Dragon Ball Z "Seasons" On Blu-ray: News & Discussion

[Fizzer]

Protesting against the current situation with Dragon Ball releases and reviewing this particular release are two different issues. Personally, I think this release does a pretty good job of doing what it claims to do - present Dragon Ball Z in a cropped, remastered format with a new modern image.

[sangofe]

No, Funimation's film is in better shape than Toei's (colour wise) since it's newer. The peach is what faded only, the blues haven't gone yet. From what I can tell anyways. It just gets pretty bad in the android/cell arc. The next season looks good from the new trailer; but I noticed the Namek arc had held up pretty well(The Dragon Box holds up for that season too; Bulma's hair is mostly blue).

Look at this screen shot
Raw film scan cropped to 16:9
http://imageshack.us/a/img21/4544/fnhh.png
Season 1 blu ray
http://imageshack.us/a/img24/7311/e4z1.png
and here it is uncropped
http://imageshack.us/a/img51/9107/2c0h.png
This release is clearly based on Steve Franco's transfer that was used for the level sets. The transfer they're using for this release has already been color corrected they are just altering them in post in an attempt to modernize the show.

Steve's transfer is actually not bad at all...

[kidglov3s]

The screenshots and footage I'm seeing looks like some kind of flash animation, it seems so flat compared to other releases. I'm at the point where I really want to buy DBZ at a reasonable price but there are just no complete releases with 4:3 footage which are readily available, I feel like I might have to just start pick-n'-mixing with the Dragon Boxes and DVD singles.

I think this whole movement to disguise cel animation is really sad, intentional efforts to deny works the highest level of their craftsmanship. I imagine it must be especially frustrating for people who worked so hard doing the more thankless tasks involved in the process.

[qjz123]

Trailer

Spoiler:

Blu ray

Spoiler:

The trailer seems to be brighter and it has an issue with crushed blacks.

That's strange... I have an old screenshot from the trailer here that seems to be from FUNimation's website, and the colors are accurate to the final product...

Spoiler:

So... the trailer was brightened when FUNimation put it on YouTube? Were they trying to appeal to the overbrightened YT crowd or something? Anyway, if the colors are accurate on FUNi's website, then I think the S2 trailer has accurate colors.

Even the trailer on Funimations website has an issue with crushed blacks
Funimations trailer
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/1093/bhva.png
Blu ray
http://imageshack.us/a/img11/1014/m8mg.png

[Ajay]

That's just web compression for you.

Low bitrate, super lossy format. It's to be expected really.

More reasons for me to hate Netflix and other streaming sites. Long live the Blu-Ray.

[final_flash]

I am 33 and i have been a DBZ fan since i was 19. I first watched DBZ on recorded VHS tapes before Toonami on Cartoon Network. I've always been a martial arts action fan. I watched Bruce lee movies and movies like Blood Sport when I was younger. I like how in DBZ they train hard to get better, instead of just having super powers for no reason. I would really like a good release of DBZ. I actually don't mind the cropping (done right). It gives it a theatrical look.
CONS:
Dragon box: Colors to pink, no Faulconer music, not HD
Orange Brick: Colors to saturated, Lines missing, center cropping, not HD
DBZ Kai: Picture to soft, redone music and dialog (some of its okay),
added scenes that stand out, removed episodes that add intrigue
Level sets: To much grain, colors not bright enough, blacks not black enough.

I know nothing is perfect but overall the level sets are the best. The colors are done well minus what i said in the cons. Don't really believe they stopped it do to costing to much to make. I think its because they weren't selling enough. Maybe only the hardcore fans were buying it and the casual fans weren't. Hope they stop the BD season sets and finish the level sets.

[Sin]

I know nothing is perfect but overall the level sets are the best. The colors are done well minus what i said in the cons. Don't really believe they stopped it do to it cost to much to make. I think its because they weren't selling enough. Maybe only the hardcore fans were buying it and the casual fans weren't. Hope they stop the BD season sets and finish the level sets.

I don't know, I think there are enough unfinished sets in the DB franchise, I'd rather they finish these up so that at least some fans can be pleased. The only thing that bothers me is that, after these, how much of a market will there be for any BD sets that continue with what the Level Sets were trying to do. Blu-rays are expensive to produce and expensive to purchase, it's not like casual fans will want to buy the series for a second time on Blu-ray, especially if they're not aware/bothered by the crop and remaster.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

I know nothing is perfect but overall the level sets are the best. The colors are done well minus what i said in the cons. Don't really believe they stopped it do to it cost to much to make. I think its because they weren't selling enough. Maybe only the hardcore fans were buying it and the casual fans weren't. Hope they stop the BD season sets and finish the level sets.

I don't know, I think there are enough unfinished sets in the DB franchise, I'd rather they finish these up so that at least some fans can be pleased. The only thing that bothers me is that, after these, how much of a market will there be for any BD sets that continue with what the Level Sets were trying to do. Blu-rays are expensive to produce and expensive to purchase, it's not like casual fans will want to buy the series for a second time on Blu-ray, especially if they're not aware/bothered by the crop and remaster.

Funimation could just pull another for the hardcore fans again with a proper restoration, but 17 episodes a pop wont cut it regardless of quality.
Funimation would probably do better if they released it as a limited run like the dragon boxes and hopefully the full series in 1 go.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

Protesting against the current situation with Dragon Ball releases and reviewing this particular release are two different issues. Personally, I think this release does a pretty good job of doing what it claims to do - present Dragon Ball Z in a cropped, remastered format with a new modern image.

For the fans of the original show, any changes like these will always be bad. There is only one release and many people expect that they will get Dragon Ball - their beloved show, not some cheap attempt to please casual customers. Why should I respect FUNimation's ideas, when they are disrespectful towards the series of which I'm a fan? We have similar situation to the decision to change the original soundtrack here. Why FUNImation always need to fit DB to something?

Which modern anime produced in widescreen is cropped and gives claustrophobic feel? 90% of the scenes looks totally out of frame and too zoomed in.
Which modern anime has issues with backgrounds, crushed blacks, oversaturated and badly corrected colors?

There is no possibility to "bring Dragon Ball to the new era" without producing another show. This is only a fairytale for people raised on commercials. Totally idiotic idea from any point of view excluding business one. The final effect is way worse than modern productions.

Modern HD - meaning of this term is totally different for each person. For me, all standards like VHS, LD, DVD and Blu-ray were designed to carry original material. Their most important parameter is not quality but fidelity. The less it interferes with the content, the better format it is. That's the real goal of technological advance. So, the "professional" meaning of "bringing Dragon Ball to the modern era" is just showing us the possibilities of 16mm film. To be honest, Dragon Ball don't need to be brought to "modern era" by remastering process because modern home video formats are roughly matching "studio formats" which were used for Dragon Ball production. Its modern era which caught up with Dragon Ball when blu-ray format became available in 2006.

This is only a false advertisement to make more money and justify budget cuts. They are feeding people with the food they made them to like.

I'm always against things that I consider harmful to what I like and respect. It is immoral to me to just stand and watch how something that I highly praise is bashed. This is my understanding of the word "respect".

I am 33 and i have been a DBZ fan since i was 19. I first watched DBZ on recorded VHS tapes before Toonami on Cartoon Network. I've always been a martial arts action fan. I watched Bruce lee movies and movies like Blood Sport when I was younger.

33 -> 23
19 -> 9
Cartoon Network -> RTL7

and we are the same person!

To much grain, colors not bright enough, blacks not black enough.

I completely understand that the grain is a flaw to many people, but you must understand that it was eternally bounded with Dragon Ball when they decided to use 16mm for shooting the series. There is absolutely no possibility to get rid of it without harming the picture. As I know, colors on the Level sets were almost perfectly matching original cels.

[biohazard]

Besides... there are lots of things darker than hair and brighter than eyes along the series. It's a mistake bringing absolute black and white to hair and eyes...

[final_flash]

Found an interesting review on the new BD season sets. http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/62294/dr ... -season-1/

[dbboxkaifan]

One thing that they really should have improved was the English Dub With US Music audio track to 5.1 than 2.0 only.

I'm not a fan of Faulconer's score but it has some really catchy tunes here and there so it's unfortunately it's 2.0 only.

[Vegard Aune]

Found an interesting review on the new BD season sets. http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/62294/dr ... -season-1/

Well he does a good job describing the clusterfuck that is DBZ on home video in the US, but what's this he mentions about boosted contrast on the Dragon Boxes? I mean, I know the US DBoxes were a tiny bit brighter than the Japanese sets, but the difference was so miniscule that one literally had to look at the two side-by-side to even notice the difference. And the Japanese sets clearly had no alterations made to the contrast or color at all-- Isn't that by now widely considered the one big obvious flaw that should have been fixed for those?

[PhoenixEX]

Good review from DVDtalk. He considers himself a "purist" so you already know that it's not some BS Amazon review.

[Ajay]

Just spent the better part of an hour taking a pretty close look at the Japanese audio for these sets. I think myself and many others were quite quick to jump to 'this is just EQ you can do in VLC'.

It's actually quite impressive. Those highs are really softened up nicely and whilst the louder screams do still pierce quite a lot, it's certainly a great improvement over what I'm listening to on my Dragon Boxes right now.

When you're EQing out the low end and some mids (what causes the muffled sound), you're pretty much eradicating any sense of 'oomph' the original had in favour of some extra clarity. Surprisingly, Funimation have actually done a really nice job of retaining the natural punches in the track whilst removing the obnoxious muffle.

Another issue you'll run into when trying to EQ in VLC is that the hiss from the source becomes very pronounced since you have to up the treble to ensure clarity is kept. This isn't the most difficult thing to remove but, as I've mentioned before, you run the risk to eradicating sounds that a program will consider 'noise' e.g. wind effects, general atmosphere etc. From what I've heard, there are a few instances where you can hear the noise removal in effect - a character will stop talking and it'll go deadly silent for a short moment. It's not super distracting and you're very unlikely to notice it unless you're really looking out for it so I'd definitely give them props there.

Alas, the video quality is still garbage so I may just undertake yet another muxing/remuxing project.

[MarcFBR]

Good review from DVDtalk. He considers himself a "purist" so you already know that it's not some BS Amazon review.

Having read his reviews in the past, and skimming through others, his reviews of video quality tends to skim by on technical knowledge (while often not checking to see the technical details of the show or release itself,) often ignoring issues for nostalgia and inflating scores based on generically deciding on his own if it can or can't look better. My main issue seems to be that based on comments in a few of his reviews it seems he has an actual issue eyeballing the video quality (he references Funi upscaling releases in another review, when Funi didn't upscale that one, and it was quite obvious they didn't for example, but the way he writes it makes it seem like he has issues distinguishing an upscale from a non-upscale, but then acts as if upscales are inherently a bad thing. As a reviewer, you review the product and how it got there, if they did a pristine upscale of something, then it's still pristine.)

[qjz123]

Found an interesting review on the new BD season sets. http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/62294/dr ... -season-1/

Decent review although he seems uninformed on certain issues. Such as saying that Funimation went back to the uncropped source of the orange bricks which isn't true because that wouldn't be possible. The master used for the orange bricks was scanned from the 16mm film in 16:9 automatically center cropping the entire series. One thing about this set that makes it different from the orange bricks is the fact that the image is spotless completely free of any tape marks, scratch marks, dirt, dust, or burn marks. He attributes this to some kind of automated digital clean up which I don't think is true at all. The image has no instances of the blemishes that I listed earlier something that can only be achieved if you go frame by frame and have an actual person do it. Now someone posted here a couple of pages ago that Funimation could just be using the already remastered level sets for the first 39 episodes selectively cropping them and removing all the grain brightening it up etc. etc. Regardless of whether they're starting from the raw film scan or just using the level sets as a base someone somewhere had to clean up the damage at some point it couldn't have been automated.

[final_flash]

One thing that they really should have improved was the English Dub With US Music audio track to 5.1 than 2.0 only.

I'm not a fan of Falconer's score but it has some really catchy tunes here and there so it's unfortunately it's 2.0 only.

I wonder if Funi decided to put it to 5.1. Or if the fact that the Japanese music is mono made it so they could put it to 5.1 surround. I def rather have Falconer's music in 5.1.

[UltimateHammerBro]

Oh my. Disappearing lines again?

I wonder if Funi decided to put it to 5.1. Or if the fact that the Japanese music is mono made it so they could put it to 5.1 surround.

The Ultimate Uncut Edition had a 5.1 track with Nathan Johnson's score. That said, maybe they couldn't obtain a 5.1 track for the episodes with Faulconer and decided to make it all 2.0 for the sake of continuity.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Good try, but that's far from disappearing.