Funimation's 30th anniversary collectible home video release

[Gyt Kaliba]

Oh yeah, the original Japanese Dragon Boxes had way more reason to be the price they were. Like you said, that's just how DVD pricing in Japan goes sadly, but it was also likewise the first release the TV series' side of the franchise had ever gotten released (again, as you said).

Compared to here though, where we had a shitton of VHS and DVD singles, boxsets of those, Season Sets, Level Sets (even if they were incomplete), Dragon Boxes, Bluray Season Sets...there's soooo many ways to buy so much of this material that it makes each subsequent releases' price being high a harder barrier for some to overcome, no matter the quality (especially if one already has the series via one of those previous releases).

I also gave somewhat of a pass to the Rock the Dragon set being the price it was, since it was a release of a very specific version that hadn't been released in ages either (and was only the second release of much of that, I think?), so it was already a rarer item.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

One of the problems of being such a long-runner: makes it impossible to sell all of it at a reasonable price, even when you cut out half of it and call it Z!

I too am hoping that they'll sell a less premium version of the boxset, particularly because I have no interest in the physical extras like the statue. Just give me the discs with a nice presentational box (that isn't too extravagant, obviously) at a reasonable price.

Even still while this may be an expensive limited release, it has nothing on how much the Japanese Dragon Boxes specifically the DB and Z volumes 1 and 2 boxes cost which was approximately ¥100,000 or about $800 a piece. In the case of those, they were limited collector's items which Toei/Pony Canyon manufactured based on the total number of orders they had recieved in the specific alloted periods during the year when the pre order was available. The difference is that the Dragon Boxes were the first ever release of the entire franchise in Japan where the only things that had been out prior were the original run of the movies on VHS and Laserdisc. In terms of the times the astronomical cost can be reasoned on the above plus the fact that most who would spend the crazy money on them were those super nostalgic fans that had grown up with the series when it was on TV who had the disposable income to buy them, though they did also put out the individual DVD's for each series and all movies later for those who simply couldn't afford the boxes, so they had the bases covered as far as that goes.

I know it's a tough comparison when home video releases in Japan are so much more pricier than releases here in the a States but just thought i'd raise that point.

Plus those Dragon Boxes did eventually get rereleased in Japan as singles with arguably some of the most beautiful cover art I’ve ever seen, honestly if I was in Japan I’d rather get the singles. I can’t see that happening with these here because FUNimation has saturated the market so much now. If they never did UUE or the bricks we probably would’ve seen Dragon Box singles here too as soon as they stopped producing the boxes, and life would’ve been so much easier for everyone.

Same here, if i were living in Japan i too would buy the individual discs because they certainly proved to be easier on people's pocketbooks over the boxes. It's good that they provided that budget option for those fans who wanted the entire series and all of the movies but didn't have the crazy amount of cash to spend on all the Dragon Boxes during the specific ordering periods in their respective years from 2003-2006.

The only downside of the Dragon Box singles are that they don't have the bonus features that came with the boxes themselves with the exception of the movies' discs.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Oh yeah, the original Japanese Dragon Boxes had way more reason to be the price they were. Like you said, that's just how DVD pricing in Japan goes sadly, but it was also likewise the first release the TV series' side of the franchise had ever gotten released (again, as you said).

Compared to here though, where we had a shitton of VHS and DVD singles, boxsets of those, Season Sets, Level Sets (even if they were incomplete), Dragon Boxes, Bluray Season Sets...there's soooo many ways to buy so much of this material that it makes each subsequent releases' price being high a harder barrier for some to overcome, no matter the quality (especially if one already has the series via one of those previous releases).

I also gave somewhat of a pass to the Rock the Dragon set being the price it was, since it was a release of a very specific version that hadn't been released in ages either (and was only the second release of much of that, I think?), so it was already a rarer item.

Yeah, that's just the way it is with home video releases in Japan. It may seem crazy and hard to grasp for some but steeply priced collector's editions of popular anime series over there are very common.

[eledoremassis02]

On the plus side, they still have tons of physical rental stores, which is how most Japanese get their entertainment. I think outside of hardcore collection, Japanese aren't really into having mass collections of films and TV, and we're becoming that way too I suppose.

[Yalos]

Stuff like that has always irked me, especially when we're talking about products made from a particular period in time. It always makes me think back to this DVD of old Mickey Mouse shorts that my fiance has. It has a short (or maybe a few of them, I forget) that would be considered rather racist by today's standards. But they don't censor them. They present them as is, with an introduction by Leonard Maltin, a renowned film critic, explaining why the shorts are the way they are, why they are not okay today and why they weren't really okay then either, but also explaining that to censor them or to hide them away would only serve to hide that they happened, when instead they should be used as a lesson to show WHY they were wrong. I think similar introductions should be placed in front of similarly dated and 'wrong' films from those earlier time periods, and they should be used as exactly that, examples of a less open-minded and unfortunate period in history, like Song from the South (which Disney insists on half pretending doesn't exist, even while still using one of it's most well-known songs on it's music releases...).

...But that's all in regards to stuff like Tom and Jerry or Mickey Mouse, and such. There's not really anything like that in Dragon Ball to speak of (outside of unfortunate cases regarding General Blue and Advisor Black's Japanese name pun), to really require such an intro. In the cases of blood and 'flipping the bird', they should just give the show an appropriate rating, and parents should then be expected to actually do their jobs and decide if they think the material present is appropriate for their kids. And really, in the case of the middle finger at least, I can practically guarantee that any kid that's ridden a public school bus has seen that gesture before, and probably heard worse cursing than anything you'll find in any version of Dragon Ball.

Dragon Ball was intended for Japanese children to watch and thus for kids, but in the West if it requires to rate it as PG-13 or higher then so be it. It's a rating so it won't affect the content of the discs whereas censoring it would.

Aside from various characters flipping the bird, there's also those times when Goku & Raditz had bloody holes in their bodies, Cell adsorbed humans, Super Boo turned Chichi to an egg and then crushed it, some bastard killed Mr. Satan & Majin Boo's dog, Freeza impaled Kuririn (the Kai scene is nowhere near as bloody or violent as Z was)... and probably some other moments I'm forgetting but does all of this prove that it deserves a PG-13 or higher rating in the West? As long as it remains uncut, yeah. I watched Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT and the Movies and I wasn't traumatized by any of it. Just lots of fear mongering these days which ends up with games, movies and anime series being censored.

For example, DMC5 in the West was censored, in Japan it's uncut. Why, why, why! It's an M-rated/PEGI 18 game for crying out loud.

A bit off-topic but only the PS4 version got censored the PC and Xbox One version were left uncensored

While I think it's really stupid it seems that people blow it out of proportions, it's very minor part of the game


However, in DBZ it's different because Trunks filliping off Broly was the only reason to watch this movie

[SqueakyBoots]

What really makes the whole censorship thing seem pointless is the fact that we're in the internet age and you can find meme images of that screenshot of Vegeta holding up the middle finger plastered all over many different social media outlets. The damage had been done a long time ago and removing it from future releases isn't going to change that. Having censorship in Kai is one thing but a release of the original series should be presented as is purely from a historical perspective.

Same deal with the older classic cartoons when they get released on blu-ray and dvd. That Tom and Jerry short that caused the blu-ray sets to get cancelled, it's on youtube. Not hard to find at all. Pretty sure kids are stumbling upon it by accident. I found one upload of it that has 44 million views. The only thing WB has accomplished by trying to hide it is making fans angry. Thankfully, WB seems to be going to back to producing new releases of the older cartoons through their burn on demand Warner Archive service. (They just released a blu-ray of Popeye cartoons a few months ago using newly made transfers that look terrific, there's no DNR, everything in it is uncut including one cartoon that is politically incorrect and the set has gotten nothing but praise everywhere I've been. Take notes, everybody.) So I'm hoping we'll get the rest of Tom and Jerry in the near future.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

What really makes the whole censorship thing seem pointless is the fact that we're in the internet age and you can find meme images of that screenshot of Vegeta holding up the middle finger plastered all over many different social media outlets. The damage had been done a long time ago and removing it from future releases isn't going to change that. Having censorship in Kai is one thing but a release of the original series should be presented as is purely from a historical perspective.

Same deal with the older classic cartoons when they get released on blu-ray and dvd. That Tom and Jerry short that caused the blu-ray sets to get cancelled, it's on youtube. Not hard to find at all. Pretty sure kids are stumbling upon it by accident. I found one upload of it that has 44 million views. The only thing WB has accomplished by trying to hide it is making fans angry. Thankfully, WB seems to be going to back to producing new releases of the older cartoons through their burn on demand Warner Archive service. (They just released a blu-ray of Popeye cartoons a few months ago using newly made transfers that look terrific, there's no DNR, everything in it is uncut including one cartoon that is politically incorrect and the set has gotten nothing but praise everywhere I've been. Take notes, everybody.) So I'm hoping we'll get the rest of Tom and Jerry in the near future.

Indeed, i can understand why the edits were done to Kai because of the change of standards on the intervening 20 years since DBZ had originally aired. There's also the fact that it was airing in a Sunday morning time slot alongside One Piece, as compared to Z's original Wednesday evening slot which all three original series had aired in over the course of those 11 years from 1986 to 1997. However, the original Z should remain as is and not be tampered with or have content altered in the same manner as Kai.

Yeah, the thing with the Tom and Jerry BD's surely was a huge fiasco. It's a shame that happened but WBHV did it to themselves by promising a complete and unaltered set but then going back on that because apparently some thin skinned, PC executive over there in the legal department decided to pull the rug out from under everyone by cutting those two shorts from the Golden Collection Vol. 2 set. I was actually looking forward to them for a time but the apparent cancellation of the second set made it to where i felt it wasn't worth getting the first set and having an incomplete collection. As such i have held onto the Spotlight volumes in spite of their flaws, because for the time being it looks like that is the closest thing we have at this point to a complete run of the Hanna-Barbera produced shorts. I have copies of the two supposedly "too offensive" shorts so them not being in the sets themselves aren't a huge issue for me.

[SqueakyBoots]

I've been able to accept censorship in Kai because Kai itself is a newly edited and revised version of the show to start with and it has other visual edits besides the censorship. Whatever they may decide to do with Kai in the future if they ever rerelease it again is fine by me because Kai is really it's own thing and nobody is treating it as a replacement to the original.

[Kuwabara]

I don't think the release will be censored, or at the very least Toei and Funimation certainly wouldn't advertise it. Just imagine if it was censored and people only found out after purchasing it... Now that would be hilarious!

However, censorship? They can make absolutely gorgeous HD remasters of their shows on Blu-ray but then there's a good chunk that's been removed.

Fist of the North Star is a perfect example. Here's a comparison of the SD uncut vs HD censored: https://www.twitter.com/nappasan/status ... 0589656070

I thought this particular instance of censorship had to do with Toei having to cobble the film back together with multiple video sources? The true, uncensored version of Fist of the North Star - The Movie is likely lost forever in consistent quality.

[Scsigs]

Indeed, i can understand why the edits were done to Kai because of the change of standards on the intervening 20 years since DBZ had originally aired. There's also the fact that it was airing in a Sunday morning time slot alongside One Piece, as compared to Z's original Wednesday evening slot which all three original series had aired in over the course of those 11 years from 1986 to 1997. However, the original Z should remain as is and not be tampered with or have content altered in the same manner as Kai.

I mean, not all of the censorship would be bad. I'm not comfortable with seeing kids naked, so if they could censor that shit like they did with Kai, that'd be great.

[Jord]

I don't think the release will be censored, or at the very least Toei and Funimation certainly wouldn't advertise it. Just imagine if it was censored and people only found out after purchasing it... Now that would be hilarious!

You mean just like how TOEI just did a few months ago?

[KBABZ]

I don't think the release will be censored, or at the very least Toei and Funimation certainly wouldn't advertise it. Just imagine if it was censored and people only found out after purchasing it... Now that would be hilarious!

You mean just like how TOEI just did a few months ago?

That's the joke.

I mean, not all of the censorship would be bad. I'm not comfortable with seeing kids naked, so if they could censor that shit like they did with Kai, that'd be great.

I think the thing people are upset about is that it's abjectly not the original version of the show when you do that. I wouldn't mind a few instances of it personally, but the original version should always be an alternate angle in those cases.

[Shaddy]

Nobody against the censorship of Dragon Ball is so because they're interested in baby Goku's dick, it's just a case of wanting something to be as accurate to how it was originally portrayed as possible.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Nobody against the censorship of Dragon Ball is so because they're interested in baby Goku's dick, it's just a case of wanting something to be as accurate to how it was originally portrayed as possible.

Precisely, yes. Vegeta's scene were he was flipping off Kuririn felt out of place because he was just showing a fist, and originally it was something else.

TOEI's role isn't to play parent but to release quality series and movies. So, for the 80's and 90's kids it was okay but the 00's kids it's unacceptable they see middle fingers or what males have between their legs.

[KBABZ]

Precisely, yes. Vegeta's scene were he was flipping off Kuririn felt out of place because he was just showing a fist, and originally it was something else.

It didn't feel odd to me when I saw it, having no familiarity with the original and all, but I would have preferred the finger for authenticity's sake.

[Scsigs]

Nobody against the censorship of Dragon Ball is so because they're interested in baby Goku's dick, it's just a case of wanting something to be as accurate to how it was originally portrayed as possible.

Not necessarily my point. I was more so pointing out instances of GOOD censorship in Kai that make it just more watchable to me personally. Instances of people flipping the bird, however, SHOULD be maintained. I mean, in Japan, it's seen as a juvenile thing, right? It's kind of the same in America. It's harmless. Those being censored never made sense to me, especially on home video. Especially when previous video releases exist without the censoring, so there's no point whatsoever to doing it. It's just as baffling to me as why Lucasfilm won't just rerelease the unaltered original Star Wars trilogy as an alternative to the re-edited versions. They claim it's to honor George Lucas' wishes, but so many fans would give all the money in the world just to own the original theatrical versions of the movies. Especially when there are the popular Harmy fan edits out there that went into extensive editing to actually bring us cleaned up versions of those films in the original forms. Not all of the edits are bad, mind you, or the fact that Lucas wanted to create alternate versions of them, but it's the nature & volume of the changes, as well as no release of the unaltered versions that drives a lot of people, myself included, up a wall.

I'm sure FUNi have heard how much people don't like the fact that the Japanese Blu-Rays of a few of the movies that were censored & they'll request Toei give them the raw scenes. Granted, they HAVE to work with what Toei gives them most of the time (I mean, look at Viz & Sailor Moon, which apparently had its film masters lost or junked at some point, leaving really bad masters for them to work with BEFORE they oversaturated the colors & accidentally had ghosting on the discs. Then again, the Italian DVDs have the best remaster of that show, so who knows? Yet the movies look fantastic because they used the film masters as a base for the remaster of them), so who know. Then again, that hasn't stopped FUNi from drastically altering the pictures before (except where it would've helped in TFC's case for getting rid of the inconsistent green tint that plagues most of the episodes), so maybe they could splice in some footage & alter the colors & grain to match what Toei gives them from the Dragon Box masters, since they MUST have them sitting on a hard drive somewhere in Texas. But, then again, they tend to not alter the pictures when something's already in HD, so who knows if they'd even do THAT for us?

[KBABZ]

Thank goodness Toei didn't make Kai an out and out REPLACEMENT for Z and said "Hey we're not selling Z anymore Kai is the new thing".

It would be great if Funi were to splice in the uncensored shots, but they probably wouldn't as the visual change may be a giveaway, it would be a decent amount of work, and it might in all likelihood annoy Toei.

[JohnnyCashKami]

You lot are worried TOEI will crop it but there's more probability it'll be censored. Like the movies.



I seriously hate this BS of removing you know what. TOEI (remastered by Q-TEC) got rid of Vegeta's flippin' the bird back in 09 and in 18 they did it again to other characters.



Here's also something about Kai TFC that may interest some:



Source: twitter/nappasan

[Scsigs]

Here's also something about Kai TFC that may interest some:



Source: twitter/nappasan

Anyone feel like translating?

[Char Aznable]

For the record I've been worried about cropping and censoring, and I have a bad feeling on both of them.