Dragon Ball Z-The History of Trunks (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Biographies-Character-(3) Featurette-Trunks Moments (4) Gallery Trailer DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	47:20
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Daisuke Nishio
Studio Distributor	Toei Animation Madman Entertainment	Starring	Christopher Sabat Sean Schemmel Brian Thomas
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$24.95	Music	Shinsuke Kikuchi

    Dragonball Z - The History Of Trunks features, for the first time in R4, the original Japanese dialogue and music in a second audio stream. This is the one thing that has been missing from preceding Dragonball Z DVDs, and boy does it make a difference!

    Dragonball Z - The History Of Trunks is slightly confusing to the casual DBZ viewer as it centres around something that never happened (in a way). Promoted as "The Future That Never Was", the story fits somewhere before the first DBZ DVD I reviewed (Dragonball Z 3.1) but also after the last one I reviewed (Dragonball Z 3.6). By now you're wondering...how? Well, based on plot development, the end of this feature would coincide with the start of DBZ 3.1. However, if we sorted chronologically, this disc would not exist. The future that is played out in this feature is what would have happened if Trunks didn't do what he does in this feature.

    Confusing? Not really. This plays on a time paradox not unlike that seen in the Back To The Future trilogy. Having said all of that, watching this feature probably makes the series even harder to follow.

    The gist of this disc is that everyone has died at the hands of the Androids, with Gohan and Trunks being the only surviving warriors. Several years have passed, and the Androids are still terrorizing the world. With this going on, Gohan has taken it upon himself to stop them, with little to no effect. Gohan soon acquires the son of Vegeta, Trunks, who begins increasingly to train harder and harder. This makes no difference though, as Gohan loses his life to the Androids, leaving Trunks to fight for himself.
 

    The overall tone of the show is much darker when listening to the original dialogue and music. I never knew how much music was actually added in for the American dub - the Japanese version uses silence to convey emotion. Besides music, the script is the other major difference. Funimation, the US company who dub DBZ into English, have completely altered the dialogue, either adding in dialogue where there was none in the original Japanese version or changing the dialogue from something relevant to filler. Some examples of this are:

English:
"It's just like watching fireworks, don't worry honey"
Japanese:
"Devils! They're Devils"

English:
"We're just a pig, a cat and a turtle"
Japanese:
"Piccolo, Vegeta, and even Yamucha were taken out by them!"

    The above two examples are examples of how many references to death and the afterlife have been removed from the English dub of Dragonball Z.
 

English:
Android 18: "No! I spared him. You know 17, that makes me look bad, like I was lying! That's not fair!"
Android 17: "Sorry, that was rude."
Japanese:
Android 18: "What, you did him in? This is no good, No. 17! Didn't I tell you to at least leave the clothes?"
Android 17: "Oops, I forgot."

English:
"I don't know about wise, but I did remember the honeydew melon and the ketchup and the potatoes for my French fries."
Japanese:
"They say half the world's people have been killed now!"

    These two examples show how the English dub has removed some of the vital details from the DBZ universe. Android 18 would never have spared a human - she hates all humans. The Androids even laugh in the face of death - this was taken out of the English version. The line about the world's population is absolutely integral to the storyline. Not having it there lessens the impact of the Androids.
 

    And now we come to the inaccuracies of the English dub.

English:
Trunks (To Gohan): "Please train me"
Japanese:
Trunks (To Gohan): "Train me even harder"

    Trunks has obviously already been trained as he can fly, something that takes training to accomplish.
 

    Why all this nitpicking? Simple really. It is a plea to Madman to include the original language track on every Anime DVD (including DBZ) that they release. The way I see it, the original language track is as important as the original aspect ratio, and must be included. Otherwise, any hard-core anime fan who wants the original dub will have to import from another region, something that I'm sure Madman would prefer didn't happen.
 

    To sum up, Dragonball Z-The History of Trunks is an excellent feature, presented fully uncut both visually and aurally. It is a must-own for very DBZ fan with a DVD player.

Video

    DBZ in general is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This disc offers a semi-movie style type of episode, but still uses the same 1.33:1 aspect ratio as the normal series episodes. It is (appropriately) not 16x9 enhanced.

    Animation on DVD can be judged by watching it on a frame-by-frame basis, showing it in its most primitive form. The greater the similarity to (what would assumed to be) the original cel, the higher the marks the transfer receives. When applying this principle to this DVD, I found it to be quite similar, with the only problem being age and storage-related artefacts. Sharpness is excellent for the most part, a giant leap up from the MPEG-1 video clips that I watched some segments from this episode in originally. Shadow detail was effortlessly perfect.

    Colour is as bright as ever for the series. Being such an action-filled episode/short film, colour is seemingly used more than it has been before and it shows tremendously. My favourite colour/lighting effect (the atomic blast reflection on characters) is absolutely brilliant.

    As usual, the only downside to the DVD is grain and other age-related artefacts. It is worth noting that they weren't as obvious in this transfer as on other DVDs in the series. One exception to this is the episode opening, which exhibited greater numbers of spots and flecks than normal. Some very slight cases of aliasing were also present.

    For the first time, English subtitles are provided. They came in very handy for when I was comparing the two audio tracks, for I could listen to the English dub and then read the translation of the original Japanese, noting the differences between the two soundtracks.

Audio

    The two audio tracks that are present on this DVD are English and Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 mixes. They are encoded at the lower bitrate of 192Kb/s.

    Dialogue was clear for the English track. I cannot state this with any certainty for the Japanese track (for obvious reasons). What I did notice was a few expletives muttered by Trunks at times (see, I can speak some Japanese!), but these were meant to be hard to understand (How many cartoon characters swear in Australia I ask?). Audio sync wasn't perfect, but definitely matched up better on the Japanese track.

    The ability to listen to the original musical score is another huge advantage of having the Japanese track. Unlike the English track, where music is haphazardly inserted where there was originally none, the Japanese track uses silence to create suspense and emotion.

    On a purely technical level, the English track sounds much, much better. The Japanese track lacks fidelity and dynamic range, and also features rather a lot of hiss, while the English track has no problems whatsoever. The Japanese track also sounded very monaural, while the English track had a wide soundstage with subtle imaging effects included. The English track is far better from a technical standpoint but there is no way I would ever prefer it over the Japanese track on its artistic merits.

    Surround effects were absent from both soundtracks.

Main Menu Audio & Animation

Biographies - Character Profiles (3)

Featurette - Trunks Moments (4)

• Trunks vs. Henchmen (1:37)
• Trunks vs. Frieza (0:55)
• Trunks vs. King Cold (1:52)
• Trunks vs. The Androids (0:39)

Gallery

Trailer (1:07)

DVD Credits (Easter Egg)

    The Region 1 version of this DVD misses out on:

• Biographies - Character Profiles
• Featurette - Trunks Moments
• Gallery
• Trailer

    The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on:

• "The World Of Dragonball Z" featurette

    The "World Of Dragonball Z" featurette found on the R1 DVD can be found on the Region 4 DBZ 3.3 DVD. Personally, I'd much rather have the Trailer and the Trunks Moments featurettes. If you are desperate for the "World Of Dragonball Z" featurette, then simply buy the R4 DBZ 3.3. You can actually pick up both DBZ 3.3 and this DVD for around the same price as the R1 counterpart. Accordingly, I'll declare the R4 DVD to be the preferred version in this case.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall