10 Years Of Bilingual DragonBall TV Series DVD's In America!

[Tanooki Kuribo]

Back in 2000 FUNimation released the first ever bilingual DVD's of the series in America. Sure, there were some problems at first but as the years went by, FUNimation learned more about their DragonBall fans and eventually try to cater to all of them. Let's take a look back in time!! ::pulls huge lever::

(DB)ZOMG! The First DVD of the Series!

This first DVD release of the series was kind of a black sheep. It had the "Includes 2 Versions, English Uncut Version and Original Japanese Version Subtitled in English" tag line on the bottom of the cover instead of in an impact graphic like the rest of this line had....



...It had the wrong opening, FUNimation used the opening from DBZ movie 1...



...The Japanese subtitles used English dub name spelling and would censor harsh language, for example "damn" would become "darn" and things of that nature...





Speaking of subtitles, check those out! They're horrible. Here is a comparison of the first subtitle font next to the latest one from the DragonBox...



And on top of all this, you couldn't switch back and forth with the English\Japanese audio like you normally would. This is because up until this point the English episode numbers and Japanese episode numbers were different due to a crazy amount of cuts in the English version. So, to sync up the English version to the Japanese version they had to add some footage from the previous episode and make a 40 minute episode.

Bonus! See how Chris Sabat sounded in this first DVD compared to how he sounds in the re-dubbed Season Set and DragonBox: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ny8zPfJGcU

But despite all these flaws, it was great to finally have DragonBall, in Japanese, subtitled, on a home release that was in really good quality for it's time. It was mind blowing! Eventually, FUNimation grew to be something I really wouldn't have guessed back then. Now it seems almost any type of fan can buy the show the way THEY want it. Things actually turned out pretty good.

Canceled DVD's!

During the course of 10 years there have been some DVD lines that, for some reason or another just got canned.

First up we have "DragonBall Z Season 1".



This was popping up sometime in may or 2006. We know today that this eventually became the orange brick. When this first popping up on the Internet though, the Ultimate Uncut Editions were still being released and fans were a little confused by this. We thought maybe it was a collection of the UUC but then it vanished and the Ultimate Uncut Editions were canceled. Then... nothing happened for a while.

Here is what it looked like when Daizex.com broke the news about it...



Next is the "Ultimate Uncut Editions".



Well, I guess it was explained above what happened to this line of DVD's. These had the first episodes of DBZ that were never released uncut in the USA before, and they had the Spanish\Mexican dub on them as well! They were promoted pretty heavily and seemed to be going pretty well. You could even buy the first volume to get the art box to fill with the rest of the DVD's. But alas, that second box would never be filled. It was canceled after 9 volumes to make way for the orange bricks.

Spanish DVD's



This line was a pretty horrible release. It was the Mexican\Spanish dub but had the wrong opening, wrong title cards, wrong end credits AND it was from the orange brick sets which meant this was all in wide screen. This some how lasted one volume more than the UUC.

DragonBall Z Movies.



Back in August of 2009, these odd DVD's started popping up in listings in stores such as Amazon, Rightstuf and AAAnime. This just totally confused fans. I mean, they finished releasing every DBZ movie, then they put the movies out again as double features, now they were releasing them as singles... again?! Nothing ever became of this but some fans like to think it could have been the DragonBox: The Movies release. Sometime this year, for whatever reason I decided to made an Adult Swim type commercial explaining this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTM87CP8-fs

Well that's all I got. What are some of your memories of getting this first DVD or just your first DragonBall DVD in general, was it all you hoped for? Less then what you expected? It's been 10 years, if you're posting stuff here, I'm sure you've purchased a DragonBall DVD in the past 10 years.

[Great Saiyaman I]

I actually didn't pick up any of Z til the DBoxes. I didn't really have to suffer through the Season Sets...

[Tanooki Kuribo]

Wow, and you saved a lot of money.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Those first bilingual DVDs were terrible. Good thing I never got them.

[Super Sonic]

My first one was the first 25th Budokai dvd. Got it after I got a dvd player, and after getting the last Saiyaman tape. Was actually 9 years ago, but first I got to see in Japanese as I didn't watch I-Channel due to not knowing the language.

[Bardo117]

I still bought the Season sets.

[VegettoEX]

Those first bilingual DVDs were terrible. Good thing I never got them.

They were "terrible" from a "Hey, this is 2010 and we're looking back at them from a technical perspective" kind of... err... perspective.

Back in 2000? Fucking amazing.

We danced in the streets until the cows came home.

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Those first bilingual DVDs were terrible. Good thing I never got them.

They were "terrible" from a "Hey, this is 2010 and we're looking back at them from a technical perspective" kind of... err... perspective.

Back in 2000? Fucking amazing.

We danced in the streets until the cows came home.

I can certainly imagine.

[Bardo117]

Hell yeah, those days where amazing. Anything DBZ would blow up back then.

[penguintruth]

I bought a couple of uncut, dub-only VHS tapes back in the day, because I didn't have a DVD player until about 2001 or 2002. By the time I was collecting DVDs, I had lost most of my interest in DBZ. Then years later I saw the Ultimate Uncut release and almost got some of that, but decided to wait for boxsets. It's a good thing I waited, since it was cancelled. Again, I lost interest for a while until I saw some orange bricks in the store, and almost bought them, but then remembered reading something about them on DaizenshuuEX and checked up on it, seeing that they sucked. When I read about the Dragon Boxes a little later, I decided to hold out for Funimation to bring those over.

So it's a damn good thing I waited, huh?

But I totally remember the celebrating over bilingual DVDs back in the day. We were all talking about how FINALLY Funimation did something right.

[Kendamu]

Back then I bought the first three DBZ movies on DVD. Other than a used DVD here or there (that had a favorite episode on it) over the years or a really good deal on DBox singles, I didn't seriously start collecting Dragonball DVDs until the US DBox also.

[Gaffer Tape]

Awesome idea for a thread. If someone could remember the exact chronology, there were a lot of other subtle distinctions. It's hard to remember due to their release order being all over the place in terms of the series.

But what I'm thinking of is how the early DVDs didn't treat them as standalone episodes. There was one opening, one ending at the beginning and end of each disc. Like you said, the opening on the Ginyu discs was movie one. The closing for those was exclusively episode 67. After the Ginyu, they started using creditless openings and endings. At the Trunks discs, they started adding in the English next episode preview at the end of the disc and stopped using dub names. That would eventually be put in the special features before being removed entirely. Around the Androids discs, they changed their font. Well, it was the same font, they just reduced the size of the black border around them. For the early Freeza discs, they still used the Cell arc opening but eventually fixed it. Then they eventually made all the episodes self-contained with their own set of openings and endings, but they were still creditless. Eventually they added back in the eyecatches, preventing that terrible horn-bleeding that used to occur.

That's all I can think of right now. Anyone else can try and make some chronological sense of it all.

[Bardo117]

I can't imagine the Buu Saga with Ultimate Uncut packaging.

[AnimeMaakuo]

.

[Bardo117]

My first memory was watching it in spanish at 7:00 P.M on weekdays. Collecting figures that they sold in Mexico.

Then for a couple of years I forgot about DBZ, untill I saw it again on Toonami. That's when I started buying action figures and videogames.

Not until the Orange Bricks, did I decide to get serious about collecting the DVD's. Now I want the DragonBoxes....

[Adamant]

Those first bilingual DVDs were terrible. Good thing I never got them.

Dude, you got the season sets.

My first DVDs were the Pioneer releases of "The Saiyans" and "Snake Way", containing episode 5-10 of the old English Dragonball Z dub. They were expensive as hell (50$ a pop... I bet you Americans never payed that much for your old fansub tapes), censored and cut-up crappy dub only, but dammit, it was my only way of finally getting to see this "Dragonball" thing I had only read about. And hey, these particular episodes weren't handled THAT badly.

From there on, I left "Dragonball Z" alone for a while, and picked up the bilingual Funi "Dragonball" sets that were coming out at the time instead. They were bilingual, uncut, had a far better price-to-content ratio, and were earlier episodes as well - I wanted to watch the series from the beginning, so that was a huge plus. I had also started picking up the manga at the time, so I wasn't that starved for material anymore, nor was I relying on the anime to tell me the story - it was just an adaption of a story I was already familiar with.

And that's the beginning of my adventure in Dragonball DVD land.

[SuperSaiyan3Goku]

Oh, the good 'ol days of 2000.

This was around the time I first got into the series. Finding everything online, pretty much. I collected figures, the Beckett Magazines, and VHS tapes. I didn't start collecting DVDs until 2003 or 2004. My first DVD was Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan from Wal-Mart. After that, I gradually collected all 13 Dragon Ball Z Movies, and grabbed the Andoid through Cell Games single DVDs from the site Overstock.com and one set from Suncoast. The only TV Special I had access to was the Trunks special on tape. So only uncut dub. But this year, hell this month, I finally grabbed the Trunks Special on DVD. I also have Bardock, got that earlier in the year.

I am one of the fans who started to collect the Season Sets. I, like many other fans, thought this was going to be how Dragon Ball Z would be for the next few years. I didn't even BOTHER with the "Remastered" movies, simply because I was already collecting the singles, and I didn't want the movies to be fucked by Funimation, like with Z. Sure, a few may look nice, but if I buy one, I buy them all. That's how I work.

When the Dragon Boxes were announced, I knew that this was how Dragon Ball Z would be for now. So I proceeded to buy the current four Dragon Box sets. I even have a spot for set number 5.

[Perfect]

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

Dude, you got the season sets.

I know I'm going to get shit for this, but I don't see the Season Sets as being that bad. I also have no problems with the subtitles on them (which was what I was referring to on those bilingual DVDs).

[BluezaBladeNZ]

I did actually encounter a couple of annoying things the Madman version had of the Season Sets. The first one was the broadcast track on episode 4 playing Kikuchi's score at the same time (wasn't a concern since I didn't watch that track) and the the subtitles for Season 3 (not sure about 4-9 since I started importing the R1 copies) were too big that at times, it would go out of the video area.