Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.
Alright, so I recently completed my Dragon Ball collection. Well, almost. I finally collected all the manga volumes (Viz Bigs), Dragon Boxes, Kai Blu-Rays, Blue Bricks and the newest addition - GT Blue Bricks. Now, all that is left are the movies. Which are cheaply and conveniently available in packages.
I know that they are basically the double features repackaged. I searched for some comparison shots on here, but could not find exactly what I was looking for.
Here's what I need: Side by side comparisons from the Funi Movie Sets to the Japanese DBOX ones, 'cause I'm really on the fence and I'm not exactly sure if it is worth to purchase the Funi sets...
Side by side shots of the image quality or packaging?
Image quality on the Blu-Rays are great. The only downside is that they've been cropped from 14:9 to 16:9. Not a big deal at all really as you're not exactly losing all that much headroom. But yes, image quality is great, very sharp and all the grain is retained but is not obtrusive.
Sound quality is to be expected - English dub and soundtrack are of a much higher quality than the Japanese counterparts but that's just a case of one being recorded more recently than the other. They both sound great regardless.
I have a couple of questions about the U.S. releases too. Do any of the U.S. versions have:
1) the Japanese title cards or title animations, or whatever you call them? I have only seen most of the movies fansubbed, and was surprised during the movie 5 showing at Animazement to see a tacky WordArt-looking "Cooler's Revenge" logo.
2) hi-fi Japanese audio? Again, the version at Animazement surprised me with the low-fi Japanese audio. I mean, the hi-fi audio for the movies still exists, unlike with the TV series, so why would they not use it?
Edit: sorry OP! This didn't really help with your question
Pretorious wrote:I have a couple of questions about the U.S. releases too. Do any of the U.S. versions have:
1) the Japanese title cards or title animations, or whatever you call them? I have only seen most of the movies fansubbed, and was surprised during the movie 5 showing at Animazement to see a tacky WordArt-looking "Cooler's Revenge" logo.
2) hi-fi Japanese audio? Again, the version at Animazement surprised me with the low-fi Japanese audio. I mean, the hi-fi audio for the movies still exists, unlike with the TV series, so why would they not use it?
Edit: sorry OP! This didn't really help with your question
The old Funimation singles have the Japanese title cards and animations. As for Hi-fi Japanese audio, I wouldn't be able to tell you. It sounds good enough to me, though. I don't have anything to compare it to other than what I've heard of the Japanese Dragon Box versions, which sound effing amazing, but we don't have that quite yet, assuming we even get the Dragon Box version of the movies at all. I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you what the Double Features have. I just grabbed the singles for the cheap price and fullscreen.
The self-proclaimed World's Biggest Dragon Ball Kai Fan™
AjayLikesGaming wrote:Side by side shots of the image quality or packaging?
Image quality on the Blu-Rays are great. The only downside is that they've been cropped from 14:9 to 16:9. Not a big deal at all really as you're not exactly losing all that much headroom. But yes, image quality is great, very sharp and all the grain is retained but is not obtrusive.
Sound quality is to be expected - English dub and soundtrack are of a much higher quality than the Japanese counterparts but that's just a case of one being recorded more recently than the other. They both sound great regardless.
The cropping point is only applicable to the TV special double feature. The films were all originally released in 16:9.
"Clark Kakakent however, would never speak that way. Clark Kakakent is a big orange boy scout who fights for truth, Justice, and the Saiyan way." - DemonRin
The picture quality of the FUNimation Blu-ray films aren't really great, they're very good as an alternative to the Dragon Boxes but definitely not the best, and FUNimation should do a proper remaster of it someday.
FUNimation 2015 Releases I want:
- Kai 2.0 on Blu-ray
Seems like they're from the same master except the Blu-Ray is of a higher resolution. Seems to be the case for all of them really.
Comparison from History of Trunks:
Spoiler:
Full Size: http://i4.minus.com/iQlhqcYV0Kfw1.jpg
Quality is obviously higher IRL since this is a compressed image but you can see the difference. Blu-Ray is definitely the way to go.
EDIT: Misread your post and wasted my time. Woops. Googled around though and found these:
Spoiler:
Also, here's a comparison of the movie set vs. the blu-ray
Spoiler:
Blu-Ray
Movie Set:
The only real difference is resolution and every not being pink. HOWEVER, you will find better Japanese audio on the Dragon Boxes so it's up to you what's more important/what language you prefer.
Last edited by Ajay on Thu Jun 06, 2013 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
AjayLikesGaming wrote:Seems like they're from the same master except the Blu-Ray is of a higher resolution. Seems to be the case for all of them really.
Comparison from History of Trunks:
Spoiler:
Full Size: http://i4.minus.com/iQlhqcYV0Kfw1.jpg
Quality is obviously higher IRL since this is a compressed image but you can see the difference. Blu-Ray is definitely the way to go.
He wanted a comparison between the Double-Features and the Dragon Box The Movies set, not between the two Funi Double-Feature releases.
DragonBoxZTheMovies wrote:Kanzenshuu! We annoy voice actors, get composers fired....and occasionally talk about Dragon Ball
omegalucas wrote:He wanted a comparison between the Double-Features and the Dragon Box The Movies set, not between the two Funi Double-Feature releases.
Well shit, that's what I get for trying to read in the early hours of the morning. Edited my post to include what he was looking for...I think.
The FUNimation Double Features do have English Title Cards replacing the original Japanese ones... It's because FUNi no longer uses "alternate angles" for their DVD/Blu-Ray releases. When they can, they choose to not have any Japanese credits or type on the OP/ED/title cards.
The Double Features unfortunately also have lower-quality Japanese audio than their other releases. This is most likely due to the quality of the film source they used for the remastering. The Japanese audio is just really low and muffled-sounding compared to the Dragon Boxes and even FUNi's old movie singles.
These Double Feature versions are also used in the recent DBZ Movie-packs (the ones with the new redone cover art)...
So, yeah. Video-wise, they're pretty good, and even the English tracks sound clear and loud; it's just the Japanese audio that's at a disadvantage here. That's why I want them to hurry and release their version of the Movie Dragon Box: mainly for the high-quality Japanese audio track.
Nothing matters (in a cosmic sense.) Have a good time.
Thanks BobZ for asking the original question, because that was helpful to me, too!
And thanks OmegaRockman and originalbilis for answering my questions, which, bilis, I am now pretty sure I also asked you at Animazement, but since I have the memory of Akira Toriyama, I forgot the answers to them . Do your answers also apply to the original, pre-Z movies?
It sounds like the singles are the version I want, unless the movies DBox comes out.
mister yummy wrote:It's not what you're asking, but I'd go with the singles. They're the only ones not cropped to widescreen.
Yes, the theatrical releases were indeed in cinemascope, but they were animated in full frame 4:3 aspect ratio.
Well, yeah, but then you reveal all of the flaws that are there because the animators intended the films for a widescreen release. I think it's the home release guide that has a few examples of this. For instance, the top of Gohan's Masenko in one of the movies is missing because the animators drew it with widescreen in mind.
"Clark Kakakent however, would never speak that way. Clark Kakakent is a big orange boy scout who fights for truth, Justice, and the Saiyan way." - DemonRin
If you want comparison between the FUNi double features and the DragonBoxes, I did just that a while back. You might wanna right click and hit "original" to see it full sized.
. Do your answers also apply to the original, pre-Z movies?
