(Added 1/9/03 - Actually, it turns out that Funimation's DVD's are much better than I previously thought. I've learned a bit more about Japanese cursing and translations and can now tell that that's no longer a problem with Funimation's current and future DVD's. Still, as a fan and I'm not going to be satisfied until the DVD's are totally 100% uncut. With the high prices and total lack of extras and original cover art (just screen shots) Funimation has yet to win me over with three to four 96% uncut Japanese episodes per DVD.)

(Added 2/25/03 - Actually, the previews aren't Funimation's fault either- they're Toei's! For more on this check out VegettoEX's editorial section where I've submitted what are pretty much my final thoughts about the DBZ DVD's.)

Gen Fukunaga- "Plans at least for now, but not solidified, are that the DVD version will have a pure Japanese, subtitled version."

This statement was made by Gen Fukunaga back in 1999. At first fans of the original version were very excited at the news that the original Japanese version was hitting DVD's--now they could buy perfect quality episodes, even better than Japanese master tapes, remastered on DVD. Also, fans of the dub unaware of or without access to fansubs would finally get a chance to see the butchering that was being done. Funimation even went to the trouble of hiring Steven J. Simmons, an excellent translator with a strong background in Japanese and English who is also a great fan of Akira Toriyama and his many works. Better sound, better animation, better translations...ahh, what could there possibly be not to love?

However, when the first DVD, "Ginyu Assault", finally did come out it completely and utterly failed to failed to live up to it's much-hyped expectations (http://dbzuncensored.dbzoa.net/editorial/editorial17.html). The eyecatchers were eliminated, gone. The last episode updates, previews gone. The cursing? Censored. The character names? Funimationized...The music being remastered in stereo? Didn't happen. The credits being translated so fans could find out who really made the show? Nope, the paint/editing guy is more important to them than the people who actually made this show. As an extra slap in the face, they even recycle the same set of credits over and over and over and over so they won't have to be bothered to go to the small amount of trouble of cleaning up any other ones.

So why did Funimation screw up so much on their first DVD attempt?

Steven J. Simmons- "The only thing I know is what gets included on the master timecoded copies. I do not know why there is no 'preview' soundtrack included on those. I also wish the eyecatches were included. I was told it's being done for continuity's sake."

"Continuity's sake" eh? That means Funi's even censoring Japanese episodes provided by Toei! So Funi went to the expense of cutting out all the eyecatchers so that fans of the dub used to seeing "Tom" on Cartoon Network wouldn't find out that the original version used different things to introduce and end commercial breaks.

The last episode updates? Well, the English episodes had their last episode updates cut out so, of course, the Japanese episodes "had" to have theirs cut out as well. Funi's tv cut dubbed episodes all have last episode updates (although many of them are censored) so this was done for no real reason at all whatsoever. Even by Funi standards it makes no sense for them to spend time and money cutting out last episode updates. So these cuts all comes down to sheer stupidity and ignorance, since even the most hardcore of dubbed DBZ fans would be immensely (and rightfully so) pissed off at Funimation for lying and cheating them out of their money they spent on "uncut" English versions.

The previews? Funi's DVDs cut out all but one of the English previews, to get people interested in buying the next DVD, so there should be at, the very, very LEAST one Japanese preview. But...there isn't. Their "continuity" excuse doesn't fly here at all because they have no history of ever releasing any Japanese episodes at all before this time! Funi probably just doesn't want people to be able to watch the whole series in Japanese. After seeing the last Japanese episode they must be brought down to Earth and be forced to listen to the Monster Truck Announcer and his drastically-different-from-the-original narration to see what will be on the next DBZ episode.

The cursing? Gen Fukunaga doesn't want it there so by gosh, no cursing! I mean, what if a 6-year-old kid sees the word "shit" or even "asshole" appear on screen? He might become a serial killer! Or, in the worst case scenario, what if that 6-year-old's soccer mom happens to see it on the screen? The soccer mom would panic and call the newspapers who would make the story into national news. Then she'd writer letters of complaint to all of DBZ's CN advertisers and--oh wait, this is "uncut" subtitled Japanese DBZ, only legally available on official Funi DVD's. CN shows "cut" DBZ, so her complaint wouldn't matter to them. Well... she could mail store and retailers selling the Funi DVD's and--oh wait, those stores sell products much more graphic with worse cursing than any Japanese DBZ episode, they wouldn't care. Okay, so Fukunaga's just being a little pussy here as usual.

The names? Whoa whoa whoa--"Son Goku" is just--wayyyyyyy "too Japanese". After all, Funimation isn't here to "teach kids about Japanese culture" they just wanna bring you guys a really cool anime! The manga it's based on was written and drawn by a Japanese man for over a decade, and 1,000s of different Japanese people somehow worked on and influenced the creation of the anime series...so as you can see, Funimation's really got their hands full making sure that NO confusing and bizarre Japanese elements ever come through to keep you from enjoying the coolness of DBZ! Also, fans might be a bit pissed to find out that Funi cut Goku's family name, so that's gotta kept as big a secret as humanly possible.

The credits being untranslated? Two reasons. 1. They keep recycling the same ending sequence so they won't have to spend any money or time fixing up any other ending sequences. And 2. Even if they did use different ending sequences they still wouldn't translate the Japanese credits and give due respect to those who made this series. After all, they want to hog as much credit for "making" DBZ as humanly possible. Not even any of their movies credit all of the Japanese who worked on them, although Pioneer's 3 movies do (even on the English dubbed version--the Japanese cast comes before the English cast). So much for "continuity."

As for remastering the Japanese music in stereo...it's not that expensive or difficult and almost all the songs are already on cd in Japan, but Funi wants to spend as little time as humanly possible on improving the Japanese version because the hardcore fans are the ones they care the least about. Even though, as Chris Psaros pointed out, Funimation COULD sell the stereo-remastered music to Toei for big bucks when Toei remasters the whole series someday, Funimation has been too stupid to realize that. Whoops!

Flash forward 3 years...after endless complaints from DBZ fans, what has Funimation done to correct their past mistakes? Have they learned anything?

Well, they've stopped cutting out eyecatchers in the Japanese version for certain DVD's past the Freeza saga. To top it off they're even putting back in the eyecatchers they cut out for their dubbed cut version. Very nice. But rather humorously, they have added their own little "song" for the very brief eyecatchers in the English version so that they can get money "for every second it's played" and so that they can "save money" by not having to pay "royalties" for playing 7 seconds of music.

Hmm... the censorship of cursing has finally stopped. "Jackass", "darn", "heck", "dang" are gone and it seem like most everything since the Trunks Special hasn't had any censoring in it. While that is very great for us Japanese-version fans, Funi still needs to develop a spinal cord so they can finally be mature enough to correctly handle the level of cursing present in Dragon Ball Z in their "uncut" dub.

Well, at least the last episode updates are also finally back. Hey--Funimation actually possesses SOME intelligence! (Pats Gen Fukunaga on the head.) Good boy.

But the previews...well, there's still only only English preview and no Japanese previews. Why does Funimation cut this stuff out? They're even pissing off their 100% dub version fans they care the most about with their previewless "uncut" English versions.

The Funimationizing of character names has stopped almost completely. "Saiyan" is the English translation for "Saiyajin" and foreign words in Japan have an "o" at the end like "Kakarroto." Thus, "Kakarot" is also an okay translation for "Kakarroto," though "Kakarrot" would be even better. Other names are also doing fine- san, chan, kun and Son are back.

The credits? There's no excuse for not translating these or for recycling them repeatedly to save a bit of money, especially given that Funi's "got more money than we know what to do with." Gen Fukunaga's pretty damn lucky that there are so many different dubbed language versions of DBZ around the world because Toriyama and Toei would shit a brick if they watched and found out that Funi was ignoring and spitting upon the Japanese cast in even the subtitled episodes.

Hmm, still no stereo. It's not difficult or expensive to remaster the music to stereo, it can be done and, again, Funi could recoup any small expenses by selling the remastered music to Toei in the future. Oh well, this is just a minor detail, if Funi just did everything else then hardcore fans would have little to nothing to gripe about regarding the content of Funi's DVD's.

Overall, Funimation has improved immensely with their DVD's. Almost perfect even. However, they still haven't released a single 100% uncut Japan episode being as they cut the preview out of each one which is extremely annoying since that's really one of the only major problems left for them. Funimation's biggest problem, however, is the cost of its DVD's. The average price of a Funi DVD--$20. An average 3-4 episodes DVD anime price, but most anime series are about 26 episodes, not 291 episodes. The approximate number of DB DVD's there will be--45 (probably in 2004). The approximate number of DBZ DVD'S there will be--88 (2003). The approximate number of DBGT DVD'S there will be--21 (probably in 2004).

Total approximate number of DB-Z-GT DVD'S--154. 154 X $15 = $2310. 154 X $20= $3080. So the total will be $2310 - $3080 (not counting tax) to buy all of Funimation's "uncut" DVDs.

However, Funimation could easily put 10 episodes (or even more) on each DVD. So, for a 508 episode series, that'd be approximately 51 DVD's, less than 1/3 as many as they're planning on making. And all of those would only cost between $765 - $1020! Or rather, about $225 - $300 for all of DB (15 DVDs), about $435 - $500 for DBZ (29 DVD's) and about $90 - $120 for all of GT (6 DVD's). Imagine if Funimation were to price the DVDs like this--they would make a ton of money, definitely much, much more than what they're currently making with their ripoff prices. And with prices look those pretty much every fan, from rich to poor, would buy these. If Funi can look past their greed and stubborness enough to understand this then this actually is a very likely future scenario. Besides, DB DVD's aren't selling as good as DBZ DVD's anyway.

Still, Funi has stated that they flat-out refuse to go back and put in eyecatchers because "it would screw up the time codes." In other words, they don't want to have to spend the time or energy to actually correct their past failures and make their "uncut" dvds fully uncut so Funi probably feels the same way about putting back in missing last episode updates and reviews. But if they were to do this, and put back in Steve Harmon's original scripts for all the episodes and movies--boom, that'd pretty much be it for the DBZ fansub industry. This would be a much easier and much more profitable way of attacking the fansub industry rather than bribing rats to betray people and hiring lawyers to call up and mail people threatening to sue them. Plus, instead of generating vast amounts of anger and criticism this would do nothing but generate praise. Sides that, Funimation could be sued for all of their "uncut" DVD's which deceive customers, so doing this would also partially eliminate the potential for them to be involved in a massive and embarrasing lawsuit which they oh-so-desperately-deserve.

Not only that but even the most hardcore of the hardcore with complete DB-Z-GT fansub collections would go back and buy the episodes if they were done this way. If that were the case then the only other reason to buy fansubs would be to see the Japanese commericals. Funi, however, could even then create a huge number of extras by getting permission to put in the commercials and translate them, or do that only for the DBZ commercials.

But don't get your hopes up too much, this is just a Utopian view of what Funimation could do to make the perfect DVD set. And, of course, this is Funimation we're talking about. The chances of them actually putting 20 episodes per DVD (10 English and 10 Japanese) is unknown, especially since they still haven't released all of the Cell saga episodes yet (which all premiered back in 2000 and early 2001) and they won't be releasing them until sometime in 2003. I've mentioned before that Funi coming out with massive episodes on single DVD's is possible, but it's unlikely that this will happen until long after DBZ DVD sales finally plummet. Funi seems to be perfectly content with things exactly the way they are and it's very unlikely that they'll see the sales drop coming from miles away when it does hit. If Viz Manga or Pioneer were in control of the DBZ anime in America then this would already be happening and they'd already be making plans to heavily market and release the DVD sets for the inevitable sales drop. But with Funimation...we may have to wait until 2004 or 2005 for them to release an affordable DBZ DVD set. Even then it may still have 291 cut Japanese previews missing and at least 200 cut English previews missing, among Funimation's other massive DVD problems.

For now though, it appears that fansubs are still the only way to view DBZ truly uncut. But if you want to see a completely perfect-quality and uncut DVD set of all of DB-Z-GT come out then don't despair--Toei has stated that they have plans of releasing such a version in Japan at some point in the future. It'll probably come out shortly before the live-action DBZ movie to help build up new interest and renew old interest. The only problem with their planned version right now is that they have no plans to include English subtitles...yet. But English is a popular language to study in Japan and it'd be VERY easy (and cheap) for them to include English subtitles. If fans can petition Toei strongly enough about including Mr. Simmons's English translations in their version, and make it known that they would import such a version in a heartbeat, then perhaps they can get Toei to accomplish with the Dragon Ball series what Funimation has failed to do--make a pure Japanese, subtitled version.

- The Great Saiyaman