Dr. Slump: The Movies (1-5) by Discotek

[Herms]

- In Movie 2, all the planets have crazy names. Are any of these jokes?

Suppaman's home planet Okaka-Umeboshi is named after umeboshi with katsuobushi. Part of the joke is that here the "boshi" in "umeboshi" is written with the kanji for planet, 星/hoshi. Planet Takeya-Saodake is (long story short) named after an old timey phrase cried out by traveling merchants selling bamboo products.

- In Movie 4, Senbie Norimaki's character is "Count Norimackey." Is there any reason for this spelling other than the movie's "American" setting? I don't hear a difference in the pronunciation, did I miss an English spelling somewhere, or is this indicated in a guidebook or something?

As part of the quasi-American setting, in the closing credits his name is spelled ノリマッキー/Norimakkii/Norimackey rather than the usual 則巻/Norimaki. But yeah, the difference in pronunciation can be hard to pick up on when watching the movie.

Yeah, Toriyama frequently would draw Stormtroopers in the background of Dr. Slump. If I recall correctly, one of the policemen trying to stop the "Hoyoyo Gang" is a Stormtrooper.

That Stormtrooper policeman is a recurring character in the main series, where he's a member of the Penguin Village police force. He's actually named "Drop-kun", though that bit of trivia comes from the Dr. Slump Special fan book, and he's never called by name in the actual series.

Oh yeah, another thing that I had a question about was from Movie 3, the character/vehicle Borobo. If he was a one-off movie character, that's cool, but they were treating him like he was a regular cast member. I don't remember him from the comics, is he an anime-only character?

He only appears in that one movie. It is pretty weird the way the movie treats him like just one of the gang.

[Chuquita]

Movie 5 has

Spoiler:

one of the hench-bots looking identical to Cooler's hench-bots (the one that tries to have Yajirobe chopped up).

[Herms]

Movie 5 has

Spoiler:

one of the hench-bots looking identical to Cooler's hench-bots (the one that tries to have Yajirobe chopped up).

Yeah, that guy first appears in the main Dr. Slump series as a translator robot for some aliens, and his design keeps getting reused. His Daizenshuu 7 bio notes that Dr. Slump connection.

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Potential good news for you Slump fans, I was browsing UP1and noticed they are "temporarily out of stock", that was quick!

How well did this sell for U.S retailers?

[coola]

I've finally got it as well

Spoiler:

[ParkerAL]

I've been checking its listing on Amazon frequently over the past week, and it seems to be selling within the range of Discotek's other titles on the site.

[coola]

Just finished 1st movie, and i absolutely love it Thumbs up for subbing end credits, lots of companies forget about it, and while it is nitpicky, i sometimes like to know who exactly made my favorite episodes i really hope this release will be success, and we will se rest of movies and then TV series.

[medama_oyaji]

Finally got a chance to watch Movie 5! Here are some thoughts:

Spoiler:

First of all, not a big fan of that intro theme. Maybe it would grow on me if I watched a season of it

Anyway, I think I still stand by my assessment that my favorites of this set are movies 2 and 4. This one was still pretty great though! Packed with fun ideas and effects.

The Hokuto no Ken parody was great. I loved that the robots' heads sort of blobbed around a bit before exploding. Sort of implied the crazy gore of HnK

The crayon monsters were really cool. Loved that.

The bit with the spelling and math made it feel more specifically like a kids show than usual. Not a complaint, necessarily, it WAS a kids show! Just something that stuck out to me.

Glad we got a movie on this set that had some of the later additions to the cast, like Obotchaman.

I wonder sometimes what it's like to see these movies with little to no familiarity with the series. If you're a DB fan who doesn't know much about Dr Slump but ordered this out of curiosity, please post your impressions!

EDIT: Funny, just as I posted this, I clicked over to ANN and they have a review up as well! http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/ ... dvd/.77308 Haven't read it yet, but looking at the summary at the bottom...looks like the reviewer has some similar thoughts to me! I swear I did not write that review!

[Sshadow5001]

Yay got my DVD set in the post today starting with Movie 2 since I already watched the first through fansubs.

Lol I like how the Ribugiko mobile suit sorta resembles a Zaku and one of Mashirito's minions wonders if Arale is a Newtype

[Gyt Kaliba]

I got in touch with RightStuf about my set, since it still hasn't shipped, and it should hopefully be shipping out soon irregardless of the other two items I'm waiting on as well.

[SaiyaJedi]

So, this doesn't directly have to do with the DVDs, but while searching the internet, I discovered that there was a special edition of Roadshow magazine released back in 1982, which contained the entirety of the second movie's script (along with the usual assortment of posters, story information, character designs, stickers, and the like).

Also, the name "Hoyoyo! Space Adventure" was apparently appended for the home video release, much the same as "Return my Gohan".

[Sshadow5001]

So, this doesn't directly have to do with the DVDs, but while searching the internet, I discovered that there was a special edition of Roadshow magazine released back in 1982, which contained the entirety of the second movie's script (along with the usual assortment of posters, story information, character designs, stickers, and the like).

Also, the name "Hoyoyo! Space Adventure" was apparently appended for the home video release, much the same as "Return my Gohan".

That's pretty awesome, there also seems to be some shots from the series too.

[Kingdom Heartless]

Watched the first movie last night and was floored by how good it looked. Obviously, the animation wasn't the best, but the colours and lines were strong. Normally when watching a DVD I think "Man, I wish I had this on Blu-Ray," but here I was thinking "I can't imagine a Blu-Ray would improve on this a great deal."

[BojGrass]

Finally got a chance to watch Movie 5! Here are some thoughts:

Spoiler:

First of all, not a big fan of that intro theme. Maybe it would grow on me if I watched a season of it

Anyway, I think I still stand by my assessment that my favorites of this set are movies 2 and 4. This one was still pretty great though! Packed with fun ideas and effects.

The Hokuto no Ken parody was great. I loved that the robots' heads sort of blobbed around a bit before exploding. Sort of implied the crazy gore of HnK

The crayon monsters were really cool. Loved that.

The bit with the spelling and math made it feel more specifically like a kids show than usual. Not a complaint, necessarily, it WAS a kids show! Just something that stuck out to me.

Glad we got a movie on this set that had some of the later additions to the cast, like Obotchaman.

I wonder sometimes what it's like to see these movies with little to no familiarity with the series. If you're a DB fan who doesn't know much about Dr Slump but ordered this out of curiosity, please post your impressions!

EDIT: Funny, just as I posted this, I clicked over to ANN and they have a review up as well! http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/ ... dvd/.77308 Haven't read it yet, but looking at the summary at the bottom...looks like the reviewer has some similar thoughts to me! I swear I did not write that review!

I'll indulge. I bought this strictly based on the notion that maybe if I helped support this release we might hopefully get a release of the series if it does well enough in sales, and it's Toriyama.

I did catch myself wondering a very good portion of the time watching the movies "am I missing something?" Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed them, but I did wonder how much the movies assume you know what's been going on in the series up to this point in time. If the series ever did come out (or if I ever got around to buying the manga) I would like to revisit these movies and see if I can get into them a little deeper than I did this go around, because none of the details have really stuck with me on this viewing in particular.

[ParkerAL]

*Still working on a review of this, off and on.*

@BojGrass: Out of genuine curiosity, what did you originally expect from the movies when you purchased them, and what did you know about the series beforehand? Dr. Slump is pretty light on plot and I think these movies reflect its goofy fun identity rather well. In all honestly, I don't think these are the kind of movies in which one has to "dig deep" for meaning. The details are all pretty much there on the surface, as plain as pink poop on a stick.

[BojGrass]

*Still working on a review of this, off and on.*

@BojGrass: Out of genuine curiosity, what did you originally expect from the movies when you purchased them, and what did you know about the series beforehand? Dr. Slump is pretty light on plot and I think these movies reflect its goofy fun identity rather well. In all honestly, I don't think these are the kind of movies in which one has to "dig deep" for meaning. The details are all pretty much there on the surface, as plain as pink poop on a stick.

I honestly didn't know what to expect. I made myself go into it with as few pre-conceived ideas about how it should be other than what very little I knew about Dr. Slump. I knew that the plot in general was fairly light as you said and to be kind of goofy (Poop on a stick), so I wasn't really anticipating any deep philosophical stories and/or epiphanies. Digging deep might have not been the exact correct phrase I meant. It's a character thing mainly from what I remember. It seemed like different characters drifted to different "roles" (for lack of a better term) from movie to movie, but I attributed that to it being one of the movies instead of the series itself and I figured it was something like Dragon Ball's third movie where characters are kind of shifted around into different "roles" than what they have in the show.

I honestly have no history with the series except whatever free bit you get from Viz digitally in the preview of Volume 1 and then the crossover episode(s?) from Dragon Ball. My favorite out of the batch was the second one I think? Where they go into space to save Yamabuki.

[Kingdom Heartless]

Any word yet as to whether this is selling as well as Discotek may have hoped?

[theoriginalbilis]

R1 anime companies are notorious for never releasing sales numbers...

FUNimation is the most open company when it comes to how something sales... But they never will tell the numbers.

[medama_oyaji]

And Discotek is especially quiet publicly, right? Not necessarily like they're trying to hide anything, but a number of times on ANNCast, it has been said that they've reached out for interviews and the Discotek guys aren't really interested in speaking publicly. They just keep their heads down and release their products. They're most active on Facebook, but even then it's pretty much just limited to announcements, with occasional tidbits thrown in to the comments...

[theoriginalbilis]

And Discotek is especially quiet publicly, right? Not necessarily like they're trying to hide anything, but a number of times on ANNCast, it has been said that they've reached out for interviews and the Discotek guys aren't really interested in speaking publicly. They just keep their heads down and release their products. They're most active on Facebook, but even then it's pretty much just limited to announcements, with occasional tidbits thrown in to the comments...

Discotek might also have the smallest number of staff working in the R1 anime business. I could be wrong though, but last time I heard, there were like 2-3 folks running the operations, right?