Dragon Ball Z Kai Volume 1 Discussion

[The Time Traveller]

They seriously couldn't make them alternate angles? It's fucking Bluray, space age, super science! Goddamn Funimation is going backwards.

[Gaffer Tape]

I'll admit that I have some trouble actually reading the Japanese voice actors' names, so the translated credits help me in that sense.

I recommend Kanzentai's episode guide. For my DBox marathons, I go there at the end of every episode to find out some random character I didn't recognize and to confirm who was the animation supervisor/studio for each episode. Quite educational. And, yes, I am a huge nerd. But even if I didn't have that resource and had no way of figuring out that crazy moon language, I'd still prefer the original credits to be there. "The way it was meant to be seen" and all that jazz.

They seriously couldn't make them alternate angles? It's fucking Bluray, space age, super science! Goddamn Funimation is going backwards.

Amen, brother, amen. It's almost like they're... time traveling. Wait.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

I recommend Kanzentai's episode guide. For my DBox marathons, I go there at the end of every episode to find out some random character I didn't recognize and to confirm who was the animation supervisor/studio for each episode. Quite educational. And, yes, I am a huge nerd. But even if I didn't have that resource and had no way of figuring out that crazy moon language, I'd still prefer the original credits to be there. "The way it was meant to be seen" and all that jazz.

Thanks for the tip Gaffer and I don't have problems reading the Kanji for the main voice actors like Nozawa Masako, Horikawa Ryou, Gouri Daisuke etc. But for the voice actors that I don't know, I might end up reading the name wrong and that's where the translated credits really help me out.

[Mewzard]

Like I said, Funi isn't going backwards now, as they ditched alternate angles a long time back. I can't remember seeing a single alternate angle after the three episode dvd days. Not a large loss. Rather pay $50 for 42 episode Dragon Box or $35 for 13 episode Kai set at Best Buy with no Alternate Angles than $15-$20 for 3 episodes with Alternate Angles.

And the reason they likely didn't include AA on the Kai Blu Rays is either due to the space of the episodes on BR being greater, or only wanting the two sets to have so much difference, to make the products roughly the same, minus video/audio output.

[Puto]

Like I said, Funi isn't going backwards now, as they ditched alternate angles a long time back. I can't remember seeing a single alternate angle after the three episode dvd days. Not a large loss. Rather pay $50 for 42 episode Dragon Box or $35 for 13 episode Kai set at Best Buy with no Alternate Angles than $15-$20 for 3 episodes with Alternate Angles.

The Z Season Sets had alternate angles, I think. It's the GT and DB Season Sets that didn't.

[LeprikanGT]

As long as the dub this time around doesn't make everything 'silly' I'm all right. I'm used to the English attack names so that will be a little change, but aren't names like 'TIEN' trademarked and all that at this point?

What's the Japanese name for Tri-beam?

[JulieYBM]

What's the Japanese name for Tri-beam?

The 'Kiko-Hô'.

[Innagadadavida]

Because that's just what the show looks like, and when I watch the show, I'd prefer to watch it (to fling around a sometimes ironic marketing term) "the way it was meant to be seen." Funny that.

Couldn't one argue though that the way it was "meant to be seen" was to look at it and instantly know what it means?

[LeprikanGT]

As long as they didn't throw "son" in there every time they say Goku, Ill be happy.

[Mewzard]

Like I said, Funi isn't going backwards now, as they ditched alternate angles a long time back. I can't remember seeing a single alternate angle after the three episode dvd days. Not a large loss. Rather pay $50 for 42 episode Dragon Box or $35 for 13 episode Kai set at Best Buy with no Alternate Angles than $15-$20 for 3 episodes with Alternate Angles.

The Z Season Sets had alternate angles, I think. It's the GT and DB Season Sets that didn't.

Really? I didn't notice. Then again, the quality was rough on those, iirc.

[ohaimynameiserik]

I don't think Japanese title cards are all that big of a deal whatsoever.

The episode titles are directly translated, and even if they are different, if you have the subtitles on it says the original title at the bottom.

Does the Japanese alphabet really give you that much of a hard-on?

[JulieYBM]

Does the Japanese alphabet really give you that much of a hard-on?

I see you didn't read the reasons given for wanting the actual title cards and credits.

People want the actual credits of the show, not some licensor's depiction of them. The Dragon Box perfectly handled the situation, we'd like to see that continued.

[Gaffer Tape]

Couldn't one argue though that the way it was "meant to be seen" was to look at it and instantly know what it means?

Yes, one could. He'd be wrong, though.

Seriously, though, you could take that argument to its logical conclusion and say that one should only watch foreign shows dubbed in one's native language so that one could listen to it and instantly know what it means. Or one could take it even farther and rationalize removing all Japanese idioms or scattered kanji throughout the show so that it would be recognizable. Japanese attack names? What's that garble? I don't know what it means! Slippery slope. I'd rather avoid that slope entirely and just keep the show as it originally was, completely intact.

Does the Japanese alphabet really give you that much of a hard-on?

Well, I have to admit that Toriyama's made-up Kaio kanji is pretty damned sexy. Mmmmmmm. Asa para gasu indeed, you silly catfish man.

But, yeah, JulieYBM summed it up perfectly, so I don't have anything else to say about that except that I'm glad at least a few others get where I'm coming from.

And, yeah, for all the horrible things about the DBZ season sets, they were, as far as I know, the last FUNimation DB releases to use alternate angles, and that makes me sad... So just to make it clear, I wasn't arguing that this specific release was the moment of the stepping backwards. You're right. It's been happening for over a year now. But it's still a step back.

[Undercooked Sausage]

There really isn't much more free space on a Blu-Ray than on a dvd since the video and audio takes up a lot more space. So all these posts wondering why there are not alternate angles doesn't really make any sense.

They are not on there because FUNi didn't want to do them, didn't want to throw down on 2 dual-layer blu rays in each set just to satisfy a few dozen people out there that care.

I'm fine with english credits as every single anime I've ever watched has had them outside of the Dragonboxes. That and I like actually reading the names of the people who worked on the show.

[Greenman]

There really isn't much more free space on a Blu-Ray than on a dvd since the video and audio takes up a lot more space. So all these posts wondering why there are not alternate angles doesn't really make any sense.

I believe someone here mentioned (on the podcast maybe?) that the problem with alternate angles on the DVDs was the total bitrate of the video, not the file size on the disc. So instead of 5Mbit/s for one angle it would be divided with the alternate angle.

[MarcFBR]

I believe someone here mentioned (on the podcast maybe?) that the problem with alternate angles on the DVDs was the total bitrate of the video, not the file size on the disc. So instead of 5Mbit/s for one angle it would be divided with the alternate angle.

The problem is more that the way it was done was it killed the MAXIMUM (also I think that was me on the podcast that mentioned that... not sure.)

So having 5Mbit/s for video isn't bad, but sometimes you need a nice bump up to 8 or 9 on DVD.

While that isn't true for Blu-ray with Blu-ray Playlists, Funimation doing dual angle in the first place was an oddity in the industry.

[Gaffer Tape]

Do you mean an oddity in the anime industry or an oddity in the DVD industry? Because I was under the impression that alternate angles existed largely for this kind of purpose in the first place.

[Greenman]

I believe someone here mentioned (on the podcast maybe?) that the problem with alternate angles on the DVDs was the total bitrate of the video, not the file size on the disc. So instead of 5Mbit/s for one angle it would be divided with the alternate angle.

The problem is more that the way it was done was it killed the MAXIMUM (also I think that was me on the podcast that mentioned that... not sure.)

So having 5Mbit/s for video isn't bad, but sometimes you need a nice bump up to 8 or 9 on DVD.

While that isn't true for Blu-ray with Blu-ray Playlists, Funimation doing dual angle in the first place was an oddity in the industry.

I gotcha. Thank you for the explanation.

[MarcFBR]

Do you mean an oddity in the anime industry or an oddity in the DVD industry? Because I was under the impression that alternate angles existed largely for this kind of purpose in the first place.

Oddity in the anime industry, oddity in the DVD industry.

Truthfully alternate angles were never used all that much because they murder the video quality.

The biggest use of them that I can remember is using them to show storyboards.

And even a few anime releases skipped doing that and found alternate ways to do it to keep the video quality high.

Bandai's method was instead of using the alternate angle for storyboards, to actually 'draw' them in a subtitle and overlay that over a corner of the video.

It has almost completely switched over to BD Playlist.

The truth is while it sounds easy to say 'give us that', it adds quite a bit of time for someone to sit there and do it for every episode.

More time means they are spending more to make it. Making the disks more expensive isn't an option because they need to hit a specific price point.

Removing alternate angles from DVDs was the best thing Funi did to improve both their video quality and the impression that anime fans had in general that Funimation releases were low quality.

By that logic it seems nearly ludicrous to demand them to change it back.

[Undercooked Sausage]

Sigh, so I live within 100 miles or so of where this set ships from, and my shipping status has been "reserved for your order" for the last two weeks now and I can't think of a reason why all these other sets shipped out and mine hasn't.