DBZ movies review question

[Kyo28]

Originally Posted by kndy

The Dragon Ball Z films with the English dub tend to have good directional when it comes to audio and so, many of the later DBZ films sound really good. But I can't say so much about the Japanese track.

I grew up watching the DBZ stuff from Japan and like yourself, I would love to have better audio versions but this is not solely just DBZ but for many titles.

Not sure about the reviewer on blu-ray.com but even when I did my reviews for the DBZ film blu-rays, I put more stock into the English versions because I know that for many anime releases non-Bandai related, they are not going to restore the audio for older anime.

With that being said, as a guy who has been reviewing anime since 1993, you know as well that the Japanese sub vs. dub debate has been ongoing for many years. When we reviewed VHS and LD's back then, we knew that many of the people who viewed anime at the time watched it in Japanese. Even back during the old anime con years of clubs and early years of anime cons, we'd watch and review the Japanese-only (no sub) version.

But times have changed, those who do purchase anime like watching their anime via English dubs. While those who appreciate the original Japanese language version are more apt to downloading fan subs or watching the official industry releases (like the "Naruto Shippuuden" on hulu and now "One Piece").

Second, where Bandai in Japan had spent a good amount of money with the work they did on the Akira Blu-ray release, a lot of the anime industry and what they license put their efforts into the dub release. And if you're going to invest that much into an anime, you got to make sure people are buying it. Where "Akira" is appreciated by non-hardcore anime fans, as you probably know, the anime industry is not exactly doing that well right now. Even in Japan, where Blu-ray sales are low, would investing in re-recording the films be worth the investment?

But I can understand your position. I would love to have classic anime digitally remastered with great picture quality and audio quality. Heck, I'm hoping at Anime Expo we will hear some exciting announcements of classic anime like MS Gundam (the UC films) released on Blu. But because they are quite old, I'm not expect them to bring back all the anime voice talent like they did with the Gunbuster film.

Nor do I expect too much of an audio upgrade with the original Japanese tracks from classic anime but I do expect a bit more for the English audio version which the anime companies in the US have a bit more control.

Thanks. This made for an interesting read and you make some very good points, especially from the economic side of things.

Sigh, I guess I should get used to being a minority in watching anime in it's original language. In fact, in the DVD days, I never bought US releases, just Japanese releases. Now that I have a region A BD player, I thought I might as well buy US releases of Anime, as they are cheaper than their Japanese counterparts (not to mention some aren't released in Japan yet, like the DBZ movies).

To my dismay, I came to the hard realization that:
1) US releases tend to completely neglect the Japanese audio tracks
2) title screens, openings and endings are often edited (removal of Japanese text and replaced with US text, even in the credits where US voice actors are credited before the Japanese voice actors )

I guess it all comes down to this for me now: either shell out more money for the Japanese release and get it 'as it should be' or save out quite some money but get a handicapped US version.

For the DBZ movies I'm really sitting on the fence as I'm sure later down the road (perhaps a lot later), we'll see a more expensive Japanese release of these movies, especially if Dragon Ball Kai gets good viewer ratings. Question is if they'll invest in a better Japanese audio track or not as well as extra's or manual cleaning up of the images.

Decisions, decisions ...