Funimation Adds Fuel to the Fire in Controversy Over DRAGON BALL Z Collector's Edition

Funimation is in some pretty hot water right now with Dragon Ball fans. You see, Funimation is wanting to release a special Collector’s Edition of Dragon Ball Z for the anime’s 30th anniversary. This is a noble goal and one that many fans love the idea of. Funimation even decided that they will release the series in the original aspect ratio of 4:3 for this new Blu-ray release instead of the 16:9 used in previous releases. Another win for fans. I would argue that’s about where Funimation won its last battle with many hardcore fans, aka the target demographic as they’re planning on only making 6,000 sets. Check out the first trailer for the set.

Reserve your copy now: https://funi.to/2TYYnCx It's been 30 years of Dragon Ball Z and we want to celebrate in the most perfect way-with you! Bring home a collector's edition of the most iconic series ever! Packed full of everything you could wish for...and more.

Now, you may have started to see some of the problems. First, they are treating this as a crowdfunded project. Not many fans are happy about the requirement of 3,000 agreeing to purchase this set for $350 in order for it to happen. Another problem is the quality of the video. I’m no expert, but I did some digging and found a video from AnimeAjay where he explains a lot of the problems that he and other fans have. They’re not happy with the level of noise reduction (some don’t want any noise reduction), the saturation levels have been bumped, the colors have been flattened and tweaked not to their liking, and the image has been cropped a lot more than it needed. Here’s the full video if you want more details, but beware as he uses a lot of NSFW language.

Funimation's new Blu-ray set for Dragon Ball Z's 30th anniversary was insulting enough to pull me out of retirement. Here's why. #DragonBallZ #Funimation #Bluray Twitter - https://twitter.com/AnimeAjay Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AnimeAjay/

That video blew up pretty quick and Funimation has since released a statement in response to many of the criticisms. They address the cropping because, “in many frames, the picture on the materials we received does not extend all the way to all four sides, and there are scalloped corners or inconsistent edges where the image is missing, again largely due to the age of the materials.” Some of the fans are fine with this idea, but as you’ll see below, they still have a question regarding it. They feel like too much has been cropped. Funimation also included comparison images which I have provided one set of:

You can immediately tell some big differences in noise, color, and the cropping. However, they released a second video and essentially buckled down in this defensive stance trying to show the people complaining that they’re not doing anything wrong.

Reserve your copy now: https://funi.to/2YY0iv0 It's been 30 years of Dragon Ball Z--relive the world's greatest action animated series ever in 4:3 aspect ratio, remasted on Blu-ray for the first time! Check out how the image compares to previous 4:3 and 16:9 releases.

After seeing the rebuttal, I went back to AnimeAjay who laid out what many hardcore fans want and extensively went through to explain how Funimation is not meeting those wants. Once again, he uses a lot of NSFW language.

Despite our best efforts to reach #Funimation about their #DragonBallZ #Blurays, they still don't get it. Twitter - https://twitter.com/AnimeAjay Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AnimeAjay/

All in all, this is a giant mess for Funimation and at the time of writing this, they were only at 2,808 reservations out of 3,000. Now, I do think that they’ll get those last 200 reservations. However, I do wish Funimation would listen to some of these ideas such as the smaller crops. Where do you stand on this issue? Have you reserved one of these sets?