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

[Roland_ELoG]

Speaking of selective cropping.... have any comparisons been made to see if the new Season sets are framed better than the bricks? The best case scenario with 16:9 cropping is that it's done carefully so as not to cut off the most important part of the image. The bricks cut off the word Dragonball Z in the interstitial cards, for crap's sake. (I may have mentioned this, but it IS the laziest, shittiest part of the OJ bricks)

[B]

If that shot of Nappa and Vegeta mugging and smirking is any indication, then nope, they are just sawing off footage. You'd think keeping someone's head in the shot was important.

[Metalwario64]

Speaking of selective cropping.... have any comparisons been made to see if the new Season sets are framed better than the bricks?)

From the shots we have, it looks like we've only seen center cropped shots. The two shots of Goku and Piccolo are from the same episode, and are framed the same, and the same goes for the Vegeta and Saibaimen shots. That scenery shot is nearly identical to the Orange Brick framing.

[superrayman3]

That being said, we still didn't support the level sets the way we Really should have...-sigh-

The reason for that is just like the DBOX's the level sets were literally released right after another DBZ set was being completed (the DBOX's), FUNimation gave people no grace period like they should have, that coupled with the fact that Kai was on the market at the same time as the orange bricks, DBOX's and then level sets were on store shelves, the market was literally oversaturated with DBZ releases so people were overwhelmed and just decided to go with one version and said to hell with all of the others FUNimation only has themselves to blame for the level sets not selling well if that's why they were canceled.

[MarcFBR]

And as for 'the internet'. We have a handful of people on a few forums, who at best have done a poll that has 20ish votes for 4:3.

And 4 for 16:9 I see that you are "selectively cropping" information which you like

Really, I'm the one being selective about my information? You can keep linking to the same handful of sites and whining, but it doesn't change how reality works.

What about blu-ray.com? What about amazon? What about comments? What about things like "Was this review helpful to you?" or "green bars" here?
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=12353

Blu-ray.com, a site for enthusiasts has nothing to do with the mass buying public. And Amazon, a site based around the mass buying public has... 17 negative comments.

Some of the fans are speaking, some of them are clicking.

If this is so obvious, why they cannot just admit that they don't care about quality of their product?

A handful of fans means nothing compared to the sales of the mass market, the fandom is utterly FLIPPING OUT and even with people from the fandom going elsewhere to state their displeasure, the numbers haven't even seemingly hit THIRTY anywhere.

The fact you seem to be whining very loudly doesn't change the reality of how business works. And the reality of DBZ is, if you can budget DBZ to do it cheaply, and have it fill up the screen, that equals money.

It's like the film Macross: Do You Remember Love when it was released in Japan. It was more valuable edited and thrown into a bundle with a game, than it was to release it uncut on day 1.

Even a company as vaunted by fans as Criterion isn't above playing fast and lose with their products. Their Godzilla cover looked nothing like the classic Godzilla, instead going with something more 'extreme' looking like the modern modern interpretations, because they were smart enough to know that would sell.

Now I just need to decide if I'm going to order the 6th release of Robotech I've gotten in about the last decade (and they've done more than 6, and those sell nonstop, each and every time.)

[Roland_ELoG]

When the Level sets came out I was flat broke, I didn't own a Blu-ray player, and I had JUST bought a few Orange Bricks and disliked them. By the time I bought them they were already discontinued and I was just buying them as a curiosity.

Funimation is certainly entitled to molest the footage and make a big buck. Treating your fans like shit has worked for Nintendo for many years, it's a legitimate business strategy.

[eledoremassis02]

When the Level sets came out I was flat broke, I didn't own a Blu-ray player, and I had JUST bought a few Orange Bricks and disliked them. By the time I bought them they were already discontinued and I was just buying them as a curiosity.

Funimation is certainly entitled to molest the footage and make a big buck. Treating your fans like shit has worked for Nintendo for many years, it's a legitimate business strategy.

I lost interest in Dragon Ball around 2003-4 so I was out of the loop and didn't even know about the orange bricks or Dragon Boxes. It wasn't until the level sets that I got interested and I bought them used (cause they were cheaper). I was lucky enough to get Dbox 5-7, granted there price are still not bad. I got Box 3 for doing some DVD cover art and Box 1 for $40 on ebay.

For Box 4 I'm going to the singles (and part of Box 2).

But there is still a portion of the Namek saga I use the orange bricks for. It's acceptable cause I can watch it uncut. But if FUNi released there own "Dbox" with their footage, I wouldnt mind that. But if that does not happen, I could just save and get the Dbox Japanese singles and add subs for it.

I accept that the market may be asking for these sets. It just stinks that Namek never had a 4:3 uncut release outside of the Ultimate Uncut Toonami Run (wish I recorded those lol)

[JEFFMAN219]

Why does funimation treat dbz like shit and this is coming from a dub fan. I mean they don't fuck around with yu yu hakusho, fullmetal alchemist, and one piece releases but with dbz they always fuck something up with their releases.

[dprez]

Dragon ball z level 1.2

Spoiler:

Dragon ball z season 1 trailer

Spoiler:

Oh God the crushed blacks!

O, that's bad. They are taking so much away from the original picture it's to sad. First they cut out 20% of the image with the crop, and now they scrub all the detail away and make the colors way too bright with thick black lines!

Looks terrible. Hope it bombs and FUNi finnaly gets it...

[Kojiro Sasaki]

(...)

From where did you get information about the mass market sales? It's very possible that I'm unable to understand how American reality works. This level of ignorance is absolutely unimaginable for me.

Are you saying that people would not accept a good quality release? FUNimation is actually paying for this what they call "remastering process". Doing it properly would cost them less. Other companies have no problems with good quality. There are tons of less or more popular shows which received normal treatment. Can somebody explain why FUNimation is putting so much effort and money in destroying Dragon Ball Z? That's the main question.

Are you happy with this "reality"? Are you supporting it? I'm not and I will fight against it. Even "reality" will not stop me from calling things by name.

[rereboy]

(...)

From where did you get information about the mass market sales? It's very possible that I'm unable to understand how American reality works. This level of ignorance is absolutely unimaginable for me.

Are you saying that people would not accept a good quality release? FUNimation is actually paying for this what they call "remastering process". Doing it properly would cost them less. Other companies have no problems with good quality. There are tons of less or more popular shows which received normal treatment. Can somebody explain why FUNimation is putting so much effort and money in destroying Dragon Ball Z? That's the main question.

Are you happy with this "reality"? Are you supporting it? I'm not and I will fight against it. Even "reality" will not stop me from calling things by name.

They are probably imitating the whole process they went through with the DVDs. First a orange brick-like release for the more casual, less informed and more excitable audience with 16:9 and vibrant colors. And then, in the future, perhaps another release for the more hardcore and informed audience with the original aspect ratio and colors.

This way they might double-dip again with Bluray.

[jjgp1112]

*Sorry for the late reply, this thread moves hella fast.

One of the most enduring (and popular on YouTube) scenes will suffice for a Kai vs Broadcast dub comparison.

"Whatashameyou'renotafractionastoughasyou'dliketobelieve. It's easy enough to tell from the few moves I've seen that all anyone need do is avoid the node on your palm."

That may be a word for word translation, but that's kind of my point. I studied Japanese literature while getting my (useless) degree, and the thing I came across time and time again were "exact translations" that used the same verbiage as the original but conveyed none of the same emotion, and "loose translations" that changed the verbs and word order but matched the tone of the original perfectly.

Kai seems like an exact translation, which makes the dialogue clumsy and scatterbrained. The gulf between English and Japanese as Languages (word order, number of possible adjectives or actions per sentence) is so vast that direct translations sound goofy and... wrong. That's just my take anyway.

"Are androids capable of feeling anythingakintorealfear?"

None of those lines sounded jambled together in the show. I think you're reaching on that one. They were wordy, yes, but they didn't sound like run-on sentences.

[jjgp1112]

(...)

From where did you get information about the mass market sales? It's very possible that I'm unable to understand how American reality works. This level of ignorance is absolutely unimaginable for me.

Are you saying that people would not accept a good quality release? FUNimation is actually paying for this what they call "remastering process". Doing it properly would cost them less. Other companies have no problems with good quality. There are tons of less or more popular shows which received normal treatment. Can somebody explain why FUNimation is putting so much effort and money in destroying Dragon Ball Z? That's the main question.

Are you happy with this "reality"? Are you supporting it? I'm not and I will fight against it. Even "reality" will not stop me from calling things by name.

Will you stop being willfully naive and stubborn?

Doing it "right will cost them more, not less. Because of that, they had to release the level sets in the manner that they did, or else a 39 episode set would've cost a fuckload of money. And because they didn't get the returns to financially justify such a process, they had to ixnay the whole thing and release these significantly cheaper alternatives.

That's the thing you're missing - they gave us what we want. A release with a lot of care and effort put into it that satisfied multiple fanbases. And we didn't buy it. Whoops.

It's unfortunate that it's come to that, but the fact that the season sets are consistently among the top selling anime releases for nearly seven years now shows that appealing to the lowest common denominator is ultimately what produces the most money, and FUNi is in the business of making just that. They're nowhere near as big as Disney or other major production companies that can pump out these super remastered releases like it's nothing, so they have to go about different strategies.

[Roland_ELoG]

Maybe the right thing to do is to do nothing? Why spend a ton of money ruining the show when you could spend NO money just... compiling it, on Blu-Ray.

Think about it. Standard DVD definition looks pretty fine on all but the most hypothetical future TVs, so the real advantage of BluRay is capacity. Stick the original show (from the old ass singles, maybe, but with progressive scan), with all the audio tracks, both versions of the intro (from the old ass singles, maybe), and some special features (from the old ass singles, maybe). Make it one disc per season. Perfect. Maybe.

[MarcFBR]

Think about it. Standard DVD definition looks pretty fine on all but the most hypothetical future TVs, so the real advantage of BluRay is capacity.

That's a matter of opinion, and frankly, that's roughly the opinion that gets us cropped and filtered Blu-rays in the first place, because the way they are filtered and cropped makes it appear to many people to be better.

Make it one disc per season. Perfect. Maybe.

No reason to do this. Without a perceived increase in either quality or value, it won't work. They still gotta charge for the full season, which takes away any value. And with it being based on the quality of disks that already exist, there is no perceived quality improvement. There is literally no reason to do it because they have DVDs on the shelf, which have the product on it at SD, and would be cheaper than a BD release would.

We used to see a lot of people suggest such a thing when Blu-ray was new, but I can't think of it happening even once, because it just isn't a viable style of release (for various reasons, but I brought up 2 of the primary ones above.)

[Kojiro Sasaki]

Will you stop being willfully naive and stubborn?

No. You don't understand and you will never understand what I'm doing and what are my motives (if you are saying that I'm "willfully naive and stubborn"). May it stay like it is. We were born and raised in totally different reality. Different blood runs in our veins...

Doing it "right will cost them more, not less. Because of that, they had to release the level sets in the manner that they did, or else a 39 episode set would've cost a fuckload of money. And because they didn't get the returns to financially justify such a process, they had to ixnay the whole thing and release these significantly cheaper alternatives.

Make sure that you know what I meant before commenting: 16:9 without stupid use of DVNR and idiotic color correction - would it be more expensive?
Raw masters would be 10x better than this.

Why FUNimation sold one set (17 episodes) for around 18$, if I remember correctly? Were they volunteering?

That's the thing you're missing - they gave us what we want. A release with a lot of care and effort put into it that satisfied multiple fanbases. And we didn't buy it. Whoops.

Bad timing.

You will not get rid of me After official announcement of 16:9 I do not care at all. I'm considering this writing mostly as English lessons (By the way, I did never learn the language at all - everything comes from music, movies and reading)
(If somebody would like to ban me, please leave me possibility to write PMs - I need to stay in touch with two users here)

[Ajay]

Think about it. Standard DVD definition looks pretty fine on all but the most hypothetical future TVs, so the real advantage of BluRay is capacity.

That's a matter of opinion, and frankly, that's roughly the opinion that gets us cropped and filtered Blu-rays in the first place, because the way they are filtered and cropped makes it appear to many people to be better.

It frustrates me to no end to see people claiming that SD footage is acceptable and that Blu-Ray is only about capacity. You only have to spend about 10 minutes on a site like Blu-Ray.com to realise how incorrect that is.

[MarcFBR]

It frustrates me to no end to see people claiming that SD footage is acceptable and that Blu-Ray is only about capacity. You only have to spend about 10 minutes on a site like Blu-Ray.com to realise how incorrect that is.

But he has roughly proven WHY Funimation would so heavily tweak the series.

Because plenty of people believe that, and regardless of how 'accurate' the trailer appears, stuff like the Piccolo images, etc. are quite striking to see for the first time for most people.

[Gyt Kaliba]

It frustrates me to no end to see people claiming that SD footage is acceptable

Cuz it kind of...is...acceptable, for a lot of us? I for one still don't understand how people can act like DVDs are suddenly not even worth having. I sure don't recall people acting like this during all the time before Bluray. Hell, I don't even remember people acting like that when DVD first came out and was a drastic improvement from VHS.

[rereboy]

It frustrates me to no end to see people claiming that SD footage is acceptable and that Blu-Ray is only about capacity. You only have to spend about 10 minutes on a site like Blu-Ray.com to realise how incorrect that is.

Never mind that, 10 minutes with a bluray in a modern TV and the difference from a DVD is obviously clear. I don't know how people can say they don't notice the difference between a movie in DVD and the same movie in bluray

It frustrates me to no end to see people claiming that SD footage is acceptable

Cuz it kind of...is...acceptable, for a lot of us? I for one still don't understand how people can act like DVDs are suddenly not even worth having. I sure don't recall people acting like this during all the time before Bluray. Hell, I don't even remember people acting like that when DVD first came out and was a drastic improvement from VHS.

Because Bluray is superior in every way and since every Bluray player is also a dvd player there is no reason not to jump right in to it. There's literally no reason for buying on DVD except because its cheaper. Its the sole advantage.