Dragon Ball Super: Hybrid Cut

[TheRainmaker]

Hello all. Long time lurker who is a newbie to Kanzenshuu, it's cool to finally be a part of this community. I've been kicking around this idea of a fanedit with another redditor and thought I'd bring it here to source your ideas and maybe get some collaboration going.

Here's the general idea: the first two arcs of the Dragon Ball Super anime are used to retell the events of the two most recently released DB films to that point, Battle of Gods and Resurrection F. While these arcs are considered the canon version of the stories and provide the foundation for the rest of the television series, it is nigh universally believed that the films are the far superior versions of these stories. The main issues that cause viewers to find the film versions more interesting are the severely downgraded animation and art quality of the anime's retelling as well as the snail's pace that the saga moves at. The goal of this fanedit is to create a hybrid of the 2 versions of the stories, editing in content from the films into the series. While the films and the episodes retelling the films have their fair share of differences, they by and large parallel eachother, and the idea is to implement the aspects of the films that were executed better than the anime into the series to create the best possible way to get started on Dragon Ball Super.

This edit is to be split into two major parts, one handling the Battle of Gods Arc, and one handling the Revival of Frieza Arc.

Battle of Gods generally will be the easier of the two halves. I currently intend to use the film to buff up the first act of the anime, as the plot was very slow to get going in the first few episodes and could have used some of the urgency that its film counterpart initiated. My biggest change to the BoG arc is that while I found the concluding Goku vs Beerus fight to be well written with a variety of quality character moments, the animation was severely lacking and paled in comparison to the movie. Thus, my current goal is to implement about 90% of the Goku vs Beerus fight into the anime from the film, while keeping the overall structure of the anime fight. I have taken some notes on how this could be executed sequentially, and I am optimistic that a proper end product could be achieved.

One of the biggest alterations between the film and anime is setting. The storyline mainly takes place at Bulma's birthday party, which is on land in the film and on a cruise ship in the anime. While I find the film to have the superior pacing and writing, I have chosen to stick with the cruise ship setting, as it is the official canon location that later episodes of the series would flash back to. This means that roughly half of the Battle of Gods film will not be included in this cut due to the fundamental difference in location.

As for Revival of Frieza, I believe that this arc will be more complex. The anime arc follows very closely to the movie in most of the aspects that are covered, but the anime goes into so much more detail and expands the story in very effective and valuable ways. My goal with this arc is to keep the anime as my foundation while replacing any anime sequences with movie sequences that I deem to see as superior. In particular, the most infamously maligned aspect of the Revival of Frieza arc is the horrendous final battle between Goku and Frieza, as it is commonly considered the low point of visual quality for the entire series. In this particular area, I plan to rely very heavily on the film.

My main goals go as follows
1. If something from the anime is done better in the film, it will be replaced.
2. I want episodes to run at their proper runtimes, including intro, bumpers, and credits. I want this edit to feel like real episodes, with no trace of faneditor footprints.
3. I am not looking to remove more fluff than necessary. While plenty COULD be done to speed up these arcs and probably increase their overall quality, Super has a very relaxed and slow pace. If these arcs move TOO quickly, then they will feel out of place with the rest of the anime. The two arcs combine for a total of 27 episodes, and I could see my fanedit being 5 episodes shorter at the most.

I am still in the early stages of this edit, as I am brainstorming ideas while watching the episodes on Funimation. I am still in the process of purchasing and ripping each individual source I will need for this fanedit, so I won't have any actual work to show in the near future. I'll be curious to see if anybody around here is interested in this idea.

[Psykomatik]

Very, very interested in this. I tried this to be honest and failed at it so I hope you'll manage to do it properly. Good luck bro, looking forward to this!

[PremiumSalt]

Out of curiosity, do you see this project being dub, sub, or both?

[TheRainmaker]

Very, very interested in this. I tried this to be honest and failed at it so I hope you'll manage to do it properly. Good luck bro, looking forward to this!

Thanks! I have a friend and fellow Dragon Ball fan helping me split the work, so hopefully we can deliver on this concept!

Out of curiosity, do you see this project being dub, sub, or both?

Unfortunately at this time, I only have an English dub project in mind. It is the one that has my heart and my nostalgia, and motivates me to work on the project. If I was a more skilled editor with the understanding to work at both at the same time, I would. Currently, I only have the intention of doing this edit for the dub.

[Draconic]

At one point I tried to make a Beerus vs God Goku combining the best parts of both the movie and the anime, but the different settings proved to make this impossible. Most of the early fight in the anime takes place on water and there's basically no way to combine that setting with the multiple locations in the movie (the city in the movie is too close and the change would be too noticable).
The latter parts of the movie take place in space and Goku is still God in those, while in the movie the change only happens after Goku goes Super Saiyan. You have to cut too much to make that work, but it is possible, I feel. Couldn't be bothered to myself, though.

As for the Ressurection of F movie, Ajay already did an extended cut of the movie adding everything interesting from the anime, so you might want to look into that for inspiration. I think the best way to do this is just cut the movie into little 20 minute episodes, using some of Super to complete the runtime or make things the pace better... and just replace the entire anime fight. The though part might be the fight with the minions since, storywise, it's better in the anime... but there are too many changes done from the movie, regarding Shisami and Tagoma specifically, that can't be reconciled with the movie sequence. Good luck there, I guess.

Hopefully you manage to pull trough this, though. Good luck and keep us posted!

[TheRainmaker]

At one point I tried to make a Beerus vs God Goku combining the best parts of both the movie and the anime, but the different settings proved to make this impossible. Most of the early fight in the anime takes place on water and there's basically no way to combine that setting with the multiple locations in the movie (the city in the movie is too close and the change would be too noticable).
The latter parts of the movie take place in space and Goku is still God in those, while in the movie the change only happens after Goku goes Super Saiyan. You have to cut too much to make that work, but it is possible, I feel. Couldn't be bothered to myself, though.

As for the Ressurection of F movie, Ajay already did an extended cut of the movie adding everything interesting from the anime, so you might want to look into that for inspiration. I think the best way to do this is just cut the movie into little 20 minute episodes, using some of Super to complete the runtime or make things the pace better... and just replace the entire anime fight. The though part might be the fight with the minions since, storywise, it's better in the anime... but there are too many changes done from the movie, regarding Shisami and Tagoma specifically, that can't be reconciled with the movie sequence. Good luck there, I guess.

Hopefully you manage to pull trough this, though. Good luck and keep us posted!

I actually have took into consideration all of those issues for my Battle of Gods recut, and here is my current layout to work around these issues.

Episode 10 of the anime is the first episode of the fight, and I am leaving it pretty much unchanged. It is a really good episode that takes things slowly, with Goku having to learn how to use his God powers and Beerus warming up.

Episode 11 is where the entirety of the movie fight is going to be placed. I wish I could spread it out more, but as you said the two fights can't be mixed very well. However, I do have a plan of how I will transition in and out of the movie fight. Episode 11 is all about Beerus kicking Goku's ass and being disappointed with Goku's abilities. In the anime, this leads to a scene where Beerus drags Goku by his head through the sky at high speeds and slams him into an island. From there, Beerus beats down on Goku until Goku is able to reverse the momentum with a quick shot of a headbutt. My plan to transition locations from the sky over the ocean to over the city is to repurpose the headbutt shot. The sequence of events will go Beerus dragging Goku through the sky --> quick shot where Goku headbutts Beerus (with background rotoscoped to be the sky instead of on land) --> explosion teleporting flurry from movie to portray a struggle through the air --> establishing shot of the city from BoG --> fight in the city from Battle of Gods.

The fight from Battle of Gods then plays out from there, unaltered except for side character reactions that are inconsistent. The only cut that will be admittedly awkward is that I'll have to have Goku lose his SSG form during the movie fight and have it back when we go back to the Super footage. How I plan to do this is at the end of the movie fight when Goku teleports off screen to hit his kamehameha, I will add a transformation sound effect and kick in the SSG theme, transitioning back to footage from the anime. From there we get the amazing moment from the anime of Beerus stabbing Goku with that attack and Goku's monologue in the sea. The fight then plays out in Episode 12 with the greatest hits of the remaining anime episodes.

I have seen Ajay's cut of Res F and I love it. Also a massive credit to the user who created an English dub track version of it. I will definitely be using it for reference. I have considered using footage of it for my edit, but I want to get Ajay's consent and credit him appropriately.

[Draconic]

At one point I tried to make a Beerus vs God Goku combining the best parts of both the movie and the anime, but the different settings proved to make this impossible. Most of the early fight in the anime takes place on water and there's basically no way to combine that setting with the multiple locations in the movie (the city in the movie is too close and the change would be too noticable).
The latter parts of the movie take place in space and Goku is still God in those, while in the movie the change only happens after Goku goes Super Saiyan. You have to cut too much to make that work, but it is possible, I feel. Couldn't be bothered to myself, though.

As for the Ressurection of F movie, Ajay already did an extended cut of the movie adding everything interesting from the anime, so you might want to look into that for inspiration. I think the best way to do this is just cut the movie into little 20 minute episodes, using some of Super to complete the runtime or make things the pace better... and just replace the entire anime fight. The though part might be the fight with the minions since, storywise, it's better in the anime... but there are too many changes done from the movie, regarding Shisami and Tagoma specifically, that can't be reconciled with the movie sequence. Good luck there, I guess.

Hopefully you manage to pull trough this, though. Good luck and keep us posted!

I actually have took into consideration all of those issues for my Battle of Gods recut, and here is my current layout to work around these issues.

Episode 10 of the anime is the first episode of the fight, and I am leaving it pretty much unchanged. It is a really good episode that takes things slowly, with Goku having to learn how to use his God powers and Beerus warming up.

Episode 11 is where the entirety of the movie fight is going to be placed. I wish I could spread it out more, but as you said the two fights can't be mixed very well. However, I do have a plan of how I will transition in and out of the movie fight. Episode 11 is all about Beerus kicking Goku's ass and being disappointed with Goku's abilities. In the anime, this leads to a scene where Beerus drags Goku by his head through the sky at high speeds and slams him into an island. From there, Beerus beats down on Goku until Goku is able to reverse the momentum with a quick shot of a headbutt. My plan to transition locations from the sky over the ocean to over the city is to repurpose the headbutt shot. The sequence of events will go Beerus dragging Goku through the sky --> quick shot where Goku headbutts Beerus (with background rotoscoped to be the sky instead of on land) --> explosion teleporting flurry from movie to portray a struggle through the air --> establishing shot of the city from BoG --> fight in the city from Battle of Gods.

The fight from Battle of Gods then plays out from there, unaltered except for side character reactions that are inconsistent. The only cut that will be admittedly awkward is that I'll have to have Goku lose his SSG form during the movie fight and have it back when we go back to the Super footage. How I plan to do this is at the end of the movie fight when Goku teleports off screen to hit his kamehameha, I will add a transformation sound effect and kick in the SSG theme, transitioning back to footage from the anime. From there we get the amazing moment from the anime of Beerus stabbing Goku with that attack and Goku's monologue in the sea. The fight then plays out in Episode 12 with the greatest hits of the remaining anime episodes.

I have seen Ajay's cut of Res F and I love it. Also a massive credit to the user who created an English dub track version of it. I will definitely be using it for reference. I have considered using footage of it for my edit, but I want to get Ajay's consent and credit him appropriately.

Oh, you're surely putting much more effort than I was willing to lol though I guess having actual editing skills helps too. Everything sounds great. When you said episode 11 was going to be the movie fight I was a bit worried, since episode 11 of the anime is still one my favorites in the series and definetley the best of that arc, but since you're moving things to episode 12 that's great.

Good luck man! Can't wait to see the progress!

[ronaldnorth_03]

I want to see this project. I have Dragon Ball Super project too, but I opted the opposite way for some reasons.

1 - Both films, especially Battle of Gods, are good and cohesive on their own.

Turning them into arcs turns small errors in the narrative of a movie into gigantic errors within an arc.

3 - The rhythm of the anime-transformed narrative suffered when Toei did it, got too slow or too fast.

4 - Turning these films into arcs, Super Saiyan God's discarding by Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan is even worse, since in less than 15 episodes we had two transformations. Something that in movies, although still a mistake, this is softened by the time gap between the two films and their own narrative.

5 - The mix between movie and anime images is noticeable. It would take a color adjustment and some filter to narrow the gap.