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

[samuraix123]

I don't really see any flaws in the artwork?

[Ajay]

They make very little compositional sense. They're overly busy and a lot of the characters are peculiarly proportioned. Many of the covers just look like they took a some-what appropriate background and pasted in some character vectors in random spots.

Take a look at Season 1's cover:

Spoiler:

What is Piccolo standing on? He's floating with his foot on the side of a slope. Nappa's off in the distance looking awkward with Chaozu fighting a Saibaman above him for some reason. It's just a weird cobbled together mess of characters that are vaguely relevant.

Take out Piccolo, Nappa, Chaozu and the Saibaman and you've got yourself a reasonably nice cover. Aside from Goku's obscenely long foot, it would be really nicely done.

Again, with Season 2 the same issues are rampant, except this time, it's even worse:

Spoiler:

It's just lazily put together. A lot of it isn't even particularly well drawn - take a look at Ginyu! He looks ridiculous.

It just goes on like that with every release they put out. I mean, I see what they're going for, of course. It's just so poorly executed.

Spoiler:

The background stuff is just so out of place. All of those primary focal points are really strong compositionally but they're consistently thrown off by the random array of characters in the background.

And uh...yeah, Gohan's head is huge.

It's just a cool idea done very poorly.

[samuraix123]

Ahh I guess everyone has their own expectations and opinion on what's good and what isn't. I can understand some of the points you're making but some I just disagree with and there ain't nothing wrong with that. haha I do think these look a heck of a-lot better than the orange bricks covers lol

[Baggie_Saiyan]

And the weird Amazon prices continue for S8: http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Z-Seas ... +8+blu+ray $31.49. I pay $33.74 to import them so prices like these don't make me feel bad.

[thomas1up]

And the weird Amazon prices continue for S8: http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Z-Seas ... +8+blu+ray $31.49. I pay $33.74 to import them so prices like these don't make me feel bad.

The description has the aspect ration listed as "1.33:1" ... That's 4:3 isn't it? Lol nice one Amazon.

[Ajay]

Ahh I guess everyone has their own expectations and opinion on what's good and what isn't. I can understand some of the points you're making but some I just disagree with and there ain't nothing wrong with that. haha I do think these look a heck of a-lot better than the orange bricks covers lol

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not sat here stroking a neckbeard and crying into an anime pillow over these covers. They're just flaws that initially stuck out to me and were quite surprising given how much FUNimation praised them prior to release. They're not really flaws that a majority of people are even going to pick up on or even care about if they did.

I have a background in graphic design and photography where the basic rules of composition are pretty much drummed into your mind's eye after a few jobs. Little things tend to stick out and bother me more than most and I know full well that that can come across as nitpicky and silly at times!

You're right, they're certainly a lot more pleasing to the eye than the Orange Bricks ever were. Those things looked like someone took one look at the Dragon Box designs and decided to take a giant orange dump right on top of them.

[samuraix123]

That makes sense though. if you're into graphic design and such it makes sense why you may find things worse than I would. lol

[Baggie_Saiyan]

And the weird Amazon prices continue for S8: http://www.amazon.com/Dragonball-Z-Seas ... +8+blu+ray $31.49. I pay $33.74 to import them so prices like these don't make me feel bad.

The description has the aspect ration listed as "1.33:1" ... That's 4:3 isn't it? Lol nice one Amazon.

Yeah lol that caused a lot of confusion when S1 was listed.

[JEFFMAN219]

They make very little compositional sense. They're overly busy and a lot of the characters are peculiarly proportioned. Many of the covers just look like they took a some-what appropriate background and pasted in some character vectors in random spots.

Take a look at Season 1's cover:

Spoiler:

What is Piccolo standing on? He's floating with his foot on the side of a slope. Nappa's off in the distance looking awkward with Chaozu fighting a Saibaman above him for some reason. It's just a weird cobbled together mess of characters that are vaguely relevant.

Take out Piccolo, Nappa, Chaozu and the Saibaman and you've got yourself a reasonably nice cover. Aside from Goku's obscenely long foot, it would be really nicely done.

Again, with Season 2 the same issues are rampant, except this time, it's even worse:

Spoiler:

It's just lazily put together. A lot of it isn't even particularly well drawn - take a look at Ginyu! He looks ridiculous.

It just goes on like that with every release they put out. I mean, I see what they're going for, of course. It's just so poorly executed.

Spoiler:

The background stuff is just so out of place. All of those primary focal points are really strong compositionally but they're consistently thrown off by the random array of characters in the background.

And uh...yeah, Gohan's head is huge.

It's just a cool idea done very poorly.

I don't think that the covers look that bad. They actually look great in my opinion. The only problem that this set has are the digital noise reduction which fucked up the zoomed out shots and the backgrounds look a little weird.

[dbboxkaifan]

These covers look very busy, make little to no sense, but the worst one is somewhat the first "season" by how long they made Son's foot. Like, regardless that it's animation that's still too bloody long, plus looks ugly and Madman tried to normalise it on their cover.

Spoiler:

Then there's also that Dr. Gero on "season" five appears to be reaching out to Vegeta.. like why?! Everything is just so random with these covers.

Spoiler:

[FortuneSSJ]

This release has all japanese endings and japanese next episode previews?

[Freeza Soldier #156]

This release has all japanese endings and japanese next episode previews?

I believe it has the endings, though, the credits themselves are English only. I can tell you for a fact that there are no NEPs whatsoever.

[samuraix123]

This release has all japanese endings and japanese next episode previews?

I believe it has the endings, though, the credits themselves are English only. I can tell you for a fact that there are no NEPs whatsoever.

It does have last episode previews for what it's worth. I do kinda miss the next episode previews though. but it's been so many releases now that I've learned to live without them.

[FortuneSSJ]

Thanks for the answer guys.

[Black_Anime_Fan]

This release has all japanese endings and japanese next episode previews?

I believe it has the endings, though, the credits themselves are English only. I can tell you for a fact that there are no NEPs whatsoever.

It does have last episode previews for what it's worth. I do kinda miss the next episode previews though. but it's been so many releases now that I've learned to live without them.

Tis why I'm glad I decided to complete my DVD singles collection. Sure, they're not the original NEPs, but they're something.

[dbboxkaifan]

The episode previews happen during the beginning of an episode which IIRC on the DVD OB#7 I think they all had them, including Japanese episode title cards but the rest was creditless.

In terms of FUNimation Dragon Ball media with NEPs it was the Dragon Box Z collection and the Dragon Ball GT singles, and additionally the 'Ocean Dub' DVDs with their custom NEPs.

[Black_Anime_Fan]

and I really, really doubt that taking time to produce good looking covers was a thought in anyone's head over at FUNimation

Oh, it was definitely a thought in their heads. They were bigging up the fact they had someone in Japan (whoah!) working on the covers for them. Read the Kanzenshuu interview where they answered our questions. They specifically say, 'we knew we wanted to do something special with the packaging'.

It may be a budget release but that doesn't negate the need to point out clear flaws with the product; especially when they went out of their way to be so boastful about working with 'the art team at Toei'.

We wanted artwork that was diverse enough to use for more than just Blu-ray covers; something that we could use to provide awesome looking posters, merchandise, convention experiences, and much more.

They were going all out on this artwork. They wanted something really damn good for multiple uses and unfortunately, they've been stuck with some really awkward and poorly composed pieces that really don't reflect their aims.

In that case, wow, lol, you've proven me wrong. I apologize.

[JEFFMAN219]

Yo guys here is season 7s trailer and from what I can tell the picture quality looks great.

http://www.funimation.com/shows/dragon- ... en-blu-ray

[Ajay]

I'll be very interested to see how this compares to Kai's current remaster. If it's somehow worse than what TOEI is putting out now then...damn.

Part of me just knows it's going to as garbage as everything before it but I'd love to be able to cut together my own version of Kai with a superior remaster.
And fail University as the project consumes my life

[Freeza Soldier #156]

Yo guys here is season 7s trailer and from what I can tell the picture quality looks great.

http://www.funimation.com/shows/dragon- ... en-blu-ray

It does look pretty good. Of course, the later orange bricks looked good as well. It can't look worse than the Season 5 Blu-ray. A lot of the episodes on there were so blurry they were unwatchable.