Movie Square

Please SEE my iPOD photos added in the IMAGE GALLERY of this DVD. Let me know what you think =)

I just got this set at Best Buy for 19.99 and 2 days later Amazon decides to FINALLY drop the price to 19.99. WHAT ARE THE ODDS? I was waiting and waiting 4 Amazon 2 drop the price cause all their other DBZ box sets were purchased by me at 19.99. Anyways I’m so glad i can finally experience the 4th season because Frieza was really dragging on. And the fact he was voiced by a WOMAN was even more annoying. Ever since these box sets came out i have become a fan for life because i couldn’t enjoy this show when it aired as i started watching when it was so deep in the episode count that i didn’t bother to catch up. Anyways the series is great and as i was watching the Frieza saga i realized how great the picture clarity was and it almost didn’t seem like this was a cartoon animated in the late 80’s early 90’s. Just beautifully drawn. But when i started watching season 4 i noticed all the SLOPPY artwork and just bad drawings. I was sooo repulsed by what i saw, absolutely SLOPPY!!!! I only caught like 3 episodes but hopefully the entire series wont be this way. It says digitally remastered and restored footage and from what i saw i thought it was a cartoon from the 1970’s. This didnt exist in the first 3 box sets so i was shocked it was on this one. I cant wait for season 5.

Also please check out my photos that i posted of season 4, its the ones with the iPod on it. ENJOY =)

Rating: 5 / 5

I’d give this more like a 2 1/2 but I’m being generous. Okay this review is for Draognball Z season 4. I’m not gonna review the DVDs themselves but the content, the dub, and some things that have to be addressed.

Content And Dub

- There are 31 episodes available. That’d be good if you didn’t have to take 12 of those episodes out. The Garlic Jr. Filler and the two episodes before the three year gap are on this set. So that brings it down to 19 episodes that are really worth your time. Episode count wise, I’d say that this is the worst set. And the numbers are getting lower and lower as time goes. But oh well

- The video is still widescreen and it still has hairs and junk that were supposed to have been digitally cleaned up. There’s actually more junk on these dvds than the old single discs that Funi released long ago. Way to go Funimation! Overall the video looks okay but I’d say that the integrity of the film looked bad. Whenever characters talk and move across the screen things look like they’re going to fall apart. That’s what Funimation gets for removing the grain on a 15+ year old Japanese cartoon. The widescreen doesn’t help, there are still times when it’s annoying to watch. For instance Garlic Jr.’s mouth is moving and you can’t see it. Basically things that were originally part of the scene get cropped out slightly, but enough to annoy. It’s very disappointing. The widescreen is still not purposeful and was a stupid decision but hey Funimation and Dragonball don’t mix.

- The three audio tracks from the previous three are still present. Japanese with flawless subtitles, English with Original BGM and English with Dub BGM. The Japanese sound is mono and the sound quality is poor in comparison to the dub audio. That’s probably the only thing that the dub has that’s better than the original, but the sound on the Japanese track still holds up well. Everything comes through and there’s not a time when the sound drops out or anything. The English w/original BGM is in 5.1 and the English w/dub music is 2.0 stereo. The dub itself isn’t very good. I actually got a good laugh out of it. When you play the dub with the original BGM you notice all of the bad/poor/ and overacting moments and the terrible dialogue more than if you heard it with the dub music. Oh, yeah the revised dialogue and redubbing are terrible and completely unprofessional. Why’s that? The only redubbed roles are Vegeta until the end of Garlic Jr., some of Garlic Jr.’s henchmen, and Maron. The overall product sounds terrible when old voices are clashing with new ones. I can’t explain it without having sound samples but it’s just a big mess. And there is no revised dialogue at all. There are no new words spoken at all even by the newly voiced people. Overall the dub gets a 2/5. It’s been going downhill since Season 2 and re-dubbing is self defeating if you don’t redub the main characters and when you don’t fix any incontinuity errors that needed to be fixed.

Things That Funimation Should Stop Doing Before Some People Get Upset

-Stop showing trailers that say that you are using the original Japanese film master. You aren’t! You are using your old master and you sent it through an automated machine and cropped the top and the bottom without even checking to see if things were really cleaned up and if the widescreen was properly framed for all of the scenes. Stop treating the people who you want to buy these sets and the people that don’t want to buy these sets like idiots.

-Stop showing trailers on TV and online that don’t mention widescreen and are sometimes in fullscreen.

-Stop saying the the dialogue is revised and that there are redubbed voices when nothing that needed to be changed has changed. In this season alone we still have Tao as a general in the RRA and Gero as the leader of the RRA which are far obviously from true. Not only that, but it’s quite offensive now to continue letting things like that slip by. We’ve all seen Dragonball and you, Funimation, in your dub have said that Tao is a hired assassin and the Commander Red is the leader of the RRA not Gero. That’s just carelessness to let something like that slip under your feet now. To do a proper redub you go back and redo everything that was a mistake or wrong and redub everybody’s voices and not just a few characters or have some character’s redubbed then having the non-redubbed voice in a later episode.

-Conclusion

You get what you pay for. $30 bucks for 31 episodes with a minimal redub and a shody remaster that didn’t have to take place at all. These sets were decent at first even with all of the errors and widescreen but now it’s getting ridiculous. Funimation’s unprofessionalism with the advertising of these sets is getting old and they should start owning up to what they’ve done rather than going around and pretending like nothing’s wrong.

3 out of 5
Rating: 3 / 5