A blessing for those who held out on the cropped and "psuedo" remastered season sets
REVIEW
Having my hand at watching the Dragon Box and the extra material it offers, I can say this is easily a great quality release from FUNimation. It's a near perfect release. Now let's break down what it has to offer.
Picture: Taken from the original 16mm film preserved in cold storage, the picture was quite perfectly clean, but with most old animation, it will suffer from some damage over time. Pony Canyon, the company that went through the remastering process, had all the new digital technology available to them to clean the footage frame by frame while reducing jitter and removing most of the grain. With FUNimation's Dragon Box Masters, most of this is quite evident. The picture is clean and looks great in motion. As most say, screenshots really don't do it justice. There were times where I did notice some minor inconsistencies with flesh tones. Somewhat pinkish in one frame, not so much in another or another episode. It's a minor problem and I suspect it...
Dragon Ball Z as I remembered
Like many, I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z. Unlike most, I grew up watching it through nth generation fansubbed VHS. For years I wanted a box set of DBZ that was presented the way I remember (With a more vibrant picture and clearer sound of course.). Funimation's earlier efforts were foolish to say the least, but it was understandable when you consider and understand Toei gave them very little to work with.
The Orange bricked sets released a few years ago was not how I remembered DBZ. The widescreen presentation was a major turn off. I heard about the Japanese Dragon Box sets but considering it was over $500 to order and it was strictly in Japanese I passed on them. Then the Otakon announcement hit and my mind was blown. After a back and forth email session with a friend with connections to Funimation I quickly preordered it.
Three months later, I received it. THIS is the DBZ I remembered! The picture and audio quality is impeccable to say the least. The...
FUNimation redeems itself for Orange Brick nonsense.
When I first heard the Dragon Box was coming to America, I thought it was some kind of lame joke. But it turns out that it is actually true. For those who don't know. The Dragon Box was released in Japan years ago which featured a true frame by frame restoration of the Dragon Ball Z anime. The original 16mm film was used to create the DVDs that were sold in Japan, so the original colors and frame alignment are being displayed correctly.
One thing about the Japanese Dragon Box release was the price. It actually came in 2 seperate boxes, each containing one half of the series, which retailed for about 100,000 yen, or about $850 USD for each box. So for the Japanese release, you would spend over $1700 USD for the entire series. Also keep in mind there is no subtitles on the Japanese release as well, just Japanese language only. Instead of 2 boxes, FUNimation has decided to split the set in 7 seperate sets. This will make it easier to purchase the entire series at a much lower...
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