Reggie Blogged

For my money, one of the best composers in the music business would have to be Yuji Ohno. This guys is mostly known for his work on just about anything that has to do with Lupin III. After the last few weeks, it's hard for me not to think of Ohno's compositions when Lupin comes to mind. (I've been listening to his various albums to get my jazz fix.) Ohno's works are primarily jazz-inspired and even some of his earliest efforts on Lupin music in the '70s is still considered extraordinary. Not only has he covered music for the various Lupin series and movies, he's also done music for all three PS2 Lupin games. The man is also an accomplished musical genius even when he isn't working on music for Lupin. Tokyo City Lights is a jazz masterpiece. If you want to hear some of Ohno's work, just check out this YouTube pag e with various uploads.

DBZ his a very popular anime, but you already know that. From VHS to DVDs and remastered DVD box sets, the series has seen multiple releases. The Funimation Remastered Box Sets should have been the last of the DVDs that a DBZ fan would have to buy. Each box set contains over 30 episodes, is remastered and in 16:9. (you'd be surprised how many people bemoaned the cropping among other things), the option for English or Japanese voices, the option to watch in either language and mix up the American and Japanese soundtracks in your viewing, and only run you $34.99. Not a bad deal. All nine seasons are DBZ are available in this format. So that should be all the DBZ you need, right? You should be done buying DBZ DVDs, right? And shortly after season nine dropped Funimation announces plans to release the Dragon Boxes. What are the Dragon Boxes? These were originally released by Toei in Japan of 2003 and where Japanese viewers chance to finally own the series on DVD, thought it was limited...

I didn't begin reading manga until 2003 and the first manga I ever picked up were the first two volumes of Dragon Ball & Dragon Ball Z. In Japan, the whole manga is known as just Dragon Ball. Despite already knowing a good deal of the story because I'd already seen the anime, the manga was no less enjoyable. On the contrary. I feel like I was able to get a much better appreciation for Akira Toriyama's art since it was in comic form. It took nearly 4 years, but in 2006, I'd finally had the DB and DBZ manga in it's combined 42 volume entirety. This week, I decided to start reading it all over from the beginning. I'm already on volume 3 of DB. The 16 volumes of DB that I own are the smaller versions with red covers with the old VIZ logo. These particular versions are completely unedited. When VIZ thought they could market the manga to an even younger crowd, they began censoring the DB and DBZ manga, much to many fans dismay. The VIZ Big editions of DB and DBZ, ...