Shout Factory Japanese Collection

[UltraPrimal]

Originally Posted by Protoman

I helped work on the boxset and they didn't take a lot of my suggestions due to "Licensing agreements with Takara" Long story short Takara didn't want them to make a boxset that was better then theirs, so the Masters were not the same ones used for their boxsets in the land of the rising sun. Also the subs....... oh man the subs....... I argued with Brian about keeping the original Japanese names..... but he didn't listen.

That explains a lot. I thought the quality was pretty bad. Like watching it on VHS or an SD stream, even with my up-converting player.

And I was wondering why Holi was called Stakeout, and Jan is Jean, and the Breastforce are the Chestforce.

I haven't watched Masterforce on there yet, just Victory, but from what I've seen, Ginrai is still Ginrai though.

Originally Posted by Stapler

It's also really cool that you got the opportunity to work on these sets, Daniel. Are there any bonus features that you're a part of?

Bonus features? What bonus features? Very disappointing in that respect. I was really hoping for some kind of commentary. Obviously not by the original cast. But like a fan commentary on a few key episodes. Or a making of the DVD boxset. Or a showcase of all the toys from each series. All we got was a few pages ripped out of the Ark book.

[Akroyer]

Originally Posted by Stapler

Like I said, I'm pretty lenient with subs. As long as it's coherent I'm happy. I find it difficult to follow what's happening on screen and read the subtitles simultaneously, so I'm getting these sets more as a novelty and curiosity more than anything.

I'm totally on board with this comment. Big reason why I'm still working my way through Headmasters I usually end up watching things twice. Once for the story and once so I can watch the action.

[tilallr1]

Did they change the original release of the Headmasters series? I picked up the first shout release of just the Headmaster Series.

http://www.blu-ray.com/dvd/Transform...ers-DVD/21142/

I thought the PQ was alright. Subtitles were alright too. Of course I am comparing this to the other G1 S1-S4 series from Rhino.

Did the entire set have bad PQ or just Masterforce & Victory?

[Scrapper6]

Originally Posted by Protoman

I helped work on the boxset and they didn't take a lot of my suggestions due to "Licensing agreements with Takara" Long story short Takara didn't want them to make a boxset that was better then theirs, so the Masters were not the same ones used for their boxsets in the land of the rising sun. Also the subs....... oh man the subs....... I argued with Brian about keeping the original Japanese names..... but he didn't listen.

Let me get this straight, Takara the company who originally had these shows made, stipulated that the DVD Box Set of their shows for the American Audience couldn't be better quality than the one for their Japanese audience?

So basically what you're telling us is that Takara undermined these releases so they wouldn't lose their paying customers for the sets they had made, so that they could continue to make a profit from the American market on their sets, so we would be forced to watch the shows through them and only through them. Despite the fact that NO OTHER COMPANY IN THE WORLD would ever do something like that because they still make profits off the product.

But hold up, I watched the Headmasters set and I never noticed any real quality issues with the episodes. So is it the Masterforce and Victory sets I should be concerned with or what?

Either way I'm still buying these sets. And Protoman, what precisely are you saying when it comes to the names in the subs? So they used the American names in Headmasters, big deal, if they did the same thing with Masterforce well there will be more issues since the characters aren't meant to represent the same American characters. But I can still live with that, as long as they didn't call Minerva, Nightbeat, because that's just dumb.

Besides, the Japanese audio still uses the original Japanese names, they couldn't change that. So Cerebros is still called Fortress... Actually come to think of it I don't recall the name Cerebros ever being used in the subs, it was always Fortress Maximus if I recall.

Anyway, come May I'll be picking up Master Force in single set form and then I say BRING ON VICTORY.

I have to say though, if Takra really did force the company to stick to low quality masters just because they didn't want the sets to be better than theirs, well... They seriously care less about the fans overseas than Hasbro does.

[Cheers Ian]

Originally Posted by soundwaveCA

So I just got this today and I have to say I am very disappointed. DVD quality is pretty bad and it almost looks like it was ripped off a second generation VHS tape or something. Pretty sure there are better fansub's out there then what Shout Factory did with this set. Am I the only one who thinks this set looks like ass?

Either way I would avoid these DVD's if at all possible.

Originally Posted by GMfan

I'll take them off your hands for $20

I'll give you $25

[Pascal]

I got the chinese boxset a few years ago and am perfectly happy with it.

[Protoman]

Originally Posted by Stapler

It's also really cool that you got the opportunity to work on these sets, Daniel. Are there any bonus features that you're a part of?

The whole project started WAAAAY back in March of 2011 when I got a phone call from Brian Ward (Shout Factory's Executive Producer) because he heard from Hydra and another bigger name TF fan that helped with past TF related merchendise about how I was "THE GUY" to go to for Japanese stuff. I gave them TONS of bonus content to use, from high res Laserdisc rips of Headmasters toy commercials, whole OSTs of the show, line art gallery....... tons and tons of stuff. None of it was used due to Takara not wanting a boxset that contained more content, he also said some stuff like music would have huge licensing problems here in America. The month before Botcon 2011, Brian told me he was going to go to Botcon and we would talk more about it in person. By Botcon we were working on Masterforce and man....... the subtitling spats..... See Masterforce is VERY Japanese, in culture, in lingo and all the characters have different names. With Headmasters you could get away with a lot....... with Masterforce it's not so easy....... Long story short, more stuff was rejected, content was reduced to nothing and a planned trip to SDCC with Shout Factory to promote the Boxsets (Even a big SDCC panel with me explaining the Japanese history of Transformers) was cancelled by Hasbro......... so yeah

Originally Posted by soundwaveCA

Yeah those TV Nihon sub's are the way to go for sure, and I presume when you say "masters" you mean mean the old tapes they found in a dumpster that had been stepped on a few times?

Takara's boxsets had great master copies which spawned from the laserdisc releases. Shout Factory got TV Masters which always have degradation issues.

Again Takara didn't want Shout to have a equal or superior boxset. This is not the first time something like this has happened with "anime" related stuff. Macross could not have a DVD boxset till Japan got theirs and when they did, they refused to share the Masters for YEARS. Look how the Rhino DVDs with G1 were handled too with THEIR Masters..... it's a complex process.

[soundwaveCA]

Originally Posted by Protoman

Takara's boxsets had great master copies which spawned from the laserdisc releases. Shout Factory got TV Masters which always have degradation issues.

Again Takara didn't want Shout to have a equal or superior boxset. This is not the first time something like this has happened with "anime" related stuff. Macross could not have a DVD boxset till Japan got theirs and when they did, they refused to share the Masters for YEARS. Look how the Rhino DVDs with G1 were handled too with THEIR Masters..... it's a complex process.

You think with the relationship between Hasbro and Takara we could have avoided this shit.

[UltraPrimal]

Makes me wonder if we'll even see a BW2/Neo boxset.

[Stapler]

Wow... Sounds like there was a lot of issues behind the scenes. But thanks for the info of your involvement Daniel. It's always interesting to hear about the inner workings of things like this.

I'm glad that they approached you about these sets, though. We all know how much you love the Takara series, so a lot of love would go into it. I wasn't there, so I don't know how the discussions went (nor do I want to pry into private matters like that) but I'm sure Shout! Factory would have wanted to be just as faithful to the source material as you would. I guess there was just too much red tape getting in the way.

You know... I'm even more eager to pick up these sets now just because of the story behind them.