It's been almost 10 years since the original dub of the Saiyajin saga came to syndication, back then it was under the video distribution of Pioneer and the television syndication jurisdiction of the dreaded Saban. On the whole, the editing was very unfortunate because a lot of great things were lost at the expense of whittling into standard American TV seasons. Basically 67 episodes became 53, 35 of those episodes becoming the Saiyajin's 26 chopped up dub. There was everything, merged episodes, an entirely chopped episode, gallons of digital paint, and of course the horrible dialogue rewriting to cover up death, heartbreak, ect. But now, almost 10 years later, things are way different...

At the unfortunate loss of the Ocean Group (notable Scott McNeil, Ian Corlett, and quite a few others), we are now blessed with a darn near 100% Uncut DVD only release of the Saiyajin and Namek sagas. The first ever Ultimate Uncut DVD is what I am reviewing here and now. I will first say that going into this, I'd had no idea what to expect with all the talk going around. But I now know, as will all you I hope.

First off, comes the DVD. The main menu is a pure still image of Goku with Raditz and Piccolo in the upper corner, which is just a tad annoying considering the other Z DVDs get nicely animated menus. The Extras include: A Goku Vs. Vegeta Featuretee, which is a VERY nice and REAL extra provided, as it covers 7 separate interview steps with Sean Scemmel (VA of Goku), Chris Sabat (VA of Piccolo), Rob Bricken (some random dubbie from an Anime magazine), and various random DBZ fans from some conventions, an extremely sweet feature and I hope they do a similar one with Gohan (as he is, in my opinion, the single most important character in Z). The next extra is "The Nimbus Cloud" feature which while quite badly accurate sometimes, pops up a separate subtitle track where a little 2-D cloud shows what was edited, sped/slowed down, or cut. After that is a nice little Trivia section which I must admit only lost one because it was a tricky question, and a couple of the questions provide some nice eye candy (one answer result shows a clip of the next redub DVD, and another from the uncut version of Gohan going SSJ2), though all answer results are Dub-only. And finally, we get nice ol' trailers, which I must admit were by far the Best FUNi could have treated us, especially Gunslinger Girl's.

Now we go to the actual episodes, we get 4 separate audio tracks and 2 separate video angles. English Uncut 5.1 Surround Sound, English Uncut 2.0 Stereo, Spanish-Mexican Mono, and Original Japanese Mono. There are NO subtitles for the Spanish-Mexican version which is very unfortunate, but Mr. Steve Simmons is all out 100% in the Japanese subs department. I LOVED every episode, and felt so bad for Gohan in Episode 1 when he got lost in the woods, the music in the part where he's stuck over the river really puts the English's to shame. The only things possibly altered are all the theme and ending songs for the episodes, which have all their own respective Kanji censored away (remember GT 64?). And there is absolutely NO next-episode preview, not even a dub-only for the DVD's last episode like previous Z DVDs. But the episodes more than make up for it, and are somewhat re-mastered so they aren't as worse showing as the 1996 versions.

The episodes themselves, here is the basic plot: Earth's peace is forever shattered by the hostile arrival of an alien mercenary whose evil knows no bounds. This new menace's campaign of terror begins by ruthlessly beating Earth's greatest hero within an inch of his life. Complicating matters is the shocking revelation that there is more to this sinister invader than meets the eye. This is the story is its full uncut glory. This is the ultimate Dragon Ball Z!

And it couldn't be any more right on those last two sentences, as the Saiyajin saga really does build up the series. Seeing Raditz in his purely cold-blooded demeanor is just awesome, and no more cover up lines by FUNi or Saban (though we have to wait for the next release concerning "another dimension). Whilst the original dub Episode 3 ended with Radtiz and Goku about to be impaled by Piccolo, this original Episode 3 ends with Raditz just now elbowing Goku and Piccolo. The music while vastly improved in the new redub, still doesn't touch the original Japanese version, and they're even borrowing Ocean lines for the redub, but for these very early ones isn't as bad as one could think (as Ocean's dub of the first 4/6 were originally pretty fair in dialogue). And for all the things this DVD provided, the 3 separate languages, all of the fabulous extras, the original Uncut Japanese first 3 episodes, it was a mere $15 while a year and a half ago would have been $25.

I hope this helped anyone out in deciding if they want this or not, as I'm NOT going to recommend it as some may be disappointed at FUNi's source of video quality material (as in, not using the beautiful re-mastered from the Dragon Box). Good luck on your deciding, and here are the 25 things I personaly find good and bad about this first "Ultimate Uncut Special Edition" redub DVD:

GOOD:

#1; The 5.1 English version is now listed as an "extra" instead of a separate version on the case.

#2; Steve Simmons is back with his fantastic translations for the Japanese version.

#3; ALL of the extras definitely kick ass, even the trailers, a damn well earning 10/10.

#4; The Spanish-Mexican version is included, making its anticipated return from Movie 5.

#5; The theme songs, credits songs, and both of the eye catchers are all retained in both angles: Angle 1 being for the English 5.1 and regular English versions, and Angle 2 for the Japanese and Spanish-Mexican versions.

#6; The new English theme is certainly better than "Rock the Dragon".

#7; The English credits, while having an entirely different look and done by Mark Menza, actually sound quite nice and sound somewhat similar to the Japanese ending but with a lot less lyrics.

#8; The DVD's versions have been digitally re-mastered somewhat so there's not as much grain and age showing in the video quality.

#9; The script, whilst using more Ocean grabbing than direct Japanese translations did have its moments in all 3 episodes, and unlike Veggeto Ex said, its not an exact using of the Ocean version. And besides, some of the lines from the Ocean version (such as Raditz's: "What a fragile breed of people") are seemingly direct translations so it's not as bad as he made it out.

#10; The music in the English version, while not the same as the Japanese version, is mountains above what the English version had been before this redub.

#11; The audio for the Japanese and Spanish-Mexican versions, while still in Mono, have no doubt been cleaned up and made as close to Stereo as one could hope.

#12; The video quality for the Japanese/Spanish-Mexican versions and the English 5.1/English regular versions are now in separate angles instead of having the theme, recap, episode title, and credits on an entirely different video track, which would used to make it a pain to switch languages on the other Z and GT DVDs (since the theme etc. would be unchanged: example being if you'd be watching the English version and wanted to switch to the Japanese version, then you could do so but the theme, recaps of the episodes, episode title, and credits would remain in English, but all that has been fixed). Oh, I forgot to mention that because of the angle option, there's no more annoying slight pauses after the episode titles, yoo hoo!

BAD:

#13; FUNi STILL insists on having the music changed for their redub, which will annoy me to no end despite the decent effort they apparently put into these first 3 episodes.

#14; The script follows seemingly more Ocean than Japanese which at this point doesn't seem to be really a bad thing considering Ocean did a decent enough job on the first 4 eps (6 now), but what about the rest of the Saiyajin and Namek sagas!? Will we have to endure "another dimension" and "parachutes and city evacuations" galore?

#15; The Angle with the theme and credits for the Japanese/Spanish-Mexican version unfortunately has all of the Kanji censored away, which I suppose is FUNi's way of saying "You want them translated, here ya'll go, now you don't need them at all", that seriously pissed me off.

#16; The music, while very respectably re-mastered for both Japanese and Spanish-Mexican versions is cleaned up, still remains in Mono.

#17; The Spanish-Mexican version gets NO subtitles, that's right, you heard me right. They put them in for Movie 5 but I guess were too friggin' lazy to do them for even the first 3 episodes, I guess at times like this memories from Spanish class would be nice.

#18; The English Angle's credits remain to only thank a handful of staff for the Japanese version and completely ignoring the people who worked on the Spanish-Mexican version.

#19; There is absolutely NO "next-episode preview", I have no clue why when they could have at the minimum least gave us a dub-only "next-EP preview" for the DVD's final episode, and slipped it in extras as a "fifth extra", which would have made me perfectly content (considering they get the previews with no audio from Toei). I mean they're trying to make these DVDs as "uncut" as possible, yet they leave out the one thing that in my eyes, would have made it a perfectly uncut DVD in the American market and give it a 10.5/10 in the extras rating. I know it'd be a dub-only preview for simply the dvd's final episode, but it'd of been better than nothing.

#20; The "Follow the Nimbus" cloud, while a nice little feature, gets quite crazy sometimes. For one thing it's on a separate subtitle track all-together so you can't watch a version with subs (which for the Spanish-Mexican has no option). And also, the cloud appears on a lot of things that weren't taken out of the Ocean version, or I'm hoping just had the frames sped up, slowed down, and/or something in the distant background being paint-censored.

#21; There's no prize for winning the "DBZ Trivia", I was hoping for bloopers of the English VAs like the first "Fruits Basket" had gotten, but alas, it was not meant to be.

#22; The DVD gets, while a little cool, an intro commercial which kind of bugged me since they already have a trailers area in "extras".

#23; All the menus, while containing redub music, are non-animated. But it doesn't really bug me, I mean it's not too bad.

#24; No more Scott McNeil VAing Piccolo, I miss him so much when he did Piccolo, and now were all stuck with Chris Sabat's "Lieutenant Worf" impersonation. It's not fair!!!

#25; Probably the most important factor, is the style of digital re-mastering FUNi promised, because while it has improved from the 1996 Ocean version, it doesn't even touch the beautiful work done to the "Dragon Box Edition" from Toei. But I can live with what FUNi gives us, and despite promising myself I would wait till a box-set comes out, I'll have to break it because these episodes in Japanese are just priceless. Masako Nazowa forever!

- SSJ Conan
<ShadowSilenter@aol.com>