Review The Johto Journeys DVD Boxset

[sonic10158]

I am so glad that this boxset finally happened after all of these years. I had actually forgotten about it coming until November 11th, so I was really excited when I saw it at the store that day. But is the boxset actually any good compared to say the Australian release of the same season (I'm only going to compare it to the Australian release because that is the only other way I own the season. I never had the original US DVD volumes of the season)?

Episodes:
I am happy to say that unlike the recent re-releases of the first two seasons [The Indigo League and Adventures in the Orange Islands], they removed NONE of the episodes from it [like they did to episodes like Stage Fight in the recent Orange Islands boxset]. In fact, this box set actually includes the two episodes not included in the long out of print individual DVD volumes of the Johto Journeys. Because of this, I give this a score of:
10/10

Picture Quality:
As usual, the picture quality compared to other anime is poor. However, it is no worse than other Pokemon anime boxsets. There is obvious aliasing between each frame and the picture is a bit fuzzy. EDIT: Upon further inspection, the 4th disc in this box set has an even worse quality than the other three discs, and is definitely worse looking than the Australian release. Over all, I would give this boxset's picture quality a score of:
5/10

The episode "The Fire-ing Squad" is the first episode on the 4th disc, and I'm using it to compare the Australian and USA DVD picture quality.
Here is a screenshot of the Australian release:

And here is the same image from this USA Boxset:

Audio Quality:
I think the audio quality is just fine. I can hear both the voice acting and the background music easily and I never hear any cracking, hissing, or any other common sound issues. The sound is just as good as the Australian release. Over all, I would give this boxset's audio quality a score of:
10/10

DVD Menus:
The DVD menus are just like the Australian and most US releases of the show. You start out at a menu where you can choose "Play" or "Episodes" where you can pick which specific episode to watch. Hitting play will let you watch all of the episodes at once, playing the intro > episode > ending > intro > episode > ending > etc. This is the way I like to see tv show boxsets operate. You don't have an extras menu or anything to watch the Pokemon Karaokemon videos separately or anything. Because of all of that, I would give this a score of:
9/10

Other Notes:
I am really pleased to say that this boxset actually includes Pokemon Karaokemon at the end of every episode! Not even the Australian release did this. I had been begging to see these in decent quality for almost a decade now. No more having to listen to the bad quality rips of the songs on Youtube! Also, I really like how they put all 4 discs of this boxset into a single DVD case. It saves a lot more space on my shelf. One annoyance I have with this boxset is that there is no list of episodes in the boxset, so you can't just see which disc has which episodes without having to put in each disc and checking directly.

Closing Thoughts:
This boxset was late coming, but I am just thrilled that it came at all. I hope that, with this coming right after they re-released seasons 1 and 2, this is a sign of Viz Media finally pulling their head out of the sand and are actually planning on releasing EVERY season. Johto League Champions, Advanced Challenge, and Advanced Battle are desperately needing a boxset here in the USA. Master Quest, Advanced, and Battle Frontier are desperately needing a re-release of their boxsets. And I'd like to see them put the entirety of the newer seasons in a single boxset instead of splitting them up into three boxsets each.

 

[Dogasu]

Can you post some screenshots so we can get a look at the video quality? If you don't want to bother posting both then I can supply the Australian release screenshots for comparison.

 

[sonic10158]

I can, but I won't be able to until tomorrow afternoon

 

[Target]

Can you post some screenshots so we can get a look at the video quality? If you don't want to bother posting both then I can supply the Australian release screenshots for comparison.

I don't expect the quality to be drastically better than the original Viz Media release.

 

[Dogasu]

I actually expect it to be much worse seeing as how they're cramming 10 episodes onto each disc.

Anyway, this was posted on the Facebook page for my site with screenshots from the new set. Apparently Disc 4 is a mess.

 

[Target]

I actually expect it to be much worse seeing as how they're cramming 10 episodes onto each disc.

Anyway, this was posted on the Facebook page for my site with screenshots from the new set. Apparently Disc 4 is a mess.

Oh God, really? Now I really want to see these screenshots. I don't want my money going towards a mess of pixels.

 

[Ryu Taylor]

I'm not fazed. I think those are only noticeable when watching at one frame per second. I'll still be getting the set. Although I do think it's a rather funny gaffe that a Zubat is listed among Ash's party on that cover. Oh well.

 

[sonic10158]

I actually expect it to be much worse seeing as how they're cramming 10 episodes onto each disc.

Anyway, this was posted on the Facebook page for my site with screenshots from the new set. Apparently Disc 4 is a mess.

I added screenshots of both releases now

 

[Ryu Taylor]

I added screenshots of both releases now

Where?

 

[sonic10158]

in the first post

 

[Yoshi1001]

They look about the same to me. The AU one may be marginally sharper, but I don't think it's worth it to import the set for such a small difference.

 

[ii kanji]

Is it me or are they both horrible? Is this the best quality that the episodes can be restored to? I mean, I know the episodes are old but is this really what we used to watch on our old analogue TVs?...

 

[sonic10158]

Is it me or are they both horrible? Is this the best quality that the episodes can be restored to? I mean, I know the episodes are old but is this really what we used to watch on our old analogue TVs?...

They are just horrible. Considering how good Toei [that's the company, right?] Animation handled remastering Dragon Ball Z's, which is older than Pokemon's anime, picture, I'd say TCPi is just being cheap and/or lazy

 

[Ryu Taylor]

They are just horrible. Considering how good Toei [that's the company, right?] Animation handled remastering Dragon Ball Z's, which is older than Pokemon's anime, picture, I'd say TCPi is just being cheap and/or lazy

OLM makes the Pokemon anime.

 

[ii kanji]

Yeah but OLM aren't producing these pathetic DVDs are they?

 

[Dogasu]

Better masters definitely exist but they TPCI / Viz probably just don't have them. They could probably totally get them if they wanted (FUNimation was able to get better masters of the first two episodes of DBZ, for example) but doing so would require them to actually give a shit.

 

[Target]

Yeah but OLM aren't producing these pathetic DVDs are they?

Neither does Toei. Ryu Taylor's answer about OLM was to answer sonic10158's about if Toei Animation was involved in the production of the actual episodes, not their respective R1 DVD releases as you seemed to have inferred.

 

[ii kanji]

Ah my mistake then.

 

[technickal]

They look about the same to me. The AU one may be marginally sharper, but I don't think it's worth it to import the set for such a small difference.

This. And I think it's just the fact that the hand-colored episodes haven't aged well in general (even if they do still have some charm to them). Slightly better-quality versions may exist, but not by much.

 

[Ryu Taylor]

By the way, they removed the "Leo Burnett and 4kids are the Devil!" gaffe from the Ledyba episode. I just got to that part of the episode now.