AB Video to release original Dragon Ball on Blu-Ray

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I think if there was any time for TOEI to be angry at AB Groupe it wouldn't be now, it would have been during the period from 2000 to 2005 when Dragon Ball was first introduced to the UK.

Back then the franchise was handled really poorly between being moved to digital only channels, toys of Tapion, Hirudegarn, Janemba and Gogeta being released despite the movies they are introduced never airing, even the Super Saiyan 3 Goku, Gotenks and Vegito toys were released while the Cell arc was airing, said toys being quickly moved to discount, home video when it was at its peak being limited to three poorly dubbed movies. Cartoon Network had massive success with Dragon Ball Z, so much so that they constantly reran and marathoned it. I'm sure if they had a sponsorship deal with Smyths they could have made a lot more money off the franchise. Pop has done it in recent years, which allowed them to keep Super on the air, so I can only imagine how much longer Cartoon Network could have kept Dragon Ball at the height of its popularity in the western world if they or AB Groupe had done the same.

After all this is the country with the largest population in Europe only behind France and Germany (though perhaps overtaking France when you factor in the Irish population), but this was, as far as I'm concerned the biggest missed opportunity AB Groupe has ever had.

Not to derail this thread, as I know it's about the French Blu-Ray, but as far as I know AB Groupe has always handled the franchise very well in France, although I guess that's natural because they are a native company.

[sangofe]

I think if there was any time for TOEI to be angry at AB Groupe it wouldn't be now, it would have been during the period from 2000 to 2005 when Dragon Ball was first introduced to the UK.

Back then the franchise was handled really poorly between being moved to digital only channels, toys of Tapion, Hirudegarn, Janemba and Gogeta being released despite the movies they are introduced never airing, even the Super Saiyan 3 Goku, Gotenks and Vegito toys were released while the Cell arc was airing, said toys being quickly moved to discount, home video when it was at its peak being limited to three poorly dubbed movies. Cartoon Network had massive success with Dragon Ball Z, so much so that they constantly reran and marathoned it. I'm sure if they had a sponsorship deal with Smyths they could have made a lot more money off the franchise. Pop has done it in recent years, which allowed them to keep Super on the air, so I can only imagine how much longer Cartoon Network could have kept Dragon Ball at the height of its popularity in the western world if they or AB Groupe had done the same.

After all this is the country with the largest population in Europe only behind France and Germany (though perhaps overtaking France when you factor in the Irish population), but this was, as far as I'm concerned the biggest missed opportunity AB Groupe has ever had.

Not to derail this thread, as I know it's about the French Blu-Ray, but as far as I know AB Groupe has always handled the franchise very well in France, although I guess that's natural because they are a native company.

There was a long time AB handled Dragon Ball very poorly even in France. As for other countries AB didn't try to sell sublicenses. That was Plus License. (Or was it licens Plus ? I can't remember right off the bat). I once interviewed them many years ago.

[Scsigs]

I think if there was any time for TOEI to be angry at AB Groupe it wouldn't be now, it would have been during the period from 2000 to 2005 when Dragon Ball was first introduced to the UK.

Back then the franchise was handled really poorly between being moved to digital only channels, toys of Tapion, Hirudegarn, Janemba and Gogeta being released despite the movies they are introduced never airing, even the Super Saiyan 3 Goku, Gotenks and Vegito toys were released while the Cell arc was airing, said toys being quickly moved to discount, home video when it was at its peak being limited to three poorly dubbed movies. Cartoon Network had massive success with Dragon Ball Z, so much so that they constantly reran and marathoned it. I'm sure if they had a sponsorship deal with Smyths they could have made a lot more money off the franchise. Pop has done it in recent years, which allowed them to keep Super on the air, so I can only imagine how much longer Cartoon Network could have kept Dragon Ball at the height of its popularity in the western world if they or AB Groupe had done the same.

After all this is the country with the largest population in Europe only behind France and Germany (though perhaps overtaking France when you factor in the Irish population), but this was, as far as I'm concerned the biggest missed opportunity AB Groupe has ever had.

Not to derail this thread, as I know it's about the French Blu-Ray, but as far as I know AB Groupe has always handled the franchise very well in France, although I guess that's natural because they are a native company.

Plus, y'know, when you guys DID get the movies, it was the infamous Big Green Dub that translated the shitty French dub's scripts into English, dubbed it with English-speaking actors in France, didn't account for proper grammar, & was really badly done.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

sangofe yes I remember your interview with Plus Licens. I thought they operated the same as AB? I was under the assumption around 2010 when AB lost the rights to the Nordic and some Eastern European territories they took over.

Scsigs yep, I assume we got the Big Green dubs because they were cheap to license?

Cartoon Network seemed to be slowly losing the rights to the series and eventually only had small batches of episodes left. I can't see any reason why Toonami UK only reran the Imperfect Cell saga during Z's last few months on the air or only the King Piccolo saga after original Dragon Ball ended and was only on the air a few months more.

[Joujou]

I have something to give hope to the situation. Toei Animation Europe proudly boasts about AB Groupe as a licensee. If they were crossed or angry at them they would not do that.

If Toei had genuinely been angry, they would have done the following:
- Remove the box set from sale.
- Sue AB for breach of contract (specifically, the use of unauthorized material).
- Terminate the contract and potentially cancel the release of box set 2 or even revoke AB's rights.

The fact is, they simply did nothing. It's worth noting, as mentioned, that Dragon Ball is not the only license to face this fate. For instance, the Sailor Moon box set scheduled for release in France has been further delayed (and Crunchyroll uses material provided by Toei). Additionally, if Toei had been angry, AB wouldn't be able to continue working with ASTRORES, as AB is set to broadcast on Mangas a special version of Sailor Moon produced by Astrores that will not be sell on Bluray (as they don't have home video rights)

[sangofe]

sangofe yes I remember your interview with Plus Licens. I thought they operated the same as AB? I was under the assumption around 2010 when AB lost the rights to the Nordic and some Eastern European territories they took over.

Scsigs yep, I assume we got the Big Green dubs because they were cheap to license?

Cartoon Network seemed to be slowly losing the rights to the series and eventually only had small batches of episodes left. I can't see any reason why Toonami UK only reran the Imperfect Cell saga during Z's last few months on the air or only the King Piccolo saga after original Dragon Ball ended and was only on the air a few months more.

Your question is very good about Plus Licens and I honestly don't really remember now... Maybe you are right about that fact.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Your question is very good about Plus Licens and I honestly don't really remember now... Maybe you are right about that fact.

I can't say for sure. Licensing is complicated, I know you broke the news in 2009. So I guess they could have took over from AB then.

The weird thing is that AB Groupe were blocking YouTube videos in 2010 on copyright grounds in most, if not all European territories, including the Nordics and eastern countries.

It's weird because the article doesn't state where AB come into the equation, just sounds like companies such as TV channels and home video distributors get the sublicense from TOEI with Plus Licens acting as an intermediary of sorts?

[Scsigs]

Scsigs yep, I assume we got the Big Green dubs because they were cheap to license?

Cartoon Network seemed to be slowly losing the rights to the series and eventually only had small batches of episodes left. I can't see any reason why Toonami UK only reran the Imperfect Cell saga during Z's last few months on the air or only the King Piccolo saga after original Dragon Ball ended and was only on the air a few months more.

I mean, from what I can tell, AB Groupe didn't wanna license FUNi's dub with the Texas cast. Why? Don't exactly know, but my assumption is that FUNi charged too much for them at the time to do that. So, they commissioned Ocean to record an alternate dub with mostly the same scripts, since they were helping FUNi script their dub anyways. The Big Green movie dubs, I think, were also done for similar reasons, though rather than get Ocean to do them for some reason, they did an alternative. It's so weird how that happened.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I mean, from what I can tell, AB Groupe didn't wanna license FUNi's dub with the Texas cast. Why? Don't exactly know, but my assumption is that FUNi charged too much for them at the time to do that. So, they commissioned Ocean to record an alternate dub with mostly the same scripts, since they were helping FUNi script their dub anyways. The Big Green movie dubs, I think, were also done for similar reasons, though rather than get Ocean to do them for some reason, they did an alternative. It's so weird how that happened.

AB Groupe didn't commission the Westwood dub, they only distributed it in Europe. Its a common misconception they were behind that dub but there's never been any proof. Although it was known at the time Ken Morrison was signing the actor's paychecks, which says to me Ocean funded it themselves.

It's also unclear whether or not AB Groupe commissioned the Big Green dubs. Next to nothing is known about the production of those dubs, other than the fact they were rushed out the door.

[Scsigs]

AB Groupe didn't commission the Westwood dub, they only distributed it in Europe. Its a common misconception they were behind that dub but there's never been any proof. Although it was known at the time Ken Morrison was signing the actor's paychecks, which says to me Ocean funded it themselves.

It's also unclear whether or not AB Groupe commissioned the Big Green dubs. Next to nothing is known about the production of those dubs, other than the fact they were rushed out the door.

The post you linked literally explained nothing about Ocean being the ones to commission the alternate Z dub.

Here's the thing. In the early 2000s, AB Groupe commissioned different English dubs of DB media for distribution in Europe. AB owned the DB license for most of Europe. Mainly France since they're a French company, but also for the UK. The Ocean cast Z dub for the material after the Texas cast was used in the US premiered in the UK before the Canadian broadcaster of Z started using it because Canadian Gov't TV broadcast requirements. Now, what I believe happened is that they paid Ocean to dub it, not that they paid the actors themselves. That would've been up to Ocean. That's like saying the dubs Ocean did for Viz Media weren't commissioned for Viz's distribution. Viz paid them to do the dub of Death Note, but they didn't pay the actors directly for the voice acting. Same with the Speedy dub of the Z movies where those were seemingly contracted out to some low budget studio in Malaysia to be done & really poorly translated from the Japanese scripts. I don't expect Toei or whatever company had the distribution license to have been paying those actors directly unless they directly owned whatever studio did it for them. As well as when Bang Zoom was commissioned by Toei to do their alternate English dub of Super. Toei didn't pay the actors directly, just the studio to dub the first 27 episodes for whatever markets they broadcasted them in. I don't know why you thought I suggested that AB wrote the actors' checks. That wouldn't have happened.
Ocean was also notoriously cheap with this dub, hence why Peter Kelamis initially came back, then left after a bit due to the low pay & was replaced by Kirby Morrow, as well as why they recycled Megaman music from a show they'd previously worked on. It was also pretty fast-tracked from what I've read, which led to a rushed production. This says to me that the dub barely had any money put into it & they didn't wanna put more money or time into it than they needed to because it wasn't something they did for themselves. You'd think if it was, they would've given the dub team more time &/or money in which to do it, no? I mean, they'd later do that with Kai, but not Z itself. Hence why that dub has yet to surface anywhere.
Now, why do this? 2-fold. 1. Cheaper dub to pay for & 2. The Ocean dub actors were already familiar to European audiences, so they commissioned Ocean because of their previous work on the series. There's absolutely nothing to suggest Ocean started the dub at the time & licensed it out. Also, if they did, why not just pick up at uncut episode 68 rather than where they did & do it earlier than they did? Logically, that makes no sense. They picked it up when they did specifically because that was around where FUNi was dubbing it & the FUNi dub had been running in the UK for a while by then. Like, they had to catch up fast to FUNi & then send the tapes over to Europe for airing after the audio editing was done for it. Now, it's more than likely that Ocean distributed their Z dub to Canada because they'd already been doing it & it looked appealing because it met Canadian broadcast standards due to being a Canadian-produced dub, but Europe? Come on.
Also, from what I can tell, AB also commissioned the Ocean/Westwood/Blue Water dubs of DB & GT, which is why their dub of DB uses an English cover of the French theme song. Also explains why they used their budget studio in Calgary to do them rather than the main Vancouver studio. Less money to pay the mainstay actors with.

As for the Big Green Dub, from what I'm reading, that dub is apparently adapted from the French Z dub's (a dub notorious for its bad translations & scripting a lot like FUNi's Z dub) scripts & a lot of the character names & nomenclatures were used (Clearin, Bloomer, Space Warriors instead of Saiyans, etc), as well as Turles instead being Goku's brother instead of just being a doppelganger. 1 voice actress has been fully confirmed to have voiced characters in the dubs, Sharon Mann, who's an American-born & raised VA who lives in France & does English-language dubbing for companies over there. This, I think, is the best source of proof that this dub was done by AB Groupe.

[MasenkoHA]

I mean, from what I can tell, AB Groupe didn't wanna license FUNi's dub with the Texas cast. Why? Don't exactly know, but my assumption is that FUNi charged too much for them at the time to do that. So, they commissioned Ocean to record an alternate dub with mostly the same scripts, since they were helping FUNi script their dub anyways. The Big Green movie dubs, I think, were also done for similar reasons, though rather than get Ocean to do them for some reason, they did an alternative. It's so weird how that happened.

AB Groupe didn't commission the Westwood dub, they only distributed it in Europe. Its a common misconception they were behind that dub but there's never been any proof. Although it was known at the time Ken Morrison was signing the actor's paychecks, which says to me Ocean funded it themselves.

It's also unclear whether or not AB Groupe commissioned the Big Green dubs. Next to nothing is known about the production of those dubs, other than the fact they were rushed out the door.

Ocean was also the one paying the voice actors when Funimation was producing the dub they were recording for. Ian Corlett even stated his beef was with Ocean and not Funimation for how they found ways to pay their actors super low (ironic since Funimation appear to be even worse) so I don't know if "Ken Morrison was signing their paychecks" during the Westwood era is hard proof that Ocean commissioned and funded the dub themselves.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

The post you linked literally explained nothing about Ocean being the ones to commission the alternate Z dub.

Here's the thing. In the early 2000s, AB Groupe commissioned different English dubs of DB media for distribution in Europe. AB owned the DB license for most of Europe. Mainly France since they're a French company, but also for the UK. The Ocean cast Z dub for the material after the Texas cast was used in the US premiered in the UK before the Canadian broadcaster of Z started using it because Canadian Gov't TV broadcast requirements. Now, what I believe happened is that they paid Ocean to dub it, not that they paid the actors themselves. That would've been up to Ocean. That's like saying the dubs Ocean did for Viz Media weren't commissioned for Viz's distribution. Viz paid them to do the dub of Death Note, but they didn't pay the actors directly for the voice acting. Same with the Speedy dub of the Z movies where those were seemingly contracted out to some low budget studio in Malaysia to be done & really poorly translated from the Japanese scripts. I don't expect Toei or whatever company had the distribution license to have been paying those actors directly unless they directly owned whatever studio did it for them. As well as when Bang Zoom was commissioned by Toei to do their alternate English dub of Super. Toei didn't pay the actors directly, just the studio to dub the first 27 episodes for whatever markets they broadcasted them in. I don't know why you thought I suggested that AB wrote the actors' checks. That wouldn't have happened.
Ocean was also notoriously cheap with this dub, hence why Peter Kelamis initially came back, then left after a bit due to the low pay & was replaced by Kirby Morrow, as well as why they recycled Megaman music from a show they'd previously worked on. It was also pretty fast-tracked from what I've read, which led to a rushed production. This says to me that the dub barely had any money put into it & they didn't wanna put more money or time into it than they needed to because it wasn't something they did for themselves. You'd think if it was, they would've given the dub team more time &/or money in which to do it, no? I mean, they'd later do that with Kai, but not Z itself. Hence why that dub has yet to surface anywhere.
Now, why do this? 2-fold. 1. Cheaper dub to pay for & 2. The Ocean dub actors were already familiar to European audiences, so they commissioned Ocean because of their previous work on the series. There's absolutely nothing to suggest Ocean started the dub at the time & licensed it out. Also, if they did, why not just pick up at uncut episode 68 rather than where they did & do it earlier than they did? Logically, that makes no sense. They picked it up when they did specifically because that was around where FUNi was dubbing it & the FUNi dub had been running in the UK for a while by then. Like, they had to catch up fast to FUNi & then send the tapes over to Europe for airing after the audio editing was done for it. Now, it's more than likely that Ocean distributed their Z dub to Canada because they'd already been doing it & it looked appealing because it met Canadian broadcast standards due to being a Canadian-produced dub, but Europe? Come on.
Also, from what I can tell, AB also commissioned the Ocean/Westwood/Blue Water dubs of DB & GT, which is why their dub of DB uses an English cover of the French theme song. Also explains why they used their budget studio in Calgary to do them rather than the main Vancouver studio. Less money to pay the mainstay actors with.

As for the Big Green Dub, from what I'm reading, that dub is apparently adapted from the French Z dub's (a dub notorious for its bad translations & scripting a lot like FUNi's Z dub) scripts & a lot of the character names & nomenclatures were used (Clearin, Bloomer, Space Warriors instead of Saiyans, etc), as well as Turles instead being Goku's brother instead of just being a doppelganger. 1 voice actress has been fully confirmed to have voiced characters in the dubs, Sharon Mann, who's an American-born & raised VA who lives in France & does English-language dubbing for companies over there. This, I think, is the best source of proof that this dub was done by AB Groupe.

But why would AB commission another dub? Ocean basically already produced one, they were editing Funimation's dub to air on YTV as they had access to their scripts, video, raw music tracks (which were placed differently to the US and UK airings) and just had to bring back the old cast and slap on some library tracks. AB didn't have the same working relationship Ocean had with Funimation and would have had to pay for all those materials. It would make more sense for Ocean to sell their dub to AB to distribute in Europe. AB provided video tracks for the last 4 episodes of Dragon Ball Z, but that was the extent of their involvement other than selling it to TV networks. Ocean also likely had contacts because they dubbed French cartoons before and AB attended the animation industry event Mipcom, so it was easy enough to work out deals and such.

Ocean started at edited episode 108 because they were in a hurry to have a dub ready to go. Brian Drummond confirmed he was returning as Vegeta 2 months after Dragon Ball Z began airing in the UK and had became a massive success, but clearly for episodes 1-107 Funimation got to AB first to fulfill the demand for more and Ocean had to catch up, so they skipped season 3 altogether.

Canadian content laws had nothing to do with the Westwood dub. YTV already had FUNimation's dub up to edited episode 167 so the majority of what they aired of Dragon Ball Z was not Canadian content. YTV made the switch because they were sick of getting tapes late.

Ocean was also the one paying the voice actors when Funimation was producing the dub they were recording for. Ian Corlett even stated his beef was with Ocean and not Funimation for how they found ways to pay their actors super low (ironic since Funimation appear to be even worse) so I don't know if "Ken Morrison was signing their paychecks" during the Westwood era is hard proof that Ocean commissioned and funded the dub themselves.

Fair enough. My point still stands it has never been confirmed AB commissioned the Westwood dub, it's fan speculation that's been regurgitated for years, so much so that people just take it as fact, but as I stated previously that's highly unlikely.

[sangofe]

We're really getting off topic but the French dub was a hit and miss. They received really bad English scripts and had to do the best they could with them as they had no Japanese to french translators.


Slightly more on topic is that they dubbed using first gen copies of 16 mm the film masters they were sent physically. awhich is infuriating to think about when these aren't being used for video anymore but upscales instead. AB had to mail them back.

I have something to give hope to the situation. Toei Animation Europe proudly boasts about AB Groupe as a licensee. If they were crossed or angry at them they would not do that.

If Toei had genuinely been angry, they would have done the following:
- Remove the box set from sale.
- Sue AB for breach of contract (specifically, the use of unauthorized material).
- Terminate the contract and potentially cancel the release of box set 2 or even revoke AB's rights.

The fact is, they simply did nothing. It's worth noting, as mentioned, that Dragon Ball is not the only license to face this fate. For instance, the Sailor Moon box set scheduled for release in France has been further delayed (and Crunchyroll uses material provided by Toei). Additionally, if Toei had been angry, AB wouldn't be able to continue working with ASTRORES, as

AB is set to broadcast on Mangas a special version of Sailor Moon produced by Astrores that will not be sell on Bluray (as they don't have home video rights)

Very good points but is this with Astros and Sailor Moon confirmed or speculation?

[Joujou]

It have been said by animeland that thé HD remaster that mangas will air will be différent than the one released actually by crunchyroll ( that use toei shit master) SO as Toei don t provide true HD scan it s indirectly confirmed that it will be astrores

[sangofe]

It have been said by animeland that thé HD remaster that mangas will air will be différent than the one released actually by crunchyroll ( that use toei shit master) SO as Toei don t provide true HD scan it s indirectly confirmed that it will be astrores

I still don't see it as confirmed. Why would AB pay Astrores to do it just for a TV airing? It's much cheaper to do a cheap upscale.

[Joujou]

It have been said by animeland that thé HD remaster that mangas will air will be différent than the one released actually by crunchyroll ( that use toei shit master) SO as Toei don t provide true HD scan it s indirectly confirmed that it will be astrores

I still don't see it as confirmed. Why would AB pay Astrores to do it just for a TV airing? It's much cheaper to do a cheap upscale.

it has been said that it will be a differrent HD remaster than the one crunchyroll used. as crunchyroll use Toei's one, where do you think that AB got their new HD remaster? only fool think that AB have 16mm filmprint so if it's not an astrores, why would they bother to do a "differrent one" if it's not an astrores one? people working into AB know very well that there is a high market potential with astrores AI upscale and they know it the same way as they knew about broadcast audios for db and that's not because some japanese hoarders keep them in their hand that they used it, it's only because it was publicly released, else NEVER you'll have seen an official release using that audios

Do you know that captain tsubasa less censored version is mangas exclusive? you cannot get it on dvd , do you know that the uncensored dragon ball gt dub is also "mangas exclusive"? that's why crunchyroll and adn don't (and won't) get this uncut audio

Basically it's not because crunchyroll have sailormoon rights now that it doesn't mean that later in the future, AB will not be able to released it legally, i even think that it's a way to "destroy" crunchyroll release and get the rights back later
sailormoon release by crunchyroll got a lot of complain cause it didn't even used the less censored french dub and that the "upscale look like trash", that's basicaly the same complain that people made about selecta db release and finally they did it

it's very easy to understand that if they deliberately said that it's a differrent HD remaster, it's basicaly to tease another astrores one

[sangofe]

It have been said by animeland that thé HD remaster that mangas will air will be différent than the one released actually by crunchyroll ( that use toei shit master) SO as Toei don t provide true HD scan it s indirectly confirmed that it will be astrores

I still don't see it as confirmed. Why would AB pay Astrores to do it just for a TV airing? It's much cheaper to do a cheap upscale.

it has been said that it will be a differrent HD remaster than the one crunchyroll used. as crunchyroll use Toei's one, where do you think that AB got their new HD remaster? only fool think that AB have 16mm filmprint so if it's not an astrores, why would they bother to do a "differrent one" if it's not an astrores one? people working into AB know very well that there is a high market potential with astrores AI upscale and they know it the same way as they knew about broadcast audios for db and that's not because some japanese hoarders keep them in their hand that they used it, it's only because it was publicly released, else NEVER you'll have seen an official release using that audios

Do you know that captain tsubasa less censored version is mangas exclusive? you cannot get it on dvd , do you know that the uncensored dragon ball gt dub is also "mangas exclusive"? that's why crunchyroll and adn don't (and won't) get this uncut audio

Basically it's not because crunchyroll have sailormoon rights now that it doesn't mean that later in the future, AB will not be able to released it legally, i even think that it's a way to "destroy" crunchyroll release and get the rights back later
sailormoon release by crunchyroll got a lot of complain cause it didn't even used the less censored french dub and that the "upscale look like trash", that's basicaly the same complain that people made about selecta db release and finally they did it

it's very easy to understand that if they deliberately said that it's a differrent HD remaster, it's basicaly to tease another astrores one

For DBGT they didn't re broadcast the one with title cards and next episode previews as far as I know.
Didn't know about Captain Tsubasa and I never said I thought they have the film prints of Sailor Moon. Just seems weird they'd spend money on paying Astrores when it's for tv. Although they did proper HD remaster of l'école des champions from film masters and never released that to sell...

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

For anyone that still doubts TOEI and AB Groupe being on good terms I think this definitively proves they are.

Thanks to Cure Dragon 255 for sharing this with me:

[Cure Dragon 255]

I forgot to give DBI context, but that's the Toei Animation Europe website on OG Dragon Ball. Which confirms they are a loud and proud licensee and that Toei loves working with them.

You guys can see by yourselves.

https://www.toei-animation.com/catalog/dragon-ball/

[Scsigs]

it has been said that it will be a different HD remaster than the one crunchyroll used. as crunchyroll use Toei's one, where do you think that AB got their new HD remaster? only fool think that AB have 16mm filmprint so if it's not an astrores, why would they bother to do a "different one" if it's not an astrores one? people working into AB know very well that there is a high market potential with astrores AI upscale and they know it the same way as they knew about broadcast audios for db and that's not because some japanese hoarders keep them in their hand that they used it, it's only because it was publicly released, else NEVER you'll have seen an official release using that audios

Do you know that captain tsubasa less censored version is mangas exclusive? you cannot get it on dvd , do you know that the uncensored dragon ball gt dub is also "mangas exclusive"? that's why crunchyroll and adn don't (and won't) get this uncut audio

Basically it's not because crunchyroll have sailor moon rights now that it doesn't mean that later in the future, AB will not be able to released it legally, i even think that it's a way to "destroy" crunchyroll release and get the rights back later
sailormoon release by crunchyroll got a lot of complain cause it didn't even used the less censored french dub and that the "upscale look like trash", that's basically the same complain that people made about selecta db release and finally they did it

it's very easy to understand that if they deliberately said that it's a different HD remaster, it's basically to tease another astrores one

Where has it ever been stated that AB Groupe had the film prints? Nowhere has it ever been stated they do, nor has AB said so, nor doo I think anyone thinks that. It's been known for years now that they just AI upscaled & color-corrected the Dragon Box DVD masters.

For anyone that still doubts TOEI and AB Groupe being on good terms I think this definitively proves they are.

Thanks to Cure Dragon 255 for sharing this with me:

Basically, they're still fine.