Topic: Manga and Anime discussion

My first ever physical anime purchase! It's actually pretty exciting, as before now my only legal anime have been what I've seen on TV & Netflix, and a few movies I have bought digitally on Amazon (which to be fair is most of the anime I've seen, but I'll admit I've used sketchy sites in the past).

Sorry for the double post, but I'm just pretty excited, lol.

So Anime LTD are going to be releasing Gundam The Origin I-IV film collection soon, anyone picking it up?

it's been years since i watched Gundam if i'm honest so this will be a nice way to get back into the series (and get lost in that deep abyss again)

@FullbringIchigo, I take it that's a British anime distributor (Anime LTD)? Never heard of them over here in the US.

@RR529 yes it is

Finished up Captain Earth (Blu-Ray) recently. It's a mecha/super robot series that sees high school student Daichi recruited into the ranks of "Globe", a seemingly "NASA" like space exploration organization (of which his father was an astronaut, before dying during a mission), but soon learns that it's true clandestine goal is to protect Earth from an alien invasion.

What I Liked:

• While it doesn't really do anything new with the typical character archetypes, I enjoyed the cast and thought they played off each other well. Also, narratively it mixes things up as they have to deal with a competing faction of their own organization in addition to the aliens.
• It has a good amount of variety. It has the typical "Super Robot" battles, here in space, where their mechs take on massive forms, smaller scale, more traditional mech battles on Earth itself, and even confrontations with competing factions from within their own organization that either see them facing off against unmanned war machinery or situations where jumping into their mechs really isn't the solution.
• I really liked both the Earth & Spacebound designs of the "Engine" series (the heroes' mechs), Machine Goodfellows (the enemy Earthbound mechs), and I really enjoyed the sciency facade they had going on with the whole "NASA" like theming (in order to battle in space, a character's mech would be carried up via rocket, detach, then dock with it's oversized components on it's way through a series of space stations).
• I also want to point out that this is simply a very beautiful looking show. Everything is well detailed, the colors really pop, and it's well animated.

What I Disliked:

• I wasn't a big fan of the "Kill-T-Gang" design (the enemy Spacebound mechs).
• There's no naming convention to any of the enemy terms, which can be confusing at first. Their organization is the "Planetary Gear", their human avatars are referred to as "Designer's Children", their Earthbound mechs are "Machine Goodfellows", and Spacebound they are "Kill-T-Gang".
• I wasn't a big fan of Molkin's human avatar design (one of the prominent enemies). I have no issue with sexy designs on principle, but her gaudy, very revealing shibuya fashionista outfit (for lack of a better term) doesn't really fit the tone of the rest of the series, IMO. A more subdued sexy outfit would have fit better (a la Faye from Cowboy Bebop or the Major from the first season of GitS: Stand Alone Complex).
• Narrative spoilers up next. An Earth company created the Planetary Gear's human avatars, as well as their Machine Goodfellows, but seem to be completely oblivious to their connection to the invading Kill-T-Gang. Their main ship is stuck in orbit around Venus, so I have no idea how they set that up, unless I missed it. I guess they may have sent instructions to the company on how to make these things, and the company was completely oblivious to the fact that they were setting up for an invasion?

Overall: Despite some issues, I really enjoyed this series and recommend it to anyone who enjoys mecha or even broader sci-fi anime. Also, as it took place during summer vacation, it's a great time of year to watch it.

Content Guide:

• Violence - Mild: People do get bloodied up from time to time, but it's not a particularly gory series. Mostly robot on robot action.
• Sex - Mid: It has nothing explicit, but there's quite a bit of mild content, which in total is enough to bump it to a Mid, IMO. In addition to Molkin's overall look, you have Hana (the female lead), who'se not used to human company at first so she inadvertently exposes herself to others a couple times early on (nothing is shown to the audience), the camera focuses on her cleavage for a few seconds each on the couple episodes they're at a pool/beach and she's in her swimsuit, and for narrative purposes she's nude for a long period of time later on (though they get around this by simply deciding not to draw nipples). You also have another main female character, Akari, who as part of a running gag (that only happens twice), will try to cheer up a male character by performing a "Navel Forte", in which she exposes her midriff to them. Lastly, there is a shower scene involving Hana & Akari, though the camera is placed in just the right position that nothing explicit is ever shown.
• Language - Mid: Mostly just PG-13 level offences, but I bumped it up to Mid due to one suprise F-bomb. Not sure if it's there in Japanese, but it's there in the English subtitles.

Haven't been on here in a while and courtesy of a mate I have stumbled across Solo Levelling. What an amazing comic for a gamer, absolutely awesome stuff.

i found a load of my old Ocean Group DBZ VHS's i taped off TV some are missing BUT i still have everything from the Android Saga to the World Tournament during the Boo Saga

i love the old Ocean Dub of DBZ

i also found my complete VHS's of the Blue Water dub of DBGT too

anybody else remember the old Ocean Dub on UK TV?

@FullbringIchigo, even though I'm in the US I do remember the Ocean dub, because that's the version they showed on Toonami back when the series was new before Funimation had their own in-house team (I think they switched over after a hiatus during the Namek arc when the Ginyu Force showed up).

Moreso than the "Over 9,000" meme, my brother & I associate Vegeta with his Ocean voice because it seemed like he was screeching the letter "E" during power ups, especially during his fight with Goku.

We were suprised to hear the "old" DBZ voices (as we called them at the time) show up when we started watching InuYasha (which was dubbed by Ocean) years later, which we got a kick out of.

Too bad it doesn't seem they do that much anime anymore.

@RR529 yeah in America once funimation started to dub it in house after Saban left the U.S got the rest of the franchise dubbed by them, from Ginyu all the way through Buu and then GT but in the UK it was different we had the Ocean Group for the first few Sagas same as the U.S and then we got the in house funimation dub for Ginyu through Trunks then changes Canadian broadcasting standards resulted in AB Group who had the broadcasting rights in Canada teamed up with Westwood Media Productions to produce an alternate English dub of the second half of the series with Ocean Studios once again providing the voice track. This production was also shown in the UK, where AB Group also held broadcasting rights, while the Funimation dub continued to be shown in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

Then English dubs of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT were also created by AB Group. However, the voices were recorded at Blue Water Studios in Calgary, Alberta by Chinook Animation (Ocean's budget studio) as opposed to the Vancouver cast, and were also shown in Canada and the UK instead of the Funimation dubs.

then AB Group produced the "Big Green Dub" and these were the films and TV specials and made for UK distribution in collaboration with other production companies. These productions are notorious among fans for their poorly-written scripts (which were based off AB Groupe's own scripts for their French-language dub of Dragon Ball Z), bizarre changes to characters' names (for example, Piccolo is called "Big Green" and Saiyans are called "Space Warriors") and sub-par voice acting. Little information is available on the production surrounding these dubs, though it is presumed that they were recorded in either the Netherlands or France sometime in the early 2000s

Despite being aired on Toonami UK, only the movies Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might, Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest, and Dragon Ball Z: Lord Slug were distributed on DVD (and i own those) there due to poor sales. However, Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle and Dragon Ball: Mystical Adventure, the first nine Dragon Ball Z movies, and the two TV specials were also dubbed by this company. All of their dubs of the Dragon Ball Z movies/specials have been released on VHS and DVD in the Netherlands and other select European countries of which i managed to find a copy of Broly The Legendary Super Saiyan or The Burning Battles as it was called

also as a nice littel nod to the Ocean Dub when the Copy Vegeta Arc in Dragon Ball Super was dubbed by Funimation they actually got Brian Drummond to voice him

@FullbringIchigo, that clip was awesome! I need to show my brother that one.

@RR529 i know right it's just a shame they didn't do the same thing with Goku Black and get Ian James Corlett, Peter Kelamis or Kirby Morrow to voice him, that would have been amazing

Arriving earlier than expected is my copy of Godannar!

I first ran across this one a few years ago back when I was still using questionable sites, so I'm glad to finally support it. It's been long enough that I've forgotten the core details, so it's a good time to rewatch it. While it has a ton of over the top fanservice, the show is a love letter to the silly nature of the "Super Robot" genre & is tons of fun from start to finish.

@RR529 here are my tapes, i hooked up my VHS player last night to see if they still work and they do, so i now can watch a huge chunk of DBZ with the Ocean cast again

on a side note i posted this on twitter and now i just got some random guy asking me to send him all my tapes so he can back them up

i don't know this guy so no way am i sending him my tapes, i'll back them up myself thank you very much

OH HELL YEAH!, i LOVE Fairy Tail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAnl-1gYmoY

Well, I just won another figure on Toreba. Let's hope I don't miss it this time, lol.

So i'm still sorting though all my stuff and i found this,

my brother brought me this off eBay years ago & in his defence the original listing made out they was selling the official funimation DVD's and not a knock off Data Disc

take this as a lesson, always make sure when buying off eBay it IS what it says it is

on the plus side it was actually the UK Blue Water dub which is pretty cool as finding them now a days is like finding the holy grail

You know what was awesome about this version of Budokai 2, extra stage, extra costumes, special skills and the original Japanese voice over

anyone ever play these

@FullbringIchigo, I had a childhood friend that had one of the two.

Of course, at the time I wasn't aware that DBZ was really an older series (airing "new" episodes in the early 00's in the US at the time), so I thought it was neat/odd that they were "going back" to release games on the older Playstation (I think I assumed that the Budokai games were the first, especially considering that the first one omitted the Buu arc).