Soundtrack glitches on UK orange brick DVDs

[BaddAss]

I recently started buying the UK releases of the DBZ orange brick DVDs by Manga Entertainment, and I just started watching the first disc of season 1 on my laptop using VLC. I have the US broadcast audio selected (my preferred option), but on episode 4 (Piccolo's Plan) it has both the Nathan Johnson and the Japanese music playing at the same time. Just wondering if this some kind of glitch or if anyone else experienced this? I haven't yet tried watching on a DVD player and I know VLC can be a little glitchy sometimes. I've never heard anything about this being an issue on the original US release, and there's barely any discussion online of the UK versions, but they are pretty much exactly the same except for the packaging. Thanks in advance if anyone has an answer for this.

EDIT: I started watching season 2 and found an even bigger problem. On the US broadcast audio track, the episode "The Search Continues" (the one where Goku sneaks out of hospital) is completely missing sound effects. Voices and music are all there just fine, but not a single sound effect is there, making it feel like you're watching some kind of early demo. Hoping again that this was some kind of glitch with the player I was using, I looked it up and there are two reviews on Amazon complaining about the same thing. People thought the orange bricks were bad originally? Try the UK versions! Seems like Manga Entertainment wanted to double down on Funimation's mistakes by making the playback itself an absolute mess.

EDIT 2: Turns out this sound effect issue on season 2 is a recurring problem for certain episodes. I'm really not a fan of the Japanese soundtrack so having to switch between audio tracks is a huge bummer for me.

[NeflyteMasato]

I recently started buying the UK releases of the DBZ orange brick DVDs by Manga Entertainment, and I just started watching the first disc of season 1 on my laptop using VLC. I have the US broadcast audio selected (my preferred option), but on episode 4 (Piccolo's Plan) it has both the Nathan Johnson and the Japanese music playing at the same time. Just wondering if this some kind of glitch or if anyone else experienced this? I haven't yet tried watching on a DVD player and I know VLC can be a little glitchy sometimes. I've never heard anything about this being an issue on the original US release, and there's barely any discussion online of the UK versions, but they are pretty much exactly the same except for the packaging. Thanks in advance if anyone has an answer for this.

How far into the episode is the glitch? Is it the whole episode, or just a specific time frame in the episode?

[BaddAss]

I recently started buying the UK releases of the DBZ orange brick DVDs by Manga Entertainment, and I just started watching the first disc of season 1 on my laptop using VLC. I have the US broadcast audio selected (my preferred option), but on episode 4 (Piccolo's Plan) it has both the Nathan Johnson and the Japanese music playing at the same time. Just wondering if this some kind of glitch or if anyone else experienced this? I haven't yet tried watching on a DVD player and I know VLC can be a little glitchy sometimes. I've never heard anything about this being an issue on the original US release, and there's barely any discussion online of the UK versions, but they are pretty much exactly the same except for the packaging. Thanks in advance if anyone has an answer for this.

How far into the episode is the glitch? Is it the whole episode, or just a specific time frame in the episode?

It's the entire episode. Very noticeable during the recap, title card and eyecatches.

[NeflyteMasato]

I recently started buying the UK releases of the DBZ orange brick DVDs by Manga Entertainment, and I just started watching the first disc of season 1 on my laptop using VLC. I have the US broadcast audio selected (my preferred option), but on episode 4 (Piccolo's Plan) it has both the Nathan Johnson and the Japanese music playing at the same time. Just wondering if this some kind of glitch or if anyone else experienced this? I haven't yet tried watching on a DVD player and I know VLC can be a little glitchy sometimes. I've never heard anything about this being an issue on the original US release, and there's barely any discussion online of the UK versions, but they are pretty much exactly the same except for the packaging. Thanks in advance if anyone has an answer for this.

How far into the episode is the glitch? Is it the whole episode, or just a specific time frame in the episode?

It's the entire episode. Very noticeable during the recap, title card and eyecatches.

I just checked on my Blu-ray player and the audio was normal for the US Broadcast version. I think there’s a slim chance of a weird glitch for the UK version, more likely it’s a codec not playing nice with VLC.

[BaddAss]

How far into the episode is the glitch? Is it the whole episode, or just a specific time frame in the episode?

It's the entire episode. Very noticeable during the recap, title card and eyecatches.

I just checked on my Blu-ray player and the audio was normal for the US Broadcast version. I think there’s a slim chance of a weird glitch for the UK version, more likely it’s a codec not playing nice with VLC.

Is that with the US or UK release? Also check the edit I just made on my original post, that's definitely worth taking a look at.

[NeflyteMasato]

It's the entire episode. Very noticeable during the recap, title card and eyecatches.

I just checked on my Blu-ray player and the audio was normal for the US Broadcast version. I think there’s a slim chance of a weird glitch for the UK version, more likely it’s a codec not playing nice with VLC.

Is that with the US or UK release? Also check the edit I just made on my original post, that's definitely worth taking a look at.

It’s the US release, also I did notice the addition to your post and the sound is normal there as well.

[BaddAss]

I just checked on my Blu-ray player and the audio was normal for the US Broadcast version. I think there’s a slim chance of a weird glitch for the UK version, more likely it’s a codec not playing nice with VLC.

Is that with the US or UK release? Also check the edit I just made on my original post, that's definitely worth taking a look at.

It’s the US release, also I did notice the addition to your post and the sound is normal there as well.

Man, looks like us Brits got royally screwed.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Is that with the US or UK release? Also check the edit I just made on my original post, that's definitely worth taking a look at.

It’s the US release, also I did notice the addition to your post and the sound is normal there as well.

Man, looks like us Brits got royally screwed.

Worst part is that the dub on any of the UK releases other than Kai bears little to no resemblance at all to the dubs that aired on TV here. A monumental missed opportunity on Manga UK's part as there would have been a huge incentive for international fans to import the Canadian dubs.

[BaddAss]

It’s the US release, also I did notice the addition to your post and the sound is normal there as well.

Man, looks like us Brits got royally screwed.

Worst part is that the dub on any of the UK releases other than Kai bears little to no resemblance at all to the dubs that aired on TV here. A monumental missed opportunity on Manga UK's part as there would have been a huge incentive for international fans to import the Canadian dubs.

Yeah, that would've been cool, but the problem is there are no Ocean Dub recordings for the uncut footage, so it wouldn't work unless they used the censored and cut down edits of the episodes. Plus it would've been awkward considering the transition we had from the Ocean cast (Saban) to the Funimation cast and then back to Ocean (Westwood) again.

[BaddAss]

It’s the US release, also I did notice the addition to your post and the sound is normal there as well.

Man, looks like us Brits got royally screwed.

Worst part is that the dub on any of the UK releases other than Kai bears little to no resemblance at all to the dubs that aired on TV here. A monumental missed opportunity on Manga UK's part as there would have been a huge incentive for international fans to import the Canadian dubs.

Yeah, that would've been cool, but the problem is there are no Ocean Dub recordings for the uncut footage, so it wouldn't work unless they used the censored and cut down edits of the episodes. Plus it would've been awkward considering the transition we had from the Ocean cast (Saban) to the Funimation cast and then back to Ocean (Westwood) again.

[MasenkoHA]

Man, looks like us Brits got royally screwed.

Worst part is that the dub on any of the UK releases other than Kai bears little to no resemblance at all to the dubs that aired on TV here. A monumental missed opportunity on Manga UK's part as there would have been a huge incentive for international fans to import the Canadian dubs.

Yeah, that would've been cool, but the problem is there are no Ocean Dub recordings for the uncut footage, so it wouldn't work unless they used the censored and cut down edits of the episodes. Plus it would've been awkward considering the transition we had from the Ocean cast (Saban) to the Funimation cast and then back to Ocean (Westwood) again.

The dub of Z is awkward no matter how you watch it.

[eledoremassis02]

This is the only audio issue I spotted on the U.S Orange Brick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZQl-lTPts

This is what I posted
"On my season 5 set the (Japanese) opening is extremely muffled on every episode on every disc. It's like someone is listening to it two rooms over. However, it's not the case with my season 4 set." However, it seemed to be unique to my set so it could be a QC thing?

Edit: Also found this post from years ago

Speaking of audio error, did anyone notice that in one or two episodes when you're watching the Raditz vs Goku and Piccolo fight that the Japanese and English music play at the same time in one of the audio tracks?

That was one of the first things I noticed when I bought the set years ago, it's only on episode 4 for some reason. This only occurred on the Madman version whereas the US version was fine.

[NitroEX]

MangaUK didn't care about many things. It's partly why I found it so bizarre when people used to throw praise at them for their weak association with the brand. They just seemed to view Dragon Ball as their newest meal ticket and did the bare minimum for fans. Not a great legacy in my view.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I think people gave Manga UK the praise they did because up until 2012 the only home releases we had were the Big Green dubs of Z movies 2-4, whereas other English-speaking countries like the US, Canada and Australia had tons of releases for over a decade by that point. They've put out some good stuff in the last two years like Broly without the green tint, a beautiful Super Collector's Edition, and the packaging for the new Z Blu-Rays is quite nice, although other than that they've been incredibly underambitious. Kai with the Yamamoto score was a happy accident, the banana bricks would have been serviceable if they fixed the episode skipping, everything else ranged from fine (GT seasons) to good (Super, movies, etc).

[NitroEX]

I don't see the orange bricks and BD season sets as much of a victory to be honest, I'd prefer quality over quantity. A load of bad releases only adversely affects the UK market potential. And you may as well be praising Funimation instead of Manga for those releases since they did nothing to create or enhance them. The Big Green DVDs were bad but long out of print and weren't a factor when talking about the series so they were irrelevant to most by the 2010s.

If a competent distributor like Anime Limited had gotten the license they would have no doubt put more effort into a home release than Manga did. Much of what they've done for anime has been more praiseworthy in my opinion.

The lack of green tint on Broly wasn't even MangaUK's doing, it was Toei. Madman in Australia provided the same release that MangaUK got, they were just fortunate enough to get a later print of the film whereas Funi got stuck with the theatrical/tinted version. It really had nothing to do with them doing us any favours and I'm sure if those other distributors got stuck with the tinted release they'd have kept silent about the issue, as they do with everything else that they don't want to change.

The Super releases are a different case altogether, by that point, there was nothing for Funimation to ruin in terms of footage. Everything was standardised by Toei so Manga just carried on repackaging their stuff as normal. I don't personally see the big deal about packaging as they all use the same key art given to them by Toei. I also don't really care about Super to be honest, my concern is really with the classics, and they were treated very poorly.

I'd still have preferred a more caring distributor so that they were handled respectfully from the beginning.

[90sDBZ]

Manga UK have done wonders for the franchise over here. Between DBZ coming off the air in 2005 and Manga getting the license in 2012, we had absolutely nothing outside the videogames. Even if someone else could've got the license the fact remains that nobody did for all them years. The franchise was effectively dead here until Manga UK rescued it.

Just the other week I was in HMV and they had tons of DB merchandise; posters, mugs, wallets, toys, funko pops, and even a model tournament stage. Another shop had a Gohan statue for sale. You'd never have seen any of this prior to 2012, which is why I'll never understand people saying Manga UK getting the license was a bad thing. And that's saying nothing of the incredible theatrical runs for Resurrection F and Broly, which they worked their asses off for.

For 7 years UK fans had no way of watching the show outside of importing, which for many simply wasn't affordable. Manga UK not only rescued the franchise but also made it so fans could actually watch the show again. I can't help but shake my head when people say we were better off with nothing. Like really?

[NitroEX]

Even if someone else could've got the license the fact remains that nobody did for all them years. The franchise was effectively dead here until Manga UK rescued it.

That's because AB Groupe held the license, it wasn't available to any UK distributor until that deal expired or was revoked. Saying Manga UK rescued it is laughable and the exact kind of deification that drives me nuts.

Just the other week I was in HMV and they had tons of DB merchandise [...] You'd never have seen any of this prior to 2012, which is why I'll never understand people saying Manga UK getting the license was a bad thing.

This would have happened with any UK distributor, in fact, I don't even think Manga are directly responsible for merchandise outside of home video, that would be from a combination of Toei Europe, Bandai and Abystyle. MangaUK are just the home video component of Toei's rollout plan, they're not the masterminds behind all the ancillary merchandise.

For 7 years UK fans had no way of watching the show outside of importing, which for many simply wasn't affordable. Manga UK not only rescued the franchise but also made it so fans could actually watch the show again. I can't help but shake my head when people say we were better off with nothing. Like really?

Pretending that it was a choice between MangaUK and nothing else is a disingenuous argument. When AB lost/relinquished their license the door was open for any distributor that Toei agreed to partner with. Other anime distributors besides Manga exist in the UK currently and any of them would have jumped at the chance to have the license for Dragon Ball home media. Unfortunately for us, Anime Limited didn't start up until 2013 and back in 2012 Manga already controlled the most popular licenses for Viz such as Death Note and Naruto which bloated the perception of their company to Toei and made them seem like a better seller than their competition, MVM. But when Anime Limited started up the quality of their releases blew away Manga's and even rivalled Funimation's in the US. Their releases were catered to collectors first and foremost and they weren't lazy with the image quality. They've even been doing free disc replacement schemes since their early days to fix issues found on their releases whereas Manga has only recently adopted schemes like that with their latest Akira release, before that it was unheard of for them to fix any problems.

Anime Limited have also gone out of their way to include other English dubs on their releases where possible, with Manga this wasn't the case. You can even find people complaining about the lack of "UK dub" on manga's release of Wicked City for example, whereas Anime Limited released Cyber City Oedo with the UK dub and UK soundtrack included. The only time I've heard of Manga doing anything similar for older dubs was for Akira but that's been an exception.

And that's saying nothing of the incredible theatrical runs for Resurrection F and Broly, which they worked their asses off for.

Anime Limited have also been bringing theatrical runs of anime films and continue to do so with the new Lupin III: The First. They were very successful with bringing Your Name and the Mamoru Hosoda films to UK theatres so again, how is MangaUK unique in this regard?

At the end of the day, Manga was just a distributor who was lucky enough to successfully convince Toei to give them the license and make them the home video partner for the UK. Nothing they've done since has proven that they were the best choice for us as fans. I would have much rather seen Anime Limited with the license or possibly even MVM might've been able to do better with it. MangaUK has done nothing exceptional.

[90sDBZ]

Even if someone else could've got the license the fact remains that nobody did for all them years. The franchise was effectively dead here until Manga UK rescued it.

That's because AB Groupe held the license, it wasn't available to any UK distributor until that deal expired or was revoked. Saying Manga UK rescued it is laughable and the exact kind of deification that drives me nuts.

Just the other week I was in HMV and they had tons of DB merchandise [...] You'd never have seen any of this prior to 2012, which is why I'll never understand people saying Manga UK getting the license was a bad thing.

This would have happened with any UK distributor, in fact, I don't even think Manga are directly responsible for merchandise outside of home video, that would be from a combination of Toei Europe, Bandai and Abystyle. MangaUK are just the home video component of Toei's rollout plan, they're not the masterminds behind all the ancillary merchandise.

For 7 years UK fans had no way of watching the show outside of importing, which for many simply wasn't affordable. Manga UK not only rescued the franchise but also made it so fans could actually watch the show again. I can't help but shake my head when people say we were better off with nothing. Like really?

Pretending that it was a choice between MangaUK and nothing else is a disingenuous argument. When AB lost/relinquished their license the door was open for any distributor that Toei agreed to partner with. Other anime distributors besides Manga exist in the UK currently and any of them would have jumped at the chance to have the license for Dragon Ball home media. Unfortunately for us, Anime Limited didn't start up until 2013 and back in 2012 Manga already controlled the most popular licenses for Viz such as Death Note and Naruto which bloated the perception of their company to Toei and made them seem like a better seller than their competition, MVM. But when Anime Limited started up the quality of their releases blew away Manga's and even rivalled Funimation's in the US. Their releases were catered to collectors first and foremost and they weren't lazy with the image quality. They've even been doing free disc replacement schemes since their early days to fix issues found on their releases whereas Manga has only recently adopted schemes like that with their latest Akira release, before that it was unheard of for them to fix any problems.

Anime Limited have also gone out of their way to include other English dubs on their releases where possible, with Manga this wasn't the case. You can even find people complaining about the lack of "UK dub" on manga's release of Wicked City for example, whereas Anime Limited released Cyber City Oedo with the UK dub and UK soundtrack included. The only time I've heard of Manga doing anything similar for older dubs was for Akira but that's been an exception.

And that's saying nothing of the incredible theatrical runs for Resurrection F and Broly, which they worked their asses off for.

Anime Limited have also been bringing theatrical runs of anime films and continue to do so with the new Lupin III: The First. They were very successful with bringing Your Name and the Mamoru Hosoda films to UK theatres so again, how is MangaUK unique in this regard?

At the end of the day, Manga was just a distributor who was lucky enough to successfully convince Toei to give them the license and make them the home video partner for the UK. Nothing they've done since has proven that they were the best choice for us as fans. I would have much rather seen Anime Limited with the license or possibly even MVM might've been able to do better with it. MangaUK has done nothing exceptional.

Believe it or not, I've seen people on this forum make the argument we'd be better off with nothing than Manga UK's releases, which is absurd.

When exactly did AB Groupe lose the license? I'm sure Jerome mentioned that they considered aquiring it back in 2007 or 2008, and that by not doing it then they lost sales to imports. He also said they had to fight to convince Toei the show would be profitable here. However it went down, it seems there was a gap of a few years were another company could have fought for it the way Manga UK did.

It was also Toei who insisted they release the Orange Bricks, as they were the most profitable release overseas. This would have been the case no matter who got the license. Jerome even said they wanted to release Kai first.

It's easy to critisize Manga UK when we weren't in the room for these discussions. Licensing anime is a complex business, and deals can fall through easily, often mid-release. Going with the flawed but proven successful Orange Bricks was the safest option from a business standpoint. For whatever reason Toei had reservations about the UK market. They wanted the release that was already cheaply mass produced, and had done the numbers. Given this context, going with the expensive collectors item that was the Dragon Box would have been a huge risk.

And producing a new release from the ground up would obviously be more expensive too. To release Z exactly as it aired would have required them to license the Saban dub and early inhouse dub from Funimation, and the Westwood dub from Ocean. Not exactly straightforward. It might have meant paying twice as much on licensing alone. Although you could argue they could afford it now.

[NitroEX]

I take whatever Jerome said with a grain of salt. I'm sure he would've bent the truth if it meant good PR for their company. We weren't privy to the meetings they had with Toei so we'll only ever hear one side of it. What I can believe is that Toei insisted on them releasing Z before Kai as Kai was viewed internally as a superior product on paper and would have negatively affected the sales of Z, that just made logical sense, but the rest is suspect in my view.

What we do know is that other foreign distributors were able to get footage from Toei that wasn't sourced from Funimation's orange bricks so there's no reason to assume Manga would have been under more restrictions than those other countries were. AB themselves were working with Dragon Box masters for French DVD box sets earlier than the UK release so regardless of what Manga claim, the evidence doesn't back their story. I don't see why Toei would forbid them from having the same footage as AB or insist on a specific cropped release that Toei themselves didn't even produce. I'd wager a more realistic scenario is that Manga saw that the orange bricks were the best selling release in the US and opted for them as a safe financial bet for their own market, ignoring the Dragon Boxes either because of the lower sales numbers or because they were ignorant of its existence. Jerome was also ignorant of the RTD box set so it wouldn't be surprising if he was unaware of their full catalogue or didn't understand the circumstances surrounding each release. Remember that Funimation clumsily released the Dragon Boxes, Kai, as well as the Level sets all relatively close together leading to Dragon Ball fatigue and saturation of the market, this along with the Dragon Boxes being a limited release caused the declining sales, the orange bricks were always going to appear to be more successful. They were the first affordable box set which gave them another advantage, it had little to do with the quality of that release.

Anyway, we don't know when AB's license ended in the UK but we do know that Toei Europe was founded in 2004 and they had taken no action during all those years. It's pretty safe to assume their hands were tied legally until 2012 when they made the announcement. The license may have transferred earlier than that but Toei needed a local distribution partner before they could continue. I assume AB were in a similar situation prior to losing the rights, they weren't willing to do it themselves as they were primarily a French operation and would have needed to set up UK headquarters. AB did previously have a partnership with Warner Vision to make UK releases but that obviously didn't last.

The Dragon Boxes would in no way have been a huge risk, that's absurd considering the UK had NO version of the series on the market up until that point. The public would have bought any box set. The Dragon Boxes (or a locally produced variant of them, like with France) would have sold just as well as orange bricks.

The issue of the broadcast dubs could have been handled separately at a different time if they actually cared about them, which I personally don't think they ever did.

[LostTimeLord]

Avoiding authoring the discs themselves would certainly have been a factor, as (according to Manga's social media at the time) it would made up a big chunk of a UK releases' costs when it was needed. Localising the Dragon Boxes would have meant creating new English PAL masters of them. As per usual, Manga took Madman's PAL release and just made some basic changes to the opening logos.

Could they have afforded to make their own PAL discs? Well, two years later they could justify releasing One Piece movies that had no prior English release at all, which they can't have expected to sell better than DBZ. I suspect they took an "if it ain't broke" approach, not realising that it was, in fact, broke. To their credit, they did avoid the widescreen Blu-rays (IIRC, Jerome claimed that this was due to the cropped DVD's backlash) and we ended up with the uncropped versions as the standard BD release over here.