Episode #0390 (15 November 2015)

[VegettoEX]

Episode #0390 (download MP3) (rss feed) (subscribe in iTunes) (YouTube version)
54:57; 96 kbps, mono; 37.9 MB

Episode #0390! VegettoEX and Hujio hold nothing back as they criticize fandom's response to a "Dragon Ball Super" English dub announcement for Asia. We also track the entire story behind a major news item mistranslation: there was no new movie announced for a trilogy of films during a convention in Spain, and the evidence is right there on the table for anyone to analyze.

Referenced sites:

• NEWS: Champa & Vados Voice Actors Revealed in "Dragon Ball Super"
• NEWS: "Dragon Ball Super" Hits DVD Rental Market in Japan
• NEWS: Japanese McDonald's x "Dragon Ball Super" Happy Meal Campaign
• NEWS: Toonami Asia to Premiere Exclusive "Super" English Dub in 2016
• NEWS: New Dragon Ball Movie Confirmation Rumor Debunked
• LISTENINGS: Kirblog - The "Beerus Saga" of DBSuper

See you next time for what's hopefully a proper ten-year anniversary of the podcast!

[Super Sayian Prime]

The shock about a non-Funimation dub of Super surprised me too. Every TV series in this franchise has seen at least two partial, if not complete, English dubs. Why would Super be the exception?

As for the new movie garbage, I'm not sure I want to see your reactions when Toei inevitably announces a Super compilation film.

[SaiyaSith]

Good podcast this week. Please talk a little more about DBS next time.

[Blade]

A fun and entertaining episode on the whole, which, I think, channeled a lot of my own fan-frustrations about things I've read over the past few weeks.

My one grumble, however, is the discussion around the 30 - 32 minute mark, which dismisses the idea of a new film on the grounds of it making no sense either logistically and financially when Super is about to go into the same story.

The issue I take with that is that Super itself makes no sense given that it's doing exactly the same thing. We're talking about a weekly animation serial that is currently in the process of reanimating a film that Toei released only earlier this year - which is freakin' nuts! There's nothing about that arrangement which makes even the slightest bit of sense or shows even proper fore-planning; for all intents and purposes, I'd be willing to wager that Toei announced Super without actually knowing what they hell they were going to do with it. They're winging it, and stringing out the adaptation process of BoG and RoF as long as possible to give Toriyama time enough to put something new together for them to work with.

I've been a Dragonball fan long enough to know that second-guessing Toei's perchance for the bizarre can be it's own undoing. Sure, in the context of the stuff which appeared on those Spanish news sites, there's nothing that says that a new film is around the corner, and furthermore, the time frame would be nuts given that we've just had RoF - but honestly, weirder things have happened. If they announce something tomorrow, I'd be no less shocked than I would be if they announced something in two years time - or even, not at all.

[Herms]

The issue I take with that is that Super itself makes no sense given that it's doing exactly the same thing.

To be fair, Mike himself did make a comment along these lines in passing.

[Blade]

The issue I take with that is that Super itself makes no sense given that it's doing exactly the same thing.

To be fair, Mike himself did make a comment along these lines in passing.

That's sort of the point I'm getting at, Mike does add that it's 'weird enough that Super is competing with Freeza' but I think that alone demonstrates a precedent for these sorts of ridiculous decisions and undermines the entire logic of the exchange beforehand.

Mike: Dragonball Super is a thing right now, it seems really weird that they would re-tell Battle of Gods, re-tell the Freeza movie - we know there's a new story arc coming out - how does a new movie coming out this year or next year fit into that?

Hujio: How does it even make any sense financially? I mean, you have Super that is currently running and then you're going to produce a film to compete with it?

Because, I mean, roll the clock back to Spring when Super was announced, and a lot of people were asking the exact same thing. When it started airing a re-telling of Battle of Gods, there was a mixture of confusion and disbelief that they were actually doing that, which I guess has sort of segued into some sort of twisted normality via the meter of Toei's logic in regard to their handling of the franchise. As a critical thinking exercise, we're no longer in the position to be able to say 'well, that seems unlikely as it makes no sense' just because of the nature of the craziness that we're dealing with.

[Gian2408]

Why do people have a problem with this Asian English dub? It's not going to matter for people in America. If you don't want to watch it, don't watch it. For us who live in South East Asia, this is an awesome thing. YOU ARE STILL GOING TO GET YOUR ENGLISH DUB. I'M STILL GOING TO BUY YOUR DUB ON BLU-RAY. This won't be the Malaysian dub. This will have higher TV standards. India is a mass market for Dragon Ball.

When I was getting home releases, I had to wait so long on amazon and I envied the people who got go to a store and pick up Dragon Ball. Let us have our dub. Your dub will be better. Your dub will have Chris Sabat, Sean Schemmel, Chris Ayres and Jason Douglas. Don't hate on this dub without giving it a shot.

[VegettoEX]

You raise perfectly reasonable points, Blade, but like Jake noted, I/we did actually address those in the show.

It's absolutely correct to state (as you did, and - again - as we did during the show) that Super is absolutely crazy in how it's re-telling not just one movie, but two movies, one of which was literally just released on home video. We acknowledge how insane that is.

At the same time, the production of a third movie right now would also be insane, and while it's not the ONLY reason to be suspect, it's ***A*** reason to be suspect. It's one more thing to raise an eyebrow about. It's the start of the skepticism, but not the end-all, be-all "proof". It's our jumping-off point.

Please remember that this topic isn't really about there being or not being a "third" movie, or when that might come to pass if it ends up being real. This is about a news site completely mangling their reporting, us collectively watching them as they dig their hole deeper and deeper, and projecting forward what their ass-covering will be when something - ANYTHING - comes to pass that might be enough to draw some sorf or relevant tie for them to run out from cowering under their sheets to say "HAHA TOLD YOU SO!" (except no... no, you didn't).

(We acknowledge and expect there will probably be another movie at some point. Of course there will be. It wasn't announced in Spain, though, and this is all about the inside baseball of how shit gets so bad on the Internet, and what you should do about it.)

[JulieYBM]

A new movie isn't impossible in the next year or two. After all, the 2013 film was produced at the same time as production on One Piece Film Z, which had a ton of good animators and a new One Piece film is in there. Toei Animation has so many different projects in production right now that I would certainly hope production was held off or begun far enough in advance that the film didn't look like a steaming pile of turd, but shit is going to go down as it goes down. After how restrained the last two films have been they probably wouldn't receive much in the way of time or animators, anyway.

[Dogasu]

Yes, amazingly enough, brick-and-mortar DVD rental stores are still very much a thing here in Japan. There are theories as to why they still exist that range from "the old people in this country hate change" (a problem that affects many other things) to "the bigger chains have mafia ties that allow them to continue operating" but the fact remains that you can go into an actual store and rent DVDs, Blu-rays, and music CDs. Sites like Hulu and Netflix (which only launched here two months ago!) are gaining traction but it seems like these rental stores still have a few more years left in them.

I've thought about picking up the first Dragon Ball Super rental DVD and checking to see if there are any animation touch-ups (I'm not sure why Mike doesn't think there will be any? The precedent is certainly there) but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe later this week.

[VegettoEX]

People point to Crystal often, but that was a web series first. Pretty huge difference.

A better example would be something like any random poor-looking One Piece episode or any other long-running traditional shonen show Toei works on.

[Puto]

Dragon Ball Kai had a missing layer in one of the reanimated shots fixed between the TV airing and the home release. Also, 'Paradice' in episode 1's opening lyrics got fixed too.

[VegettoEX]

Dragon Ball Kai had a missing layer in one of the reanimated shots fixed between the TV airing and the home release. Also, 'Paradice' in episode 1's opening lyrics got fixed too.

I'm definitely aware of those. While that's true, those are literally one-click fixes. That's different than even just one shot being reanimated.

[ShadowDude112]

I really like the line Mike said. "You're just jealous someone's getting something cool. Shut the fuck up!" I like it because not only is it true, but there's more to it. Technically, these people are getting the cool thing, just not in the way they want it, in this case, with FUNimation's voice cast. They're getting it illegally, sure, but they're getting it illegally and not in the way they want it which makes it kind of more spoiled when you think about it.

[Ajay]

Regarding the potential touching up on Episode 5, I think there's definitely a very small chance for it to happen. They fixed up Boo Kai's intro for the Japanese broadcast:

Spoiler:

The background is different between the versions, as well as the framing of the action. Things to watch out for are faces, hands, and arms. Likewise, there's some lighting changes between scenes.

They didn't even bother to draw Boo throwing the energy ball in the International release; instead, the ball engulfs him. Following this, the international version has some bland animation of Goku screaming before delivering a Kamehameha, whereas the Japanese version shows him watching the action from a dramatic angle before firing the beam off. Both have different lead-ins into the identical firing animation, but the Japanese version is significantly better.

Spoiler:

It's obviously an apples and orange comparison, but it's the most recent change I can think of that involves actual reanimation. I guess we'll see. Personally, I don't think it's likely, but after such a huge outrage from just about every community (with even the staff commenting on it), it'd be kind of crazy to simply ignore it.

[Ringworm128]

Wait no Funimation dub? Hmmmmm not sure I like the sound of that, then again I'l probably just watch it in Japanese most of the time.

Oh and congrats on ten years of the podcast.

[kei17]

Why do people have a problem with this Asian English dub? It's not going to matter for people in America. If you don't want to watch it, don't watch it. For us who live in South East Asia, this is an awesome thing. YOU ARE STILL GOING TO GET YOUR ENGLISH DUB. I'M STILL GOING TO BUY YOUR DUB ON BLU-RAY. This won't be the Malaysian dub. This will have higher TV standards. India is a mass market for Dragon Ball.

I think this is the way they think: "That's not fair! Why do the Asian people get an English dub before 'Murica the center of the world! English and DeeBeeZeee are ours, not for barbarians who's already got their lame ching chang chong languages!"
The Philippines got an English dub of DBZ before the US, though.

The issue I take with that is that Super itself makes no sense given that it's doing exactly the same thing. We're talking about a weekly animation serial that is currently in the process of reanimating a film that Toei released only earlier this year - which is freakin' nuts! There's nothing about that arrangement which makes even the slightest bit of sense or shows even proper fore-planning; for all intents and purposes, I'd be willing to wager that Toei announced Super without actually knowing what they hell they were going to do with it. They're winging it, and stringing out the adaptation process of BoG and RoF as long as possible to give Toriyama time enough to put something new together for them to work with.

I too find it extremely hard to understand their sloppy marketing strategy, but I've come up with one hypothesis; They want to market the show toward the countries that didn't get BoG and RoF. In this case, they could have produced some additional episodes with recycled footage only for such countries and get straight to the newly written arc on the Japanese airing, though. Maybe it has something to do with the home release date of RoF, but it sounds dumb.

[Herms]

Wait no Funimation dub? Hmmmmm not sure I like the sound of that, then again I'l probably just watch it in Japanese most of the time.

There almost certainly will be a Funimation dub somewhere down the road. However, Funimation will not be the first to dub the series. That's all.

[DragonBoxZTheMovies]

While I hate the fact that you guys had to record this in the first place, this was immensely satisfying to listen to. It's lucky that you guys have this sort of outlet, because being able to let it all out like that must've almost felt therapeutic. Although, to be completely honest, I actually saw very little of the fan responses that you guys are discussing here, but this is likely down to the fact that I've been a little more detached from the franchise lately and also more selective with my browsing habits. Mainly been sticking to Twitter and Kanzenshuu. Either way, I always enjoy any insights into how you go about running the site (I'm aware that I've said this several times before). The discussion on how you go about reporting news was really interesting.

Massive congratulations on the show's tenth anniversary, by the way (I think I've been around for at least 5 of them). Looking forward to what ever you have in-store, celebration-wise (perhaps the return of the 'emails' segment?).

[Dogasu]

People point to Crystal often, but that was a web series first. Pretty huge difference.

Not really...? I don't see why Crystal debuting online first somehow makes it a more likely candidate for retakes than Dragon Ball Super is.

A better example would be something like any random poor-looking One Piece episode or any other long-running traditional shonen show Toei works on.

Well they went back and touched up Saint Seiya for the home release.

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtop ... t=160#wrap

I'm not saying that Dragon Ball Super will definitely, 100% get animation touch-ups for the home release but at the same time I don't think it's unlikely either.