Yesterday, Crunchyroll’s new Blu-Ray boxset for Dragon Ball Z was released in the UK.
Scott Emsen of UK Anime Blu-Ray received a test copy and reviewed it.
Unfortunately the following special features from Funimation’s 2013/2014 Blu-Ray season sets are not included:
- Inside Dragon Ball Z : Interview with Josh Martin
- Inside Dragon Ball Z : Interview with Chris Rager
- From East to West : Dragon Ball Z’s Epic Journey
- A Completely Serious Discussion About the Comedy of Dragon Ball Z
These additional special features were included on the original 2014 Blu-Ray release of Season 9 but were absent from the Crunchyroll rebranded release in the US as well.
As such, it seems these extras have been phased out and never got a UK release.
The only difference, as Emsen points out, other than the placement of Crunchyroll’s logos and BBFC ratings the disc art depicts the four star Dragon Ball rather than a plain blue and white background.
While Manga UK’s head of marketing and acquisitions at the time ruled out these Funimation discs being released in the UK because of the backlash and the company listened to advice against releasing them again in 2020 it appears the company, now known as Crunchyroll are operating differently.
This box set marks the fourth UK release of Dragon Ball Z on Blu-Ray (following the 30th anniversary collection in 2019 as well as Manga UK’s standards and steelbooks in 2020) and the first release for the cropped 16:9 discs.
This will come as a disappointment to fans clamouring for the original 4:3 aspect ratio, but it is very telling that Manga UK cared about what the fans wanted. Crunchyroll has been a much less customer-focused company.