Dragon Ball Z: Season 1 [Blu-ray]

I have been wanting to buy a release of Dragon Ball Z for a few years now and I think this release is great. I'd like to clear up what the set doesn't have that I would have liked to have known beforehand.- This has a Play All and a Marathon Play option, Play All, plays all the episodes on disc plus the credit openings/outros, and "Last time on dragon ball z!" intros. Marathon Play (which I think is really cool), only plays the credit opening and "Last Time on Dragon Ball Z!" once at the beginning of the disc and the outro credits at the end of the disc. This makes things a bit more cinematic and helps cut down time so you can sit an watch 10 episodes all in a row without having to skip ahead or watch something you've seen a bunch of times already. This cuts off about 45 minutes (Discs run about 4 hours through play all and 3 hours and 15 minutes through Marathon Play)- No English subtitles for English dialogue. The only subtitles available are for the Japanese dialogue, which I don't understand because on my bluray player if I select subtitles manually it gives me 2 english options, when I select the first option it displays the Japanese to English translation and for the second option nothing appears. I don't know if the other seasons fixed this or not but I found that the case with Season 1- For the first 2 seasons Bruce Faulconer hadn't done the music for Dragon Ball Z so what you get is the funimation score, from the Captain Ginyu saga (last few episodes of season 2 onward) Bruce Faulconers score takes the place of the second english option in the disc menus.- The Japanese intros Cha La Head Cha La and the outro song is only on the Japanese mono track, whereas the first audio option clearly says "English Dialogue with Japanese Music 5.1". The actual music during the episodes is from the Japanese version, just the intro and outro is different.- Also no "Rock the Dragon" song or opening on these sets.- I would have liked Vegetas first appearance (Red hair, green armor) to have been color corrected to match how he looks throughout the rest of the series.I consider myself a long time fan of Dragon Ball Z, I started watching Dragon Ball in Elementary School then I started collecting the VHS tapes. I eventually sold the tapes to buy the Orange Brick sets but relented at the last minute, once I found out about the awful cropping and colors. I got to borrow one from a friend and I found myself looking at all the imperfections and being critical of what got cut off from the cropping.Later on I heard about the Dragon Box sets, I bought one of them but was disappointed that they had no english music and had become out of print (out of print = rare = more $$$).I never actually heard of the level sets at the time they were being released, I don't think I had a bluray player at the time. If I had known I probably wouldn't have bought them, Averaging 17 episodes per release for 291 episodes, there would be 17 bluray sets, 17 bluray sets at $30 each would be $510 (I'm not sure how much the level sets were when they were released). $510 is a lot for a series with lots of filler episodes.When I first heard that funimation was yet again re-releasing the series I was hoping for a set that had both the Japanese and English music, 4:3 cropping, and used the bluray format for HD visuals. This set delivers on all fronts except for the original 4:3 cropping. I held off for a long time for this very reason thinking it to be like my experience watching the first season of the orange bricks. I finally decided to buy this recently and I'm glad I did.Yes this set is cropped, but it's not as badly cropped as the orange bricks. Funimation has done a decent job reframing the series this time around to include tops of heads and keeping what's important in the frame. I see a lot of reviewers bash this release for that reason alone but honestly once you start watching the episodes you don't notice anything is missing at all. It would have been great for the fans to receive the original 4:3 aspect ratio, but I find the new 16:9 cropped aspect ratio has ZERO impact on the story or how I remember it, so in my opinion it's a moot point, it would have been nice to have but a moot point nonetheless, though purists will say otherwise.I've seen another reviewer give it low reviews because of how the camera panning is sloppy and how in some scenes it looks like they just moved the camera to fit the frame in, I went in expecting to see this happening at every turn I've only seen this ONCE while watching the first season, it was in the third episode or something (When Raditz and Piccolo are talking about the Dragon Balls and someone points at Goku, the camera does a quick pan down at Goku laying there) and I haven't seen it happen again. I think they may have been going for a dramatic effect but it did kind of look like they just moved the camera to get the scene back in frame again. Also the grain from the original 16mm film source is gone which removes a lot of fine details and is noticeable when you watch the episodes.Overall this set looks amazing, more modern as the slipcover suggests. The colors pop but are not overly saturatedUnless you are watching and comparing with the original 4:3 film format, you will always find something wrong with this release, whether it be the cropping, film grain that was taken out, or the colors. Enjoy it for what it is, a cleaned up "HD restored" version of Dragon Ball Z that will look great on your HDTV, the story is the same as you remember it and nothing in this release suffers from how Funimation has decided to present it. Compared to the previous releases this is the best version of Dragon Ball Z that is out right now, superior cropping from the orange bricks and audio options from the Dragon Boxes (Not counting the level sets because they aren't going to continue production on these). If you decide to purchase this set you won't be disappointed. At the price I don't see why not, if you find the cropping is too much for you, don't buy the rest.I've also heard that this is the last release of Dragon Ball Z that Funimation is planning on doing, if this series does well, they will work on Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT bluray releases. Hopefully they decided to release these in the original 4:3 format. If Funimation does decide to rerelease DBZ it probably won't be for a few more years.My suggestion? If you ABSOLUTELY don't want this cropped version check out the blu-rays of Dragon Ball Z Kai. DBZ Kai is meant to follow the manga more closely and they cut out all the extraneous filler episodes that plagued the original DBZ.

I recently got into the Dragon Ball Series, and it's a very addictive series that I'm loving.Though there are many complaints against FUNimation's full season releases of Dragon Ball Z, I'm going to give my own perspective.First off, the thing I'd like to say is that I'd very much rather have a full screen release because cropping something initially done in fullscreen is just problematic. It irritated me greatly that they did that to the Original UK blu-ray sets of "Thunderbirds" back in 2008. But, I'm surprised at how well it transfers to widescreen when cropped properly (where as the Orange DVD sets are just awkwardly framed straight crops without any human touch). I'm somewhat pondering if the show was animated in open-matte (filming in fullscreen for a widescreen release) because if I weren't so video tech savy, I wouldn't know it were cropped. It may not be that far off since some of the movies were done in fullscreen but with widescreen cropping in mind.The second thing I hear is about over-saturation of colors. The colors do have quite a pop, but I wouldn't say they're all that over-saturated. But my definition of over-saturation may be different from others. The contrast and color tones are really good and make it feel as if the show were animated not that long ago (still without losing that cell animated 1980's feel). The Dragon Box sets may be in fullscreen, but the color tones really bother me there; the blues are too strong and the skin tones are too pink. Minimal to no color correction on those.The third is one I have to agree with, and that is the excessive DNR (Digital Noise Removal) in order to reduce grain on the film print. Now that concept I don't have a problem with, it's some of the unintended consequences. More subtle details are blurred/smeared due to DNR. You won't really notice the affects of it on close up shots or shots focused on the characters, but shots of characters from a far distance really seem to smear up and lose detail (even though those shots were slightly less detailed to begin with). And it takes a toll on the background paintings which are much more detailed. It doesn't bother me so much that it makes it impossible for me to watch, but as a video editor, it's kind of hard to ignore.So, I have to say, the final product of the Blu-Ray isn't perfect, but I'd still recommend it. It depends on how bad the cropping bothers you, and if you're a hardcore DBZ fan, you've probably already sold all your bone marrow for the Dragon Box sets, so I don't need to say that you probably won't want to be buying this set. In comparison to what I've seen of the Dragon Box sets, the final quality of this set is miles better.

Its clearly a second hand item. This should be listed... it's simply illegal to not be clear about that. It's also very expensive for a second hand product.

学生時代のアニメで懐かしい。

What can I say is DRAGON BALL Zeeeeeee! The best progress story telling in anime!

La primera temporada abarca desde la llegada de Raditz, la batalla contra Vegeta y el viaje a Namekusei. Son 40 capítulos con una calidad de video excepcional - tiene algo de recortes en comparación a la serie original pero no te pierdes de nada. El audio también es excelente aunque es exclusivamente en inglés o japonés, los subtítulos son realmente malos ya que no coinciden con el audio prácticamente en nada. DBZ es un clásico por lo que esta edición en bluray es muy recomendable.

I'm really not a big anime fan, but there's just something about the Dragon Ball series that keeps bringing me back. Maybe it's the rose coloured glasses of nostalgia talking, but I love this series. I feel like I'm the only 20-something year old woman who will say that. Not only was it odd for a little girl to like this sort of thing, but for a grown woman to enjoy Dragon Ball Z? Bizarre. But that is the beauty of this series. The sheer variety there is in the fanbase is amazing.Okay, so Dragon Ball Z season one picks up a few years after the end of the original Dragon Ball. If you didn't watch/read the original series, that's okay. A lot of people still aren't familiar with it. But it's worth checking out and you'll get a little more out of DBZ if you become acquainted with it. Goku is now married to Chi-Chi and they have a young son named Gohan. But the sunny reunions and introductions are soon dashed by the arrival of Goku's brother from outer space, Raditz. Goku soon finds out that he is a saiyan, an alien warrior originally sent to Earth to destroy it. After the defeat of Raditz we learn that two more powerful saiyans are on their way to Earth to find the dragon balls and wish for immortality. Thus begins the saiyan saga and the introduction of one of the most popular characters in the series, Vegeta.Now let's talks about the blu-ray itself.Starting with the packaging. I like it. Compared to the "orange brick" DVD sets, it's a lot better. Instead of that folding cardboard thing with the slip cover the DVD sets had, this has a slip cover over an actual plastic blu-ray case and the discs are far easier to access compared to the DVD sets.I have seasons two, four and nine in the "orange brick" DVD sets, so as far as picture quality goes on this release compared to the DVD, it's substantially better. Obviously this is blu-ray, so that's not a big shock. It has a real pop to it and this is probably the best DBZ has ever looked. But I found that at times it could be too bright. Sometimes characters almost appeared to be paper white in colour it was so bright at times. There were other times when there was a bright flash from an explosion or a ki blast of some sort and I had to squint because it was so bright. You may want to consider turning down the brightness on your television because of this.One of the biggest complaints about the orange brick DVDs is that they have these unnecessary black bars cropping the picture. That has been done away with, thank god.The sound is great. I have a surround sound system, so every explosion is just that much more extreme.You have three ways to watch the series. English voice cast with the original Japanese music, the English voice cast with the American music (this is what I watched) or the original Japanese voice cast with original Japanese music. Unfortunately for those of us who watched the show on YTV... there's no Ocean dub here. Of course, at this point in my life, I think I've gotten so used to the Funimation dub, that the absence of the Ocean dub doesn't even bother me.Marathon mode has returned from the DVD sets. This is an absolute godsend, especially now that the blu-ray can remember exactly where you left off if you decide you don't want to watch anymore. This is great for those late-night binge watching sessions everybody has once in a while.Overall, it's a good release. It's a good price. If you're a fan of the series or you're new to it, I think this is a great place to start and a good bang for your buck. I would definitely tell you to pick these blu-ray sets up instead of the orange brick DVD sets, if at all possible. Only complaint is that the slip cover was a little banged up when I received my copy from Amazon, but that's just me being picky and OCD about my stuff.