ABED wrote:Wait, it comes as a shock that it's a martial arts fantasy series? What do they think it is?
Its very often thought of, within a lot of mainstream U.S. circles, as a sci fi superhero team show. Basically with Goku and the Z Warriors as a Japanese take on Superman and the Justice League.
And when you get right down to it, its really not hard to see why that is, despite the mountains of self-evident evidence to the contrary: as Masenko earlier noted, a LOT of effort was made by FUNimation to scrub out much of the series' more Eastern aspects, in both obvious and even more subtle ways. And it goes even beyond just the dub itself, as the show is just flat out MARKETED as a superhero show, with WAY more emphasis put on Goku and his friends as "defenders of Earth" and whatnot.
Like it or not, these things have long-term, farther reaching consequences. As unbelievable as it is, it really DOES get completely past a LOT of U.S. fans that this show is any kind of a martial arts show (or even just a fantasy in general sometimes) and that its firmly of a piece, in terms of genre and theme, with things like the DCAU or the MCU and whatnot.
There are even many posts on this very forum (and plenty others out there) of dub fans who are in flat out express denial of the series, from Z onward, having any relation whatsoever to martial arts, with the claim that only original DB is about martial arts and that once Raditz lands, it suddenly turns on a dime into a more general superhero science fiction show with nothing to do with martial arts or fantasy of any sort at all.
I've even come across this view out in the world IRL, in totally non-anime fandom circles, of just general public folks who watched the series growing up and expressly highlight that it was their favorite superhero show, and that its all about "protecting peace and justice" and so on.
On just this basic-most foundational distortion ALONE the dub is an abysmal, damaging failure that wholly mismarketed and misrepresented this series at a baseline level to a totally unwitting audience. And of course has lead to all manner of weird and totally unmerited criticisms of the show's writing, characterizations, and basic storytelling style and direction that have cemented themselves in the public consciousness at this point and even become memes.
Not that these things (the series' writing and narrative and so on) are in any way perfect or immune from criticism on their own merits of course: but the merits and metrics that people are using to judge them by in the first place are TOTALLY factually incorrect and wholly misdirected thanks entirely to both the dub and its misleading marketing throughout the years. It leads to all kinds of supremely weird misunderstandings that most of us are STILL, even today in 2018, trying to clear the air on for people whenever any kind of discussion about the series occurs.
Its honestly at this point probably NEVER going to fully go away, and this "reversioned" alternative take on Dragon Ball, that is 100% unique and exclusive to the FUNimation dub alone and nowhere else, is what's ultimately going to remain permanently in the public consciousness. And that's a terrible shame, because the actual series is a
whole lot different from that.
So yeah: I don't particularly care what anyone's personal preference or nostalgic baggage is at this point, as all of that is totally and completely beside the point. The dub is indefensibly, objectively a negative contribution to Dragon Ball's broader legacy, just on a pure foundational level for introducing all of this nonsensical and totally pointless and unnecessary baggage into the wider English-speaking fandom's bloodstream, likely on some level forever going forward.
