Does Toei Remaster Better?

[Googaliemoogalie]

So a few years ago I bought the Dragon Ball movies on DVD in a boxed set (2)
The DVD sets had video quality that seemed very close to what I imagine the film would have been and close to what the processes the Dragon Boxes used.
NOW Toei has released the movies on Blu Ray. New remasters and new box sets. I bought mine straight from Japan so I could compare what Funimation does with their remasters to really see who does the franchise better.
FYI - The aspect ratio should be wide (similar to 16:9) since they were movie releases. But keep an eye out for crop factor, colour and grain removal.

The Toei Blu Ray Set:




The Funimation DVD Set



Now for comparison shots:

Chichi! I heard lunch!















So the Blu Ray has less contrast (much less), lower brightness, less saturation, and look at the first picture of Chichi's boots, there's a noticeable crop factor and grain removal.

I think that the remastering Toei is doing isn't as great as it could be. Are they as bad as Funimation? I don't know, the outlines on the characters (Look at Kuririn) look pretty good.
What do you all think? I'm not that impressed, is it just me? I've gotten used to bad Dragon Ball releases so I just expect it now.

[Jord]

I think the Toei screenshots do look a bit better but not spectacularly so. Plus, while DBZ is enjoyable, it's not like it's a series that sounds out in animation fidelity so the higher price for the Japanese Blu-rays isn't worth it to me. Especially not when we're talking about the movies, which are pretty short and certainly watchable but not all that memorable.

[thejeremymenace]

From a purely empirical and visual standpoint, yes, the Toei remaster for the movies is leaps and bounds above anything that Funimation has put out. There is no comparison as far as I'm concerned.

It's worth mentioning that the intended "wide" AR for the movies is 1.85:1, which is slightly wider than 16:9, hence the black bars.

Having personally reviewed these releases I'd say most of them, movie 1 included, are pretty middle-of-the-road as far as DNR goes, and I don't really have any complaints. However, a few of the films in this set are pretty overzealous with it (movie 5 in particular IIRC).

Movie 11 and 12 have been censored in the Toei set to remove middle fingers, which has been well-documented elsewhere on this site and on the internet. Toei also has no intention of correcting the discs either.

The HD master that this box is based on had gone out to Netflix and Amazon Prime a few months prior to the box set release, with no DNR and no censorship. I don't really understand why Toei didn't just slap that on a disc and call it a day, but Toei defies understanding most of the time. Either way, I'd recommend looking for those streaming versions and making some further comparisons yourself.

[coola]

Similar timed screenshots from Dragon Box: The Movies DVD release

[VDenter]

The Toie masters look far better. Colors look far more natural and less blown out and the detail is significantly higher, OFC Toie should have just put the streaming versions of these masters that didn't have DNR and weren't censored on disc and it would have completely blown away anything Funimation has ever done. That said the DNR here doesn't' bother me nearly as much as it normally would. 35mm film tends to resist the typical smudgy flat look that DNR often brings to the table on 16mm prints that the show mostly uses. Still, it is dumb that they applied DNR to begin with and the censoring is ridiculous. I have no idea why they decided to downgrade a perfectly good release but these companies clearly seem to think that this practice makes the material look better. On the plus side, for the movies at least, I actually think widescreen the way to go over 4:3. These movies were originally experienced in that format and to me That should be preserved.

[Googaliemoogalie]

Similar timed screenshots from Dragon Box: The Movies DVD release

Nice!
Looks like this Dragon Box release was used to create the BluRay remaster. The crop is the same

[Googaliemoogalie]

The Toie masters look far better. Colors look far more natural and less blown out and the detail is significantly higher, OFC Toie should have just put the streaming versions of these masters that didn't have DNR and weren't censored on disc and it would have completely blown away anything Funimation has ever done. That said the DNR here doesn't' bother me nearly as much as it normally would. 35mm film tends to resist the typical smudgy flat look that DNR often brings to the table on 16mm prints that the show mostly uses. Still, it is dumb that they applied DNR to begin with and the censoring is ridiculous. I have no idea why they decided to downgrade a perfectly good release but these companies clearly seem to think that this practice makes the material look better. On the plus side, for the movies at least, I actually think widescreen the way to go over 4:3. These movies were originally experienced in that format and to me That should be preserved.

I agree with you, I have no idea why nowadays DNR is still used to such an extent. With all the hate online, SOMEONE in the industry must know not to use it!
When you talk about censoring, what do you mean? what scenes? To be honest, I didn't rewatch the movies so I didn't notice.