Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" Dub Turns 14; Still Unreleased

[Scsigs]

She was physically incapable of keeping up with Freeza's dialogue when they recorded for Kai. I doubt they wanted to take that chance of having that happen again.

I really don't know if I buy that. She was able to keep up with "Frieza" the first time around -- albeit it wasn't a tremendous performance, but she was physically able to keep up with the dialog (whatever that means). I think it's just a nice way of saying that they thought her performance was bad, although it doesn't end up sounding much nicer because now instead of stating their opinion (that she was bad), they're making it look like she's physically incapable of doing something. I know that Linda Young's style was more slow and Kai was dubbed in a way where it sounds like they're rushing through all of their lines (my one complaint about the Kai dub), but they were able to have Young do Freeza the first time around and it's not like any extra dialog was added to Kai, so... I basically don't know why they sound like they sped through their lines, thus losing a lot of emotion. If I give the original Z dub more credit than the Kai dub, it's that at least in Z there was time to really marinate in the emotion of the lines, while in Kai, it's just like, "WhoaThat'sAPowerfulForceMyGoodnessNoWayHowCanThisBe?!"

Do you REALLY not get what Kai was? Or how it was edited from Z? It's a re-edit of Z that both speeds up the animation, in addition to cutting most of the filler out to make it faster-paced. Take it from me, I re-edited Dragon Box footage to episode 99's dub (I plan to do more once I have a better setup to my computers) & what I had to do for that was, baseline, set all of the clips from the corresponding Z episode to at least 10% faster than it was originally paced for Z. And, by the way, they didn't say say was physically incapable per se, just that they felt that, with the scripts that were coming in, that she wouldn't be able to keep up. Given how much the animation was most likely sped up, this makes sense for their evaluation.
However, I still stick by the opinion that the only people who could possibly still prefer her to Chris Ayres are people affected by nostalgia because I've never felt she fit the role, so if they finally felt the need to replace her with a more appropriate VA, then no skin off my bones.
You also mention that you feel the dub was faster. Dude, the SHOW is faster than Z on the whole. With the amount of filler cut out & the sped-up portions, I'm not surprised in the least by Chris Ayres replacing Linda Young for that reason alone. Actually watch a comparison between a scene from Kai & Z, like maybe Goku powering up to SS3. It's a full minute faster than Z in Kai because of how much it was most likely sped up.

[NitroEX]

She was physically incapable of keeping up with Freeza's dialogue when they recorded for Kai. I doubt they wanted to take that chance of having that happen again.

I really don't know if I buy that. She was able to keep up with "Frieza" the first time around -- albeit it wasn't a tremendous performance, but she was physically able to keep up with the dialog (whatever that means). I think it's just a nice way of saying that they thought her performance was bad, although it doesn't end up sounding much nicer because now instead of stating their opinion (that she was bad), they're making it look like she's physically incapable of doing something.

I agree. They definitely seemed to backtrack on Linda Young last minute as she made it all the way to the recording phase. The excuse they ended up giving did seem quite odd. You're probably right about them just not liking her performance.

I know that Linda Young's style was more slow and Kai was dubbed in a way where it sounds like they're rushing through all of their lines (my one complaint about the Kai dub), but they were able to have Young do Freeza the first time around and it's not like any extra dialog was added to Kai, so... I basically don't know why they sound like they sped through their lines, thus losing a lot of emotion. If I give the original Z dub more credit than the Kai dub, it's that at least in Z there was time to really marinate in the emotion of the lines, while in Kai, it's just like, "WhoaThat'sAPowerfulForceMyGoodnessNoWayHowCanThisBe?!"

I totally get where you're coming from. This has been a pet peeve of mine when it comes to modern Funi dubs in general, not just Kai. It seems to be more noticeable during scenes where characters are relaxed and talking casually. For whatever reason, they seem to unnecessarily cram too many words within the timing of the lip flaps and as you say, it makes certain dialogue sound unnatural and rushed, like they're keeping up with a teleprompter. This isn't so much of an issue with action scenes, as it's natural to talk at a faster beat during tense scenes, although Schemmel's "IWillNotLetYouDestroyMyWooorld!!" from BOG suffers from the same approach, it ruins immersion a bit for me.

You also mention that you feel the dub was faster. Dude, the SHOW is faster than Z on the whole. With the amount of filler cut out & the sped-up portions, I'm not surprised in the least by Chris Ayres replacing Linda Young for that reason alone. Actually watch a comparison between a scene from Kai & Z, like maybe Goku powering up to SS3. It's a full minute faster than Z in Kai because of how much it was most likely sped up.

Kai has certain bits of animation noticeably sped up (I believe Vegeta breaking the punching machine was one of them) but this is often reserved for action scenes, not scenes where characters are standing and talking. I'm aware that they also cut out scenes but that's not exactly "sped up" in the way that you're implying. In any case, Kai's quicker pacing doesn't mean they have to record lines at a quicker pace, you just need to write the dialogue to be more concise.

[8000 Saiyan]

I don't see the problem with the fast-paced lines. I think Ayres delivered them flawlessly.

[NitroEX]

Ayre's Freeza's is already established as being a fast-talker with a sharp-tongue, this isn't the case for every character.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Regarding the video games; they kind of have to put Funimation's dubbing in the games, otherwise the hardcore Funi fans would tear the games apart. If Vegeta and Piccolo don't sound exactly identical, and Goku doesn't sound like a manly superhero, and King Kai sounds like anything more than mere comic relief, then how could anyone possibly enjoy DBZ?

Honestly I felt the voices blended in Z, but as of Kai there is definitely a difference between Sabat's Piccolo and Vegeta with the former giving off a wise old master vibe and the latter sounding like a royal prince, and Goku sounds no more manly than other male adults, I'd argue less so because of the naivety in Schemmel's performance (which is completely fitting for a manchild-type hero) his King King Kai lacks a sense of authority though I'll give you that.

I don't see the fast talking in Funi's modern DB dubs to be an issue either, its only there when it helps the scene. There's plenty of times they speak at a normal pace.

[ShadowDude112]

Lol at Ocean Cucks thinking this will happen. Do you tell your wife's son that this will happen when you send him to bed?

Spoiler:

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Mod note: User was banned for this post.

[Scsigs]

I totally get where you're coming from. This has been a pet peeve of mine when it comes to modern Funi dubs in general, not just Kai. It seems to be more noticeable during scenes where characters are relaxed and talking casually. For whatever reason, they seem to unnecessarily cram too many words within the timing of the lip flaps and as you say, it makes certain dialogue sound unnatural and rushed, like they're keeping up with a teleprompter. This isn't so much of an issue with action scenes, as it's natural to talk at a faster beat during tense scenes, although Schemmel's "IWillNotLetYouDestroyMyWooorld!!" from BOG suffers from the same approach, it ruins immersion a bit for me.

You also mention that you feel the dub was faster. Dude, the SHOW is faster than Z on the whole. With the amount of filler cut out & the sped-up portions, I'm not surprised in the least by Chris Ayres replacing Linda Young for that reason alone. Actually watch a comparison between a scene from Kai & Z, like maybe Goku powering up to SS3. It's a full minute faster than Z in Kai because of how much it was most likely sped up.

Kai has certain bits of animation noticeably sped up (I believe Vegeta breaking the punching machine was one of them) but this is often reserved for action scenes, not scenes where characters are standing and talking. I'm aware that they also cut out scenes but that's not exactly "sped up" in the way that you're implying. In any case, Kai's quicker pacing doesn't mean they have to record lines at a quicker pace, you just need to write the dialogue to be more concise.

I don't see what you're talking about with the modern FUNi dubs having too many words crammed into the dialogue. They tend to sound like they're purposely using a thesaurus sometimes, or reorganize some words, but otherwise, their dubs are usually pretty on-point with the dialogue. Goku's line of "I will not let you destroy my world!" actually make sense if you're following the action of the battle. The only place I can see this being a major problem is the scene in Kai where Goku & Vegeta fuse into Vegetto, where he says "Thanks, Vegeta. Here we go," rather than the simple actual line that was already in English in the sub, "Thank you, Vegeta," when they did put it as the actual line in Z. THAT, I can understand being bothersome, but the way FUNimation does their dubs, I actually like above just a straight dub like, say, Viz usually does. I kind of prefer alternate language dubs sounding more natural to a native speaker's ear rather than a 1:1 translation most of the time.
At the very least, they're not 4Kids' or Saban's writers, who insert TOO MUCH dialogue into their dub scripts. Even in Power Rangers, which isn't really a dub of Super Sentai since it's actually an adaptation, there's too much dialogue at points. Nothing can just be quiet for them for more than a second before someone has to speak again, or the music has to blare more. That's also partly why I hate the Z dub; too much dialogue when it wasn't necessary & the dub music was always loud & obnoxious in addition to unfitting. It wouldn't bother me if the dialogue weren't less than half-assed, but it usually is, or just redundant or stupid.

Oh, trust me. The episode I just described had even dialogue scenes sped up to make sure it ran at a 25-minute runtime after the recap at the beginning of it, which is most of the remaining episode since it's the episode of Gohan's first day at school. Even in the first 98 episodes, I noticed that there were some sped-up dialogue moments. Trunks' first scene where he talks to Goku at the start of the Android Saga springs to mind with how much quicker it was compared to Z.

Addition: THANK YOU, mod who banned ShadowDude112 for that incredibly awful comment he put there. I don't see the dub having a great chance of reaching the light of day, but I'm not gonna squash anyone's hopes. Plus, it's interesting to see the conversation about it.

[Scsigs]

Regarding the video games; they kind of have to put Funimation's dubbing in the games, otherwise the hardcore Funi fans would tear the games apart. If Vegeta and Piccolo don't sound exactly identical, and Goku doesn't sound like a manly superhero, and King Kai sounds like anything more than mere comic relief, then how could anyone possibly enjoy DBZ?

Honestly I felt the voices blended in Z, but as of Kai there is definitely a difference between Sabat's Piccolo and Vegeta with the former giving off a wise old master vibe and the latter sounding like a royal prince, and Goku sounds no more manly than other male adults, I'd argue less so because of the naivety in Schemmel's performance (which is completely fitting for a manchild-type hero) his King King Kai lacks a sense of authority though I'll give you that.

I don't see the fast talking in Funi's modern DB dubs to be an issue either, its only there when it helps the scene. There's plenty of times they speak at a normal pace.

I agree. Sabat's Piccolo & Vegeta are more well-rounded now than back in the Z days, though it DID take me a while to get used to them when I first started watching Kai, since his Vegeta's more deeper than in Z rather than just being less gruff & his Piccolo's more like his Zorro voice. There's a noticeable difference, but it honestly just feels like a modified version of that voice.
Sean has always been a good pick in my opinion, but his delivery, even later on, in the Z dub was always just the littlest bit, at least, off because of his inexperience & the voice direction most likely give to him. Nowadays, I have full confidence that he's the best pick to play Goku in English, as he feels more comfortable in the role & is now given WAY better voice direction & can properly emote. He even picked up some things from Nozawa it seems, what with his voice fluctuations, which I noticed he started doing after the initial 98 episodes of Kai got dubbed. In TFC, it's definitely more pronounced that that's what he's doing & in Super, he's definitely got that part down. It's, honestly, pleasantly surprising how far he's come since '99. King Kai, I understand why some don't like it, but I honestly can't see the character having a different voice at this point, so live & let live for that one, I say.

[8000 Saiyan]

I don't know if Schemmel was always a good choice for the role. Back in 1999, he didn't have the acting skills to play Goku well.

[Scsigs]

I don't know if Schemmel was always a good choice for the role. Back in 1999, he didn't have the acting skills to play Goku well.

Hence why I added that he didn't always have the best direction or didn't have a lot of experience. He's always had a good voice for the character, he just wasn't always the best actor in the dub. He definitely grew into the role over time.

[8000 Saiyan]

I don't know if Schemmel was always a good choice for the role. Back in 1999, he didn't have the acting skills to play Goku well.

Hence why I added that he didn't always have the best direction or didn't have a lot of experience. He's always had a good voice for the character, he just wasn't always the best actor in the dub. He definitely grew into the role over time.

While I'm more of a Nozawa fanboy, I have to agree about that.

I never understood why people say he sounds like Superman though. He certainly doesn't sound anything like Tim Daly or George Newbern. Maybe it's more of the lines he had to say than his actual voice.

[Arian]

Lol at Ocean Cucks thinking this will happen. Do you tell your wife's son that this will happen when you send him to bed?

Spoiler:

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Mod note: User was banned for this post.

To the mods and admins of this forum, whatever you do, PLEASE don't delete this post because I want to come back to it when Ocean Kai DOES come out through Wow! Unlimited's new channel (if all goes well) and he can just look stupid for all eternity.

Although, now that he's banned, he can't show us a video of him dressed as Goku and attempting to fly. A darn shame.

[NitroEX]

I don't see what you're talking about with the modern FUNi dubs having too many words crammed into the dialogue. They tend to sound like they're purposely using a thesaurus sometimes, or reorganize some words, but otherwise, their dubs are usually pretty on-point with the dialogue.

I think you're misunderstanding what I meant but unless I go into heavy detail in each episode (which I'm not prepared to do nor do I have the time) then I don't see how else to clearly convey it to you. If you're used to that type of delivery in anime dubs then I guess it wouldn't be noticeable to you, it would just be normal. Like I said, it doesn't really affect action scenes as they have a faster beat for dialogue, but I've noticed it enough times in casual dialogue for it to bug me, and it wasn't something I started noticing until Funi dubs became more prevalent.

Goku's line of "I will not let you destroy my world!" actually make sense if you're following the action of the battle.

I wasn't saying that the line didn't make sense within the context of the scene, I was talking about the line being written too long to fit comfortably within the timing of the mouth flaps, it forces the actor to give a more rushed delivery of it to make it all fit. With Schemmel line in particular, he did manage to make it fit but my first and lasting impression was that it did sound like there were too many words squashed together. The line could very easily have been shortened either in the scripting phase or by the ADR director while in the recording booth. Hell, I can even do it right now:

I will not let you destroy my world - 9 syllables

I won't let you destroy my world - 8 syllables

You will not destroy my world - 7 syllables

You won't destroy my world - 6 syllables

The last one might be pushing it but you get my point. Why go for the 9 syllable version when it could be done with less, sound more naturally paced (rather than "YouWillNotDestroyMy") and still be contained within the mouth flaps? An actor with Schemmel's experience would know that he can easily stretch out words if the line is too short, he does it with "world" at the end. That seems much easier to do than the approach they took. I'm really not trying to nitpick here, I'm just trying to give a clear example of what I'm talking about.

I kind of prefer alternate language dubs sounding more natural to a native speaker's ear rather than a 1:1 translation most of the time.

But that's the thing, I'm talking about moments where it doesn't sound natural to a native speaker.

At the very least, they're not 4Kids' or Saban's writers, who insert TOO MUCH dialogue into their dub scripts. Even in Power Ranger ... That's also partly why I hate the Z dub; too much dialogue when it wasn't necessary.

This is an entirely different issue altogether. It's not relevant to Funi's Kai dub, only their Z dub.

Oh, trust me. The episode I just described had even dialogue scenes sped up to make sure it ran at a 25-minute runtime after the recap at the beginning of it

Again, even if this was the case for the majority of Kai's scenes (which I'm not convinced is the case, aside from scenes being cut and sped up action) it still doesn't excuse scripting lines that are overly long for a scene. If they fail that, shortening a line in the recording booth to sound a little more natural is quite an easy fix too.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Sean has always been a good pick in my opinion, but his delivery, even later on, in the Z dub was always just the littlest bit, at least, off because of his inexperience & the voice direction most likely give to him. Nowadays, I have full confidence that he's the best pick to play Goku in English, as he feels more comfortable in the role & is now given WAY better voice direction & can properly emote. He even picked up some things from Nozawa it seems, what with his voice fluctuations, which I noticed he started doing after the initial 98 episodes of Kai got dubbed. In TFC, it's definitely more pronounced that that's what he's doing & in Super, he's definitely got that part down. It's, honestly, pleasantly surprising how far he's come since '99. King Kai, I understand why some don't like it, but I honestly can't see the character having a different voice at this point, so live & let live for that one, I say.

Yeah, I can't really blame Schemmel for his early performances being a complete newbie, it's also easy to take access to Nozawa's work as Goku and the Japanese version for granted these days with the internet as is and the sub being available on all the in-print home releases, but back then it wasn't as widely accessible to be used as a reference. Nowadays I can definitely see Schemmel has taken some cues from Nozawa while still making the voice his own. I've liked the higher inflections during Goku's desperate moments like this one.

Part of the reason I really want to see this dub is that I'm interested to see if Richard Ian Cox can hold up to Schemmel's superb (by now I'd argue flawless) portrayal of Goku. Based on what I've heard of Cox I'd say he's a solid choice for Goku for many of the same reasons as Schemmel, able to hold down a scream, innocent sounding, not sure about the hick aspects, but we'll see. Since this dub was being recorded around the same time Funimation produced theirs I assume that Cox won't have to take any inspiration from Schemmel's Kai performance as Lex Lang has tried doing for the Super Bang Zoom dub. And yes Funi isn't replacing King Kai at this stage but I've learned to live with it. I think Ocean have a shot at beating Funi on that casting though whether Don Brown returns or they get someone else.

[8000 Saiyan]

Sean has always been a good pick in my opinion, but his delivery, even later on, in the Z dub was always just the littlest bit, at least, off because of his inexperience & the voice direction most likely give to him. Nowadays, I have full confidence that he's the best pick to play Goku in English, as he feels more comfortable in the role & is now given WAY better voice direction & can properly emote. He even picked up some things from Nozawa it seems, what with his voice fluctuations, which I noticed he started doing after the initial 98 episodes of Kai got dubbed. In TFC, it's definitely more pronounced that that's what he's doing & in Super, he's definitely got that part down. It's, honestly, pleasantly surprising how far he's come since '99. King Kai, I understand why some don't like it, but I honestly can't see the character having a different voice at this point, so live & let live for that one, I say.

Yeah, I can't really blame Schemmel for his early performances being a complete newbie, it's also easy to take access to Nozawa's work as Goku and the Japanese version for granted these days with the internet as is and the sub being available on all the in-print home releases, but back then it wasn't as widely accessible to be used as a reference. Nowadays I can definitely see Schemmel has taken some cues from Nozawa while still making the voice his own. I've liked the higher inflections during Goku's desperate moments like this one.

Part of the reason I really want to see this dub is that I'm interested to see if Richard Ian Cox can hold up to Schemmel's superb (by now I'd argue flawless) portrayal of Goku. Based on what I've heard of Cox I'd say he's a solid choice for Goku for many of the same reasons as Schemmel, able to hold down a scream, innocent sounding, not sure about the hick aspects, but we'll see. Since this dub was being recorded around the same time Funimation produced theirs I assume that Cox won't have to take any inspiration from Schemmel's Kai performance as Lex Lang has tried doing for the Super Bang Zoom dub. And yes Funi isn't replacing King Kai at this stage but I've learned to live with it. I think Ocean have a shot at beating Funi on that casting though whether Don Brown returns or they get someone else.

Judging from this voice, I think he can do the hick aspects.
http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv- ... attorshot/

If he can hold up to Schemmel's performance, well, I guess we'll have to see how he does.

[TheGreatness25]

Do you REALLY not get what Kai was? Or how it was edited from Z? It's a re-edit of Z that both speeds up the animation, in addition to cutting most of the filler out to make it faster-paced. Take it from me, I re-edited Dragon Box footage to episode 99's dub (I plan to do more once I have a better setup to my computers) & what I had to do for that was, baseline, set all of the clips from the corresponding Z episode to at least 10% faster than it was originally paced for Z. And, by the way, they didn't say say was physically incapable per se, just that they felt that, with the scripts that were coming in, that she wouldn't be able to keep up. Given how much the animation was most likely sped up, this makes sense for their evaluation.
However, I still stick by the opinion that the only people who could possibly still prefer her to Chris Ayres are people affected by nostalgia because I've never felt she fit the role, so if they finally felt the need to replace her with a more appropriate VA, then no skin off my bones.
You also mention that you feel the dub was faster. Dude, the SHOW is faster than Z on the whole. With the amount of filler cut out & the sped-up portions, I'm not surprised in the least by Chris Ayres replacing Linda Young for that reason alone. Actually watch a comparison between a scene from Kai & Z, like maybe Goku powering up to SS3. It's a full minute faster than Z in Kai because of how much it was most likely sped up.

You make it sound like they sped up casual dialog. The pacing issues that they corrected stemmed from filler scenes and too many scenes of them just standing around. What's that got to do with dialog? You mean to tell me that there wasn't supposed to be any natural-sounding dialog? What the hell would be the point of that? "Do I REALLY not get what Kai was?" Yeah, I get it. It was a re-edit to cut out filler. I'm not seeing how that relates to rushed dubbing.

Oh and by the way, as Nitro said, the speed-reading is the new Funimation style. They actually started that with the Ultimate Uncut, but I pointed at Kai because that's what we were discussing.

[Scsigs]

You make it sound like they sped up casual dialog. The pacing issues that they corrected stemmed from filler scenes and too many scenes of them just standing around. What's that got to do with dialog? You mean to tell me that there wasn't supposed to be any natural-sounding dialog? What the hell would be the point of that? "Do I REALLY not get what Kai was?" Yeah, I get it. It was a re-edit to cut out filler. I'm not seeing how that relates to rushed dubbing.

Oh and by the way, as Nitro said, the speed-reading is the new Funimation style. They actually started that with the Ultimate Uncut, but I pointed at Kai because that's what we were discussing.

No, they didn't speed up a lot of the dialogue. My point in saying that they sped up some of the animation was that that sometimes lead to characters speaking faster than in Z. That wasn't the entirety of the show, but it DID happen. It wasn't just cutting out the filler that increased the pace of it.
And, just to put a point on it, I also said that I really don't see them cramming words into the sentences of their dubs. I really don't. They may match the dialogue to the lipflaps to make the animation flow more naturally, but I don't really see where that argument is coming from, outside of maybe a few examples, like I already pointed out.

[Metalwario64]

Lol at Ocean Cucks thinking this will happen. Do you tell your wife's son that this will happen when you send him to bed?
[spoiler][/spoiler]

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Mod note: User was banned for this post.

I know the user was banned and the mods likely want us to move on, but I'm so confused why some users just self destruct like this. It's happened more times than I thought I'd see.

[Arian]

Lol at Ocean Cucks thinking this will happen. Do you tell your wife's son that this will happen when you send him to bed?
[spoiler][/spoiler]

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Mod note: User was banned for this post.

I know the user was banned and the mods likely want us to move on, but I'm so confused why some users just self destruct like this. It's happened more times than I thought I'd see.

I think part of it stems from hatred of the Ocean dub in general, or anything that isn't FUNimation or the original Japanese.

[Robo4900]

and it's not like any extra dialog was added to Kai

That's provably false. It's not to the extent of the Z dub, but there was a sizeable amount of dialogue added for Kai.
My earlier posts back when we were talking about Funi Kai's accuracy failings made particular note of this.

Kind of like how the filter was removed from #19 in the orange bricks. I think that Freeza's voice in those forms was the result of some filter even dating back to the original (I kind of have a hard time seeing her do the third form voice on her own).

The orange bricks were remixed from work-in-progress tapes of their recordings for Z. Many mistakes were made during this remixing, but one of the most notable was that all vocal filters were totally removed; #19's machine filter, Super Boo's pitch filter, I think Yakon had one... All gone.
If there was a filter going on with Freeza's voice, it isn't present in any of the modern releases of the Z dub.