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Opening to Alternate/Ocean English Dub of “Dragon Ball Kai”?
Published by 09 February 2014, 11:43 AM EST

Forum member linkdude20002001 took it upon himself to answer one of the biggest questions ever to face Dragon Ball fandom: who provided the vocals to FUNimation’s original 1995 opening to the Dragon Ball TV series (commonly referred to as “Gotta Find That Dragon Ball!“)…?!

After reaching out to original composer Peter Berring, linkdude20002001 received word back that the actual vocal performance itself was courtesy of Dave Steele, a studio/session performer. A brief bit of digging leads one to Dave Steele’s website, which in turn leads to his “Cartoons” page with song samples.

Listed on the page is something called “dragonball z kai”, originally uploaded back in September 2013:

The song snippet is only about 22 seconds long, and is likely part of a larger, more-complete version of a song, and may not even be the final recording/mastering of said material.

An alternate English dub (to that of FUNimation’s production) has been known about since at least late 2010. Since then, various voice actors commonly associated with Ocean Productions have inadvertently (and occasionally even willfully) spilled the beans on various recasts, recordings, progress marks, etc. A replacement musical score has been one piece of information floating around since the very beginning. As-of-yet, said dub has not actually been officially revealed or confirmed by a production company or higher rights-holder.

FUNimation’s original 1995 English dub of Dragon Ball (Movie 1 + TV Episodes 1-13) and 1996-1998 dub of Dragon Ball Z (Movies 1-3 + Edited TV Episodes 1-67) featured a voice cast outsourced to Ocean before bringing the entire production in-house in 1999. The cast was later outsourced by a separate company to produce an alternate/semi-simultaneous English dub of the rest of Dragon Ball Z that primarily aired in bits and pieces across both Canada and the U.K.

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2 Comments

  • juankastro says:

    Dragon ball Kai Arco Majin boo 💡 💡 💡

  • linkdude20002001 says:

    I sent Dave Steele a message too, and he says he recorded the song in 2009. So, this STILL unannounced English dub has been in the works for at least four years… I don’t understand this madness. They do this for a lot of their dubs, though. I remember it took forever for Nana’s English dub, which was unofficially announced by the voice actors as well.

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