There is a chance of Funimation fix the errors in the 30th anniversary set?

[ronaldnorth_03]

Since the first video released, the hardcore group of fans of the series (in which this product was intended to be released to this group) has complained a lot. Having two Ajay videos with over 100,000 views on YouTube talking about. Can Funimation fix its mistakes and launch the series with its master without any changes to the image?

[AnimeMaakuo]

Since the first video released, the hardcore group of fans of the series (in which this product was intended to be released to this group) has complained a lot. Having two Ajay videos with over 100,000 views on YouTube talking about. Can Funimation fix its mistakes and launch the series with its master without any changes to the image?

That’s a pipe dream.

[ronaldnorth_03]

When will it be released? If nothing changes, we only have Selecta Vision's bluray ... Funimation has had time since then, never showed anything ...

[Akira]

No chance of those Selectavision releases having english subs is there? I wouldn't think they would, but if they did, they might be worth a consideration if their quality turns out nice.

[Danfun64]

No chance. The Selectavision releases have always been focused on Spain (and sometimes Portugal?).

[TheGreatness25]

While it would be great, I sincerely doubt it.

1) It's already been bought. There's nothing to be gained by Funimation spending more money re-working something that people already bought.

2) While I'm sure they know about the fan backlash, they probably think what every big company thinks in these situations -- that it's a "vocal minority" voicing its displeasure while the majority, who likes their product, is quietly enjoying it. I've heard this "vocal minority" excuse too many times.

3) Imagine the backlash from fans that would have bought this set but didn't solely because of that original footage that was released, and now won't have the chance to own it.

[VDenter]

Bet all the episodes are already done so going back and fixing anything would require them to start everything from scratch. Funimation wants to do this set as cheaply as possible so i doubt they will fix anything. Best hope is for either Toie to do a remaster of this series eventually or we wait for a hypothetical 40th anniversary set, because i doubt this will be the last time DBZ gets rereleased.

[ABED]

2) While I'm sure they know about the fan backlash, they probably think what every big company thinks in these situations -- that it's a "vocal minority" voicing its displeasure while the majority, who likes their product, is quietly enjoying it. I've heard this "vocal minority" excuse too many times.

While agree that there's little if no money in reworking the product, "the vocal minority" is true in most cases. It's a vocal minority who complain at least to any significant degree. I'm sure people who bought those terrible releases complained but that didn't stop them from buying them. Voting with your wallet speaks louder.

[TheGreatness25]

After everything that's happened recently from green tints to heavy DNR to censorship, are people still holding out hope that Toei would come and give everyone the magical release we're all hoping for?

I've gotten comfortable with the fact that the Dragon Boxes are as good as it's going to get and I'm getting everything else because of my collector problem and essentially as a video comparison project. It's not like I'll keep re-watching the series in all of these formats.

I'm pretty sure that if nobody bought the 30th anniversary set, that they wouldn't rethink their strategy. They'd probably just chalk it up to something else and move on. I highly doubt that they'd come out and make the release we'd all want out of that. They just would wait another five years before dropping something.

The idea of voting with my wallet doesn't really work in this case because we all know that someone out there would take my place for this set and if it's going to be made anyway, I might as well have it as well. I also can't stand the idea that people are basically being told that they did the wrong thing by buying this -- it's their money and they can spend it however they want. I reiterate that I don't think that if this set failed to meet its minimum preorders, that it would give us a better release. I don't believe that for a second.

[ABED]

The idea of voting with your wallet doesn't really work because someone out there would take my place for this set and if it's going to be made anyway, I might as well have it as well. I also can't stand the idea that people are basically being told that they did the wrong thing by buying this

I don't know what you're getting at here. Which speaks louder, the criticism or the revenue? And tough if you don't like the idea that people are being told they did the wrong thing. It's not even that they're told they did the wrong thing, just something contradictory. If people buy something, they have the right to criticize it, but if people keep buying it, which metric is a company supposed to go with?

DBZ has always sold regardless of how cheap the product was. What incentive is there to change?

[Robo4900]

The idea of voting with your wallet doesn't really work because someone out there would take my place for this set and if it's going to be made anyway, I might as well have it as well. I also can't stand the idea that people are basically being told that they did the wrong thing by buying this

I don't know what you're getting at here. Which speaks louder, the criticism or the revenue? And tough if you don't like the idea that people are being told they did the wrong thing. It's not even that they're told they did the wrong thing, just something contradictory. If people buy something, they have the right to criticize it, but if people keep buying it, which metric is a company supposed to go with?

DBZ has always sold regardless of how cheap the product was. What incentive is there to change?

It is worth noting that, as far as Dragon Ball releases go (particularly Z ones), this one sold pretty abysmally. They only barely crossed the 3000 minimum preorders, and it took them quite a long time to get there.

If the fans were really behind this release, it would have sold out in days.
Naturally, this was a cheap release top to bottom, and it was 100% designed as the cheapest, most cynical cash-in possible, but it's clear the fans weren't behind this release, and it didn't make nearly the money it could have.

But as far as Funi are concerned, this release was a success for a few simple reasons:

• Enough people bought it that the sets were produced, so given how comically cheap this set was to make, there can be zero doubt it anyone's mind that this was profitable.
• Funi have technically released the show in 4:3, so no fans can say they haven't, as Funi's narrative will insist, "catered to the hardcore fans that, for some reason, really must see the top of gohan's hair."
• The only 4:3 sets Funi have released of Z since the original singles have sold poorly. The DBoxes and Levels, with their ludicrous prices and almost suspiciously bad timing, are quite well known to have not met sales targets, and now this set only barely crossed its threshold.
  As was the case with Funi's claims of "fans have in the past liked DNR", they will now be able to say "fans in the past have preferred widescreen cropping."
  Naturally, they'll ignore the reasons why these sets sold poorly, because it isn't convenient for their narrative.

In other words, Funi cleverly engineered a situation in which the fans can only lose. And we lost hard. And because of the way it was set up, it turned fans against each-other too. Utterly horrible. And people like Geekdom (sorry, man, I like your Dragon Ball In-Depth videos, but...) insisting that rumours and things like the Animax Bardock special were showing this new remaster from Funi would be something special, they did not help things. (And standing by that when SelectaVision announced their new set, which is now confirmed to just be an upscale of the Dragon Box footage, is just doubling down on this mistake; learn from your mistakes, don't double down on them. I'm not directly talking to Geekdom here, lots of people are guilty of this, but Geekdom is the most public figure who's done this, and I don't feel anyone's calling him out on it enough. He screwed up, and he needs to make it right, not just double down. And that goes for every one of you who's still standing by the new SelectaVision set now that we know it's an upscale)
This whole situation turns my stomach.

All we can do is continue to call out Funi's marketing bullshit as being bullshit, and never let up.
Remember, if Funi really wanted to, they could have put out mass market releases using the Dragon Box video masters at any time from about 2009 onwards. Hell, they've even shown that they can put it out on streaming services, as the Japanese version of about 10 or 20 episodes of Z towards the end use Dragon Box masters on FuniNow. And it might not even be as late as 2009 that this was the case, one of Funi's DVD singles from 2003 used DBox masters.

Ultimately, Funi will likely never change. They'll be giving us a shitty release that's nominally less shitty than the last one in some subtle way in a few years to get people to buy it again. Though likely they'll make it worse too; the Season DVDs replaced the singles and were complete, uncut, and not ridiculously expensive... But they were cropped and blurry, and the dub audio remixes were really badly handled.
The Season BDs replaced the season DVDs and fixed the line disappearances and some small problems in the audio mixes, but were still badly cropped (wasn't a centre-crop anymore, but was still really poorly handled, by definition), and the artwork was now all smudgy like crappy watercolours/mosaic filters were applied in photoshop.
And now, the new BDs are 4:3, but have an ugly, dull, red tinge, are zoomed in way further than is reasonable (no doubt this is so they don't have to paint out any tape or glue marks. And yes, I realise some episodes are better than others judging from the clips we've seen; part of my thesis here is better is still not good, so that's no argument), and the marketing was outright toxic.

Maybe next time they'll dial back the DNR a tad, but it'll be cropped again, and the massive, ugly overcontrasting/oversaturation that the Season DVDs had will be back.

Here's the thing we should all learn from this whole kerfuffle: When you hear about a new release, don't just believe what you want to believe, and don't just spread word of what people want to hear. By all means, get excited and be positive, but have a healthy dose of scepticism. And if you're any kind of public figure within the community, lean hard into that scepticism. Because if all you're basing things off is vague rumours, you might as well be pulling your info out of your ass.
Unless you have official confirmation of something, don't believe a word of it. Consider it a 100% baseless rumour; fun to speculate on, but not to be taken seriously.

[ABED]

I have no skin in this game. I don't care beyond pointing out "the vocal minority" argument is valid.

[ronaldnorth_03]

The funi could be the last hope for a DBZ release, as Toei missed the opportunity by launching DBKai.

[TheGreatness25]

Just a thought:

Even if Funimation put out something like the Level Sets, over time, would that be enough? Despite how decent they might look, Funimation is still using their masters, which are several generations removed from the original film. At the end of the day, no matter what Funimation does to its film -- grain, no grain; DNR, no DNR; color correction, no color correction -- it will never be the intended presentation of the series. Shouldn't Toei be charged with some responsibility for this as well? While Funimation has oversaturated the DB (especially DBZ) market, Toei had really one good outing many, many years ago in an outdated format at this point. And if someone wants to argue that the one good outing was enough, then why doesn't everyone just get the Dragon Boxes and not depend on Funimation? Because it's old and hard to find. Subtitles would be great, but is that the one thing keeping people from buying it? No.

Again, I'm not saying that the 30th anniversary set is a masterpiece or anything, but I still got my copy because why not? Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe I'll only use it as another example in release comparison discussions. Either way, my reservation of it didn't make or break its sales and I sincerely don't believe that the fans have the power to change Funimation's approach to releasing the series.

Fans have been polled, asked directly, voiced their opinions in various different ways, and been given the opportunity to "vote with their wallet" time and time again. So, in the end, did voting with their wallet help any fans? Did poor sales of a release get us a better release? Not even once. In fact, one of the top two releases they ever had were on the heels of the dreadful, but financially successful orange bricks.

[AnimeMaakuo]

After everything that's happened recently from green tints to heavy DNR to censorship, are people still holding out hope that Toei would come and give everyone the magical release we're all hoping for?

I've gotten comfortable with the fact that the Dragon Boxes are as good as it's going to get and I'm getting everything else because of my collector problem and essentially as a video comparison project. It's not like I'll keep re-watching the series in all of these formats.

I'm pretty sure that if nobody bought the 30th anniversary set, that they wouldn't rethink their strategy. They'd probably just chalk it up to something else and move on. I highly doubt that they'd come out and make the release we'd all want out of that. They just would wait another five years before dropping something.

The idea of voting with my wallet doesn't really work in this case because we all know that someone out there would take my place for this set and if it's going to be made anyway, I might as well have it as well. I also can't stand the idea that people are basically being told that they did the wrong thing by buying this -- it's their money and they can spend it however they want. I reiterate that I don't think that if this set failed to meet its minimum preorders, that it would give us a better release. I don't believe that for a second.

The Japanese Dragon Boxes are awesome, no doubt. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles or English dub. If only the Dragon Boxes were color corrected, I wouldn’t ask for anything more.

[ABED]

Fans have been polled, asked directly, voiced their opinions in various different ways, and been given the opportunity to "vote with their wallet" time and time again. So, in the end, did voting with their wallet help any fans? Did poor sales of a release get us a better release? Not even once. In fact, one of the top two releases they ever had were on the heels of the dreadful, but financially successful orange bricks.

What's with the quotes? People did vote with their wallet. They bought several DVD releases, as crappy as they were. This post makes me think you don't understand the concept. People voted with their wallets when they made the season sets so successful. You and I may lament that success but those profits spoke a hell of a lot louder than us railing on and on about a proper release.

[KBABZ]

Even if Funimation put out something like the Level Sets, over time, would that be enough? Despite how decent they might look, Funimation is still using their masters, which are several generations removed from the original film. At the end of the day, no matter what Funimation does to its film -- grain, no grain; DNR, no DNR; color correction, no color correction -- it will never be the intended presentation of the series.

As I recall, when Funi revealed what the raw footage of their master looked like, the response on this forum was overwhelmingly positive. Maybe it was because of the comparison to the Black Brick footage, but it looked alright to me too. Ultimately with this talk of the intended masters and all that, considering the film itself is pushing 40 at this point, we have to take what we can get.

The Japanese Dragon Boxes are awesome, no doubt. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles or English dub. If only the Dragon Boxes were color corrected, I wouldn’t ask for anything more.

You're forgetting the context of the Dragon Box's release. It was made by Japan for Japan with no intent of releasing it internationally, hence no subtitles or dub. There's a reason you can't play those DVDs on your PC without changing its region!

[AnimeMaakuo]

Even if Funimation put out something like the Level Sets, over time, would that be enough? Despite how decent they might look, Funimation is still using their masters, which are several generations removed from the original film. At the end of the day, no matter what Funimation does to its film -- grain, no grain; DNR, no DNR; color correction, no color correction -- it will never be the intended presentation of the series.

As I recall, when Funi revealed what the raw footage of their master looked like, the response on this forum was overwhelmingly positive. Maybe it was because of the comparison to the Black Brick footage, but it looked alright to me too. Ultimately with this talk of the intended masters and all that, considering the film itself is pushing 40 at this point, we have to take what we can get.

The Japanese Dragon Boxes are awesome, no doubt. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles or English dub. If only the Dragon Boxes were color corrected, I wouldn’t ask for anything more.

You're forgetting the context of the Dragon Box's release. It was made by Japan for Japan with no intent of releasing it internationally, hence no subtitles or dub. There's a reason you can't play those DVDs on your PC without changing its region!

I’m not forgetting anything . I’m just saying it’s unfortunate they didn’t include those things and color correct the footage.