Ask John: Are the New Dragonball Z DVDs Edited?

Question:
Is Dragonball Z Volume 18 on DVD completely free of visual edits (original Japanese running time)? Will all DBZ DVDs be like this from now on? Will Funimation ever go back and release unedited DVDs for season 1 and 2?

Answer:
The new Funimation Dragonball Z TV series DVDs actually contain both the uncut, unedited Japanese versions and the domestic versions of each episode on separate tracks. By choosing “English” on the DVD menu, the disc will play the American opening, ending and present the episode titles in English. The Japanese version is completely free of visual edits (yipee!). The opening and closing animation are raw Japanese, complete with untranslated, unaltered kanji credits. Purist fans may notice that, oddly, the Japanese opening animation sequence is actually the theatrical version opening (which is identical to the TV version with the exception of the Japanese film board certification.) The episode title screens are also presented with their original kanji and English subtitles. The first and second discs, though, only contain ending credits for the final episode on the disc. At least the second DVD (Double Cross) also contains two different subtitle scripts, an accurate subtitle translation, and a “dubtitle” track. Steven “Daimao” Simmons, the translator for the subtitle script, has reported on Toriyama.org that the forthcoming DVDs should feature even more accurate, literal translations than the excellent first two discs.

Right now, Funimation simply cannot re-release the first two American seasons of Dragonball Z on DVD because Pioneer still owns the DVD rights to these seasons. The care Funimation has taken to preserve the cultural integrity of the animation with the first two Dragonball Z TV DVDs gives me hope that we may someday see the earlier episodes released on DVD in an uncut, unaltered form, but if that happens, it will likely be quite far off in the future as it would require Funimation, Pioneer, or some other company to essentially re-translate the entire Dragonball Z TV series up until the Assault DVD. The first two seasons of Dragonball Z were very heavily edited for American television broadcast. In addition to digital masking in the existing US episodes, several episodes were simply skipped entirely, and in several cases, two or even three Japanese episodes were condensed into a single US episode during the first two US seasons. For reference, the first uncut episode on the Assult DVD is American episode 54. This is Japanese episode 68. In effect, the equivalent of 14 Japanese episodes worth of footage is missing from the first two US seasons of Dragonball Z