Funimation's 30th anniversary collectible home video release

[Snail]

Content is definitely questionable. Also not a fan of FUNi as of late.

However, I'm a sucker for the box art. If someone got me this as a gift I would still be a happy camper.

[coola]

Here's a very in depth video regarding the set and the general history of the series on home video here, it was definitely an interesting watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=spii3SOhi0Y

It really is like 2006 all over again, i swear it's like Funimation higherups didnt noticed there are social media nowadays, and they can easily tore apart terrible release, Toei, please, take license away from Funimation. And please, don't buy this crappy boxset.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Here's a very in depth video regarding the set and the general history of the series on home video here, it was definitely an interesting watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=spii3SOhi0Y

It really is like 2006 all over again, i swear it's like Funimation higherups didnt noticed there are social media nowadays, and they can easily tore apart terrible release, Toei, please, take license away from Funimation. And please, don't buy this crappy boxset.

I know right, aside from the obvious exception of the Dragon Boxes and Level sets (rest their souls) they haven't put out a remotely GOOD as is release of DBZ and this set while not cropped to fake 16:9 widescreen like the Orange Bricks/Season BD's still doesn't look like much of a real improvement in my eyes. Still though, i really don't see Toei revoking FUNi's license to the franchise anytime soon at this point given how much they've grown as a company since they first acquired it in 1994 almost 25 years ago (Wow, it's been nearly that long already) because they have pretty much been the sole Dragon Ball distributor here aside from the very brief period in the late '80s/early '90s where Harmony Gold briefly had the original DB series before that nowhere.

I'm glad that i went with buying the Dragon Boxes, because there's absolutely no way in hell i'm going to give them a single red cent for cheap subpar releases that doesn't represent the series as it should be presented in a quality that does it justice.

[Robo4900]

Here's a very in depth video regarding the set and the general history of the series on home video here, it was definitely an interesting watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=spii3SOhi0Y

It really is like 2006 all over again, i swear it's like Funimation higherups didnt noticed there are social media nowadays, and they can easily tore apart terrible release, Toei, please, take license away from Funimation. And please, don't buy this crappy boxset.

As the community manager said to me on their Discord server; if you want anyone at Funi to actually hear you, you have to email them (relevant email address in my sig).

But there is a sadder truth to this that I've become resigned to; they definitely know what they're doing, and they're doing this deliberately. Not to piss us off -- they don't care about that -- but to produce the cheapest possible releases, for the most amount of money. I'll go into this more below the following quote, but the bottom line is...

Send your emails, keep the conversation going, never let up, never stop taking Funimation to task...
Funi don't care, they won't listen, but the fans do care, the fans will listen, and I'm sure many fans who don't know much about this stuff will appreciate being informed that the only good viewing options require piracy, because the official releases are all this crap.
And who knows, maybe one day there'll be some one-in-a-million effort within Funi like the Levels, and they'll have our mountainous hatred for Funi's prevoius releases to point to. I wouldn't count on it, but at this point, all we have is discussion.

I know right, aside from the obvious exception of the Dragon Boxes and Level sets (rest their souls) they haven't put out a remotely GOOD as is release of DBZ and this set while not cropped to fake 16:9 widescreen like the Orange Bricks/Season BD's still doesn't look like much of a real improvement in my eyes.

Yep. And at this point, I personally would say it's definitely deliberate. There are no releases available of DBZ that aren't utter crap, so if you want DBZ, you have to buy one of these crap releases. What that means is that any time Funi puts out a release, they can put the absolute bare minimum you can possibly put into a release, and it'll look utterly awful, but it will still manage to be about on par with whatever other crap they've previously put out (possibly a little better in some ways, probably a little worse in others), and thus people buy it anyway, and it makes tons of money both due to Dragon Ball's popularity, and the insane profit margins.

It's a genius, exploitative, evil strategy.

Still though, i really don't see Toei revoking FUNi's license to the franchise anytime soon at this point given how much they've grown as a company since they first acquired it in 1994 almost 25 years ago (Wow, it's been nearly that long already) because they have pretty much been the sole Dragon Ball distributor here aside from the very brief period in the late '80s/early '90s where Harmony Gold briefly had the original DB series before that nowhere.

Bottom line is: Funimation make a lot of money, they have a lot of fans, their dubbing is generally well-liked, a lot of Japanese companies (including Toei) like dealing with them, etc...
Anyone under any illusions of Toei taking their license away is a fool.

[JohnnyCashKami]

The UUE were a good DBZ release too, Super Saiya Man, but again.. Cancelled! FUNimation can do a proper remaster but they just can't be bothered to because they know a low quality release is just as, if not even more profitable than a high quality one.

FUNimation isn't interested in making a respectable release. TOEI should indeed revoke the license from them.

FUNimation goes from injecting politics to dubs, to making shitty remasters.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The UUE were a good DBZ release too, Super Saiya Man, but again.. Cancelled! FUNimation can do a proper remaster but they just can't be bothered to because they know a low quality release is just as, if not even more profitable than a high quality one.

FUNimation isn't interested in making a respectable release. TOEI should indeed revoke the license from them.

FUNimation goes from injecting politics to dubs, to making shitty remasters.

Yeah, they are definitely capable of putting out so much better than what they have but they choose instead to go with cheap and subpar releases which is exactly what the Orange Bricks and Season Blu-ray sets are. Both of those are utter garbage from a video quality standpoint and the only thing that really sells them is the price, that's really the main thing that has sold them aside from the dub track with the Team Faulconer score which even then isn't exactly the same thing as what aired on Cartoon Network/Toonami in the late '90s/early 2000's. What's there is a patchwork, selective re dub that inconsistently has some character's voices re dubbed but not others and in some places it sounds really awkward (i.e. 2005/2007 Sabat Vegeta talking to 1999 Schemmel Goku) so it's not truly the OG dub that aired on TV and was on the old single disc releases.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Here's a very in depth video regarding the set and the general history of the series on home video here, it was definitely an interesting watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=spii3SOhi0Y

It really is like 2006 all over again, i swear it's like Funimation higherups didnt noticed there are social media nowadays, and they can easily tore apart terrible release, Toei, please, take license away from Funimation. And please, don't buy this crappy boxset.

As the community manager said to me on their Discord server; if you want anyone at Funi to actually hear you, you have to email them (relevant email address in my sig).

But there is a sadder truth to this that I've become resigned to; they definitely know what they're doing, and they're doing this deliberately. Not to piss us off -- they don't care about that -- but to produce the cheapest possible releases, for the most amount of money. I'll go into this more below the following quote, but the bottom line is...

Send your emails, keep the conversation going, never let up, never stop taking Funimation to task...
Funi don't care, they won't listen, but the fans do care, the fans will listen, and I'm sure many fans who don't know much about this stuff will appreciate being informed that the only good viewing options require piracy, because the official releases are all this crap.
And who knows, maybe one day there'll be some one-in-a-million effort within Funi like the Levels, and they'll have our mountainous hatred for Funi's prevoius releases to point to. I wouldn't count on it, but at this point, all we have is discussion.

I know right, aside from the obvious exception of the Dragon Boxes and Level sets (rest their souls) they haven't put out a remotely GOOD as is release of DBZ and this set while not cropped to fake 16:9 widescreen like the Orange Bricks/Season BD's still doesn't look like much of a real improvement in my eyes.

Yep. And at this point, I personally would say it's definitely deliberate. There are no releases available of DBZ that aren't utter crap, so if you want DBZ, you have to buy one of these crap releases. What that means is that any time Funi puts out a release, they can put the absolute bare minimum you can possibly put into a release, and it'll look utterly awful, but it will still manage to be about on par with whatever other crap they've previously put out (possibly a little better in some ways, probably a little worse in others), and thus people buy it anyway, and it makes tons of money both due to Dragon Ball's popularity, and the insane profit margins.

It's a genius, exploitative, evil strategy.

Still though, i really don't see Toei revoking FUNi's license to the franchise anytime soon at this point given how much they've grown as a company since they first acquired it in 1994 almost 25 years ago (Wow, it's been nearly that long already) because they have pretty much been the sole Dragon Ball distributor here aside from the very brief period in the late '80s/early '90s where Harmony Gold briefly had the original DB series before that nowhere.

Bottom line is: Funimation make a lot of money, they have a lot of fans, their dubbing is generally well-liked, a lot of Japanese companies (including Toei) like dealing with them, etc...
Anyone under any illusions of Toei taking their license away is a fool.

Exactly, and that's why i have gone for the pricier option of buying the Dragon Boxes on eBay as slow of a venture as that has been, because at this point i really don't see FUNi getting their act together anytime soon and releasing another properly remastered version of the show that isn't a DNR smear fest and 20% or more of the total image chopped off because they want it to look more "cinematic" which is laughable as the show it NOT meant to be seen in an aspect ratio that compromises the image so badly. In a way, that's sort of my own silent protest in that i am not about to give them money for such horrible garbage quality when it's clear they could do so much better as we have seen several times before.

Seriously, i'm not giving them my money when they market such shoddy crap as the standard and it baffles me that people think it looks good. Compare the first few shots especially and you can see that FUNi just wants to take the least amount of effort possible and push it despite how bad it really is.

Spoiler:

[Mr.Poot]

Guess I'm boycotting Funimation now I'll just get my stuff somewhere else.

[sangofe]

FUNimation isn't interested in making a respectable release. TOEI should indeed revoke the license from them.

The problem is that Toei isn't interested in that either.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Honestly I'm willing to wait for a new remaster of Z as I mostly prefer Kai. For me the bigger disappointment is that TOEI don't seem interested in remastering OG Dragon Ball or GT. I want to support those two series on Blu-Ray, then focus on Z, which will always be a big seller anyway.

[ShaneisMC]

Anybody have any sort of news or update on how things are proceeding? Obviously the deadline for reservation ended a few hours ago. Is it indeed actually finally closed?

[Forte224]

Anybody have any sort of news or update on how things are proceeding? Obviously the deadline for reservation ended a few hours ago. Is it indeed actually finally closed?

I don't know. I can still get a far as Add to Cart but I don't really want to proceed past that, though it looks like it's still up. You could ask FUNimation but they probably don't know either.

[SqueakyBoots]

Reservations appear to still be open for the time being even though the deadline has passed. At the time of this post, there are still 1,407 sets available. I guess they're keeping it open a little longer incase anyone still buys any though at this point, it's highly unlikely they'll manage to sell the full 6,000 which I personally think should be taken as a failure for a big franchise like Dragon Ball.

FUNimation isn't interested in making a respectable release. TOEI should indeed revoke the license from them.

The problem is that Toei isn't interested in that either.

Toei apparently sent Funimation a copy of the Broly movie that had a green tint. They probably think this new remaster looks fine.

[KBABZ]

Toei apparently sent Funimation a copy of the Broly movie that had a green tint. They probably think this new remaster looks fine.

IMO the fact that Toei have never kicked up a fuss about how Funi have handled Dragon Ball both now and in the past means they really don't care.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Toei apparently sent Funimation a copy of the Broly movie that had a green tint. They probably think this new remaster looks fine.

IMO the fact that Toei have never kicked up a fuss about how Funi have handled Dragon Ball both now and in the past means they really don't care.

Yeah, it certainly seems that way as the suits over at Toei probably think "Meh, do whatever you want." so it's no skin of their nose what FUNimation does with the property over here be it crap quality home releases or what have you.

[Forte224]

Oh, the counter just dropped to 0 units remaining and it now says Sold Out. So that's it, then. Close to 4600 people bought the set (although a lot of those are probably scalpers since you can order up to 5), which is a pretty meager number in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully FUNi translates that as disdain for the image quality and not as disdain for proper 4:3.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Oh, the counter just dropped to 0 units remaining and it now says Sold Out. So that's it, then. Close to 4600 people bought the set (although a lot of those are probably scalpers since you can order up to 5), which is a pretty meager number in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully FUNi translates that as disdain for the image quality and not as disdain for proper 4:3.

I mean the fact that they went back to 4:3 is surprising in of itself, considering just how much they pushed and justified the widescreen cropping on the previous releases. I think the Q&A that Kanzenshuu did back in 2013/2014 for the Season BD's was especially telling, given the way that they tried their hardest to explain what their reasoning (or lack thereof) was for going about it the way they did. I just read through it again and laughed at the part where they literally said that "widescreen is a must" and the other stuff about going back to cropping the image again that they spouted in their responses. Like seriously, it reflects how just little they understand about how the show should be presented.

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/2013/12/31/f ... questions/

[Tylerman29]

Huh I figured it would be for sale until the 6000k sold..but I guess whatever the units were at the deadline is all they are making? Or maybe leftovers will be sent to amazon?

[SuperSaiyanPan]

Huh I figured it would be for sale until the 6000k sold..but I guess whatever the units were at the deadline is all they are making? Or maybe leftovers will be sent to amazon?

No it's over now and forever, the only hope anyone has now is eBay for criminal prices.

[Forte224]

Oh, the counter just dropped to 0 units remaining and it now says Sold Out. So that's it, then. Close to 4600 people bought the set (although a lot of those are probably scalpers since you can order up to 5), which is a pretty meager number in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully FUNi translates that as disdain for the image quality and not as disdain for proper 4:3.

I mean the fact that they went back to 4:3 is surprising in of itself, considering just how much they pushed and justified the widescreen cropping on the previous releases. I think the Q&A that Kanzenshuu did back in 2013/2014 for the Season BD's was very telling, especially the way that they tried their hardest to explain what their reasoning (or lack thereof) was.

https://www.kanzenshuu.com/2013/12/31/f ... questions/

Yeah but their original post about the 30th set, and the blog post, make it sound like they still feel 16:9 is the cuurent standard for DBZ and 4:3 is just for hardcore fans.

From the 30th anniversary page:

We understand that many fans are perfectly happy with their home video releases of Dragon Ball Z that were previously created and that’s cool with us!

From the blog post:

Our previous Blu-ray releases for Dragon Ball Z were cropped to 16:9 to match modern standard sensibilities that have evolved over the years as widescreen has become more adopted, but for this particular project, we wanted to release the series in 4:3 for the more hardcore subset of DBZ fans who want to experience the series with higher integrity.

But now that FUNimation anniversary trailer uses 4:3 footage from the Black Brick set, so who really knows how they feel? Either way, DNR appears to be a mainstay for their releases.