Barry Watson vs Yukio Nagasaki - who "damaged" series more?

[coola]

Barry Watson - Funimation producer, responsible for Funimation dub, and for plenty changes from Japanese script.
Yukio Nagasaki - Sound director of Kai/Plan to Eradicate the Super Saiyans (OAV) known for music misplacements

With of these two guys, in your opinion, damaged series more? Please do not make hateful comments, and keep discussion civil.

[RocktheDragon]

Well, I'm of the opinion that what Barry Watson "did" to DB is what was needed at that time. I really don't believe that DBZ would have been as successful as it is today (in America) without the music changes, the horrible Americanized and unfaithful dub, and many other seemingly terrible decisions that Funimation made under Barry.

I believe that they set up DBZ to be more easily accepted by American society at that time, and though many of those choices are a big no-no today, at the time it's what was required. And in the grand scheme of things those choices have propelled DBZ to a legacy (in America) that would not have been a reality if approached in a more faithful rendition.

[Blade]

It's hard to justify some of Watson's more lurid localisations from a purist point of view, but at the same time it's hard to argue against them when you consider the huge mainstream success that Dragonball Z had during his time at the company.

In regard to the latter, it's possible to argue that the positions share a circumstantial relationship, but there aren't really too many grounds to say that his changes damaged the series. I mean, apart from annoy purists and fans of the original, what did they do? Did they stifle the show's success? Garner it a bad reputation? Not really - if anything, his own reputation is the only thing that seems to have suffered in the long run.

On the other hand, I don't think it's really fair to say Yukio Nagasaki damaged the series. He didn't do a great job - but neither did many of the animators, but unlike them he was working to a backdrop of difficult circumstances in the wake of the Yamamoto scandal. No one knows exactly just how much time he had to go back and re-edit the entire series with Kikuchi's score, but there's no doubt it was a rushed job.

[coola]

In my opinion, Nagasaki work was bad even before Yamamoto scandal. "The Formidable Opponent, The Saiyan" was good, but, we heard it in almost every episode.

[Blade]

In my opinion, Nagasaki work was bad even before Yamamoto scandal. "The Formidable Opponent, The Saiyan" was good, but, we heard it in almost every episode.

With the Kikuchi score at least, there's a difference between repetitive music choices due to poor judgement, and repetitive music choices due to limited available selection. When a lot of people jump on the Nagasaki-bashing bandwagon, that's often the biggest misconception that their criticisms are based on.

I'm not saying he didn't do a poor job, but the end result is down to much more than the quality of his work alone.

[El Diabeetus]

Barry Watson, definitely. I don't believe for a second that changes were needed. Though, based on the stories Sabat told of having no reliable translations (which I still don't understand when they had Steve Simmons doing subtitle work), I guess it wouldn't make a difference. Although, I wish they would've kept Kikuchi's music at least. Even with the butchered script the tone of the show would at least be there. Changing the music literally changes the tone of a scene. Wish Watson was never anywhere near it. DBZ would've still been successful even with the original score, dialouge, pronunciations, etc. intact. Even though Kai does have some carry overs from the Z dub, I think that's proof enough if you leave it alone (for the most part) it'll still work. It was the highest rated show Nicktoons ever had. I'm surprised Cartoon Network didn't take it. But, from what I've hear the guy who runs it now hates anime (other than shows you could sell toys for, which even then... they easily could've sold toys for Kai).

Nagasaki, I don't like his placements most of the time. Which is a shame since Kikuchi, Yamamoto and Sumitomo all have solid tracks. But, he's just not a good audio director. They're fan-made clips but Kei's placements have been 1000% better than Nagasaki's. I wish he worked for Toei as he has shown more care for the technical aspects of the show than the people actually working on it.

[dbboxkaifan]

Barry Watson -- Who? From the FUNimation dub? I don't care!

Yukio Nagasaki -- Whenever I see this name it's guaranteed that he'll fuck up the music placement.

So it's Nagasaki for me.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I was tempted to say Watson, but the vast majority of his "damage" has been repaired. The English dub scripts are mountains above what they were when he was in charge, some of his questionable casting decisions have been replaced, and the ones that remain have improved as much as the scripts have. Nagasaki, on the other hand, continues to make highly questionable decisions in the audio department, which affect not only the Japanese version, but also every other dub made of Kai (English dub included). It's also worth noting that, for all of the questionable decisions Watson made, he did make some spectacular ones here and there. For example, it was his call to cast Scott McNeil as Piccolo, and Brian Drummond as Vegeta.

This is a tougher call than I thought it would be. I guess the best way to put it is that Watson's damage was greater, but it was concentrated in one area (the English dub), and you certainly can't feel his presence anymore. Nagasaki's damage wasn't as great, but it's more recent and more widespread.

[penguintruth]

Slightly misplacing beautifully composed music by Shunsuke Kikuchi a few times is not comparable to the things Barry Watson did.

It pushes the bile up into my throat even reading such a parallel made.

[Adamant]

Considering that almost every single topic over in the Kai section can be condensed to "something something English dub", and that most lists of positives of Kai has "it has an English dub that's not ungodly shitty" somewhere near the top... I'd say that the main reason people even watch Kai in the first place and experience mild annoyance at Nagasaki's somewhat flawed work is because Watson did such a horrendously piss poor job you need to watch something he didn't damage beyond repair. Kinda makes this a silly comparison in the first place.

[ABED]

Well, I'm of the opinion that what Barry Watson "did" to DB is what was needed at that time. I really don't believe that DBZ would have been as successful as it is today (in America) without the music changes, the horrible Americanized and unfaithful dub, and many other seemingly terrible decisions that Funimation made under Barry.

I believe that they set up DBZ to be more easily accepted by American society at that time, and though many of those choices are a big no-no today, at the time it's what was required. And in the grand scheme of things those choices have propelled DBZ to a legacy (in America) that would not have been a reality if approached in a more faithful rendition.

I don't buy this, I've never bought it, DBZ was popular everywhere else, yet unless we changed the show dramatically, Americans couldn't get it? The show is about fighting, people get fighting. Unfortunately, there's no alternate dimension to point to and see which one of us is right. As far as I'm concerned, there's NO justification for "mondo cool" and "cat loves food".

The fact that DBZ season 3 had such a horrendously green cast should tell you that DBZ was popular in spite of the changes.

which I still don't understand when they had Steve Simmons doing subtitle work

He didn't start until WELL after they began production. Regardless, I still can't believe FUNi couldn't find someone in TX that understood Japanese and could translate.

[GarrettCRW]

The fact that DBZ season 3 had such a horrendously green cast should tell you that DBZ was popular in spite of the changes.

which I still don't understand when they had Steve Simmons doing subtitle work

He didn't start until WELL after they began production. Regardless, I still can't believe FUNi couldn't find someone in TX that understood Japanese and could translate.

Both of these decisions were a result of Funimation being cheap as hell. Granted, dubbing foreign cartoons has hardly been the province of union actors in this country (the credited casts of Robotech and Star Blazers are both filled with pseudonyms to protect members of SAG and AFTRA), but to move from Canada (already known as a cheap alternative to using Hollywood and/or New York talent) to Texas of all places as a base for recording implies a certain frugality above and beyond the norm. And since translating for dubbing purposes =/= translating for subs, I can see why Funimation relied on some crappy machine-translated scripts (or less) until it was absolutely determined that subtitled home video releases would be on the docket.

[El Diabeetus]

Should have perhaps elaborated on my why didn't they use Daimao's subs statement. I meant by the time they decided on DVD releases. There were still weird choices even when a subtitle alternative translation would exist rather than using the unintelligible Toei machine translations. For episodes that used the Latino dub as basis. Why didn't those turn out super accurate since that dub is usually regarded as one of the most accurate Z dubs out there?

[GarrettCRW]

Translation drift. Certain terms that transfer well from Japanese to Mexican Spanish are bound to get mangled when translating the translation to English.

[dbboxkaifan]

Slightly misplacing beautifully composed music by Shunsuke Kikuchi a few times is not comparable to the things Barry Watson did.

It pushes the bile up into my throat even reading such a parallel made.

So episodes 1-95 as well as episode 98, 96 episodes in total were a few misplaced times? Huh..

The only episodes which the Kikuchi score was actually placed properly were for 96 and 97 and even then it wasn't that great either but definitely a whole lot better than the rushed misplacements done after it. It seems like Episodes 96 + 97 got the best of it while Episodes 1 to 95 and 98 were done in ten minutes without much thought into it.

[penguintruth]

It's a gross exaggeration to characterize the placement of Kikuchi's music in Kai as "damaging", especially compared to the things Watson did in Funimation's DBZ English dub. There were plenty of episodes where the placement was fine, even rather good, and it certainly didn't spit on the material like Watson's choices regarding the handling of the English dub.

[SaiyamanMS]

The fact that DBZ season 3 had such a horrendously green cast should tell you that DBZ was popular in spite of the changes.

Well, the cast being green is inevitable when you're on planet Namek!

In all seriousness though, some of the music placement in Kai wasn't always great, but it never ruined the entire show the way a number of Barry Watson's changes did, so...

[penguintruth]

The fact that DBZ season 3 had such a horrendously green cast should tell you that DBZ was popular in spite of the changes.

Well, the cast being green is inevitable when you're on planet Namek!

Heh. That made my day.

[The Time Traveller]

Yukio Nagasaki was involved with very little, Barry Watson might have fucked up the entire series in English, and now DBZ just has one of the worst dubs for a long running TV anime.

[Vijay]

Shunsuke's music is the soul of DragonBall for me. Replace that & the show's practically "dead body" for me. I dont have issues on score misplacements. Its just that Nagasaki's score felt utter trash & generic at best.

Hate it or love it, Funi Dub was responsible creating such divided fanbase. Watson is partially responsible.

My view, both "Destructed" the series.