Discotek Media Is Bringing The Original 'Digimon' Movies To Blu-Ray
The uncut versions feature a dub of many of the original dub voices while the Digimon The Movie version is remastered
Digihear digisee digiknow what’s coming? Discotek Media held a special Digimon screening at Otakon and made some major announcements.
The anime distributor has announced “Digimon The Movies: Movie Collection 1”. It includes new dubs of the films that comprised what would be released in the United States as Digimon the Movie: Digimon Adventure, Our War Game, and Hurricane Touchdown. Except (but also not except) this time, they’re each the uncut individual versions. They’re bilingual too, meaning not only do they have the new English dub, but the original Japanese audio with English subtitles. The tone of these new dubs is said to be a mix between classic Digimon dubs and a bit straighter at the same time. And they’re using the Japanese music. It was made at Sound Cadence Studios, directed and written by Marissa Lenti, with script supervision and producing from MarcFBR, the founder of the With the Will Digimon fansite.
As for the cast, it’s everyone you’d hoped it would be and more. Nearly everyone one could want from the original Saban dub is here. Or as Discotek put it: Anyone who we could find & could come back is here. That includes Joshua Seth, who only ever missed Revenge of Diaboromon, as Tai, Colleen O’Shaughnessey as Sora, Mona Marshall as Izzy (and Terriermon), and then there’s Lara Jill Miller as Kari, Brian Donovan as Davis, and Shadowhunters writer and executive producer Michael Reisz as Matt for the first time since Revenge of Diaboromon. Matt had different voice actors for each of the projects of the last decade, tri. and Last Evolution. All default-stage partner Digimon to Adventure Digidestined reprise their roles from the series, including Edie Mirman as Gatomon (who as a reminder is actually Champion and not Rookie) after being voiced by Kate Higgins for tri. and Last Evolution Kizuna. Doug Erholtz as 02-era T.K. is in a similar position, having been voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch in those projects. Wendee Lee is back as Adventure era T.K. for the first time since that series ended. The Fahns Tom and Dorothy are back in their roles too, as is Paul St. Peter as Diaboromon and its earlier stages, as well as Kokomon’s Wendigomon and Cherubimon stages.
Mimi, Cody, Joe, Greymon and MetalGreymon, Armadillomon, Gennai and Angemon have been recast, due to the deaths of Philece Sampler, Michael Lindsay, Joseph Pilato Robert Axelrod, and Mike Reynolds and retirement of Dave Mallow. Mimi is voiced by Elsie Lovelock, who also voices Matt and T.K.’s hilarious grandma, named Kinu. Cody is voiced by Madeline Dorroh, Joe is voiced by Eli Farmer, Bryce Papenbrook takes over his father Bob’s role as the Greymon, referred to Red Greymon that fought Parrotmon at Highton View Terrace in the Adventure movie. The series’s regular Greymon is Bradley Gareth, who also takes over Angemon and MetalGreymon. Armadillomon and his in-training form Upamon, the only 02 partner whose voice could not return, are now voiced by Wayne Grayson, a mainstay of 4Kids who voiced Lance on Joey Wheeler on Yu-Gi-Oh!, GX’s Syrus Truesdale, Lance from Pokémon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’s Michelangelo. Yolei is now voiced by Jessica Peterson, and Gennai is now voiced by Jason Marnocha. The deceased talent receive In Loving Memory credits in the films their characters appear in.
Digimon: The Movie’s remastering leaves everything of the Frankensteined main film intact. That includes the very of-the-time soundtrack, which included “One Week”, “The Rockafeller Skank”, “Kids in America”, “The Impression That I Get”, and “All Star” (after Mystery Men but before Shrek) as well as all the music written for the dub. None of that is being replaced. What is gone however is the infamous Angela Anaconda short that played at the beginning. According to Justin Sevakis, they tried their darnedest to include it. The special features for all of the four are to be determined.
Of course, this was a logical next step for a company that has already released Blu-Rays for both the English and Japanese versions of Digimon Adventure (Digimon: Digital Monsters season 1), the latter just this past Tuesday. The industry presentation also announced their plans for Adventure 02 to get similar releases. Its English masters were broken or missing, so they used the best Japanese footage they could get, found or recreated English tweaks, and rebuilt it. And of course it’s being upscaled. The Japanese version will come later. There will be English galleries while the Japanese extras are to be determined. That this is Movies Collection 1 indicates there’s a plan for releases of the subsequent movies like Revenge of Diaboromon and the Tamers and Frontier-set movies that made their way with the former in 2005 on Jetix, well after their original Japan releases.
Sources: With the Will, Crunchyroll, Sound Cadence Studios (1, 2, 3)