Possible details on Selecta Vision's Dragon Ball (1986-1989) bluray release

[SqueakyBoots]

First off, going with widescreen over standard definition was a must.

This person shouldn't be working in this industry.

[PremiumSalt]

The films were very clearly blocked to look good at both aspect ratios.

Evidently not if the infamous Gohan Masenko error is anything to go by...

[Danfun64]

The 4:3 Shenron error in Path to Power is worse IMO. Shame I don't have a good pic of it off hand.

[KBABZ]

The films were very clearly blocked to look good at both aspect ratios.

Evidently not if the infamous Gohan Masenko error is anything to go by...

That would have been well within the matte box for 4:3 televisions of the day:

[Robo4900]

The films were very clearly blocked to look good at both aspect ratios.

Evidently not if the infamous Gohan Masenko error is anything to go by...

The 4:3 Shenron error in Path to Power is worse IMO. Shame I don't have a good pic of it off hand.

Ah yes, because six or seven shots over the entire 17-movie run point beyond a shadow of a doubt to the irrefutable fact that they are totally unwatchable in open-matte 4:3. Give me a break.

The movies work in both aspect ratios. Personally, I'd prefer to watch them full-frame given just how much beautiful, detailed animation there was in the full frame areas that you miss by watching the theatrical.

[Ajay]

The animators' layouts are full frame with 16:9 guides. They absolutely cater to both aspect ratios. Any errors are just that: errors.



They're all significantly better experiences in 4:3.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I do have the matted versions with FUNi's feature packs, but i'm also gradually picking up the old singles to own all the movies in both fullscreen and widescreen mostly to have the choice of either whenever i am wanting to see the whole of the 4:3 picture or having it set in that cinematic form like how they were shown in theaters in Japan and later re released on VHS and Laserdisc there.

They work fine in both forms, it's mostly up to personal preference as to which aspect ratio you would rather view them in.

[LostTimeLord]

The 4:3 Shenron error in Path to Power is worse IMO. Shame I don't have a good pic of it off hand.

Here's both Funi releases (2011 then 2003 discs). I had to resort to PowerDVD when VLC refused to let me navigate through the main feature of the 2003 DVD.

Spoiler:

[kei17]

These "errors" in Path to Power are not supposed to be visible on 4:3 CRT TVs, so they are not actually errors.

[Ajay]

These "errors" in Path to Power are not supposed to be visible on 4:3 CRT TVs, so they are not actually errors.

To clarify, I mean matting errors when it came to home releases.

[Scsigs]

These "errors" in Path to Power are not supposed to be visible on 4:3 CRT TVs, so they are not actually errors.

That sounds like making excuses to me.

[KBABZ]

These "errors" in Path to Power are not supposed to be visible on 4:3 CRT TVs, so they are not actually errors.

That sounds like making excuses to me.

You're not having a proper conception of this, then.

CRT televisions were for the better part of 60 years the main way people viewed video content at home. All CRT televisions have overscan, where they crop some of the picture. This is where Action Safe and Title Safe zones come from, so that titles and important parts of the picture don't get cut off. This is also why many PS1 and PS2-era games gave you the option to reposition the screen to best fit your TV, and older consoles like the Master System and Mega Drive put stuff like single-colour borders used for the background layer here knowing that a CRT's overscan would crop it out.

Flat-screen TVs wouldn't come into living room prominence until the mid 2000s, so the idea of Action/Title Safe zones and CRT overscan permeated through the entirety of the original "classic" run of Dragon Ball anime. It would be easily arguable that classic Dragon Ball was intended for CRT televisions and not modern HD displays, with Overscan being part of the creation process (as seen with the layout sheets from earlier), so any mistakes like the Masenko would not be visible on the display the movie was designed to be viewed on.

CRTs would of course be used to view the final product during production too. It could have been something nobody was aware of and it slipped through the review process, or the mistake was noticed but kept after checking if it came inside the overscan frame. But the fact of the matter is that we, the viewing audience, would have no idea the mistake was even made were it not for the modern, non-overscan displays we have today. Trying to pin an honest mistake as evidence that 4:3 isn't an intended way to view the movie is quite foolish IMO.

[Scsigs]

These "errors" in Path to Power are not supposed to be visible on 4:3 CRT TVs, so they are not actually errors.

That sounds like making excuses to me.

You're not having a proper conception of this, then.

CRT televisions were for the better part of 60 years the main way people viewed video content at home. All CRT televisions have overscan, where they crop some of the picture. This is where Action Safe and Title Safe zones come from, so that titles and important parts of the picture don't get cut off. This is also why many PS1 and PS2-era games gave you the option to reposition the screen to best fit your TV, and older consoles like the Master System and Mega Drive put stuff like single-colour borders used for the background layer here knowing that a CRT's overscan would crop it out.

Flat-screen TVs wouldn't come into living room prominence until the mid 2000s, so the idea of Action/Title Safe zones and CRT overscan permeated through the entirety of the original "classic" run of Dragon Ball anime. It would be easily arguable that classic Dragon Ball was intended for CRT televisions and not modern HD displays, with Overscan being part of the creation process (as seen with the layout sheets from earlier), so any mistakes like the Masenko would not be visible on the display the movie was designed to be viewed on.

CRTs would of course be used to view the final product during production too. It could have been something nobody was aware of and it slipped through the review process, or the mistake was noticed but kept after checking if it came inside the overscan frame. But the fact of the matter is that we, the viewing audience, would have no idea the mistake was even made were it not for the modern, non-overscan displays we have today. Trying to pin an honest mistake as evidence that 4:3 isn't an intended way to view the movie is quite foolish IMO.

You misunderstood what I was saying, but I understand why. I meant that that was an excuse as to why the animation errors were showing in the product, not why the cropping to widescreen was better. I'm of the opinion that the widescreen is what was intended for the movies to be seen in because they put them together for theaters, which would be cropped for them. If they wanted the movies to be seen in 4:3, then they should've cropped out the frames that had the errors so that they wouldn't show. Saying that the CRTs would get rid of that problem doesn't excuse that the animation errors are still visible in the 4:3 transfers of the films, when they could easily fix them in one way or another. I can buy that with when people say older video games look better when played on the TVs of the eras they came out in, but I can't excuse it with something like this.

[Metalwario64]

They're all significantly better experiences in 4:3.

Yeah, I agree. There are lots of cramped shots in movies 12 and 13 especially. A shot near the end of 12 with Goku and Vegeta standing in the distance over the bloody pond has both of their heads cropped off in the 16x9 version!

I just wish the footage used in the old FUNimation single releases wasn't so atrocious. At least, it might have been tolerable if they had used good enough compression back then.

[kei17]

You misunderstood what I was saying, but I understand why. I meant that that was an excuse as to why the animation errors were showing in the product, not why the cropping to widescreen was better. I'm of the opinion that the widescreen is what was intended for the movies to be seen in because they put them together for theaters, which would be cropped for them. If they wanted the movies to be seen in 4:3, then they should've cropped out the frames that had the errors so that they wouldn't show. Saying that the CRTs would get rid of that problem doesn't excuse that the animation errors are still visible in the 4:3 transfers of the films, when they could easily fix them in one way or another. I can buy that with when people say older video games look better when played on the TVs of the eras they came out in, but I can't excuse it with something like this.

It's not the film itself what you look at ultimately, so even if there's something inappropriate on the footage, that's not really an error as far as it's not visible on the final medium then; The theatrical screen or the CRT TV. The old movies were obviously filmed with the 1.85:1 widescreen in mind as the primary format as they were screened that way in theaters, and they probably cared less about the 4:3 format, like "Hey, no need to fix that 'cause CRT TVs will crop them out anyway." It's just not intended to be seen in 4:3 without proper overscan. It's like garbage sprites on NES games that pop up in corners of the screen, which were not visible on CRT TVs then, and not counted as glitches.

[Kuwabara]

They're all significantly better experiences in 4:3.

How do you figure? Seems like personal preference to me. The extra footage is neat, but being that they're post-Academy theatrical films, I personally prefer them in 1.85:1 and don't think the cropping is arbitrary. Barring some screenings and releases I might not be privy to outside of the US, it's a shame they've pretty much only ever been presented as such in Japan. A minor nitpick perhaps, but Funi's use of 1.78:1 in more recent movie releases is close but not as faithful as I'd like. Since the TV series was presented in 4:3, I obviously prefer it that way.

Yeah, I agree. There are lots of cramped shots in movies 12 and 13 especially. A shot near the end of 12 with Goku and Vegeta standing in the distance over the bloody pond has both of their heads cropped off in the 16x9 version!

I just wish the footage used in the old FUNimation single releases wasn't so atrocious. At least, it might have been tolerable if they had used good enough compression back then.

I don't remember them looking objectionable in 16x9, I'll have to watch those again. And for what it's worth, I think there are some pretty good French releases of the latter movies in 4:3?

[Ajay]

They're all significantly better experiences in 4:3.

How do you figure? They're all significantly better experiences in 4:3.

After a certain point you could argue it's preference, but to me it's immediately obvious to me that in spite of efforts to work in a 16:9 format, the majority of the animation works better in its full-frame counterpart.

FWIW, the majority of the movies were storyboarded for fullscreen:



It's only after a certain point that 16:9 guides were used for the boards



And even then, the compositions feel stronger, the work is less cramped, and the scale is better when not cropped. Which... I guess is expected given they all worked with full frame the majority of the time, so were much more accustomed to worked in that aspect.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

[Kuwabara]

After a certain point you could argue it's preference, but to me it's immediately obvious to me that in spite of efforts to work in a 16:9 format, the majority of the animation works better in its full-frame counterpart.

FWIW, the majority of the movies were storyboarded for fullscreen:



It's only after a certain point that 16:9 guides were used for the boards



And even then, the compositions feel stronger, the work is less cramped, and the scale is better when not cropped. Which... I guess is expected given they all worked with full frame the majority of the time, so were much more accustomed to worked in that aspect.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I still like the wider movie 12 shot more, but an argument could be made for the 4:3 Broly shot. It almost looks like Goku's getting slammed into a wall since the horizon in the background isn't as visible.

So maybe some shots work well in 4:3, but I can also think of other shots that either look top or bottom heavy, or just a little too open in general. Apologies for the Pioneer DVD source, but some movie 2 shots come to mind:

Spoiler:

Those storyboard pics are super cool!

[KBABZ]

Spoiler:

I haven't seen the movies, so DAMN that looks like an 80s trance album cover!

[PremiumSalt]

So I'll admit I've learned a few things here that I didn't know previously in regards to the movies' production. All that said though, none of it negates the fact that the films were originally released and exhibited (aside for, as mentioned previously, some of the earlier ones were in 4:3 depending on the theaters equipment), so to me the widescreen ratio is closest to the original form of the films, therefore the most "purist" way to view them, in my opinion.