Why do fans prefer 4:3?

[sintzu]

Because it's the way it was intended to be seen.

Personally I don't mind 16:9 if it's done right.

[Cold Skin]

Just because it's the original picture with its original composition. A good reason.

And with 4:3 home media release you give the fans that want the full, original image (some exceptions apply like Kai 2.0) and the people that want to crop it to 16:9 can basically accomplish the same thing by using the zoom function on their TV. Everyone wins.

And have a dead-center crop with that zoom. Which is less than ideal compared to selective, smart cropping that actually chooses what info is disposable.

Do it like Resident Evil HD: give both the original 4:3 and smart cropped widescreen, and everyone is happy. (thank God they didn't offer just 4:3 on that one, that would kill it all!)

[Lord Beerus]

4:3 was how the show was originally presented. And many fan take liberties on the fact the show was unnecessarily cropped.

[Adamant]

In Japan, that kind of "full screen" practice completely died out during the VHS era, so I was very surprised when I learned that it had been still alive even on DVD in the US.

That's interesting. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that, if I understand correctly, home media has always been viewed as more of a luxury item in Japan (thus being more responsive to videophile interests), whereas it's much more commonplace in the U.S. (thus concerned with marketing toward audiences who may not understand aspect ratios that don't fill their screens).

Unlikely. The US was, as far as I'm aware, the only country in the world to keep doing that shit so long.

[JulieYBM]

Yeah, I seem to remember seeing full screen DVDs next to wide screen DVDs for years. Even during the early days of Blu-ray, I believe.

[TheOverlyMadHatter]

Unless Toei is willing to go back and fully draw and animate an additional 40% of picture on both sides, which is completely unrealistic, there's no reason why fans of the series should want to miss a good portion of the original footage. But, the casual audience is almost always the biggest one... and it also happens to be the one comprised of the people who think 4:3=/=HD, or the ones who don't want black bars on the sides of their screen, so I don't really blame businesses for going the widescreen route.

Of course, I have to at least applaud FUNimation for selectively cropping and extending the frames as necessary for their second attempt at a Blu-Ray release, but that can only work so well for a show that was originally in 4:3. It's no different from the pan-and-scan methods of yore.

[Zenkai]

Most people on this forum are purists even if the original product is crap (e.x. Toei's version of Z). My reason for being against the 16:9 cropping of the series is that it was created with the 4:3 aspect ratio in mind. When it is cropped, there is the loss of 40% of the original image which sometimes creates awkward shots such as the part where the faces of everyone telling Goku to "do it!" when he's about to kill Kid Buu is cut, leaving only the bottom or top half of a character's face visible. It looks bad, unprofessional, and sloppy. I wouldn't mind it if there weren't any issues, but when watching the episode from the Blu-ray remaster, a few faces were cut off due to the cropping. It bothered me.

My guess is that besides fans apparently wanting the series to be cropped for the releases, cutting 40% of the image for every episode saves time and money. If they crop it then there is 40% less image which means 40% less work to do for every frame. That is basically half of the image. If my math is correct it is almost twice as much work remastering the whole series in 4:3 than 16:9. Instead of remastering 291 episodes they basically did the amount of work that 175 episodes would require if remastered in 4:3.

You're actually only losing about 20% of the original image, while gaining about 5-10% on the sides (despite what this picture shows on the sides).



The top part is what you're losing. It is divided into 4 roughly equal parts (plus the remaining) in order to show that the loss of the original image is less than 1/4 of the total.

[SpiritBombTriumphant]

You're actually only losing about 20% of the original image, while gaining about 5-10% on the sides (despite what this picture shows on the sides).

The top part is what you're losing. It is divided into 4 roughly equal parts (plus the remaining) in order to show that the loss of the original image is less than 1/4 of the total.

I see. I heard somewhere that when a video is cropped (or at least when Z got cropped) that the viewer was losing 40% of the image. I didn't include the additional footage on the sides, but top and bottom I heard that it was 40%. My bad. But it still might have cost a bit more to have to do that extra remastering. Oh well.

[90sDBZ]

I was gonna say 40% sounded exaggerated. If that much image was lost it truly would be unwatchable. I find that many people who complain about the Season sets never seem to mention the image you gain at the side and basically claim that there's 20% less image period, while in reality if you factor in what you gain at the sides it's only 10-15% less image. In fairness though the details gained at the sides are often less significant than those lost at the top and bottom.

[ABED]

The image you gain on the sides is negligible.

[Vegard Aune]

I was gonna say 40% sounded exaggerated. If that much image was lost it truly would be unwatchable. I find that many people who complain about the Season sets never seem to mention the image you gain at the side and basically claim that there's 20% less image period, while in reality if you factor in what you gain at the sides it's only 10-15% less image. In fairness though the details gained at the sides are often less significant than those lost at the top and bottom.

The detail added at the side is less significant in terms of how much you gain... and also in how utterly irrelevant it is. As previously mentioned, the show was animated with 4:3 framing in mind. They may have drawn a bit more on the sides to have some slight leeway with the framing, but none of it is actually necessary, and not having that extra detail on the sides doesn't really improve the show in any way. That's why the additional footage on the sides is never mentioned.