Umino said:
I don't think Pioneer's masters were that bad. They were laserdisc masters, which at the time were probably the best. The main problem with Pioneer's release was the lack of previews, name translations (which are understandable, since the Witches 5's names are ridiculous), and incorrect openings.
They also blocked the S movie's ending animation with a black screen showing their English credits.
As far as ADV's release goes, it's my understanding they could only use DIC's masters, which were the original TV masters.
Which makes their handling of episode 89's opening even more dumb because DiC had it all along and even used it in the beginning of their own dub for that episode.
I actually prefer Pioneer's release over Viz's right now. At least Pioneer's translation felt a little bit more natural, they translated the credits, and had the pre-episode preview in the proper place.
Is there any proof that Toei didn't move the first & second season's previews themselves on their DVDs? I ask because they did something similar to that with a lot of their other older shows for DVD. Dragon Ball/Z, Fist of the North Star & Dr. Slump had their next episode previews moved to after the ending credits instead of before them which was how they originally aired.
The proof with DB/Z can be seen in old clips which are still easy to find and were recorded from the original broadcast.
http://youtu.be/4srneeP3ecc?t=2m3s
http://youtu.be/4srneeP3ecc?t=7m37s
The DVDs in question which had them moved were the Dragon Boxes released in 2003 & 2004 & the singles released afterwards since they used the exact same discs and FUNimation's releases (which I still own) left them the same way.
As for Fist of the North Star, the streams that Toei posted everywhere used the same screwed up masters from their 2003-2004 DVDs.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/88342 (23:56 mark)
The 25th Anniversary DVD box released in 2008 had a new remaster and Toei fixed a lot of what was wrong with the original discs, one of them being the previews in question and these masters are what Discotek used for their DVDs.
http://youtu.be/TKBSGMd2ctM?t=22m18s (22:18 mark)
As for Dr. Slump, they didn't release that show on DVD until 2007 and from what I've seen online, they switched them there too.
TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5QBhm3yVU8
DVD:
http://youtu.be/lEu9ppIrCRg?t=24m7s (24:07 mark)
(^different episodes but the point still stands here)
As for Sailor Moon, I guess we'll really find out when Viz gets to S how the previews are handled there. If they're the same as the Pioneer DVDs then it really might be a masters issue since I doubt they moved the first & R previews themselves to be consistent with the previous releases.
1dbad said:
It's too bad Viz didn't just go for a SD DVD release, and then wait on releasing a Blu-Ray once Japan does.
The complaints would have been no different anyway since as mentioned before, Toei has been doing their own upscales now through Q-Tec and each of them are like Q-Tec's other upscales which were very awful.
