Dragon Ball Movies HD Remaster - Amazon Video/Netflix Japan - Discussion Thread

[SupremeSSJ]

hope they remaster db and z properly would pay anything.

Seems unlikely. One thing's to remaster 17 movies and another is to remaster 511 episodes (DB, DBZ, DBGT, + DBZ 2 TV-Specials & DBGT TV-Special) unless you then also throw in the Dragon Ball health and safety specials and all that. Even if they were just to remaster DB and DBZ, that'd still be 444 episodes, overall.

I believe we will get an HD remaster of the series from Toei, I don't see why they would leave the series behind. Dragon Ball is really popular again these days so Toei would be crazy not to capitalize on a blu ray release of the series.

[Robo4900]

hope they remaster db and z properly would pay anything.

Seems unlikely. One thing's to remaster 17 movies and another is to remaster 511 episodes (DB, DBZ, DBGT, + DBZ 2 TV-Specials & DBGT TV-Special) unless you then also throw in the Dragon Ball health and safety specials and all that. Even if they were just to remaster DB and DBZ, that'd still be 444 episodes, overall.

Dragon Ball, Z, and GT makes for 508 episodes. Assuming they also do the Z TV specials, that's 510. Now, let's get a bit crazy and say that they also do the Dragon Ball PSA specials, which brings us up to 512, and y'know what, let's go really crazy and throw in the GT special which brings us to 513, and just for a laugh, let's say they assembled the 1993 Plan To Eradicate OVA on film, still have that film, and thus put together a version of that, which gives us 514. 'Course Plan '93 actually had a lot of footage assembled for it, so let's just go completely crazytown bananapants and say they used everything, which would probably come on several different reels of film, it would likely require some complex branching thing... Let's count it as 5 episodes, and say that brings us up to 518 episodes, effectively.
In other words, we're going to look at this as a worst case scenario in terms of the absolute maximum possible workload I can put on this. I'm not trying to be realistic in terms of the workload, I'm trying to find the absolute maximum possible amount of work Toei would have to do to make this work.

Each episode of Dragon Ball would have to be scanned from two different reels; one is the original negative, which only contains the main episode contents, but will contain that material in the best-possible quality you'll ever find it in, and the other is the first-generation print, which contains everything, and is typically the only surviving film element of the ending song and the next episode preview, since the ending will have different credits depending on which actors were in it, etc., and the preview was always assembled out of what stuff was finished of the upcoming episode at the time they were putting the print together for duplication for broadcast, but of course, this first-gen print will be slightly softer, granier, etc. than the negative. The OPs would also likely be taken from these first-gen prints.
Also of note: If they include the textless OPs/EDs, and assuming they still have film of all that(They probably don't, but again, let's assume maximum workload), that also adds about 15-ish reels if you have them for every OP/ED from the entire run.

Basically, what this means is that for each episode of Dragon Ball, we have two reels, meaning that for absolutely everything, in this worst case scenario where we effectively have 518 episodes to remaster, plus 15 textless reels, that'll be 1051 reels of film. Quite a lot, wouldn't you say?

But, let's think about this for a moment... Dragon Ball is one of the biggest things ever in Japan, and has massive worldwide appeal... Not quite like something like, let's say, Star Trek: The Next Generation which is very popular in the USA, and quite reasonably popular around the world, but mostly from fairly isolated groups of big fans of it... Star Trek: The Next Generation had its HD remaster assembled a few years ago, and that was quite the job; all the original 35mm camera negatives were dug out, each were manually scanned and cleaned, and then every single episode of the show had to be manually re-assembled from this raw camera footage, all the special effects had to be recomposited and/or recreated from scratch, and in total, around 25000 reels of film were involved, and they had to also get all the original sound elements together to create a new 7.1 sound mix for it all too. And yet, they did an absolutely beautiful job, and once the Netflix deal went through and the Blu-Ray sales over time continued to pick up, it made Paramount a decent stack of cash...

Compare this to Dragon Ball, which only has about a thousand reels to do, only audio stuff needed/possible for Dragon Ball would be to get either the optical film audio or the broadcast audio from various Japanese fans, and run it through some audio filtering to get the best out of the original mix in whatever format they work off of, and the only potential re-editing, recompositing, or recreating of anything would be the credits scroll at the end of GT episode 64(Which was laid on top of the tape video master of GT as a post-effect at that stage, which was what was duplicated to give to Japanese TV stations, and most foreign distributors before 2005. Toei forgot to recreate this when assembling the Dragon Box master), and arguably they'd have to assemble some kind of viewing order of sorts for the massive amount of footage done for the 1993 Plan To Eradicate OVA, if they wanted to do anything with that beyond just reusing the tape master used on the Dragon Box that just contains the standard "Perfect play" guide found on the 1993 VHS tape.

My point is, when you compare Dragon Ball to Star Trek Next Gen, the scope of the project for Dragon Ball is infinitely smaller, and the potential audience can't be much smaller, if it isn't equal or even larger... So, I see no reason to doubt that a HD master of Dragon Ball could happen.

In my mind, the only thing to doubt is whether anything beyond the original 508 episodes would be done. The 2 Z specials would be likely, the GT special less so(They probably have film for it, but given they used the videotape master for the Dragon Box... Well, it's possible they either misplaced the film, or just junked it), the Dragon Ball fire and traffic safety specials I'd say we may just get the Dragon Box masters re-used since they're mostly just a mild curiosity, and the 1993 Plan To Eradicate OVA... Well, they have the videotape of the sort of "Perfect play" guide as seen on the VHS release and the Dragon Box DVDs, they'll likely use that. If they wanted to do a HD scan, since it was essentially a choose your own adventure game for the Playdia which used video clips, then if they do still have film for it, they'll have about 2 and a half hours of footage to sort through, most of which is branching paths on this thing, which they'd have to figure out some way of assembling into something, and there may be complex rights with the guys who made the Playdia console, especially if they wanted to recreate the original branching paths feature as like a bonus thing on the Blu-Ray(Which is possible to do, it's just a question of whether it'd be feasible, whether rights would get in the way, and whether Toei can be bothered)...
On the plus side, it would be the first time most of the footage will have been seen by most people, since a lot of people don't even know about the additional footage(Which, among other things, includes Gohan fighting Tao Pai Pai, Piccolo using the Basho fan, and a bunch of alternate endings for the thing), so either that'll mean it'll be possible it'll be the big draw of showing footage many won't have seen before, or it'll be an excuse for Toei to sweep it under the rug, ignore it, and just reuse the master they used on the Dragon Boxes...

But anyway, the point is, at this point, especially given how much people were telling me that Toei will never even do their own HD masters of the movies(Yet here we are), I'm highly sceptical of such vague, baseless doubts. When you put things into perspective, there really is no reason to doubt a HD master of Dragon Ball unless the movie Blu-Rays sell poorly.

[mute_proxy]

hope they remaster db and z properly would pay anything.

Seems unlikely. One thing's to remaster 17 movies and another is to remaster 511 episodes (DB, DBZ, DBGT, + DBZ 2 TV-Specials & DBGT TV-Special) unless you then also throw in the Dragon Ball health and safety specials and all that. Even if they were just to remaster DB and DBZ, that'd still be 444 episodes, overall.

So you're saying it's more likely they'll leave the most successful part of the franchise in the dust, forgotten? Not gonna happen

[nosferatu]

Forgotten ? 1986 - 2018 nothing was ever forgotten or in the dust. the last dbz release is not that old.

[mute_proxy]

Forgotten ? 1986 - 2018 nothing was ever forgotten or in the dust. the last dbz release is not that old.

I wasn't talking to you but that other guy who said that a remaster of the originals is unlikely. If they don't move the original series into the HD era, they very well might be forgotten.

[JohnnyCashKami]

@Robo4900 @mute_proxy

I'm not saying it won't or can't happen but they probably would charge Aniplex USA (= premium) prices which for non-Japanese folks that would seem incredibly pricey but in the end, you'd be getting a wealth of Dragon Ball content.

FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z: Level 1.1 (Blu-ray) launched at an MSRP of $34.98 (correct me if this wasn't the price) with 17 episodes and that was awesome but nope.. people were complaining that it was "too few episodes" and that "it should be 40 episodes instead of 17 episodes". To be honest, $34.98 isn't even much at all now, if it was $60? Yeah, okay, I'd see their point but that wasn't the case.

TOEI could charge like $50-60 for 20 episodes per release and that would end up 15 Blu-ray sets for Dragon Ball Z, about 8 Blu-rays for Dragon Ball and lastly, only three Blu-rays for Dragon Ball GT.

A deal-breaker to this HD release is if TOEI used the shitty muffled audio when Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT broadcast audio files have been given to them and are floating around. Now that I think of it, TOEI did use an inferior Japanese audio source for the The Movies in HD than Dragon Boxes one, or so.

Fans shouldn't have to go out of their way to fix an issue that the company itself should have handled it themselves. Kind of defeats the purpose of buying a product to be enjoyed.

[eledoremassis02]

FUNimation is sitting on all of Z in HD, so while it's not from the original masters if TOEI didnt want to scan it (more cost effective/time saving/etc.) they could just use FUNI's

[JohnnyCashKami]

FUNimation is sitting on all of Z in HD, so while it's not from the original masters if TOEI didnt want to scan it (more cost effective/time saving/etc.) they could just use FUNI's

FUNimation's target audience has already bought the "definitive" release on Blu-ray so the next logical step (so to speak) is to release Dragon Ball Z: Orange Bricks in 4K Blu-ray.

Orange Bricks 'evolution'
DVD
Blu-ray
4K Blu-ray (will probably be released)

4K Blu-rays and 4K movies are all the buzz these days. Even if it isn't real 4K.

[Bajosexto]

Does traditional animation benefit from 4K? I've always wonder this. To me it just doesn't make sense to release 4K Blurays of 2D animation. But I don't know much about this stuff. So maybe the animation does gain 4 times the details in a 4K release? I would appreciate it if someone that's more knowledgeable about this explains how 4K works with traditional animation.

[sintzu]

FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z: Level 1.1 (Blu-ray) launched at an MSRP of $34.98 (correct me if this wasn't the price) with 17 episodes and that was awesome but nope.. people were complaining that it was "too few episodes" and that "it should be 40 episodes instead of 17 episodes".

Funimation and Viz charge that or more for 12-13 episode sets so 17-20 wouldn't be that bad as it would be more than the current anime releases. I think what hurt the level sets was the timing more than the price or content as they released it, Kai, DBoxes & the orange sets at nearly the same time. You also have to keep in mind that this time around Funi won't be doing the remastering so that's less time and effort on their part which will save them $$$ if a potential release doesn't fly off the shelves right away. I think things will be fine as long as each set has at least 20 episodes on it. We could get all 3 series on 25 Blu-Ray sets which would be worth it for the quality it could potentially have.

[Luso Saiyan]

Does traditional animation benefit from 4K?

It can benefit, depending on what resolution the master is scanned at. Does it benefit as much as 3D animation rendered at 4K or a live action film? No.

In the case of Dragon Ball, which was printed on 16mm film, you won't see much of a benefit in detail on a 4K Blu-ray in terms of resolution, at least when compared to a proper, regular Blu-ray release. But not everything is about resolution, 4K Blu-ray stores more data, so the bitrate can be higher and compression can be lower, which can provide an invariably better picture quality. But at the end of the day, in practice you'll barely notice it.

A proper 1080p Blu-ray release is the most logical and cost-efficient choice for a TV series, even more so an animated one.

[Robo4900]

Does traditional animation benefit from 4K? I've always wonder this. To me it just doesn't make sense to release 4K Blurays of 2D animation. But I don't know much about this stuff. So maybe the animation does gain 4 times the details in a 4K release? I would appreciate it if someone that's more knowledgeable about this explains how 4K works with traditional animation.

If the detail is there, then yes 4K is worth it. If it isn't, then it's not worth it. Simple as that.

For Dragon Ball, the main thing to remember is that Funimation are working off of third-generation 16mm prints, so there probably isn't enough detail in their film for a proper 4K master, to be honest.

FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z: Level 1.1 (Blu-ray) launched at an MSRP of $34.98 (correct me if this wasn't the price) with 17 episodes and that was awesome but nope.. people were complaining that it was "too few episodes" and that "it should be 40 episodes instead of 17 episodes".

Funimation and Viz charge that or more for 12-13 episode sets so 17-20 wouldn't be that bad as it would be more than the current anime releases. I think what hurt the level sets was the timing more than the price or content as they released it, Kai, DBoxes & the orange sets at nearly the same time. You also have to keep in mind that this time around Funi won't be doing the remastering so that's less time and effort on their part which will save them $$$ if a potential release doesn't fly off the shelves right away. I think things will be fine as long as each set has at least 20 episodes on it. We could get all 3 series on 25 Blu-Ray sets which would be worth it for the quality it could potentially have.

[Damned]

TOEI used the shitty muffled audio when Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT broadcast audio files have been given to them

Huh? Did something change recently? As far as I knew, Toei refused the broadcast audio.

[sangofe]

@Robo4900 @mute_proxy

I'm not saying it won't or can't happen but they probably would charge Aniplex USA (= premium) prices which for non-Japanese folks that would seem incredibly pricey but in the end, you'd be getting a wealth of Dragon Ball content.

FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z: Level 1.1 (Blu-ray) launched at an MSRP of $34.98 (correct me if this wasn't the price) with 17 episodes and that was awesome but nope.. people were complaining that it was "too few episodes" and that "it should be 40 episodes instead of 17 episodes". To be honest, $34.98 isn't even much at all now, if it was $60? Yeah, okay, I'd see their point but that wasn't the case.

TOEI could charge like $50-60 for 20 episodes per release and that would end up 15 Blu-ray sets for Dragon Ball Z, about 8 Blu-rays for Dragon Ball and lastly, only three Blu-rays for Dragon Ball GT.

A deal-breaker to this HD release is if TOEI used the shitty muffled audio when Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT broadcast audio files have been given to them and are floating around. Now that I think of it, TOEI did use an inferior Japanese audio source for the The Movies in HD than Dragon Boxes one, or so.

Fans shouldn't have to go out of their way to fix an issue that the company itself should have handled it themselves. Kind of defeats the purpose of buying a product to be enjoyed.

No, the oba has not been given to them as they said they didn't want it.

[Keroro1125]

No, the oba has not been given to them as they said they didn't want it.

Though didn't someone at Funimation express their interest in it? Having the OBA for Funimation's release of the new series remaster (if/when Toei remasters the series) would be a selling point for collectors. That'd be the only way I can see Funi justifying releasing DBZ again. Dragon Ball Z, "The Purist's Collection"

[JohnnyCashKami]

Chris Sabat, I think. FUNimation might need to ask TOEI permission to use that audio as it's better than the one TOEI has.

[sangofe]

Chris Sabat, I think. FUNimation might need to ask TOEI permission to use that audio as it's better than the one TOEI has.

That you're right about. In fact, he has been getting audio and still is.

[HakkaiBills93]

Any way even if sabat has the audio and even if Funi wanted to used them, they can't released them without Toei approval

[sangofe]

Any way even if sabat has the audio and even if Funi wanted to used them, they can't released them without Toei approval

I wonder what would happen if Funimation'd use it without asking.

[KBABZ]

Any way even if sabat has the audio and even if Funi wanted to used them, they can't released them without Toei approval

I wonder what would happen if Funimation'd use it without asking.

They'd probably lose the Dragon Ball license forever.