The Bizarre World of Bootlegs

[llj]

Oh, so you got THAT dub. It was the Hong Kong english dub from the 80s by the sounds of it. This was the dub that was used for Clash of the Bionoids, the edited U.S. version of DYRL that was released by Celebrity Home Entertainment. It is infamous for its terribleness.

[Drew_Sutton]

You're right - those Eva boots are incredibly well put together. My go to check for "imports" is looking for Japanese text and while there's a bunch of it for the disc stats, it actually took me a second to put together that the rest of the package is in English, which is another huge give away. I'm not used to real bilingual packaging, unless it's EN/ES or EN/FR, especially on something anime related.

Nothing at all like those Ranma box sets. Though, I think I like the monicker of "Love Tears, Panda Kempo" more than Viz's alliterative or parody titles they used; or breaking the two TV series into multiple "seasons".

While I've mostly avoided out-right bootleg DVDs, I know that I have more than my fair share of Son May and associated groups' CD soundtracks. By the time I had the cash and where with all to replace them, they were out of print or, in a couple of cases, I would have had to track down original artist CDs to match the compilation. Which were also out of print. I know I've got a few fansubbed tapes with bootlegged labels in the clamshell because that was one of the perks of buying fansubs at $20 bucks a pop.

That last disc is a mystery to me. The entire 26 episodes of EVANGELION are on the first 3 discs, and this 4th disc (the so-called "Disc 2") is filled with weird clips of freakin' super sentai shows! All of which are neither subbed or dubbed. I have no clue what any of the shows titles are. I assume some of these aren't clips but actual show openings... If anyone knows of a '70s super sentai show where a kid runs around with a black ball creature with a yellow hat that looks like a sombrero -- it's featured here. There's a bunch more too, including some guy with weird bug eyes (not Kamen Rider -- though he's featured later in the disc). I even spotted what looked like a war-themed super sentai show complete with soldiers, tanks, machine guns and...you guessed it...a giant robot. It's a trip. I guess whoever put this bootleg set together figured that after watching EVANGELION, who wouldn't want to watch around 50 super sentai show openings -- all from the '70s/'80s! If you make it through the Super Sentai openings (and there is a bevy of cute female actresses in many of them) your reward is some more outlandish Japanese TV show openings at the end, which that defy all manner of explanation. Some of these shows I would imagine are now obscure in Japan, let alone never dreamt of in the US.

The disc says "Tokusatsu Toei TV Main Themes Collection", so that is exactly what I would expect would be on it. What surprises me is that it says it is Disc 2, so there's some other pirated box set floating around with a Disc 1. It's like trying to collect different toys from the bottom of cereal boxes!

Though nothing comes close to some of the DBZ VCD titles.

I wonder about those. During FUNimation's first run of bilingual DVDs, I was still looking to get a full fansubbed set of Dragonball, Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT (because, what the hell is another 60 episodes on top of the 400-some before that) set. Friend of a friend hopped on an auction on eBay for the trilogy + movies fansubbed on VCD. Pays up and in a week or two, has VCDs. Awesome, fansubs? Let's make copies! I bring a couple of spindles of CDs over, get my copies and head back home. Fortunately, my Samsung DVD player at the time could also do VCD, I fire up some DB and yep - fansubs. Toss in some DBZ at relatively random points and my old buddies S. Baldric and E. Monsoon show up and I get to see some of those Pearl TV copies I'd only read about on the net. Cool!

So I'm eventually getting my groove on watching some DBZ and I eventually get to the episodes of the late Freeza saga, which were then being broadcast for the first time (but had been out on DVD for a minute) and my VCDs are actually stripped out DVD rips. Looked at the next couple of discs and they were the same. When the VCD set caught up with the DVD releases, they went back to fansubs.

Long convoluted story but I wonder, Char, if they are perhaps the same or very similar set of VCDs?

[Char Aznable]

This was the dub that was used for Clash of the Bionoids, the edited U.S. version of DYRL that was released by Celebrity Home Entertainment. It is infamous for its terribleness.

I was always interested in checking out the dub for Clash of the Bionoids, just to see if it lived up to it's infamy. Now finding out that I've unknowingly seen it, I can say that it certainly does!

I wonder, Char, if they are perhaps the same or very similar set of VCDs?

I believe that those DBZ VCDs are in fact one and the same -- or at the very least, extremely close. The ones I have also range from fansubs to complete outright DVD rips!

And speaking of DBZ, here are a couple images of some other bootleg VCDs. These are of the 6th and 12th movies. Movie #12 has decent subs, but whoever subtitled #6 took some liberties, as the subs have Vegeta repeatedly cursing like a sailor.





I still have to take some photos of the notorious "Speedy Video" Malaysian DBZ VCDs. These are the ones with the inexplicably weird English dub. Here's some Youtube links to hear the dub firsthand...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upy2SEnP9MU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wG84efH4sw

[llj]

Some pics of my bootlegs.

Okusama Wa Mahou Shoujo. "Magical Girl" anime about a housewife who's actually a magical girl but has gotten too old to be a magical girl.





Zambot 3. Disc 2 stops working about 2 episodes in.

[Char Aznable]

Regardless of them being bootlegs, both have awesome cover artwork!

I'm intrigued by the premise of Okusama Wa Mahou Shoujo. Is it an anime worth seeking out? It's always interesting to see the magical girl formula switched up or deconstructed, like in Madoka Magica.

[llj]

I've only seen the first 4 episodes of Okusama Wa Mahou Shoujo. It struck me as being generally a lighthearted sitcom.

[davemerrill]

I'm pretty sure I have that Zambot 3 bootleg set. That's a pretty entertaining show that goes to some very dark places. And then it has the evil space alien doing his Elvis impression.

[usamimi]

And speaking of DBZ, here are a couple images of some other bootleg VCDs. These are of the 6th and 12th movies. Movie #12 has decent subs, but whoever subtitled #6 took some liberties, as the subs have Vegeta repeatedly cursing like a sailor.

That seems to be a hallmark of DBZ fansubs--subbers sure liked to make Vegeta sound way more "badass" by peppering in some creative language. I remember I also had some Rurouni Kenshin fansubs that also liked to make Kenshin swear whenever he was in Battousai mode...again, seemingly to make him seem way more "badass".

[usamimi]

Ok, so the covers for those Ranma bootlegs looked vaguely familiar, as did the Engrish on it, so after doing a little digging, I found this old Ranma design (I'm pretty sure it's either a poster or a shitajiki)--whoever made the bootleg covers used the Engrish right from this Japanese design.

[Char Aznable]

Ok, so the covers for those Ranma bootlegs looked vaguely familiar, as did the Engrish on it, so after doing a little digging, I found this old Ranma design (I'm pretty sure it's either a poster or a shitajiki)--whoever made the bootleg covers used the Engrish right from this Japanese design.

That's great that you were able to find that! I originally figured those covers were just something the bootleg 'company' put together -- though I'm not all that surprised that they basically copied someone else's cover design!

Here's some images of the Gundam 0083 bootleg. This one was released by FX. The cover and discs look great, and the episode quality is really sharp as well. But, as is the case with many bootlegs, there's problems with the second disc. The final episode won't play through the whole way, depending on the DVD player. Some players get through the episode without a hitch, while others stop midway through the episode, causing the screen to freeze. There's some special features too, including footage not in any of the episodes. I don't know if this was originally promo footage or animated clips from a video game cutscene, but there's tons of Japanese text in it, which I unfortunately can't read...but I'd wager it explains what the footage is.