I mean even though I am not a fan of the old dub I can sympathize with the fans of it and their plight. For a long time for fans of the uncut original we had to resort to bootlegs to get the show we want and those bootlegs could be very shoddy at times. However now we are getting the whole series uncut and in the English language but again I can sympathize with fans of the old dub. While I hope that eventually Viz gets the rights to the old dub so it can be rereleased for it's fan's sake in the meanwhile I would encourage them to go get bootlegs like the rest of us did. Of course you could try to get official old dub merchandise but from what I have heard they can be ludicrously expensive. I have however heard good things about this bootleg site for fans of the old dub.
http://www.sailormoondvdset.ourgrnbusiness.com/Sailor_Moon_Complete_Series_on_DVD.html
http://www.sailormoondvdset.ourgrnbusiness.com/Sailor_Moon_Complete_Series_on_DVD.html
Oh come on please let this one die.
Yes Viz more than likely probably does have the rights to the old dub - just like how Discotek Media gets rights to the old dubs when it does re-releases of old anime.
However as I've come to see from Discotek releases and from reading what Justin has had to say
1) Are the old dub masters available ?
2) Are they complete and in a state that is not going to cost $$$$ to releases - look at what Discotek is having to go through with Cyborg 009 with some dub tracks that are completely toasted.
3) Is there enough of a commercial market for it - sorry old dub fans but till I see a change.org petition with 10,000 + signatures asking for a releases you do NOT have a market.
As Justin says - Viz is a big company and they are not Discotek - they are not going to get out of bed for a dub that
a) might take a lot of money to get to a releasable state
b) is not going to sell in huge numbers.
Read this Answerman article it explains a lot
Answerman - Why Don't More Publishers Take A Chance On Older Titles?
Conclusion -
Get a change.org petition with 10,000 signatures + - 20,000/30,000 is better then you might persuade Viz thats its worth spending their time on it.
Yes Viz more than likely probably does have the rights to the old dub - just like how Discotek Media gets rights to the old dubs when it does re-releases of old anime.
However as I've come to see from Discotek releases and from reading what Justin has had to say
1) Are the old dub masters available ?
2) Are they complete and in a state that is not going to cost $$$$ to releases - look at what Discotek is having to go through with Cyborg 009 with some dub tracks that are completely toasted.
3) Is there enough of a commercial market for it - sorry old dub fans but till I see a change.org petition with 10,000 + signatures asking for a releases you do NOT have a market.
As Justin says - Viz is a big company and they are not Discotek - they are not going to get out of bed for a dub that
a) might take a lot of money to get to a releasable state
b) is not going to sell in huge numbers.
Read this Answerman article it explains a lot
Answerman - Why Don't More Publishers Take A Chance On Older Titles?
Conclusion -
Get a change.org petition with 10,000 signatures + - 20,000/30,000 is better then you might persuade Viz thats its worth spending their time on it.
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Nadia
I doubt they have the rights if they could release it why wouldn't they? If they could make twice as much money selling both releases without having to pay two casts then why wouldn't they? I feel like the two products wouldn't necessarily be competing against one another. People would double dip or the ones interested in one wouldn't have bought the other in the first place. I mean you know how many Dragon Ball releases Funimation sells to their fans? People still buy it.
They has distribution rights to the show, which gives them the right to take down the clips on youtube. The whole old dub is still available on torrent trackers though. Even if they had an option to get the rights over the old dubs, I can see why didn't bother - they cqn only make it marketable with a remastered version. And the old show especially DiC had a lot of edits, cuts, altered images. Who would bother to recreate all of this, when the majority of people don't even like the old treatment.
*sigh*
Answerman - How Does A New Distributor Get Permission To Reuse Old Dubs?
Read this - unless there is something very stupid going on Viz has got the rights to the old dub. Look how many titles from the 80's that Discotek has put out that have reused the old dub from that era like Wizard of Oz etc.
The simple fact is Viz choose not to do so because they have just spent a lot of money making their own dub - they want to recoup their investment.
Look at the recent Nozomi Kickstarter for Emma - Let's Dub Emma A Victorian Romance Anime TV Series Season 1. They wanted $100,000 + just for a 12 episode show. Goodness knows how much Viz is spending re-dubbing 200 episodes.
They won't want to confuse the market by having *2* dubs on the market.
And again it still rolls back to - do the masters still exist for the old dub ? If we take the treatment Cyborg 009 has had they are probably in a pretty sorry state - how much work would it cost to do a decent upscale / restoration to make for a proper blu-ray release in 2018 ? Would they want to spend that money ON TOP of what they have already spent on remaking their own dub.
(Let's be realistic - to recut the dub from original Japanese masters with all the cuts / hacking DIC did, up convert it to HD etc for the probable market it would be prohibitively expensive - the only option would be to take original DIC masters and then process them but do we know 100% that the original DIC masters have been preserved well to the extent they could 20 years down the line be in a fit state for being up converted with no corruption etc )
If you definitely believe there is a market for it - go make a change.org petition and get the 20,000 / 30,000 signatures - if you can do that you might be able to make a case to Viz to spend the time / money on doing a release...till then all available evidence says it ain't happening
Answerman - How Does A New Distributor Get Permission To Reuse Old Dubs?
Read this - unless there is something very stupid going on Viz has got the rights to the old dub. Look how many titles from the 80's that Discotek has put out that have reused the old dub from that era like Wizard of Oz etc.
The simple fact is Viz choose not to do so because they have just spent a lot of money making their own dub - they want to recoup their investment.
Look at the recent Nozomi Kickstarter for Emma - Let's Dub Emma A Victorian Romance Anime TV Series Season 1. They wanted $100,000 + just for a 12 episode show. Goodness knows how much Viz is spending re-dubbing 200 episodes.
They won't want to confuse the market by having *2* dubs on the market.
And again it still rolls back to - do the masters still exist for the old dub ? If we take the treatment Cyborg 009 has had they are probably in a pretty sorry state - how much work would it cost to do a decent upscale / restoration to make for a proper blu-ray release in 2018 ? Would they want to spend that money ON TOP of what they have already spent on remaking their own dub.
(Let's be realistic - to recut the dub from original Japanese masters with all the cuts / hacking DIC did, up convert it to HD etc for the probable market it would be prohibitively expensive - the only option would be to take original DIC masters and then process them but do we know 100% that the original DIC masters have been preserved well to the extent they could 20 years down the line be in a fit state for being up converted with no corruption etc )
If you definitely believe there is a market for it - go make a change.org petition and get the 20,000 / 30,000 signatures - if you can do that you might be able to make a case to Viz to spend the time / money on doing a release...till then all available evidence says it ain't happening
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Nadia
1. They've said before that they have the rights to the old dub, and made a vague comment on the masters being incomplete or something like that
2. They could easily just use DVD rips. I bought those really nice looking bootleg sets of the first two seasons off eBay a few months ago (the ones that perfectly duplicate the original ADV DVD release, only in the form of a four-part set instead of 14 individual cases) and the picture quality is great, especially with R. Honestly, the only thing Viz would really need to do is replace all the stock footage (again, really just for season 1) with the official HD upscaled stock footage (editing it to remove body lines, add the VFX) and all the freeze frames (since they look very obvious and grainy). If they could also tweak some other things (e.g. using the unedited original Japanese footage to reconstruct the "So You wanna be a Superstar" episode, restoring the original Sailor V game shots, restoring the fall from the balcony scene, maybe recutting the opening scene of Rini's first episode, creating a new opening theme sequence for R) that would be awesome, but not strictly required. With the S and SuperS dubs, since those were uncut, they could easily just add the soundtrack to the remastered footage.
3. I understand that mass producing DVDs/BDs is expensive, so they could just make the dub available for streaming or digital download.
I feel like Viz just wants to focus on getting out their dub right now. We'll see what happens once they release Stars.
2. They could easily just use DVD rips. I bought those really nice looking bootleg sets of the first two seasons off eBay a few months ago (the ones that perfectly duplicate the original ADV DVD release, only in the form of a four-part set instead of 14 individual cases) and the picture quality is great, especially with R. Honestly, the only thing Viz would really need to do is replace all the stock footage (again, really just for season 1) with the official HD upscaled stock footage (editing it to remove body lines, add the VFX) and all the freeze frames (since they look very obvious and grainy). If they could also tweak some other things (e.g. using the unedited original Japanese footage to reconstruct the "So You wanna be a Superstar" episode, restoring the original Sailor V game shots, restoring the fall from the balcony scene, maybe recutting the opening scene of Rini's first episode, creating a new opening theme sequence for R) that would be awesome, but not strictly required. With the S and SuperS dubs, since those were uncut, they could easily just add the soundtrack to the remastered footage.
3. I understand that mass producing DVDs/BDs is expensive, so they could just make the dub available for streaming or digital download.
I feel like Viz just wants to focus on getting out their dub right now. We'll see what happens once they release Stars.
Well if the masters are incomplete then case in point. Somebodies time / effort is required to get them in to a releasable state - don't forget they can't just release them they would have to get approval from Japan before they could even do a thing. Not to mention negotiation with Japan about royalties etc.
Like I said if you want to prove to Viz that it's worth them spending time / people hours on re-releasing the dubs start a change.org petition with a few thousand unique signups and then maybe you might get somewhere.
Right now Viz is concerned with making the money back they have invested in the new dub. Sad fact is a few comments on one forum / a question or two at a convention panel is not going to convince property / asset managers at Viz to greenlight a remaster project on a dub that isn't even theirs.
Like I said if you want to prove to Viz that it's worth them spending time / people hours on re-releasing the dubs start a change.org petition with a few thousand unique signups and then maybe you might get somewhere.
Right now Viz is concerned with making the money back they have invested in the new dub. Sad fact is a few comments on one forum / a question or two at a convention panel is not going to convince property / asset managers at Viz to greenlight a remaster project on a dub that isn't even theirs.
I doubt they will ever release the old dubs. People who want them are quite niche, most hard core fans don't even want a dub. I think aftef a few years they will release the newdub again but with the japanese blu rays. I doubt there is anything planned for the old dub. It will be still a lot of effort and won't be worth it. Plusnobody can tell if Toei and Naoko would approve these releases at all.
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Yeah but this part is also pretty clear
There are still other cases where changes made to a dub that the original creators don't approve of, and once the original distribution contract ends the licensors make every attempt to bury it. But that's another topic.
If they have the rights and haven't released the dub it's because Toei is being a pain in the ass. They don't need to do a lot of fancy restoration if the point is nostalgia. I don't think my DVDs look that bad so if they looked like that it be fine in my opinion beggars shouldn't be choosers anyway. It would be worth a purchase if they threw in some cast interviews and toonami promos as extras.
There are still other cases where changes made to a dub that the original creators don't approve of, and once the original distribution contract ends the licensors make every attempt to bury it. But that's another topic.
If they have the rights and haven't released the dub it's because Toei is being a pain in the ass. They don't need to do a lot of fancy restoration if the point is nostalgia. I don't think my DVDs look that bad so if they looked like that it be fine in my opinion beggars shouldn't be choosers anyway. It would be worth a purchase if they threw in some cast interviews and toonami promos as extras.
Likes:
Starlight
And another re-release of the manga - The Extravagant Eternal Rainbow Edition. 
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Starlight
Whilst that may be the case - a more simple issue is more prevelant - Viz is not going to expend effort / money making a DVD/blu-ray that will only sell a few hundred copies at most.
Like Justin/Answerman said - Viz is not Discotek they don't get out of bed for anything less than 10,000 units.
Like I said if you're thant convinced that there is a market for it - start a change.org petition and get signatures. Get enough and Viz might start taking notice / do a kickstarter perhaps ?
Like Justin/Answerman said - Viz is not Discotek they don't get out of bed for anything less than 10,000 units.
Like I said if you're thant convinced that there is a market for it - start a change.org petition and get signatures. Get enough and Viz might start taking notice / do a kickstarter perhaps ?
Likes:
Nadia
I think comparing it to a standard Discotek release is selling the show short. I mean you can't compare Sailor Moon's popularity to that of a smaller property like Boys over Flowers or Marmalade boy which is way less popular. Also you keep mentioning Blu-ray but most Discotek releases are just DVD. I don't see what a petition would do Viz knows there are fans of the old dub. I imagine If they haven't done a release it's because of red tape from Japan but who knows. Personally I just think it's silly that theyre losing money to bootleggers or sellers on the second hand market. I mean obviously it's a different case for Funimation because they already owned the Canadian dub of Dragon Ball Z but I think they are smart to continually acknowledge fans of the Ocean dub by giving them the Rock The Dragon release.
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Incorrect - Discotek is moving towards mostly blu-ray especially for longer shows.
SD-BD is cheaper to produce than lots of DVD's - Wizard of Oz English dub / Fist of the North Star / Samurai Pizza Cats / RebornSome of those shows I would say match the DIC dub for popularity.
Discotek is able to put out the english dub of Wizard of Oz (and others) as well as the Japanese language versions because they are a small company and they don't have the overheads that Viz does.
On the balance of probabilities - yes there probably is red tape from Japan but Viz will be like "we have just spent $500,000+ on a new dub why should we release an old dub that only a few hardocre fans want that is going to cost us $50,000 in resources and staff time to get ready to release and sell maybe less than 2,000 units".
Yes you're right Viz knows there are fans of the old dub BUT are there enough fans to justify spending time and money on a new release ? - I would say they have decided there is not.
That's why I said - if you want to convince Viz there is a SUFFICIENT market for them to work on the release make a petition.
A few emails / posts on a forum / questions at conventions DOES NOT make a business case for working on a new disc release.
SD-BD is cheaper to produce than lots of DVD's - Wizard of Oz English dub / Fist of the North Star / Samurai Pizza Cats / RebornSome of those shows I would say match the DIC dub for popularity.
Discotek is able to put out the english dub of Wizard of Oz (and others) as well as the Japanese language versions because they are a small company and they don't have the overheads that Viz does.
On the balance of probabilities - yes there probably is red tape from Japan but Viz will be like "we have just spent $500,000+ on a new dub why should we release an old dub that only a few hardocre fans want that is going to cost us $50,000 in resources and staff time to get ready to release and sell maybe less than 2,000 units".
Yes you're right Viz knows there are fans of the old dub BUT are there enough fans to justify spending time and money on a new release ? - I would say they have decided there is not.
That's why I said - if you want to convince Viz there is a SUFFICIENT market for them to work on the release make a petition.
A few emails / posts on a forum / questions at conventions DOES NOT make a business case for working on a new disc release.
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Nadia
Everyone is moving towards blu-ray and ideally DVD would already be a thing of the past entirely but on their current website DVD still drastically outnumbers their blu-ray releases from what I saw of their catalog. A lot of anime fans who do care about because they are AV nerds do nothing but pick apart Blu-ray releases like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z and say the DVD releases are superior anyway. A lot of Blu-rays have only recently come out or are just now coming out in Japan. I personally find it hard to believe that a product that already exists with demand for it is really that difficult to deliver on but thats just my personal opinion. If Viz cared about the fans they would put out a survey or something but the problem is they don't care. They don't want to know what fans want they just want to force shoddy products at us because we don't have any other options.