Need More Info Regarding Master Audio Tapes For Dragon Ball

[dbboxkaifan]

Toei Animation didn't keep the tapes of DBZ's Summer Vacation Special or they didn't bother to include it on the Dragon Box Z Vol. 1 or 2, as well as others which did have a home release but for a console-ish that not many people owned (Bandai's Playdia).

Spoiler:

Summer Vacation Special


Televikko Special


Gaiden - Earth


Gaiden - Universe

[Puto]

Toei Animation didn't keep the tapes of DBZ's Summer Vacation Special or they didn't bother to include it on the Dragon Box Z Vol. 1 or 2, as well as others which did have a home release but for a console-ish that not many people owned (Bandai's Playdia).

Spoiler:

Summer Vacation Special


Televikko Special


Gaiden - Earth


Gaiden - Universe

The Playdia special *was* included as an extra on the Dragon Boxes.

[dbboxkaifan]

The Earth and Universe specials? Oh sorry about that, thanks for correcting me again.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

The Earth and Universe specials? Oh sorry about that, thanks for correcting me again.

Are you talking about the 2 OVAs, or the 2 Playdia Games? The OVAs were in the DBoxes, but the Playdia weren't, because, well, they are games.

[JEFFMAN219]

It's super easy in today's digital age to play the "Man, they're so stupid!" card, but it's not that simple.

We're talking about just one long-running show, never mind the bagillion other long-running shows each with a bagillion episodes. All on tapes. And reels. Which have to go somewhere. In an age where there's no practical way to re-use that material or any concept (mainly due to the media at the time) of being able to sell it later on.

Product's done and over. Move on. Trash the old stuff. That was the mindset.

How come the animation company that animated yu yu hakusho kept the audio masters for that show?

[dbboxkaifan]

Are you talking about the 2 OVAs, or the 2 Playdia Games? The OVAs were in the DBoxes, but the Playdia weren't, because, well, they are games.

The Playdia videos looked like interactive games so they're much of a game as going through menus on a DVD.

[kei17]

As VegettoEX and MarcFBR stated already, Toei's decision about audio masters is fairly understandable from a business point of view. However, it is worth noting that scrapping or taping over cinetape audio masters was already a defunct practice among the anime industry when the original Dragon Ball started airing in 1986. From what I know, Toei was the only anime company that kept the practice until the '90s.

We at least still have the original 16mm film masters and that may be more than enough, but I don't deny that the show could have been treated better even allowing for its time. Being old is not a perfect excuse here.

[MarcFBR]

As VegettoEX and MarcFBR stated already, Toei's decision about audio masters is fairly understandable from a business point of view. However, it is worth noting that scrapping or taping over cinetape audio masters was already a defunct practice among the anime industry when the original Dragon Ball started airing in 1986. From what I know, Toei was the only anime company that kept the practice until the '90s.

It depended on the content to be honest. Very often audio would be kept, but video wouldn't.

Minus clean footage of the opening and ending, Sunrise chucked out 35mm copies of Gundam Wing (in fact, the only reason we solidly KNOW 35mm Wing existed was because they used stored 35mm copies of the OP/ED as extras on Blu-ray.)

As I recall the story for To Heart was roughly "Well we have acceptable backup copies, so let's trash our primary film copies" and then after trashing them could never find the archival copies.

It seems to be random company by company and show by show/film by film, although your statement is generically correct that it appeared to be a legacy practice by the mid 80s, it appears that was more based on the new youthful group of producers/staff who came in at the time trying to archive stuff rather than any solid 'policy'. (In the case of DBZ it's also that the copy of the audio they kept also just isn't that great.)

Of course, I prefer the odd stories about companies that kept things as opposed to the stories of stuff being tossed out (the story of what was kept for Voltron for example, truly amazing if you are an audio person.)

[TheBlackPaladin]

(the story of what was kept for Voltron for example, truly amazing if you are an audio person.)

I am! Would you mind elaborating if it's not too much trouble (or telling me where I could read up on it...I can certainly understand not wanting to go into huge detail about it on a DB-centric forum)?

[superrayman3]

(the story of what was kept for Voltron for example, truly amazing if you are an audio person.)

I am! Would you mind elaborating if it's not too much trouble (or telling me where I could read up on it...I can certainly understand not wanting to go into huge detail about it on a DB-centric forum)?

Simply put the company that did the english Voltron series kept (and apparently took great care of) their original audio prints.

[Puto]

Not just the audio prints, but every individual element, down to individual music channels.

[Kojiro Sasaki]

It's super easy in today's digital age to play the "Man, they're so stupid!" card, but it's not that simple.

I'm just strongly against the procedures they used back in the days and this has nothing to do with today's digital age. If film studios from communist Poland kept all magnetic tape audio masters for all the shows produced in the 60's, 70's and 80's (I'm talking about classic animation for TV) - everybody could do that. I think that it was just a matter of decision (tendency/practice). The quality of the medium was not considered at all. They just decided to keep one reel per episode instead of two of them to save space. Also, using magnetic tape as the source of audio was more complicated than just playing the optical track. I believe that if somebody from the management team would protest and mention the quality difference, they would keep the masters (under the condition described below).

“Business reasons” do not make any sense to me. Putting something into the locker and keeping it in the basement doesn't cost a penny. The only explanation I would fully accept is reusing tapes for another production. That makes 100% business sense.

I can understand that in 1986 the fate of the show was uncertain (popularity), but in 1989, when first episode of Z aired, they knew exactly that the series is a massive hit. Home video formats like laserdisc, VHS or betamax were on the market for more than 10 years already and they proved that we cannot know what the future will bring. If you don't know what the future will bring, you should do everything that's possible to be ready for any scenario. In the late 80's, many cases of missing masters were known. Companies should learn the lesson long before Dragon Ball was produced. Many of them did that. Voice-only tapes would be very useful for international licensors. They could give them to translators and use them as a reference for the voice actors. Maybe it would make them understand that the show is way more serious than they thought (the level of Japanese voice acting).

So if they really disposed of those tapes by throwing them into the trash bin - I consider it a stupid thing to do (with ~1989 in mind). That's my opinion and it is based on all the information I was able to gather. Unfortunately, despite the most sincere intentions, I do not have access to things I would like to have access to.

[JulieYBM]

Dragon Ball Z Episode #1 might as well have been Dragon Ball Episode #154, there's no way enough people would have sought to buy such a long series on home video even if Dragon Ball has some of the higher quality production values for a long running series. With the hundreds of episodes and films being produced by Toei Animation a year I really don't see how it is so unreasonable for them to have trashed what were then highly unnecessary masters. It's a shame, but it made sense.

[MarcFBR]

Not just the audio prints, but every individual element, down to individual music channels.

Yep, they kept so much (not just individual music, but individual effects and voices) that when the DVDs were made, they were able to make native 5.1 tracks for the entire series (Voltron was one of the first shows mixed in stereo, so they ended up doing far more layers than was necessary because they weren't aware they could use less, and since WEP had the space, the assets were stored for the 20 years inbetween.)

They recreated the show from scratch after remastering slightly better video assets they got from Toei. Only one thing wasn't reproducible, and most people don't notice it.

[dan2026]

At least all the audio and video does exist. At least in some forms.

Anyone who is a fan of Doctor Who will probably know how many episodes are literally lost forever, due to junking practices at the time.

[Attitudefan]

Nobody in the mid-80s could have predicted the World Wide Web and its capabilities it has today. If you think about it, without the Internet (especially with its capabilities of full motion video streams), we likely wouldn't know of this issue and it would have never been a problem. Yet it is not so!

Even now, how GafferTape brought up that home releases were only intended for movies or a single episode of a show (maybe 3 tops) and it has been like that until around 2005 (Youtube came out this year. Coincidence, I think not). The UUE of DBZ were still sold in a low amount of episodes per disc. Even if you look on Amazon or Ebay, and you are looking for an older show (pre-2005) that hasn't received a re-release, it is likely you will find it all in VHS or DVD releases of less than 5 episodes. Box sets were extremely expensive for complete collections. FUNimation has just brought out full-episode box sets for older shows just recently (under labels such as DVD Save edition), where the DVDs or Blu-Rays have been complied in the last 4 years or so.

I mean, back in the mid-2000 I longed for having a full release of DBZ where I could collect the whole series but I knew it was impossible since the Internet couldn't have the full series at my fingertips nor could I afford to buy 50 plus DVDs cases housing 3 episodes of DBZ. Then, it all changed in 2006 when DBZ got the boxset release at an affordable price. (I recorded DBZ on VHS but things were over-recorded by my sister or myself, or the VHS just completely deteriorated; plus there were commercials and other unwanted crap on the tapes).

I really believe Dragonball has changed the landscape for home releases because of the Orange Bricks back in 2006. It was also prevalent at that time that full series of shows were popping up on places like Youtube. So, I feel entertainment companies were battling piracy and profiting from the idea of complete series boxsets.

It's really a new concept and I welcome it. With that said, one can understand why important things such as audio tapes were chucked into the garbage. If you were not alive during the times of pre-internet and the digital age, be aware and thankful that you don't have the struggle like we did back in the good ol' days

EDIT: Tapes of one or a few episodes were EXPENSIVE! That is why buying a movie instead of a episode was worth more for the money since you got the whole shebang (action, intro, conclusion etc.). It's understandable in why they treated the DB movies the way they did over the episodes too. Back then, even a VHS player was expensive, more so in the 80s than in the 90s. Most people in the 80s did not have them.

[Arian]

Error in posting.

[Arian]

It's super easy in today's digital age to play the "Man, they're so stupid!" card, but it's not that simple.

I'm just strongly against the procedures they used back in the days and this has nothing to do with today's digital age. If film studios from communist Poland kept all magnetic tape audio masters for all the shows produced in the 60's, 70's and 80's (I'm talking about classic animation for TV) - everybody could do that. I think that it was just a matter of decision (tendency/practice). The quality of the medium was not considered at all. They just decided to keep one reel per episode instead of two of them to save space. Also, using magnetic tape as the source of audio was more complicated than just playing the optical track. I believe that if somebody from the management team would protest and mention the quality difference, they would keep the masters (under the condition described below).

“Business reasons” do not make any sense to me. Putting something into the locker and keeping it in the basement doesn't cost a penny. The only explanation I would fully accept is reusing tapes for another production. That makes 100% business sense.

I can understand that in 1986 the fate of the show was uncertain (popularity), but in 1989, when first episode of Z aired, they knew exactly that the series is a massive hit. Home video formats like laserdisc, VHS or betamax were on the market for more than 10 years already and they proved that we cannot know what the future will bring. If you don't know what the future will bring, you should do everything that's possible to be ready for any scenario. In the late 80's, many cases of missing masters were known. Companies should learn the lesson long before Dragon Ball was produced. Many of them did that. Voice-only tapes would be very useful for international licensors. They could give them to translators and use them as a reference for the voice actors. Maybe it would make them understand that the show is way more serious than they thought (the level of Japanese voice acting).

So if they really disposed of those tapes by throwing them into the trash bin - I consider it a stupid thing to do (with ~1989 in mind). That's my opinion and it is based on all the information I was able to gather. Unfortunately, despite the most sincere intentions, I do not have access to things I would like to have access to.

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I had to quote your entire post, Kojiro. Because you have it exactly right. Despite the fact that things weren't digital back then, it's more professional to keep everything just in case of anything, like clip shows, video game promos, anything anyone may have possibly wanted these tapes for at that time. Plenty of companies in various countries kept film reels that they had no commercial use for at the time and it paid off in the end. I mean the mentality of "we don't need it anymore" is the exact reason a couple of the TV specials are lost and are only in the possession of fans.

[MarcFBR]

The fact both of you can't understand that there wasn't much of a reason for them to keep them, perhaps proves more than any other reason how such a thing might be possible 30, or even 20 years ago, just in the fact that it shows that even now, it's near impossible for a large portion of people to look at it from the perspective of someone else.

[ricecake]

Putting something into the locker and keeping it in the basement doesn't cost a penny.

When your storage space fills up, what do you do then? You either need to build or rent a new facility to hold them (which costs money), or throw away old stuff to make room for new stuff. Plus, there is the cost of climate control and facility maintenance, otherwise the material could potentially degrade to the point that they're not usable. Also, you would need to establish and maintain an archive system to track what you have and where it is located. So, for a business with a large volume of archival material, it would cost money to keep things like that.