MasenkoHA wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 7:21 pm
Toei definitely owes a brunt of the blame but I don't recall anyone forcing Funimation to crop the show to pseudo widescreen or do all the unnecessary DNR work they did. There's no reason the Orange Bricks couldn't have turned out at least as good as the Green and Blue Bricks (which aren't great but...). Hell, there's no reason, afaik, they couldn't have just repackaged the DVD singles as season sets and they certainly didn't need to cancel the UUE 2/3rd of the way through the Vegeta saga and tell fans who already bought those 9 DVDs to just rebuy those episodes to own the remaining 12.
I mean, yeah, I agree. However, the point I was getting at is that if Toei just let FUNi have the DBox masters circa 2005/06, they would've just used them instead of requesting film prints, we would never have gotten the shitty Orange Bricks, & the continual migraine that is the FUNi release history of DBZ on DVD from 2007 on.
As for FUNi's releases in general using the cropping, the harsh DVNR, the shit color correction & saturation, I agree. They used those, then also had bullshit marketing campaigns around them. To the point that, for some reason, they were apparently surprised that people immediately called them out on the 30th anniversary remaster's trailer looking like shit (doesn't help that Geekdom101 apparently heard from someone at FUNi that they were working on a new remaster of Z & because of that & how the person apparently told him about it, he ran with the narrative that Toei was spearheading a Z remaster with FUNimation helping out in some capacity even though there were no announcements or any visual things we could see to back up his claims, a problem that he has of spreading legit misinformation because he doesn't properly think through things that's come back to bite him several times over the years) & then released a second one days later with a damage control blogpost that meant to address everything they could think of, but instead just outed that they don't care about preserving DBZ's original look as closely as possible, but just wanna make as much money off of the show as possible.
What's more is that Geekdom for some reason thought at the time that Toei was remastering the first 3 shows just based on the fact that they remastered the movies & the 2 Z TV specials, even though there was nothing to confirm that at the time in 2019 & we have yet to see said remasters almost 5 years later. Toei remastered them specifically because the Super: Broly film was coming out the time & I assume they didn't wanna use FUNi's remasters & instead remastered their first gen film stock because they had yet to do so in HD & it was easier to both budget & do, even though they also did 2 versions; the Amazon Prime streaming versions which look great & are uncut & the Blu-Ray versions which feature really odd green tints & censorship in some of the films for some reason.
Dragon Ball Ireland wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2024 3:09 pm
Well Funimation were sent film originally when they first got the license in 1995, for the original series and Z at least. Funimation created their DigiBeta tape masters used for the DVD singles by transferring the film they acquired from TOEI to digital.
Clearly Funimation kept the film for Dragon Ball Z, which was what they used for the orange bricks and Steve Franko used for the base restoration for all their Blu-Ray releases (of course the Levels were left untouched and the season, steelbook and 30th anniversary discs had DNR on top but nonetheless a transfer from film was done). As far as I'm aware they were never in need of better film than what they used for the orange bricks, the orange bricks honestly could have been a fine remaster if they weren't cropped and only used minimal DNR. So technically the orange bricks were "Remastered in HD" as advertised, but as they were on DVDs they were downscale to SD but they did use a transfer done from film masters, which should have been untouched and given a Blu-Ray option.
Funimation (now Crunchyroll) may still have some film for original Dragon Ball, we don't know, but they did have film they could do as they pleased with throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, although they possibly threw out a lot due to the cost of storage. It was probably the best source they could realistically get, as they were never going to get the first generation film prints Pony Canyon used for the Dragon Boxes.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. From what Geekdom also said in the video I referenced, from what he heard, FUNi got film reels for all of the shows, TV specials, & movies that they had originally licensed & dubbed from Toei in the mid-2000s. Before that, they were probably going off of digi beta tapes Toei gave them. Every DVD & Blu-Ray of them that FUNi has released since 2007 with the Z Orange Bricks & later Blu-Rays, the first 17 DB & Z movies, the 3 Z & GT TV specials, OG DB, & GT were remastered from said film stock & put on new releases. Said film stocks were 2nd or 3rd generation duplicated prints, so they're not as good as what we'd get from an official Toei remaster, but the base colors are fine & there's enough detail preserved that realistically, all they need to do is have a good pass through with grain removal & a pass at making sure the color balance is correct & they're completely fine to use. They're 16mm film for the shows (minus the few episodes from Z's Freeza Arc for some reason) & 35mm for the films & I believe the Z specials. Their remasters of DB, GT, & all of the movies are fine for the most part, minus the fact that DB is apparently cropped in a little too much, GT's a bit too red-skewed, & the 2nd DB movie had its frame rate halved for no reason. But, Z, they consistently screwed up in 1 way or another. However, after they did their remasters, they apparently completely threw out the film stock for everything BUT Z & probably the Z movies since they released THOSE on Blu-Ray, but not the 4 DB movies for some reason. And apparently because, in their words, they're "not as popular as Z."