AB Video to release original Dragon Ball on Blu-Ray

[sangofe]

Even with their flaws, it's still better than Funimation in terms of video quality (no forced 16X9 cropping (Z) nor excessive DNR), right?

If you're referring to the DVD boxsets they're very pixelated for DBZ but better for Og DB.

But are they cropped and DNR'd like Funimation?
If not, then I take that over pixelization. lol
Which video source (or master) are AB Video using for their DVD set?

Not cropped. It's obvious they used the Dragon Boxes but with altered colors. Not great like the BD boxset of DB but I guess better than dbox?

[Cure Dragon 255]

I am really starting to think the shoddy releases are by design and not just incompetence.

Oh SURE, the Orange Bricks ARE peak incompetence and previous releases were objectively better. But after a point Toei realized "If we release a good release, that's it, we will have zero excuse to re release anything". Even the Dragon Boxes, wondrous as they are lacked the broadcast audio.

[GhostEmperorX]

But after a point Toei realized "If we release a good release, that's it, we will have zero excuse to re release anything". Even the Dragon Boxes, wondrous as they are lacked the broadcast audio.

It may be pertinent to mention that it's mainly Funimation (formerly, guess it's just CR now) that's doing all the re-releasing (which they seem to do for no other series but this one, even within the larger DB brand, to say nothing of outside), AFAIK Toei hasn't really released it much besides said Dragon Boxes.
It does however make it curious as to why they seem to be the ones holding AB's release project up.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

The Dragon Boxes didn't have the broadcast audio because TOEI threw out the masters, they threw out the masters because in the 80s and 90s home video wasn't a thing for TV anime in Japan, so it was assumed they would air on TV, help sell merchandise, figures, manga, etc. The kids would grow up and move on.

No one was thinking "hmm, but what if a bunch of adult fans in the 2010s want to experience the show as it sounded when it originally aired?", as the expectation would be the original three TV anime would be long forgotten by then. For the Japanese it was just a big long commercial. Luckily we saw Dragon Ball was more than that and it was a story of value in animated form as well as on the page.

Funimation is definitely responsible for screwing fans around though. They put out a survey asking fans would they like the next Dragon Ball Z Blu-Ray to be in 4:3 or 16:9, went with the latter despite fans voting for the former. Also, in the US for some reason 4:3 has to be the premium product and not for your average fan as Funimation only re-released the 30th anniversary discs in the steelbooks and didn't do a standard release like Manga UK did.

AFAIK Toei hasn't really released it much besides said Dragon Boxes.
It does however make it curious as to why they seem to be the ones holding AB's release project up.

Yeah, it's Crunchyroll/Funimation doing all the re-releasing. TOEI only ever released the Dragon Box and single variants.

How many times have Crunchyroll/Funimation released or repackaged Dragon Ball Z alone, not including the Dragon Boxes?

• Singles (1997-2004)
• Ultimate Uncuts (2005-2006)
• Orange bricks (2007-2009)
• Level sets (2011-2012)
• Rock the Dragon (2013)
• Season Blu-Rays (2013-2014)
• Season Blu-Ray boxset (2017)
• 30th Anniversary Collection (2019)
• Steelbooks (2020)
• Walmart 3-in-1 repackage of Season Blu-Rays (2021)
• Amazon exclusive Season Blu-Ray boxset (2023)
• Crunchyroll repackage of Season Blu-Rays (2024)

Of course this trounced the amount of times they've released the original Dragon Ball (twice - singles, season sets) or GT (four times - singles, season sets, two complete series sets) which were of course VHS and DVD only.

[GhostEmperorX]

As I thought, thanks. A few replies though:

The Dragon Boxes didn't have the broadcast audio because TOEI threw out the masters, they threw out the masters because in the 80s and 90s home video wasn't a thing for TV anime in Japan, so it was assumed they would air on TV, help sell merchandise, figures, manga, etc. The kids would grow up and move on.

No one was thinking "hmm, but what if a bunch of adult fans in the 2010s want to experience the show as it sounded when it originally aired?", as the expectation would be the original three TV anime would be long forgotten by then. For the Japanese it was just a big long commercial.

Of course, while the DVD and later optical video mediums didn't quite exist back then (LD would certainly be impractical), this didn't mean that most other animation studios there had anywhere near the same mindset as Toei (who only seemed to keep movie material), otherwise there wouldn't be a wave of pre-Y2K TV anime series restorations with actually decent audio quality going on over the last 10 years or so.

Helps that they also didn't have a record of constantly handing their IP's to the wrong licensing companies all the time.

They put out a survey asking fans would they like the next Dragon Ball Z Blu-Ray to be in 4:3 or 16:9, went with the latter despite fans voting for the former. Also, in the US for some reason 4:3 has to be the premium product and not for your average fan as Funimation only re-released the 30th anniversary discs in the steelbooks and didn't do a standard release like Manga UK did.

And if that isn't a massively descriptive example of pretzel logic for incredibly obvious reasons, idk what is. They had an easy way out but they just kept digging themselves into a hole with that and other choices that are as contrived as they are illogical.

[TechExpert2021]

How many times have Crunchyroll/Funimation released or repackaged Dragon Ball Z alone, not including the Dragon Boxes?

• Singles (1997-2004)
• Ultimate Uncut Singles (2005-2006)
• Orange bricks (2007-2009)
• Level sets (2011-2012)
• Rock the Dragon (2013)
• Season Blu-Rays (2013-2014)
• Season Blu-Ray boxset (2017)
• 30th Anniversary Collection (2019)
• Steelbooks (2020)
• Walmart 3-in-1 repackage of Season Blu-Rays (2021)
• Amazon exclusive Season Blu-Ray boxset (2023)
• Crunchyroll repackage of Season Blu-Rays (2024)

They've released DBZ a whopping 12 times already. I think that’s a lot of them.

[GhostEmperorX]

Prior to any concerns being raised about being on or off-topic, it may be that we've already gotten the answer to AB's plans for a release (in other words, the main topic) a while ago.
Which, from a statement by a staff member involved in the project, seems to have Toei's fingerprints all over it.
So could it be that the topic has reached its end already?

[Scsigs]

I am really starting to think the shoddy releases are by design and not just incompetence.

Oh SURE, the Orange Bricks ARE peak incompetence and previous releases were objectively better. But after a point Toei realized "If we release a good release, that's it, we will have zero excuse to re release anything". Even the Dragon Boxes, wondrous as they are lacked the broadcast audio.

Bro, Toei threw out the original audio masters & no one had a complete collection of it back in 2003. The collection of those synced to the Dragon Box footage is newer than you may think. It took years of tape trading & VHS ripping to get it all. While Toei for some reason doesn't want it on an actual legit home release for some reason, you can't blame them at a time where no one on the planet had it for not putting it on the discs.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I am really starting to think the shoddy releases are by design and not just incompetence.

Oh SURE, the Orange Bricks ARE peak incompetence and previous releases were objectively better. But after a point Toei realized "If we release a good release, that's it, we will have zero excuse to re release anything". Even the Dragon Boxes, wondrous as they are lacked the broadcast audio.

Bro, Toei threw out the original audio masters & no one had a complete collection of it back in 2003. The collection of those synced to the Dragon Box footage is newer than you may think. It took years of tape trading & VHS ripping to get it all. While Toei for some reason doesn't want it on an actual legit home release for some reason, you can't blame them at a time where no one on the planet had it for not putting it on the discs.

Oh that's true. In my defense I was going to put something along the lines that they didnt have it available to begin with.

[sangofe]

Prior to any concerns being raised about being on or off-topic, it may be that we've already gotten the answer to AB's plans for a release (in other words, the main topic) a while ago.
Which, from a statement by a staff member involved in the project, seems to have Toei's fingerprints all over it.
So could it be that the topic has reached its end already?

The project staff from Ab on this definitely hasn't given up.

[Scsigs]

Spoiler:

I am really starting to think the shoddy releases are by design and not just incompetence.

Oh SURE, the Orange Bricks ARE peak incompetence and previous releases were objectively better. But after a point Toei realized "If we release a good release, that's it, we will have zero excuse to re release anything". Even the Dragon Boxes, wondrous as they are lacked the broadcast audio.

Bro, Toei threw out the original audio masters & no one had a complete collection of it back in 2003. The collection of those synced to the Dragon Box footage is newer than you may think. It took years of tape trading & VHS ripping to get it all. While Toei for some reason doesn't want it on an actual legit home release for some reason, you can't blame them at a time where no one on the planet had it for not putting it on the discs.

Oh that's true. In my defense I was going to put something along the lines that they didn't have it available to begin with.

Like, Toei didn't have access to the broadcast audio in 2003, FUNimation didn't in 2009, none of the other licensees that have licensed the DBox masters for the first 3 DB shows did & apparently weren't able to use it when they DID because Toei. AB Groupe had to sneak it on to their Blu-Ray set for OG DB & they apparently got in trouble with Toei for it. It's so stupid how these things are. Meanwhile, any other company would be ecstatic to have that stuff given to them. Hell, the BBC, which I feel is the nearest Western equivalent to Toei readily accepted old audio recordings of 60s Doctor Who episodes that they junked in the 70s & couldn't find the visuals for anywhere. Toei needs to embrace fans like that rather than ignore them. They went to a whole lot of trouble to track down good, clean audio for all of those episodes & compile it together.

[Cold Skin]

Toei causing problems with this is definitely strange, since they could benefit from it themselves: they've got the best "early DB" remaster yet done for them and ready to go. They could just say "okay, we'll allow it, but you also give us the results so that we have it for Japan and possibly available to give to other countries, on Blu-ray releases or streaming services."

That's a way to have a complete, competent remaster without even having to wait for it or pay for it yourself!
"You went to that much trouble to make it clean for your country and used unofficial audio? Great job, but in exchange, if you want us to allow the release, you also give those new remasters to us - the owner of the franchise - for our own use and we'll call it even!"

[FortuneSSJ]

At this point it seems this will be like Dragon Ball Full Color manga release by Viz Media.
It was never stated that it was officially canceled, but we didn't get more either...

Its always sad when products of high quality like this are left unfinished

[TechExpert2021]

AB Groupe had to sneak it on to their Blu-Ray set for OG DB & they apparently got in trouble with Toei for it.

If that is the case, would the same apply to Funimation/Crunchyroll if they ever use the fan-restored Japanese broadcast audio in an official release of OG DB and DBZ?

[Scsigs]

AB Groupe had to sneak it on to their Blu-Ray set for OG DB & they apparently got in trouble with Toei for it.

If that is the case, would the same apply to Funimation/Crunchyroll if they ever use the fan-restored Japanese broadcast audio in an official release of OG DB and DBZ?

Yes. Yes it would. I mean, Sabat's had the audio in his possession for a while. Fans apparently gave it to him before it was ever put into a torrent. However, FUNi wasn't going to step on Toei's toes with putting it on an official release without them signing off on it, so their latest 2019 Blu-Rays didn't have it & they chose to instead to try to make the shitty audio Toei's given them to use for years at least a little more bearable instead.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Fans gave Chris Sabat the audio but there was only so much he could do as a voice actor and ADR director. Then some fans with the broadcast audio started to take advantage of others by selling it for profit, and others leaked the audio onto torrent sites to spite them. As I understand it Chris Sabat lost all interest when the broadcast audio became available on certain sites, which was a shame but I feel he saw the worst in this fandom through it all and I guess I can understand him feeling fatigued by them.

[GhostEmperorX]

Come to think of it, I wonder what the logic even was in giving Funimation of all companies that material, considering that minus one occasion they weren't even interested in truly high quality releases of the series across the board with no ridiculous strings attached.
But that's probably a topic for another time, and regardless it may have led to similar results as the present situation with AB.

[Scsigs]

Come to think of it, I wonder what the logic even was in giving Funimation of all companies that material, considering that minus one occasion they weren't even interested in truly high quality releases of the series across the board with no ridiculous strings attached.
But that's probably a topic for another time, and regardless it may have led to similar results as the present situation with AB.

The thought process was, "Well, we have this high quality audio ripped from old VHS recordings of the show & Toei doesn't have it, so let's give it to the official license holders so they can use & distribute it on their home releases."
Sabat isn't against things like this, since he understands giving fans the best releases possible. He's unfortunately not in charge of the remastering of the older shows or movies, as he's mainly a dub actor, director, & producer, but he DOES have SOME pull with audio masters. When FUNimation announced over a decade ago that they'd rescued Akira & were going to release a Blu-Ray for it, a fan gave Sabat the audio for the 1989 dub after asking if he'd want it & he accepted it. That then got synced to the video master they had & put on the discs for the movie. What's more is that they apparently tried to improve the quality of the shitty audio Toei gave them to use years ago for their last few Blu-Ray releases of Z through some method because they know those audio masters suck ass. I can only assume Sabat tried his hardest to get Toei to ok using the better audio, but they wouldn't budge.

As for if they'd use it if they could, I believe they would. You have to remember that the reasons that they shittily remastered the video the ways they have has to do with reasons that have to do with making as much money as possible.
1. Cropping to widescreen because stupid people who don't know any better &/or don't care think it's better to have the picture fill the entirety of their TV screens rather than maintain the shot integrity intended by the animators of the show & FUNimation wanted to capitalize on widescreen TVs becoming a thing in the late-2000s.
2. The DVNR algorithm being as aggressively used as it was because FUNimation didn't want to keep the right amount of grain & maintain the detail drawn into the frames of the episodes of the show because they wanted to have the show have a "modernized" feel & that feel meant trying to make it look like it was animated digitally rather than like it was animated from 1989-96 like it was.
3. The color correction being as bad as it is because, again, they wanted the show to look "modern" rather than closer to how it did back when it originally aired in Japan.
If I'm forgetting anything else, tell me.

These have nothing to do with the audio masters. The audio has remained the exact same since 2007; mono JP audio with subtitles, 5.1 English dub dialogue with the JP music & a stereo track of the English dub dialogue with the Falconer score. I imagine they would be completely fine with putting the broadcast audio on their discs if Toei let them, but that's the thing. Toei doesn't want them to for some reason. So, they can't if they don't wanna get in trouble with them. Sabat already got into trouble with trying to sneak Team Four Star into Kai: The Final Chapters' dub because Toei doesn't like them for DBZA. So much so that Toei forced them to blacklist the 4 main TFS members from working there for a while (which, imo, is going too far because they were just working there as tertiary voice actors on their dubs, but whatever), so I doubt he wants to push any more buttons with them.

[sangofe]

Let's not derail further from the topic.

[GokuDaimao]

Well no. Funimation did not have a hand in producing the Saban dub. They DID produce it. It's their dub. Not Saban's, not Ocean's, not Pioneer's. Funimation's. They are the key players in the existence of that dub. The fact that the main people involved with that dub are no longer associated with Funimation doesn't change that.

The Westwood dub isn't their dub. They likely don't have the masters to release it. They have no reason to want to release it.

It's not remotely comparable to the Toei thing.

Your ongoing effort to attempt to contradict every point I try to make purely through the use of semantics is tiresome. This is like, the 4th or 5th thread I've participated in that you've done this.

I explained my frame of comparison quite succinctly, that my comparison of these two concepts are related in the sense that the two companies have no desire to put out a particular thing in spite of fan desire because they harbor resentment of these things existing no thanks to them. I also clearly pointed out how these two scenarios are far from identical, but you needed to meet your "Um, actually" quota for the day, I suppose.

And I shouldn't even have to explain what's wrong with you trying to 'correct' me by saying that "The Saban dub IS FUNimation's dub!" Yeah, seeing Gen Fukunaga's name as Executive Producer in the credits and the FUNimation logo at the end of every episode didn't make that crystal clear, thank you.

I said, "having a hand" as a means of communicating that while other people were behind it as well, FUNimation were still in a executive position of creative input and final say. Of course it belongs to them, which is the point I was making in the first place. Everyone else, I would hope would already know that but I decided to respond to this just because you've done this to several of my posts that can only be justified by a slightly off-kilter choice of language, if anything at all.

Just let me know if I have to put a big, all-caps, "This is my opinion/speculation" on all of my posts before I say anything because it looks like I'll have to.

Or.... they could, ya know, just ask Fuji TV.

Also, regarding the GT, could we actually, possibly, maybe have film of the special? It looks like it's labelled here:



That would be a significant find as we've only ever seen scans from the videotape master for broadcasts.

Well, that's what I was getting at. That AB would have been better served honestly asking Fuji/Toei/whomever for audio of GT that they could have gotten and released legit and successfully rather than what we saw here. Granted, I know you just misunderstood me, that's fine.

I believe that you're talking about a fresh, HD-resolution film scan of that TV special since we only got a digibeta master on the Dragon Box. Yes, I agree, but Toei's got a lot more work to do before they get there. There's so much that's overdue that COULD happen, but they just say, "...Nah, don't feel like it."

We did at least get the master audio of that, in spite of the 64 episodes on the same release having bad optical audio.