Original Dragon Ball anime to be released on Blu Ray in Spain

[KBABZ]

Bumping this, we have screenshots!

https://twitter.com/SelectaVision/statu ... 68/photo/1

Not exactly a good look IMO using interlaced DVD footage.

Spoiler:

[Ajay]

Absolute rubbish.

Fans could do and have done better just using the JP DBOX.

[Scsigs]

Oh fuck! I didn't even notice before that the backgrounds in the BR screenshots are water-colored! Fucking hell, WHY can we never get an actually GOOD lasting release of these shows?

[KBABZ]

Also looks like they stretched the image. Compare the log in the first shot, or the headlight on Bulma's bike in the second shot.

[Robo4900]

So the upscale release from the company we know puts out shitty upscales, is shitty.

I am so shocked.

[PremiumSalt]

And there it is.

Ugh. Can't we have anything nice? Is this franchise just cursed to never have a good release?

[Scsigs]

And there it is.

Ugh. Can't we have anything nice? Is this franchise just cursed to never have a good release?

If you're talking the older shows, no. Not until Toei actually remasters the series & gets a good studio to do it for them & that won't ever come because Toei's not actually interested in doing that. It took them a decade too long to remaster the movies & the TV specials & that was after FUNi's attempts to do so. The shows, minus GT, are just too long & they wanna do things on the cheap, which never mix. To put things in perspective, Star Trek: TNG took over $2 million to get remastered in HD, which involved redone SVFX, new CGI to replace elements they didn't have anymore, as well as scanning in & cleaning up the footage & that's for 178 episodes. As well as remixing the audio into 7.1. DBZ has 123 more episodes than that, then you add on DB's episodes. It'd cost probably close to that to give the shows a proper remaster, including GT. It'd be worth it, but is that an investment Toei's willing to make? Unfortunately, no, it's not.

[AnimeMaakuo]

Exactly as I predicted.

[Robo4900]

And there it is.

Ugh. Can't we have anything nice? Is this franchise just cursed to never have a good release?

If you're talking the older shows, no. Not until Toei actually remasters the series & gets a good studio to do it for them & that won't ever come because Toei's not actually interested in doing that. It took them a decade too long to remaster the movies & the TV specials & that was after FUNi's attempts to do so. The shows, minus GT, are just too long & they wanna do things on the cheap, which never mix. To put things in perspective, Star Trek: TNG took over $2 million to get remastered in HD, which involved redone SVFX, new CGI to replace elements they didn't have anymore, as well as scanning in & cleaning up the footage & that's for 178 episodes. As well as remixing the audio into 7.1. DBZ has 123 more episodes than that, then you add on DB's episodes. It'd cost probably close to that to give the shows a proper remaster, including GT. It'd be worth it, but is that an investment Toei's willing to make? Unfortunately, no, it's not.

You're inflating how difficult this is to a ridiculous degree. Dragon Ball, Z, and GT don't need any recreated effects, the materials don't exist to remix it into anything beyond the original mono or stereo sound, and Toei's materials for Dragon Ball/Z/GT are actually in very good condition, and all very easily accessible in their vaults.

It would still be expensive to remaster all 508 episodes, but unlike TNG, they wouldn't literally be rebuilding the entire show from its base elements, basically doing an entire post-production process on an entire 7-season TV show again. All Toei have to do is scan the film in and clean it up properly. Which is expensive and time-consuming, and Toei probably don't see any real benefit to doing it for the Japanese market (which means they won't do it), but... Seriously, man, the TNG comparison is just utterly ridiculous.

... But yes, Toei are not doing a HD remaster any time soon. The best we will likely ever have is the DBoxes, as ultimately crappy as they are.

[VDenter]

YIKES.

Not even as good as the Dragon Boxes.

What a fucking joke.

[Scsigs]

You're inflating how difficult this is to a ridiculous degree. Dragon Ball, Z, and GT don't need any recreated effects, the materials don't exist to remix it into anything beyond the original mono or stereo sound, and Toei's materials for Dragon Ball/Z/GT are actually in very good condition, and all very easily accessible in their vaults.

It would still be expensive to remaster all 508 episodes, but unlike TNG, they wouldn't literally be rebuilding the entire show from its base elements, basically doing an entire post-production process on an entire 7-season TV show again. All Toei have to do is scan the film in and clean it up properly. Which is expensive and time-consuming, and Toei probably don't see any real benefit to doing it for the Japanese market (which means they won't do it), but... Seriously, man, the TNG comparison is just utterly ridiculous.

... But yes, Toei are not doing a HD remaster any time soon. The best we will likely ever have is the DBoxes, as ultimately crappy as they are.

True, it probably wouldn't be $2 million for the entirety of DB, pre-Kai, to be remastered in HD properly, but it'd still be a lot for 508 episodes of a cartoon on film to be properly remastered to clean up the film & present the episodes in a good master. Star Trek: TNG also suffered from not having a master film stock that they could scan in for each episode, so they had to dig out all of the film reels in their archives & re-edit them from the ground up, though they couldn't find EVERY bit of it, since there's a few times small portions of a few episodes weren't available in the film stock, so they had to splice in color-corrected VHS footage from the DVDs, which they did pretty well in doing. So, it's not exactly a 1:1 comparison, but remastering ANYTHING isn't easy or cheap. Hell, Square Enix had to rebuild Kingdom Hearts 1 from the ground to remaster it for the HD collections they did, same with several of the 3D Final Fantasy games, so there's different levels of remastering something depending on what it is (&, I know video games aren't the same thing as film, but that was just something that came to my mind).

Anyways, remastering DB would be a long, arduous, expensive process that no one actually wants to do, despite how many times they do it. Like, FUNi got so close 8 years ago, but we'll never get that level of care again & it's sad.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

So it was an upscale after all?

What was the point of Selecta Vision trying to get better masters from TOEI if they weren't going to take this remaster seriously?

[KBABZ]

So it was an upscale after all?

What was the point of Selecta Vision trying to get better masters from TOEI if they weren't going to take this remaster seriously?

I have a theory about that actually. In the DVD screenshots you'll notice very heavy combing that isn't present in most other official releases (a few spots in the Dragon Boxes aside). I suspect Selecta Vision wanted a new master from Toei that didn't have this issue.

[kei17]

If Selecta Visión is telling the truth, then this is the final nail in the coffin of the possibility of an HD remaster from Toei themselves.

In recent years, Toei has never HD-scanned any of their contents produced in 16mm except for Kai whereas it has been becoming standard practice among anime/tokusatsu industry to rescan and remaster old 16mm film contents in HD when producing Blu-ray releases as the film scanning and remastering technologies have advanced enough that 16mm film is now considered worth HD-remastering. Toei used to HD remaster anime shows produced in 16mm like Fist of the North Star, and now they don't. It's the absolute opposite of the trend in the industry! You know why? It's because they have learned that they can cheat consumers by promoting an upscaled release as "HD remaster."

From What I know, they started this fuckery when they released Galaxy Express 999 on Blu-ray in 2014, and they at least made an excuse about why it ended up just an upscale; They said the original film masters were missing and they had no choice but to upscale the digibeta masters produced for the DVD release. I do think it's total bullshit, though. Probably it still sold well thanks to the popularity of the series, and then they thought that consumers wouldn't care any difference between true HD remaster and upscale when it comes to 16mm footage and it's a waste of money to bother to rescan 16mm film. It's the label of "HD" what actually sells. From then on, they always do the same with any other non-35mm TV series, now even with no single excuse to justify not to rescan film masters!

Toei is a faithless greedy miser. They make Funimation look somewhat faithful.

[eledoremassis02]

Unboxing (no footage, just packing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XACd0Mv3F-c

[Mosaic]

From What I know, they started this fuckery when they released Galaxy Express 999 on Blu-ray in 2014, and they at least made an excuse about why it ended up just an upscale; They said the original film masters were missing and they had no choice but to upscale the digibeta masters produced for the DVD release. I do think it's total bullshit, though. Probably it still sold well thanks to the popularity of the series, and then they thought that consumers wouldn't care any difference between true HD remaster and upscale when it comes to 16mm footage and it's a waste of money to bother to rescan 16mm film. It's the label of "HD" what actually sells. From then on, they always do the same with any other non-35mm TV series, now even with no single excuse to justify not to rescan film masters!

Toei is a faithless greedy miser. They make Funimation look somewhat faithful.

What I don't understand is why they did a true HD remaster for Mazinger Z, but not for any of their other series.

[DrBriefsCat]

I'm wondering if Toei provided their masters upscaled to SelectaVision. It's not the worst upscale I've seen, judging from the stills. Still, Toei has no excuse not to remaster their old shows when they still have the film.

[kei17]

From What I know, they started this fuckery when they released Galaxy Express 999 on Blu-ray in 2014, and they at least made an excuse about why it ended up just an upscale; They said the original film masters were missing and they had no choice but to upscale the digibeta masters produced for the DVD release. I do think it's total bullshit, though. Probably it still sold well thanks to the popularity of the series, and then they thought that consumers wouldn't care any difference between true HD remaster and upscale when it comes to 16mm footage and it's a waste of money to bother to rescan 16mm film. It's the label of "HD" what actually sells. From then on, they always do the same with any other non-35mm TV series, now even with no single excuse to justify not to rescan film masters!

Toei is a faithless greedy miser. They make Funimation look somewhat faithful.

What I don't understand is why they did a true HD remaster for Mazinger Z, but not for any of their other series.

That's because Mazinger Z was produced in 35mm. Toei Animation switched to 16mm film for TV anime productions in the middle of the '70s, so the most part of Great Mazinger and all of Grendizer were produced in 16mm.

[AnimeMaakuo]

Toei is a faithless greedy miser. They make Funimation look somewhat faithful.

You're pretty greedy yourself, wouldn't you say?

Regarding Toei Animation, nothing has, or ever will change that. They're more interested in making money from suckers than doing something for the fans who made them a fortune.

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard!"

- John F. Kennedy

Back then, people had some kind of sense of mission. They wanted to achieve the impossible, dream the unimaginable, and leave a legacy behind for the next generation that would follow in their footsteps. In the electronics industry, companies like JBL, Pioneer, Sansui, Marantz, Onkyo, McIntosh, etc., would build the most expensive equipment (even if it was a financial risk) that would withstand the test of time. They would include detailed literature on how their amplifiers and speakers were measured, designed, assembled, packed, etc. People took pride in their work and were proud to stand behind their product. But those days are over...

Nowadays business’ are competing for the cheapest made product with the flashiest packaging to fool people with. Their stance is, “we made the cheapest product possible and made the most money ... and the average folk are okay with it.” It’s true that most fans of the show simply don’t care about demanding the very best. They will continue to buy garbage and support garbage because that’s what they’re told to accept. Sad, isn’t it?

I’ve decided to accept our fate with this franchise and move on with my life.

[Robo4900]

You're pretty greedy yourself, wouldn't you say?

As I recall, you've claimed to have obtained everything he has, so if it really bothers you, and you weren't just trying to make a show of yourself, you'd do something about it, rather than just take cheap shots at an insightful member of this community. And don't give me some crap about "people won't use my materials so I'm done with it" like you've done whenever anyone else has confronted you on this in previous threads. You took Kei's materials and sold them to people like Enigmo, for your own ends. That's how this started, and that's how it progressed for multiple years. You're in this for yourself, your own greed, so... Pot, meet kettle.

Regarding Toei Animation, nothing has, or ever will change that. They're more interested in making money from suckers than doing something for the fans who made them a fortune.

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard!"

- John F. Kennedy

Back then, people had some kind of sense of mission. They wanted to achieve the impossible, dream the unimaginable, and leave a legacy behind for the next generation that would follow in their footsteps. In the electronics industry, companies like JBL, Pioneer, Sansui, Marantz, Onkyo, McIntosh, etc., would build the most expensive equipment (even if it was a financial risk) that would withstand the test of time. They would include detailed literature on how their amplifiers and speakers were measured, designed, assembled, packed, etc. People took pride in their work and were proud to stand behind their product. But those days are over...

Nowadays business’ are competing for the cheapest made product with the flashiest packaging to fool people with. Their stance is, “we made the cheapest product possible and made the most money ... and the average folk are okay with it.” It’s true that most fans of the show simply don’t care about demanding the very best. They will continue to buy garbage and support garbage because that’s what they’re told to accept. Sad, isn’t it?

I’ve decided to accept our fate with this franchise and move on with my life.

It's very easy to look at a time you never lived through and think it was great, or even the same for a time you did live through, a long time ago. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.
But y'know what nostalgia really is? It's not yearning for a better time, it's yearning for a time when you were less aware of the shit that depresses and annoys you today. A time of blissful ignorance in your life. And much as many people do teeter on the cusp of it, you can't become more ignorant with time, so that time could never be recaptured.

Some people are nostalgic for a time when climate change wasn't a depressing reality they are forced to confront on a regular basis. But today, here and now, we're greener than we have been in a long time, and things are ever improving in that regard.
Some people are nostalgic for a time when politics didn't seem quite so outwardly unkind on the surface. But with the incredible abilities we have now to be aware of such things, we're able to vote against the fearmongerers, the ones who spread hate, etc.
Some people are nostalgic for a time before civil rights, when other people didn't take issue with their racist attitudes (such as the '60s and earlier, JFK's time). And those people are racists who can't get with the times; we're better off being aware of racism, and fighting against it. And further on the '60s line of thinking: We're also better off knowing about asbestos, and botchalism in improperly-sealed cans.
We've made a better world from being more aware of depressing realities.

As for the specific examples you cite: The only reason you're aware of these high-quality speaker systems it that those are the only ones people are still aware of from their respective time periods. The ones that have stayed in memory, stood the test of time. Similarly, a lot of people like to say that anime from 20-30 years ago is far better than anime now. Which is simply not true. It's just that if you're watching an anime from 20-30 years ago, chances are you're watching one that came recommended, one that has stood the test of time. If you're watching a new anime, it's a crapshoot whether it'll actually be good. Maybe you'll happen upon a modern classic like My Hero Academia. Or maybe you'll happen upon some shovelware shit that no one will talk about in a couple of decades.
See also: Americans saying British TV is better than American TV.
See also: Brits saying American TV is better than British TV.
See also: "Movies were better 20-40 years ago"
See also: "Video games were better 10-20 years ago"

It's all a point of view. Either you see all the awful things we're aware of, and you get depressed and want to run away like a coward, or you recognise it's always been there, nothing has actually changed, and assuming the subject of this is some form of injustice or other wrong being done, the mature, adult thing to do is to stand up and do the right thing.
But hey, some people can't handle certain depressing truths. And y'know what, as long as you're not actively getting in the way of people doing the right thing, you do you. Though I would appreciate it if you'd at least be honest about your position. For someone who's "decided to accept our fate", you sure love to droan on about how woe is us in every thread applicable. People who don't care generally don't tend to take every opportunity to speak at length about how much they don't care. Frankly, I'm sick of it; if you're really ready to "move on with [your] life", then go do that. Your faux-melancholy nonsense adds nothing to the various discussions you keep latching onto as a means to repeatedly say your piece.