The first thing I will mention is probably the most common amongst the Otaku and that's imported DVDs. To technically get the official Japanese release the label for region on the DVDs I believe is region 2; which means to play them you would need a whole new player to play them on. Japanese DVDs also do not have English subtitles anywhere on them. With that said though, it must bring up the question from you all; what about those boxsets I see on Ebay? Those DVD sets are from mainly China; they have English and Chinese subs and sometimes additional languages. And just by that I can hear you all saying now; "And how is that a bad thing?" Well, let me break it down;
First off; the image quality is a tad lower than those of an official release due to the fact that they cram so much data onto one disc. That's not to say they look bad or anything, it's just grainy. So if you do happen to watch these be sure not to not watch them on a big screened, HD TV.
Even though image quality is important seeing as you would be watching it, you'd obviously would like to understand it too. After all not everyone can speak Japanese; and this actually where you'd be gambling if you are thinking of these DVDs. I myself have a few DVDs from China and my first experience watching them I was slightly impressed honestly. My friend Nadia had gotten into Saiyuki and had season 1 (labeled part 1 one for these) and had my best friend, another one of our friends and myself sit down and watch. For the most part, and this holds to a couple I have too, the subs were pretty good; save for a couple of "Engrish" moments and grammatical errors. I of course just bring that down to the fact that English isn't their first language so I let it slid since it didn't hinder the storyline too much.
However, that's on the good side of the spectrum. I have had bad luck with these DVDs too; After watching seasons 1 and 2 of Saiyuki with Nadia I really wanted to own season two for the Saiyuki Gaiden episodes (those would be the 3 eps I mentioned that were worth watching for that season) and thus I bought one off of Ebay. The casing was good and surprisingly the subtitles were actually really decent with little to no grammatical errors. So what was my problem? Well it may not bother everyone, but it sure as hell bugged me; they got the names wrong on some of the characters. Instead of calling them by the names being said in the show, for some reason they had them as they did in the original legend;
Goku = Monkey
Gojyo = Sandy
Hakkai = Pigsy
Even though I had read the legend it was irritating to see that whenever their names were spoken. So instead my best friend took that copy and I got a new one. This time all the names were correct save for Sanzo's. So I was 0/2 on what I really wanted. Next I had ordered the Saiyuki Requiem movie and much like the subs I had seen from Nadia, I only really had to deal with the rough translation in some spots, however; there were some instances where the dialog would run off the screen, which just makes the story hard to follow.
For my birthday one year I had spotted a box set of 2 DVDs for the 13 episode Tales of Eternia anime. Admittedly, I originally wanted the DVDs because my favorite character from the game was on the box's cover, but never the less Nadia bought it for me and I was excited to sit down and watch. This was rather a roller coaster for me. Some of the subs referred to the main character as his name, Reid; while other times they would translate it out to be Rita. The subs also had a problem of either going too quick to where the subtitles would be several scenes ahead of the animation or vice versa where they would be so slow that the animation would be way ahead of them. And I kid you not about this; near the very end of the series whoever was subbing it just stopped trying. Let me paint this scene for you; it's the final battle and our heroes are fighting off the enemies. One of them pulls out a mystical crystal, holds it high in the air shouting "Efreeto!" (Tales of Eternia Ifrit is spelled Efreet) and a fire creature appears to burn its foes. Now you'd think the subs would come out and say "Efreet" right? Nope instead I saw this;
That is technically the worse case scenario with these kinds of subs as I have only seen it in this one instance.But in the case of my PGSM DVDs (for the TV series) there was an odd... surprise I guess we'll call it. First off yes, they had the rough translations too, but wasn't too bad. They did get a name wrong, but I almost want to bring it down the way the name sounded; the main villain of the series is Queen Berryl, but with the Japanese accent on most, if not all the characters; it sounds like Berry. So what's the "surprise"? Well while I was watching near the end of the series and was on the edge of my seat something seemed to not flow quite right and just puzzled me. For the scene I was watching having high drama; the thing that followed was happy and bouncy. It was the commercials that ran when the show was first aired. Believe me, I loled when I realized what it was, but for those to be on a DVD is just odd.
But through all of this, I will say there are some that might actually be worthy to have in your collection. For me it would be this;
This collection contains every episode of the Sailor Moon anime (the auction I got mine from also had the 3 movies with it) and to my surprise was exceptional with its subtitles. Before I actually placed a bid on this item I did a little research before hand, since the description said it was the "official Malaysian" release. Even though my main reason for wanting this boxset was to make AMVs; I also would just loved to have a physical copy I could and watch and over all enjoy. The review I had seen was pretty spot on about its casing and the subs; the person said they were for akin to that of the ADV releases. I started watching Sailor Moon R and to my surprise the subs were indeed that good. When it got to the ending credits I was shocked to see that they were in English and at the very end of said credits gave the copyright of ADV Films. So indeed they were that good because they were the official US release. The S and Super S seasons are the Pioneer release as well, so that left me with the question of Sailor Stars; Stars was never released in the states to have en English version, so how good would these be? Well they are top notch actually, as they seem to be that of a fansub. As I said it's a gamble in what kind of quality you'll get with these DVDs, but there is always a chance you will find top notch quality bootlegs lol. See you all next time for part 2! ^^/
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