1980 Astroboy DVD release in Canada (French version only)

[Astro Forever]

So... I've bought the first box, which includes episodes 1 to 26 in the original French order as it can be seen on this site, which is slightly different from the order that had been given in this thread (don't ask me which one is correct, I can't tell, but unless the French people edited the French Canadian version, the correct order should normally follow the trailers). This is a good news because the French European release went back to the original Japanese order, but with all the censorship, the Japanese last episode Astro's First Love isn't special at all. Also, the trailer at the end of the episodes wouldn't have matched the next French episode if they had followed the Japanese order (and they couldn't be moved around so easily because then the game at the end wouldn't have matched the episode the viewer had just seen, which would have been even worse!).

The original French titles were also kept, so they aren't ridiculous babelfishy translations of the Japanese titles.

However, I noticed two things when I put the discs in my DVD player: first, they make a terrible noise. They do not do this on my computer nor on my living room DVD recorder, but out of all my hundreds of discs, they are the only one to make that noise on the DVD player I mainly use. Therefore I've yet to watch an episode as I'm wondering what to do with them. I do not think the store would refund me since I opened the box, and since 3 out of 4 of those discs have a problem (the 4th one seems almost normal), my bet is that if they would exchange it with another box from those that are currently on the shelves, I'll end up with the same problem.

The second thing I noticed is that the opening and closing credits as well as the game's voices are not from the French Canadian version, but from France's version. Yeah, the dubbing is the same so it's not like it makes the series completely different, but for a huge fan like me, it would have been a lot more interesting to get my childhood's version as it was, especially since the songs were really close to the original Japanese version. I'd also rather have my game without the multiple choice.

So much for "staying close to the viewer's memory" as stated in the opening credit...

Edit: about the order, I've just figured it out... The only difference between the DVD release and the list previously posted on the thread I linked to above is that "Piège dans le cosmos" ("Save the Carolina 3) moved from episode #11 to episode #5, moving the other episodes up by one position.

Also, about the quality: I have just barely watched it but the few seconds I paid attention to were not nearly as good as Madman's or Manga's release.

[jeffbert]

In regards to the trouble playing the discs on a certain machine: My JVC just simply will not play BJ #3 or is it #4 of 7 smoothly. It skips at about 45 min into the disc. But it will not even recognise Cosmo Warrior Zero disc three. It says "NO DISC." My brother has the same model JVC & it also does this with these discs. However, these discs work just fine on my PC & another played I tried. Note that this JVC was listed as a Consumer Reports best of class.

From my experience in the engineering dept of my last employer, I know that it is not economically feasible to eliminate all the bugs from an electronic product. However, there were 3 classes of them, & the #2 & #3 bugs only showed uo under the most unlikely combinations of settings. Only #1 bugs had to be fixed before actually making the product. We wanted to fix the #2 eventually with software upgrades, but the #3 would remain forever. BTW, these were software problems, rather than hardware.

From this I conclude that is is possible that the encoding of those discs contains a flaw that only shows when played on certain equipment, although the three discs having the problem does seem odd.

I contacted the publisher of the Cosmo Warrior Zero discs regarding this problem, & eventually sent them the disc. I received an email telling me that they would send a better disc, but then learned that was an error. The Rep sent me a catalogue & offered me one free disc of my choice, she also returned the one I sent. So I simply had to live with the problem.

How old is your machine?


In regards to the sequence: Oddly enough, the MANGA Video DVD set used the original Japanese sequence with the exception of the #1 #2 being edited into #1. Here is a quote from another thread:

Hehe, you're right, I only looked at the first few. Looks like he got his episode list from the Osamu Tezuka site. Unfortunately these episode names were never used in the English version. Here's the comparitive list, with the Japanese in bold and the English in brackets:

1. The Birth of Astroboy (1. The Birth of Astroboy)
2. Astroboy vs. Atlas (1. Birth of Astroboy)
3. The Robot Circus (2. Robot Circus)
4. Saving our Classmate (3. Save The Classmate)
5. Astroboy vs. Atlas II: The Resurrection of Atlas (10. Atlas Lives Again)
6. Robot Land (21. Robot Land)
7. Frankenstein (12. Frankenstein)
8. Red Cat (29. The Red Cat)
9. Astroboy vs. Atlas III: Crystal of the Desert (11. The Crystal of the Desert)
10. The Vehicle, White Planet (8. The White Planet)
11. The Robot President (31. A Robot President)
12. Damdam's Neck (47. Goliath's Head)
13. Lightning Man (35. The Light Ray Robot)
14. Tomboy Uran (13. Uran The Tomboy)
15. Robio and Robiet (44. Robio and Robiette)
16. Adventure on Mars (7. Astro Fights Aliens)
17. SOS on the Space Shuttle (5. Save The Carolina 3)
18. Astroboy vs. Atlas IV: The Menacing Comet (15. The Rainbow Comet)
19. The Devil's Balloon (49. The Death Balloon)
20. Pook in Cruciform Island (9. The Transformation Robot)
21. The Fool Ivan (30. The Wreck of the Titan)
22. The Robot Who Lied (43. The Liar Robot)
23. The Girl from Alsore (20. The Girl From Alsoar)
24. The Biggest Robot on Earth (Part 1) (50. The Greatest Robot In The World (part 1))
25. The Biggest Robot on Earth (Part 2) (51. The Greatest Robot In The World (part 2))
26. Astroboy vs. Atlas V: The Violent Gang Gadem (22. The Robot Vikings)
27. Major Operations by Black Jack (36. The Time Machine)
28. The Great Adventure of Little Robot Sam (34. The Robot Stuntman)
29. Astroboy vs. Atlas VI: The King of the Ice (23. The Great Meltdown)
30. Uran and Uran (27. Uran's Twin)
31. Dash in a Storm (14. Speeding Through The Storm)
32. Cleopatra's Mystery (46. The Return of Queen Cleopatra)
33. Astroboy vs. Atlas VII: The Runaway Subway (16. The Runaway Subway Train)
34. The Little Elephant Pura (6. The Baby Elephant Pook)
35. The Secret of Bee Island (35. The Secret of Bee City)
36. The Monster of Kuraken (17. The Monster of Clarken)
37. Rumy in Pochom-Pochom Island (24. Lily on Peligro Island)
38. Astroboy vs. Atlas VIII: The Destruction of the Satellite & The Proton Gun (41. The Anti-Proton Gun)
39. The Stolen Sun (37. The Man-Made Solar Sphere)
40. Black Looks (45. Blackie Young)
41. The Devil Garon (18. The Genie From Outer Space)
42. Hurry, You Three Second-Rate Knights! (19. The Robots Nobody Wanted)
43. Astroboy vs. Atlas IX: Atlas Forever (48. Atlas Forever)
44. Space Leopard (25. The Snow Leopard)
45. Uran's God (32. Uran's Quest)
46. Space Airport R45 (28. Outer Spaceport R45)
47. Spaceship in Imminent Danger (39. The Hijacked Airship)
48. Jinmen Iwa (26. The Human Faced Rock)
49. Uran Loves Hit Men (38. Uran Falls In Love)
50. The Devil's Place in Ordin (33. The World of Odin)
51. Rage of the Sphinx (40. The Secret of the Mayas)
52. Astroboy's First Love (4. Astro's First Love)

They should have left Black Jack's name alone in the English dub instead of calling him Dr Roget. Fortunately, translators these days are less afraid to use the real Japanese names for characters in anime.

I think the mis-translation of the word "Odin" is because it's a proper noun. For example, in the 1963 series in Japanese, episode 2 (rendered "Frankenstein" in the English dub) was called which translates directly as something like "franc Ken". Since there are no Japanese characters for the word "Frankenstein", they use a combination of phonetics that sound as close as possible to the English (or indeed German) pronounciation.
In the case of "Odin", I suppose the closest they could get came out as "Ordin". Maybe they translated it from "or din", phonetically similar but still using regular words.

We see the same thing in the title of episode 48. "Jinmen Iwa" but in reverse. This is obviously a Romanised Japanese name; the actual name of the rock with a face like a human. In English we look at the words Jinmen Iwa and think "what?" - you won't find Jinmen Iwa in an English dictionary. So when they translate it, they could either choose to use the title Jinmen Iwa (phonetic translation of the proper noun), or words that describe what Jinmen Iwa is. They went with the description (The Human-Faced Rock). It's just like if they had translated Frankenstein into Japanese by naming him "the monster with bolts in its neck". It contains no proper nouns and each word can be easily translated.

Interestingly, Alta Vista's Babelfish can handle the translation of Odin correctly, but not Frankenstein. I think there must be several ways of going about translating these things. (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this stuff)

And I have to laugh at episode 49. "Uran Loves Hit Men".

http://www.astroboy-online.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2516

[Astro Forever]

How old is your machine?

A few months shy of 2 years.

In regards to the sequence: Oddly enough, the MANGA Video DVD set used the original Japanese sequence with the exception of the #1 #2 being edited into #1. Here is a quote from another thread:

Why is it odd? Madman did the same thing. What was odd though is how this was (badly) translated by the French on the European DVD release... oh my!

Out of the English, French and Japanese order, my favorite is the French order (even if, just as in English, "The Great Meltdown" comes after "The Runaway Subway Train").

However, this means I'll have to wait box #2 to get the best episodes. Oh well, one can't have everything.

But for now I'll just hope that box #1 will play fine. I've had an exchange today, but I'm kind of scared to check if the new discs work better. So for now it's hard to know if I'll make it to box #2...

[Astro Forever]

Well, out of 4 new discs, 3 are playing just fine but the other one is still making that noise. I hope the're a way to replace only that one disc.

I started watching a few episodes. I discovered something interesting about my childhood memories.

Almost two years ago, when I watched all the series again, I realized I had mixed "Lilly on Peligro Island" and "Robot Land". In both episodes, Astro gets out at night to save somebody, and he is not supposed to do that. I thought the scenes where he was tired at school and when his energy cassette ran out of energy as he arrived in Robot Land were in the same episode, which of course isn't the case.

I realized just yesterday that both episodes were back to back in the French order. I'm sure that also played a role in my confusion!

Both episodes were very enjoyable to watch. The censorship wasn't that obvious, in fact I realized only after watching Lilly on Peligro island that Astro had gone on the island only twice instead of three times, but it didn't even occur to me during the episode.

I wrote to the company about the "wrong" opening and closing credits and was told they had done business with the French company Rouge Citron (litterally "Red Lemon") and so that's why we ended up with that version. However I've been told that my e-mail had been transferred to the acquisition department. I don't know if they could change this for the second box, but at least I hope it will make them realize that they need to be careful with the versions they get.

I've seen screenshots of Strange Wings' Manga Distribution version, and I can say that I find the menus much more clearer on this box (I'd rather have an episode title instead of an unidentified image). I assume that the image quality must be the same than Manga Distribution's box, which means it's not very impressive (really, I think there is not much difference between this and the DVD I made out of my old VHS tape, if there is one...!) but it felt really good to be able to watch Astroboy in French on my TV again! The great dubbing compensate for the censorship and the not so good image quality.

Now if I can finally get a replacement for my first disc, I'll definitely be buying box #2. Most of the episodes I like most will be on it.

[Astro Forever]

Finally, I have 4 discs that are working well now!

[jeffbert]

Finally, I have 4 discs that are working well now!

What was the solution?

[Astro Forever]

What was the solution?

The first time I went back to the store, I was given a new box. The second time, since only one disc was faulty, I asked if it was possible to exchange only that one instead of the whole box (I feared I was going to get new faulty discs in place of the good ones I already had) and the disc turned out to work properly.

I also tried a few other discs (not Astroboy related) since last week and really, all of them played normally, so while it's possible that most people won't notice any problem with those discs, I assume there was indeed a problem with their discs, and that my DVD player isn't the problem.

In case you wonder:

First box: discs #1-2-3 didn't work well, disc #4 did.
Second box: only disc #2 didn't work well.
Third box: disc #2 worked and I'll never know about the others.

Weird, isn't it? Just by taking a look at them, nothing seemed wrong, at least at first glance.

[jeffbert]

That is weird & totally unexpected. I would really think that they would have much better quality control than that.

[Astro Forever]

That is weird & totally unexpected. I would really think that they would have much better quality control than that.

Me too.

And this is unrelated to this problem, but just to give you an idea, the video looks a little bit like there was a blue filter over it. I've read that the masters (the French ones, I mean) were a in really bad state. Given that the market for Astroboy is probably not as important in Europe than in the US or Australia (I know there aren't that many people in Australia, but from what I understood Astroboy is huge there), I understand it might have not have been worth it to go back to the original Japanese masters, so I'm not going to fault them or the French company on that. It's not like it's unwatchable, but it makes me appreciate Madman and Manga Entertainment's work even more.

[Strange Wings]

Are the 'Géronimo-rapports' on them too? And if so, are they separated from the episodes, just made accessible as an extra feature (as it's the case on the Déclic DVDs)?

How about Astro's "Et attention, mes amis! Notre jeu se pursuit dans les prochaine émissions!"?!