53+, that still leaves the problem that if you're watching in Japanese, the best you can do is get the Yamamoto score up to episode 95, leaving 3 episodes in their Kikuchi form, and if you use the Yamamoto Revival, you'll have to either load the episodes onto your PC, using up an absolute ton of HDD space(50GB per disc, 4 discs per season...), or burn custom discs yourself, which'll require a Blu-Ray burner, and blank Blu-Ray discs(Which aren't cheap!!)...
Ultimately, is Yamamoto's plagiarised score worth the effort? The "Part" sets are overpriced due to how sought-out his score is, and given the plagiarism, and the fact Kikuchi's score isn't even as bad as people make it out to be(Yeah, it's not as good as it was in Z, and it's not as good as Yamamoto's score was in Kai, but it's not bad, necessarily. Still better than Sumitomo's Final Chapters score), I'm not so sure it's worth the fuss.

Super has set the bar quite low. It’s better now, since the art and animation have improved since the start of this arc, but the writing is still awful. If I turn off my brain completely for 20 minutes, it’s enjoyable. But I find that difficult to do and often end up annoyed while watching.

Ah, finally, someone's speaking my language.
Honestly, I'm convinced that in 10 years, people will start to wonder why anyone liked Super in the first place.
Maybe I'm just a grouch, but I really don't get the hype for Super.

If they really cracked down on unofficial streaming and uploading of content, I’d just stop watching altogether. Though it doesn’t really matter now, since Super’s just about done with.

But CrunchyRoll puts it up for free...