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

[samuraix123]

Glad I own the dboxes (although I'm buying this anyways...)

On the amusing side, I showed the comparisons to a friend of mine who considers himself a casual DBZ fan.

He gives it the thumbs up and went to go preorder it. Which is exactly the point of these sets. (He also said he was looking forward to putting them up next to his orange bricks.)

I own Dragon-boxes 1,3,6 and 7 haha I wanna get part 5 when I get some more cash. I don't even have to get into how many times I re-bought the series But I'm on the fence about getting this release. I wanna wait until someone here tells me a little more about it. I would hate to see lines of animation getting deleted again like in the orange bricks and I agree with you on the point of these sets. my friend said they look awesome

[Metalwario64]

They're head and shoulders above the Orange Bricks. There's no doubt about it. Even if they're not what we want, they're not the horrible auto-corrected crap passed onto us in 2007.

At best they're better than the early bricks (but not that much), but the last few ones looked really sharp and retained most of their grain.

They look better than the new overblurred footage:




Did orange bricks 6-9 sell more poorly because they took it easy on the DVNR?

[eledoremassis02]

The trailer on the site is gone?!?!?

Wonder why? Was it too early?

[Ajay]

I'm sure this has been said already but the fact remains guys is that we, the "hardcore" fans, blew it. FUNimation did give us a product that we wanted and we failed to support it. I'll be honest and say I can't even be mad with their decision because I didn't support the level sets (bought the Dragonbox's).

This has been brought up earlier in the thread and I still disagree with it.

Yes, we didn't buy it to the level that Funi wanted us to but there's many reasons behind it that are Funi's fault and not ours. Primarily: poor timing and few episodes per part at a high price. Calling them parts discourages the casual fan because they see the high price and go 'well, I'm not even getting a full 'season' so I'll leave it for now'.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If they'd done the level sets as seasons at the price point of these season sets, they'd have sold incredibly well. If they'd skipped the extensive remastering process and shoved 4:3 crops onto a Blu-ray to mask out the edge damage, they'd still have sold.

Clearly the general fanbase doesn't care about picture quality since the orange bricks are so popular so they're not exactly going to not sell because 'ew, it's so grainy'. There's a couple of idiotic reviews on Amazon for the level sets that are in that line of thinking but that is such a minority.

It's down to timing, price and presentation that killed the Level sets.

[VegettoEX]

And, of course, that leaves us (and more specifically, FUNimation) with one more question:

If THESE don't sell to expectations, what do they do?

I mean, they're positioning them pretty well for fans (blow out the colors, cheapen the price, etc.), but still. What if they don't sell? World collapse!

[MarCas92]

Well looks like Funimation says FUCK YOU! to the hardcore fans once again. Let's go over the release history of the show from Funimation. It is clear to see that they don't care and they never learn.

First singles: Only 3 or 4 episodes per DVD and it was ok quality. < The sad part is this is probably one of the BETTER releases.
The Remastered Uncut Versions: Jap, English and Spanish Track. Great looking. These would've been more than acceptable...but then they discontinued it.
Orange Bricks: Cheap Price. Other than that they are pure garbage. The cropping and the color saturation look horrible.
Dragon Boxes: AMAZING! But they were limited edition, so now they are ridiculously over priced. Also no Bruce Falconer music. (I dont much care for the Falconer score but I would like it available as an option).
Level Sets: AMAZING! The only problems i had with it was no spanish track. Other than that I thought it was perfect. But what happened? Funi quits.

These new Blu Ray season sets are just hd versions of the orange bricks. And as the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

[MarcFBR]

And, of course, that leaves us (and more specifically, FUNimation) with one more question:

If THESE don't sell to expectations, what do they do?

I mean, they're positioning them pretty well for fans (blow out the colors, cheapen the price, etc.), but still. What if they don't sell? World collapse!

Then it turns into Evangelion, or Gundam post-Wing.

It turns back into being 'just anime' over time and we get less stuff and the brand means less overall.

[Dalesy]

Half-assed Toonami promo style ✓
Tries to tip-toe around DBZ's age ✓
Juxtaposes the original 4:3 shot with the new "remaster" even though the original looks much better ✓
Defines remaster as DNR and a saturation boost ✓

It's as if Funimation is trying to shoot itself in the foot at this point.

[eledoremassis02]

With the trailer removed from the site; I just thought of something.

They said they had no idea what aspect ratio they were going with.

Maybe..just maybe..this was a test trailer? What was the reaction on the FUNi forums?

[NessMudkip]

And, of course, that leaves us (and more specifically, FUNimation) with one more question:

If THESE don't sell to expectations, what do they do?

I mean, they're positioning them pretty well for fans (blow out the colors, cheapen the price, etc.), but still. What if they don't sell? World collapse!

They'll realise the error in their ways and Toei will let them reprint the Z DBOX and make DB, GT and Movies DBOXes? Eh, I can dream.

But in all honesty the sad thing is I DO see these selling well, in the same way the bricks did. But if they don't... Well, who knows. Maybe they'll decide that it is actually time to pander the hardcore market and they'll do another run of 4:3 sets.

[MarcFBR]

These new Blu Ray season sets are just hd versions of the orange bricks. And as the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

The Mythbusters proved you could in fact polish a turd.

[samuraix123]

Well looks like Funimation says FUCK YOU! to the hardcore fans once again. Let's go over the release history of the show from Funimation. It is clear to see that they don't care and they never learn.

First singles: Only 3 or 4 episodes per DVD and it was ok quality. < The sad part is this is probably one of the BETTER releases.
The Remastered Uncut Versions: Jap, English and Spanish Track. Great looking. These would've been more than acceptable...but then they discontinued it.
Orange Bricks: Cheap Price. Other than that they are pure garbage. The cropping and the color saturation look horrible.
Dragon Boxes: AMAZING! But they were limited edition, so now they are ridiculously over priced. Also no Bruce Falconer music. (I dont much care for the Falconer score but I would like it available as an option).
Level Sets: AMAZING! The only problems i had with it was no spanish track. Other than that I thought it was perfect. But what happened? Funi quits.

These new Blu Ray season sets are just hd versions of the orange bricks. And as the old saying goes, you can't polish a turd.

I kinda disagree with ya a little MarCas92 about them not caring. Just a little Can you name 1 other cartoon that has been treated the way DBZ has? We have soooooooooooooooo many choices in how we want to watch the series. people like me and others sometimes Frankenstein it a bit BUT! lol I do believe they do care about the show, because they know anything that has Dragonball attached to it will sell. Good or Bad.

[JEFFMAN219]

I was talking to my friend about this today and how it was weird. He made the joke that since I was a fan I would buy it, which, did make me laugh. The greatest comment he made was that he referred to this is "cut uncut Dragon Ball Z". Which literally couldn't be a truer statement. Since I made the comment of how they're calling this release uncut but we're missing 20% of the footage. Way to go FUNimation. I couldn't buy the Level Sets because I had just got that Dragon Boxes and wanted to finish watching those and assumed the Level Sets would sell well. Now we get these sets and it's like, I just don't get it. Now we have to deal with, what? 2 years of a completely inferior release? Because FUNimation can't decide if it wants to treat Dragon Ball Z with respect, or just make releases that are just awful. They treat none of their other properties like this. Not even the original Dragon Ball or GT. Just Z gets treated like crap. It doesn't make any sense. Why is it just with this one specific show? This makes so little sense. You'd think they'd have learned from 2007, but no, they're going to do this. The worst part? It's going to sell really well and that confuses the shit out of me.

Because unfortunately there's people out there who actually like watching dbz in 16:9 smh.

[Metalwario64]

And, of course, that leaves us (and more specifically, FUNimation) with one more question:

If THESE don't sell to expectations, what do they do?

I mean, they're positioning them pretty well for fans (blow out the colors, cheapen the price, etc.), but still. What if they don't sell? World collapse!

Yeah, I've been toying with the idea myself. Everyone seems pretty certain these will be successful though.

Still, nothing after the bricks has been very successful, and I'm wondering if the sheer success of the orange bricks means too many people are satisfied with those, and don't want to "upgrade" as a result?

I still have a suspicion that people might look at the Blu-rays, then see the cheaper DVDs that say "remastered in HD" and go with the cheaper option. Maybe FUNimation's past marketing will come back to haunt them?

[Gyt Kaliba]

What was the reaction on the FUNi forums?

So far, mostly the same as here, though I'm keeping a pretty close eye on the thread to make sure things don't get too out of hand. That said though, I think there's only been one post since the trailer was put up, everything else is from early speculation.

[jjgp1112]

Somebody uploaded it to Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TejxgCh9bSg

[Metalwario64]

DVD:


Blu-Ray:


The DVD is entirely blurred, whereas the Blu-ray is using lots of filters, resulting in edges being sharper, but backgrounds being smoothed completely flat. I don't know, obviously there are details the Blu-ray has over the DVD, but the clouds and grass are completely screwed in the Blu-ray footage, whereas the DVDs still have some of the original texture at least. I don't think the new footage so far is that much better than the orange bricks.

[samuraix123]

Wow! Thanks so much buddy for the shots! I haven't got the best eyes so that trailer was a little rough for me People can say what they want...I just don't like the idea of not getting that little piece of footage at the top and bottom hahaha

Edit - Does anyone think they will do the Menu Intro like the Level Sets?

[Fizzer]

I really don't know what to say. Seriously, what the fuck? Those "future" shots look awful. Once again their epic frame-by-frame remaster is DNR with colour, contrast and brightness boosts. I just don't even. It's like that time I watched Dragon Ball Evolution.

[TheAldella]

I imagine the audio will end up sounding as bad as the trailer made it. Only 6x worse for the Mono japanese tracks. That's what all the noise removal was actually doing. It just muffled it to all hell. Next they'll increase the Faulconer music by over double volume making it the best release for dub biased Dragonball Z fans yet. FUNimation, you clever devils. These can't be out-sold. It's already factual. Good lord.