On the other hand, there are no extras on the discs themselves. There's also a supplemental "Dragon Book Volume 1," a thin hardbound collection of liner notes with even more artwork and bits of background information about the series. The slipcase art is excellent, set off by embossed metallic logos, and the discs inside are contained in hardcover cases with more contrasting colorful artwork. Score: 8 out of 10 Packaging and Extras Funimation pulled out all the stops when it comes to physical presentation here – in today's slightly less ostentatious anime market, you don't very often see a box set that looks this sharp. Otherwise, there's once again very little to complain about. The surround-sound remix gives the English audio track a fair bit more punch compared to the monaural Japanese version, which is once again a bit unfortunate for fans of the original dialogue. The all-American soundtrack was never especially popular, though (especially with the hardcore types that this box set is aimed at), so there probably won't be too many complaints. The English-language dialogue is only available with the original Japanese background music – Funimation apparently chose to save bits by leaving out a third track with the old "American" revised BGM. There are two audio tracks, with the original Japanese audio in mono and Funimation's reliable, familiar English dub remixed in 5.1-channel Dolby Digital. Languages and Audio The soundtracks, unlike the video, don't seem to have changed in comparison to the "Uncut" sets, which is fine because they didn't have any glaring problems to begin with.
Besides a bit of graininess from time to time, there aren't any flaws worth speaking of. The source material has been thoroughly scrubbed to get rid of dust, nicks, scratches, and whatever other imperfections. Besides the rejiggered aspect ratio, these discs offer beautiful picture quality. No longer is Goku's spiky hairdo always cut off just a little ways before the top. The Dragon Box restores the original 4:3 television aspect ratio that the series was produced and broadcast with. To rehash the whole fiasco once more for the record, the "Uncut" season sets that finished making their way out than a year ago featured a cropped 16:9 widescreen picture. Score: 7 out of 10 Presentation and Video The back-cover copy explains that this box set is "the essential edition for Dragon Ball Z purists." That's not a bad way of talking around the real reason fans will buy it: because Funimation screwed up the last time. Sometimes that's about all you need for a really good time. It's colorful, it's funny and once it gets rolling, it has loads and loads of terrible screaming and almost-pointless violence. Once again, though, Dragon Ball became a hit for good reasons, and these episodes are a handy reminder of what they are. The important part of this review, to most readers, is probably waiting on the second page. But that doesn't mean it isn't pretty funny sometimes. Dragon Ball has never had a subtle sense of humor, and it definitely doesn't have one hear. Goku's interminable trip down the Serpentine Road sets up a bunch of goofy one-off episodes, while back on Earth we get flights of derangement like Gohan fighting dinosaurs, Piccolo blowing up the moon, and Yamcha playing baseball. Before the Saiyans land, meanwhile, the first 12 episodes of the series have some downright hilarious material. We don't root against these bad guys because they're going to take over the world or whatever, we root against them because they're jerks and they really badly need a good sock in the mush. Villains like Nappa and Vegeta aren't anything fancy, but they've got a sneering, arrogant charisma that makes it so much more fun to watch Goku work them over. This is Dragon Ball on something like a reasonable scale.
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