But seriously, how did the Falcouner soundtrack even make it to air?

[Forte224]

I did this for a while after being frustrated at all the hate kai was receiving, thankfully I'm past that now.

Haha well I did say "generally" after all. Thankfully it doesn't happen much. But I swear sometimes dub fans have a grudge against OG Japanese/English Kai for even existing

That goes both ways so much that I would say you can't really say one side does it more than the other. Heck the clip you posted has a bunch of comments hating on the dub. Or just look at some of the comments in this thread.

Um...sorry but not really. I said standalone videos. That video contains aspects from both sides so it isn't standalone, so naturally there will be haters from both sides. But if you go to your average Japanese or English Kai video, there will be tons of hate for either the score or the voices from dub+Faulconer fans. Got to a dub+Faulconer video and you rarely see a Japanese or Kai fan hating. It's not non-existent, but it's very rare

[dario03]

People will comment Wuxia and the like but a lot of the times when I hear the original OST, it just sounds like typical 80's fare. It fits when it fits, but always felt Faulconer OST fit even more. I'll just agree to disagree.

I think it fits fine most of the time, especially during the action. My biggest issue was the always playing part, I think just turning it off a bit in the episodes would have helped. Though I also think the all action all the time view of the Falcouner music is a bit exaggerated. It does have some more laid back relaxing moments, you just don't hear them as much because they were mostly during no conflict what so ever where as the Japanese version has it or silence during some tension building moments.

Haha well I did say "generally" after all. Thankfully it doesn't happen much. But I swear sometimes dub fans have a grudge against OG Japanese/English Kai for even existing

That goes both ways so much that I would say you can't really say one side does it more than the other. Heck the clip you posted has a bunch of comments hating on the dub. Or just look at some of the comments in this thread.

Um...sorry but not really. I said standalone videos. That video contains aspects from both sides so it isn't standalone, so naturally there will be haters from both sides. But if you go to your average Japanese or English Kai video, there will be tons of hate for either the score or the voices from dub+Faulconer fans. Got to a dub+Faulconer video and you rarely see a Japanese or Kai fan hating. It's not non-existent, but it's very rare

I see it from both sides. You can also see plenty of comments in the Japanese videos that just down talk the dub instead of talking about the actual video.
So, I guess our anecdotal evidences differ. Tends to happen with generally this or that type statements.

[Forte224]

That goes both ways so much that I would say you can't really say one side does it more than the other. Heck the clip you posted has a bunch of comments hating on the dub. Or just look at some of the comments in this thread.

Um...sorry but not really. I said standalone videos. That video contains aspects from both sides so it isn't standalone, so naturally there will be haters from both sides. But if you go to your average Japanese or English Kai video, there will be tons of hate for either the score or the voices from dub+Faulconer fans. Got to a dub+Faulconer video and you rarely see a Japanese or Kai fan hating. It's not non-existent, but it's very rare

I see it from both sides. You can also see plenty of comments in the Japanese videos that just down talk the dub instead of talking about the actual video.
So, I guess our anecdotal evidences differ. Tends to happen with generally this or that type statements.

I'll admit that's annoying, it's like, can't they just appreciate the video instead of bringing up a version they don't even like? But what I'm saying is at least those fans don't go and invade Faulconer videos and pick fights, they at least stay on the Japanese ones for the most part. Whereas Faulconer fans tend to regularly do so in Japanese and Kai videos. Yeah I know the "generally" statements aren't the most tasteful but what's true is true

[dario03]

Um...sorry but not really. I said standalone videos. That video contains aspects from both sides so it isn't standalone, so naturally there will be haters from both sides. But if you go to your average Japanese or English Kai video, there will be tons of hate for either the score or the voices from dub+Faulconer fans. Got to a dub+Faulconer video and you rarely see a Japanese or Kai fan hating. It's not non-existent, but it's very rare

I see it from both sides. You can also see plenty of comments in the Japanese videos that just down talk the dub instead of talking about the actual video.
So, I guess our anecdotal evidences differ. Tends to happen with generally this or that type statements.

I'll admit that's annoying, it's like, can't they just appreciate the video instead of bringing up a version they don't even like? But what I'm saying is at least those fans don't go and invade Faulconer videos and pick fights, they at least stay on the Japanese ones for the most part. Whereas Faulconer fans tend to regularly do so in Japanese and Kai videos. Yeah I know the "generally" statements aren't the most tasteful but what's true is true

I know what your saying. I just disagree, I see it from both sides. Just did a test and everything. Typed in DBZ Funimation, clicked on one of the first clip videos, scrolled down to comments, and quickly found somebody who wrote a giant rant about how anybody that is older than a child but still likes the dub should seek professional help because they are fools and have terrible tastes in music.

And I probably should have brought this up before the whole anecdotal evidence thing and all, but.... If we are going to talk about negatives that we generally see then that above is a good example of something I see from the sub side of things far more than the dub side. Which again, maybe that's just what I see and others see it from another side more often. In any case, in my opinion that is far worse. Going to a video just to say you don't like that version and talk down the product or talk up your preferred version is one thing. Going to a video to question the intelligence of its fans and insult them personally is on a whole other level.

[Hellspawn28]

I think people also assume that every kid that saw DBZ with Falcouner's music love it when they first saw it. Not everyone kid in the late 90's and early 2000's was into DBZ and some of them where fans of DBZ before Falcouner came along. I was probably the only kid in my school at that time that hated DBZ because I thought the show was stupid and annoying. The first full episode of DBZ that I saw was Piccolo vs. Freeza and I hated it.

I became a DBZ fan because of out of pure boredom when I was up late as a kid when they had SSj2 Gohan vs. Perfect Cell on the midnight run. I thought the battle scenes was cool and it kinda grab my interest. If was not for that, I would have never care about DBZ growing up at all.

[Forte224]

I see it from both sides. You can also see plenty of comments in the Japanese videos that just down talk the dub instead of talking about the actual video.
So, I guess our anecdotal evidences differ. Tends to happen with generally this or that type statements.

I'll admit that's annoying, it's like, can't they just appreciate the video instead of bringing up a version they don't even like? But what I'm saying is at least those fans don't go and invade Faulconer videos and pick fights, they at least stay on the Japanese ones for the most part. Whereas Faulconer fans tend to regularly do so in Japanese and Kai videos. Yeah I know the "generally" statements aren't the most tasteful but what's true is true

I know what your saying. I just disagree, I see it from both sides. Just did a test and everything. Typed in DBZ Funimation, clicked on one of the first clip videos, scrolled down to comments, and quickly found somebody who wrote a giant rant about how anybody that is older than a child but still likes the dub should seek professional help because they are fools and have terrible tastes in music.

And I probably should have brought this up before the whole anecdotal evidence thing and all, but.... If we are going to talk about negatives that we generally see then that above is a good example of something I see from the sub side of things far more than the dub side. Which again, maybe that's just what I see and others see it from another side more often. In any case, in my opinion that is far worse. Going to a video just to say you don't like that version and talk down the product or talk up your preferred version is one thing. Going to a video to question the intelligence of its fans and insult them personally is on a whole other level.

I guess there's no real point in continuing here. It'll just be back and forth. We at least acknowledge both sides can be unnecessarily elitist

[MajinMan]

I wish in another timeline somewhere that DB fans don't have the same dub vs sub problems that we do. Honestly, the more we try to understand each other, the more distant we get. Of course I'm not saying that we all hate each other and can't stand each other, but I've seen this certain topic being discussed at least once every month or so, and it's always the same thing every time. Nobody agrees, and everybody leaves with the same opinion and mindset they had before taking part in the discussion.

If Super is great at doing one thing, it's "uniting" the fandom and putting us all on the same boat. No "sub vs dub" differences, music changes, or anything of that sort. Imagine if the rest of DB was like that, then we wouldn't have such differing opinions on certain topics.

[Fionordequester]

If Super is great at doing one thing, it's "uniting" the fandom and putting us all on the same boat. No "sub vs dub" differences, music changes, or anything of that sort. Imagine if the rest of DB was like that, then we wouldn't have such differing opinions on certain topics.

I disagree with this line of thinking. I disagree because I think it takes the blame OFF people for their own actions, and puts it on other entities instead.

Instead of saying things would've been better had we all gotten the same thing, I believe everyone should just take responsibility for their own bad behavior. If there are fans bitterly savaging each other over their own tastes in music, that's their fault. It's not Ocean's fault, it's not FUNimation's fault, it's not Westwood's fault, it's not Kenji Yamamoto's fault, and it's not the San Andreas fault. If people can't behave themselves and keep open minds...well, that's their problem I think.

Saying otherwise, IMO, would be like saying America would be so much better if only there were just white men and women. There'd arguably be less conflict, sure...but we'd be losing something very important in the process.

[ABED]

The problem isn't disagreement as such. Even if people leave with the same opinion they came in with, that's okay. It's the politeness or lack thereof that's the issue. However, I do think that even if the discussions don't end in a change of opinion, I do think it can down the line. I know I've changed my opinion after opinionated discussions. I like being right and it's easy to fall into that trap in the heat of the moment, but over time and upon reflection I have changed my mind due to a convincing argument.

[cRookie_Monster]

See, I just don't get this. The people who nostalgia so hard over Toonami-era Dragon Ball and who insist the music needed to be changed because of how supposedly dated it was and how it didn't sound like other cartoons from that era...

For what it's worth, I'm not one of those people. I mean, I'm GLAD they DID change it; because Team Faulconer's score is literally the very reason I want to learn how to compose music one day...but I'm not so opinionated as to believe Dragon Ball Z wouldn't have done with Kikuchi's score. I'd...certainly have made fun of it for some of it's more peculiar quirks, but I still would've enjoyed the series. And I'm positive that DBZ would've done just fine with Kikuchi; just as it's done just fine in almost every other country...

...I just wouldn't have enjoyed it AS much as I ended up enjoying it; and I say that as someone who came into the series as a mid-teenager (and even then, only through the video games at first; with all their original scores intact). I fell in love with the Team Faulconer soundtrack the instant I heard them in Legacy of Goku II and Buu's Fury; and was awe-struck when I found out that 16-bit tunes like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTe8K6LUyUU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtbACzBwshc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BncM16tslI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq7EQo6Fdu4

Actually had high(er) quality versions of themselves playing throughout the whole show! And from some of the comments I've seen on one of Scott Morgan's vids...

I'm happy to learn all this history about Dragon ball's american music. Being a musician myself, I worshiped all those scores and it really shaped the entire series for me. There can never be enough new Morgan-Style-DBZ compositions as far as I'm concerned. I'm praying to hear more... Maybe even hypothetical DB Super music. Beerus themes and stuff. Thanks though for all of it! Eternally loved sounds.

This was amazing/surreal to watch. I'm sure you've heard it 1,000,000 times, but you guys' music had a profound influence on me. A day hasn't gone by that I haven't hummed or thought about a song from that dub of DBZ, and It even helped inspire me to get into making my own music (that I may upload to the internet some day). I think it would be kind of cool if you guys just had some fun and made a mock score to a Dragonball Super scene/episode, though I'm not sure how the legality of that works with uploading... Anywho, thanks for sharing this with us!

Also I'd like to personally thank you, without you knowing, the joy your music has brought me over the years is more than I can ever repay you for. Dragonball Z has been a part of my life since the age of 7, the Funimation dub is the dub I grew up with, your music made me feel connected in a way that nothing has ever done. I felt there, I felt like I WAS Gohan, Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta. Your music has made me have Goosebumps, Made me feel dread, elation, suspense- every range of human emotion. What might have just been a job for you at the time has affected my life and thousands of others in ways you can't imagine. My interest in music and my guitar playing was directly inspired by you. The Destruction theme in particular, one of the most badass things I have ever heard. It changed my life for the better. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Nice to hear from you again! I'm surprised I missed this for as long as I have, but it's good to see you getting back on the wagon in a way. It's also humbling to hear your story and what you've all gone through. I can certainly sympathize with the typecasting sort of deal you went through with the Z style music, but I am pleased that you found that pleasing your fans was something you really wanted to do rather than simply pleasing yourself. In that end, you could very well do what Enigma did. Divide yourself among two separate styles. Work on what you want to work on for some time, and then switch gears and pump out Z style music. Here's to seeing more from you in the future. Continue in excellence, man! You're still a driving inspiration for the music I make, so take great pleasure in that!

I'm not the only one who fell head-over-heels for it ...

Thanks Fionordequester for posting those quotes That's so heart warming.

When musicians come to me and cite my music as a primary inspiration or that they first got into hard rock\metal because of my stuff, I'm always blown away. I truly only expect people to make comments like that for people like in the list that was given earlier in this thread(Soundgarden, NIN, etc...both of whom are big influences on me btw) Seeing people like Enigma TNG run with it and get such a big following(compared to me anyway hah) is even more amazing.

It's particularly interesting that one of those comments is gushing about the Destruction/Beyond Belief theme, which is the single heaviest thing I (or anyone else) ever recorded for the show.

There's been some comment about how we misunderstood the show. I think to some degree that is true, but maybe not as drastically as is being implied.

Let's take that Destruction theme in particular into consideration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzSMhKoOt6I

How many people know that I WAS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO USING THIS APPROACH FOR TRUNKS?

The first bit of music I *arranged* for Trunks (and I mean arranged, Mike wrote the original melody for the Trunks trailer) was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzApzm5M-8Y (Episodic Trunks)

We actually wrote 3 versions of the Trunks music, because Funimation kept coming back and saying, "No, we want HEAVY BEYOND BELIEF".
Eventually they went as far as telling us that Trunks was a villain! Did I believe that? Not for a second. I was on the internet. I knew how to do searches and knew what was coming.
After the first two rejections, I was like..."Ok I'm a metal guy, I'll give them something they cannot POSSIBLY reject for not being EXTREME enough"

After I recorded the bombastic theme, I placed it into a scene with Trunks for the first time, and it was so ludicrous I actually fell on the floor laughing (and crying inside).

So, did we always agree with the direction we were taking the music? Heck no. Would we have liked to use live orchestra? You betcha. Could we have done it given time and resources? Absolutely. Has there ever been a paid project that I worked on where I got to do completely what I wanted to artistically? I don't think so!

Even on my own youtube channel I'm greatly influenced by what my particular fanbase wants to hear\see (as you read a fan commenting on in Fion's post). Some of the stuff on my own channel is not necessarily what I would do in a show's context, for instance the shred solos. Way too distracting in a show's context, but fun for Youtube

Oh, and did we use Casio? Haha *NO* But as I've said many times, I don't really like a lot of the "acoustic" imitating sounds we used much either (see my earlier post in this thread)

The other side of the understanding thing is: Did we know the Japanese score well and what the original score was aiming for? We had heard it, a little, but to us it just sounded like sparse 60's film music, and we truly had no earthly idea that there was a fan base who cared so passionately about it. We knew the style we had been *directed* to write and we went for that. We actually had detailed notes for every moment on what we were supposed to do (not that all of us read them, but they were there). Speaking for myself, I tried to honor the client's (Funimation) wishes as much as possible. I couldn't do everything because they asked for music changes like every second. You think the score was scatterbrained?...man...if I had done everything they asked...yikes.

So how relevant was understanding the wuxia nature of DBZ to the Faulconer crew and the job we had to do? Pretty much zero, because that wasn't our job.

I wanted to clear up one other thing. There was a lot of talk (with curse words galore) about how kids of the day (8-11) should have known the whole story already and that it was Japanese etc. etc.
In 1999-2001 I was ages 24-27. More than anyone on the Faulconer team I was aware of what was going on. I read the comments on the internet in spite of all the hate. Yes, hate! But let's be clear, I'd say the overwhelming majority of comments came from people who were fans of the Ocean Dub. Unless people were super hardcore DBZ nerds, they:

1) Only knew the Ocean dub and were comparing to that
2) Didn't even know the show was Japanese.
3) Didn't know what a Super Saiyan was.
4) Had no idea what was coming next in the show.

These are the kids on the internet at the time, teens. They poured out hate, wishing for the thing they had heard first, the Ocean actors and music. Sound familiar?

I actually had no idea what the 8-11 year olds of 1999-2001 thought of the show and score until around 2006 when I started seeing the first covers of our music being played on piano and guitar on Youtube, and the huge positive reaction to those first simple covers.

So, really, generally people back then had no idea DBZ was Japanese. REALLY. I had to explain it so many times lol.

Back to the understanding thing. I should mention Ben Kasparek. This guy understood DBZ. Me? Mike? Bruce? Julius? I don't think any of us really knew anything about the show before working on it. Ben Kasparek was one of those rare DBZ nerds. He had VHS tapes of the entire show in Japanese, before getting hired. Somewhere by the mid Cell saga Ben became our main editor (it was a gradual process). A lot of fans REALLY REALLY love that last episode where Gohan finally beats Cell. Let me tell you. Ben. He did that entire episode with editing. It was the first time I think that Mike or myself didn't go in and change something, or add even little bits of new music to aid transitions or fill in weird moments. Ben nailed it, and the fans love it. So lets give him some love. He understood the show, and you may not agree with everything he *did*, but he was doing a job. For a client! And he did it with passion, as we all did.

To all you haters out there who don't feel the Faulconer score. I'm sorry about that. To me, when I don't feel something and so many other people are, I usually look to myself to see what *I* am missing. Sometimes I can find it, sometimes not (eg Pearl Jam ugh...haha).
But know this, we did put heart into it and injected a lot of feeling in there. For me one of the most emotional scenes was when Vegeta was giving his speech about Frieza as he died. I really really wanted to make that scene amazing. Also realize there were four very different people working on that score. I didn't feel everything in there, definitely not. So there's lot's of subjectivity even between team members. There are definitely scenes that make me cringe (yes early synth guitar included...hello...I'm a guitarist!). But you know, there are scenes that used to make me cringe, that fans LOVE, and I've grown to appreciate those, except anything with GroovyDiscoTech, can we burn that track?? hahah

[Kunzait_83]

There's been some comment about how we misunderstood the show. I think to some degree that is true, but maybe not as drastically as is being implied.

Let's take that Destruction theme in particular into consideration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzSMhKoOt6I

How many people know that I WAS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO USING THIS APPROACH FOR TRUNKS?

The first bit of music I *arranged* for Trunks (and I mean arranged, Mike wrote the original melody for the Trunks trailer) was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzApzm5M-8Y (Episodic Trunks)

We actually wrote 3 versions of the Trunks music, because Funimation kept coming back and saying, "No, we want HEAVY BEYOND BELIEF".
Eventually they went as far as telling us that Trunks was a villain! Did I believe that? Not for a second. I was on the internet. I knew how to do searches and knew what was coming.
After the first two rejections, I was like..."Ok I'm a metal guy, I'll give them something they cannot POSSIBLY reject for not being EXTREME enough"

After I recorded the bombastic theme, I placed it into a scene with Trunks for the first time, and it was so ludicrous I actually fell on the floor laughing (and crying inside).

I bolded and underlined those bits above to highlight something: the fact that moments like those had occurred within the production for this score I find to be very telling. I don't know if for some degree of time there was enough confusion and mixed messaging among the higher ups at FUNimation that such a prominent heroic character like Trunks (arguably one of THE most immediately recognizably heroic, altruistic characters from a Western-oriented lens within the entire series) was genuinely and mistakenly believed to be a villain by them until later on, or if that was just something that was fed to you and the other musicians/composers as part of a general tonal direction to take the score into.

In either one of those cases though, that speaks to some incredibly, jarringly wrongheaded thinking and decision-making that was going on among your bosses at the time, as well as the fact that yes, their degree of misunderstanding what kind of show they were producing an English language rendition for in the first place was indeed pretty massive and staggeringly ignorant of some of its basic core fundamentals. That's an indictment by the way on the executives calling the shots at the top of FUNi's corporate ladder by the way: not you and the team of musicians you worked with. More on that in just a moment.

Oh and also your reaction to the above Trunks piece: with all due possible respect in the universe here... that is a COMPLETELY understandable and sane reaction to have to that particular music placed within that particular scene. Even for the person who composed it. It is completely and thoroughly ill-fitting, and its direction and placement (things which you yourself note that you had just about no control over whatsoever) clearly indicate and total and utter lack of any real understanding of what that individual scene, the characters within it, nor the general overarching ideas and themes of the overall story itself, are all about and how they were intended to be presented and the tone and feel they were meant to invoke: it is unto itself a microcosm of the ENTIRE approach taken to dubbing and scoring the ENTIRE Z anime throughout.

This whole approach taken by FUNimation's higher ups from the very outset was totally and fundamentally broken at a foundational level. You and your fellow hired musicians were already kneecapped by all this well before you'd even first walked into the door.

It is as close to "objectively" wrong for this material as something as so palpably subjective as music can possibly sidle up to being, and you obviously present yourself as someone with a more than adept understanding about how music works (your professional career speaking for itself on that front) and moreover how a musical score is SUPPOSED to work in tandem with the visual material that its backing up: so yes, OBVIOUSLY you are going to cringe, laugh (not the good/intended kind of laugh either), and cry on the inside as you watch this... exercise in horrendously confused and mind-numbing tonal clashing unfold for the first time in front of you as a finished work.

I appreciate, with the utmost sincerity, that you yourself had personally invested so much of your time and creative energy into this project (and I have a lot more to say on that at the end of this hopefully-coherent rambling, so I hope you at least hang with me for that part of all this): but at a certain point, there are clearly heaptons of moments within this score, and moreover how its used with this particular material here, that there's just NO getting around how desperately it just doesn't fucking work if we're being at all completely honest with ourselves here.

I don't have the slightest doubt that you had the reaction you recount having here, and I'm sure you had plenty of other similar reactions to other scenes and moments in the series' and your scoring of it besides this one. It is absolutely, totally more than justified here. And you were the one who helped MAKE this!

So, did we always agree with the direction we were taking the music? Heck no. Would we have liked to use live orchestra? You betcha. Could we have done it given time and resources? Absolutely. Has there ever been a paid project that I worked on where I got to do completely what I wanted to artistically? I don't think so!

Even on my own youtube channel I'm greatly influenced by what my particular fanbase wants to hear\see (as you read a fan commenting on in Fion's post). Some of the stuff on my own channel is not necessarily what I would do in a show's context, for instance the shred solos. Way too distracting in a show's context, but fun for Youtube

Oh, and did we use Casio? Haha *NO* But as I've said many times, I don't really like a lot of the "acoustic" imitating sounds we used much either (see my earlier post in this thread)

The other side of the understanding thing is: Did we know the Japanese score well and what the original score was aiming for? We had heard it, a little, but to us it just sounded like sparse 60's film music, and we truly had no earthly idea that there was a fan base who cared so passionately about it. We knew the style we had been *directed* to write and we went for that. We actually had detailed notes for every moment on what we were supposed to do (not that all of us read them, but they were there). Speaking for myself, I tried to honor the client's (Funimation) wishes as much as possible. I couldn't do everything because they asked for music changes like every second. You think the score was scatterbrained?...man...if I had done everything they asked...yikes.

So how relevant was understanding the wuxia nature of DBZ to the Faulconer crew and the job we had to do? Pretty much zero, because that wasn't our job.

Just to be 1000% perfectly clear here: I probably shouldn't speak for anyone else, but I genuinely don't think that most sub-oriented fans on the whole really blame the specific, individual musicians who worked for Faulconer Productions for the actual creative direction and decisions made for the dub's score. I know that I certainly don't. Clearly this was a corporate mandate and the buck for that stops squarely at the higher ups at FUNimation. Barry Watson and Gen Fukanaga were the primary individuals (to the best of my understanding) who were ultimately the minds behind the "change of creative direction" for DBZ's dub, so at the end of the day they're the, for lack of a better term, "bad guys" (if you can even call it that) in all this.

When it comes to matters like this one, I would like to think its fairly readily apparent that there are higher ups who pull the strings, and then there's the employees who do what they're told and are paid for their effort. The composers/arrangers, guitarists, and other musicians - as individual cogs within this greater machine - are clearly, obviously the latter and not the former here. So any fan of the Japanese version/Kikuchi with an axe to grind against the dub and its score who place the brunt of their ire and the majority of the blame for its general creative tone on either you or any of the other guys you worked with as musicians, that fan is definitely barking up the wrong tree and acting very... misguided, to put it very mildly.

I don't make it any secret clearly what I think of the Faulconer score itself. But do I at all in any way think of the individual musicians who composed and recorded it as being somehow "in cahoots" with Watson, Fukanaga, and co. in the decision to craft and use it in the manner that it was crafted and used? Or to replace the original score in the first place? Of course not. That's a completely ludicrous thing to suggest, and I would NEVER say or insinuate that. And I don't think the overall vast majority of users here ever have either (not in my own experience here at least).

This was (very) clearly a paycheck gig - of the "quick and dirty" sort - taken up by some hired guns, and I don't in any way whatsoever have any negative things to say about or towards some random starving guitarists and synth-players at the tail-most end of the 90s who took the cash and hammered out whatever the suits wanted them to so that they could make the rent and buy groceries. Other than that their end product is empty and disposable nonsense (that happened to catch a cult following largely from a certain subsection of people who are particularly engrossed with virtually EVERYTHING about DBZ as it relates to the specific context of its original Cartoon Network/Toonami television airings).

But of course it is, and I'd have been honestly shocked if it wasn't, given the very core nature of how it was initially conceived, the "logic" (such as it was) behind having it produced in the first place, and the creative direction that was already pre-chosen for it, likely well before you and your teammates were even first contacted for the gig.

(A creative direction borne out of a staggering degree of ignorance for the source material from a supposedly "professional" company who by all means OUGHT to have made it their business to have known well in advance up front what it was exactly that they were walking into and investing time/money for in the first place - some of the behind the scenes stories that have long-since come about over the years regarding how FUNimation used to be run back during its earliest days had revealed what was almost embarrassingly Trumpian levels of business incompetence going on somewhere or other at the top back then, and its first and foremost to the express credit of what Akira Toriyama and Toei Animation had accomplished with Dragon Ball itself that it managed to defy whatever handicaps that its own American licencors were unwittingly stacking against it and still be a massive and audience-beloved success despite all else. Absolutely NONE of which you yourself, as just a hired guitarist/composer caught in the middle of that whole mess, should feel the least slightest bit of responsibility for, obviously, nor receive ANY amount of misplaced "blame" for by ANY fans out there.)

This was a work that was commissioned on the cheap and on the quick by a roomful of businessmen (some of which were total novices at this at that time, and it clearly showed) who imported a hot foreign product, clearly didn't understand it very well (nor, at least in Watson's case, cared to) and just wanted something they thought they could turn a profit from quicker. When in practice, the show demonstrably would've gotten along just fine without any of their "help" in the matter, and all it ever really ended up accomplishing in the long run (in terms of Dragon Ball itself in America anyway) is fracturing the show's fanbase - in particularly dysfunctional ways - to the point where we all as fans often find ourselves spending half our time going 'round and 'round in circles with arguments and debates of this nature.

Any negative feelings whatsoever that I hold for the whole mess is saved squarely for the businessmen who made this stupid, silly, wholly unnecessary (to the point of frankly being a complete waste of time and resources on their end) decision in the first place. Not the random guys that they simply paid to do a job for them. That'd be completely fruitless and ridiculous, not to mention insanely unfair.

I wanted to clear up one other thing. There was a lot of talk (with curse words galore) about how kids of the day (8-11) should have known the whole story already and that it was Japanese etc. etc.

That seems like it was directed pretty squarely at myself. Couple things then:

1) I really, sincerely hope that the "curse words galore" remark wasn't intended as some sideways kind of chastising. This is a fairly informal setting, and its hardly positioned itself as being family oriented. I'm not speaking at a wedding or funeral here, I'm not attending church mass, and I'm not teaching 2nd grade: I'm on an internet forum talking about a 30 year old children's cartoon with a group of largely 20 to 30 something adult men (a relative minority of female and child posters here and there notwithstanding). Such is the world we currently live in apparently.

So long as I'm making reasonably intelligent, cogent points and I'm not harassing or hurling venom and bile at any fellow users (something I certainly have zero interest in doing), virtually anything else more or less goes. There are set rules of conduct here of course (which are strictly enforced to rather amazing degrees more often than not), and I go VERY far out of my way most times to abide by them. "Clean language at all times" is not at all among them.

Hopefully I'm just misunderstanding the nature of that remark and if so I apologize if I'm being overly or needlessly defensive here. But if I'm not... well, tough. Unless the site's owners decide at some point to make it against the rules of conduct, I'll be using whatever words and salty language I feel like using, including in this very post here. We're both grown men. Deal with it.

2) I never at any point said that kids "should have known the whole story". I'm not even sure what that means. Whole story of what exactly? The show itself? If they're an 8-11 year old with no exposure at all to Dragon Ball (or any other anime), then of course I wouldn't expect any of them to know much of anything about the show's story. The story of the dub productions' behind the scenes? I'd expect them to know that even less. That the show was Japanese? Or at the very least that its not American/Western? I mean... the show DOES kinda wear it on its sleeve a great deal of the time, to the point where its often hard NOT to notice.

To be more specific though, this was the heart of what I'd said (with me now bolding and underlining the especially important part):

Unless you were below the age of 5, you don't have virtually ANY excuse whatsoever not to recognize at any point in your childhood that the writing on the character's dogi and various buildings (to say nothing of a lot of the overall architecture) as being Japanese/Chinese/Asian of some sort. You (random, ordinary U.S. kid) obviously shouldn't in any way be expected to understand or be capable of reading any of it of course: just have a functional, basic-most comprehension that there exist other languages and cultures out in the world, and this is what some of their various writings roughly look like in terms of general visual style. If for nothing else than just by sheer virtue of having ever once in your life ventured near any given Chinese restaurant or takeout joint, of which there are countless hundreds of thousands of throughout the majority of the U.S.

My point was not that average kids should somehow know everything there is to know about a show that they're only just seeing for the very first time: my point was in response to another post in this thread that stated that most kids thought (or probably thought) that the Japanese writing, and other very blatant cultural signifiers, featured prominently in the show were of some "alien language" native to the show rather than indicative of some real life non-U.S. culture (Asian in this case). My response to that was that even by the standards of a small child, that is grotesquely, frighteningly ignorant. From my own experience as an American growing up, even as a 1st grader - in a fairly dumpy school in a very low-income area no less - we were taught at least VERY basic things about the existence of other non-U.S. cultures and their different languages throughout the world, up to and including Japanese.

If I'm unreasonable for expecting better standards of basic education and basic, baseline comprehension of other world cultures out of our children... then yes, by all means, call me one unreasonable motherfucker on this issue.

In 1999-2001 I was ages 24-27. More than anyone on the Faulconer team I was aware of what was going on. I read the comments on the internet in spite of all the hate. Yes, hate! But let's be clear, I'd say the overwhelming majority of comments came from people who were fans of the Ocean Dub. Unless people were super hardcore DBZ nerds, they:

1) Only knew the Ocean dub and were comparing to that
2) Didn't even know the show was Japanese.
3) Didn't know what a Super Saiyan was.
4) Had no idea what was coming next in the show.

These are the kids on the internet at the time, teens. They poured out hate, wishing for the thing they had heard first, the Ocean actors and music. Sound familiar?

I actually had no idea what the 8-11 year olds of 1999-2001 thought of the show and score until around 2006 when I started seeing the first covers of our music being played on piano and guitar on Youtube, and the huge positive reaction to those first simple covers.

So, really, generally people back then had no idea DBZ was Japanese. REALLY. I had to explain it so many times lol.

I find it interesting that you outline this, bu then immediately afterwards note that:

Back to the understanding thing. I should mention Ben Kasparek. This guy understood DBZ. Me? Mike? Bruce? Julius? I don't think any of us really knew anything about the show before working on it. Ben Kasparek was one of those rare DBZ nerds. He had VHS tapes of the entire show in Japanese, before getting hired.

Yeah. About that. I wouldn't really call Ben there "rare" exactly. Those VHS tapes (many with their origins going back to 1991, and others as far back as '86/'87 or so) had gotten around quite a bit by 1999. Hell, by 1995/1996 even. I would call Dragon Ball's pre-dub fanbase who largely followed the series through those VHS tapes "cult" for sure. "Niche" as well. "Rare" though? That's.... streeeeeeeetching it.

The 1990s was chock full of cult fanbases revolving around odd foreign or "lost" shows and films that had largely circulated on bootleg VHS tapes. DBZ was just one among them, and hardly at all in the least bit the most obscure or difficult to come across by a GIGANTIC margin. We're talking about one of the most iconic and influential Japanese anime of all time that even back in 1992 (really only what, 3 or 4 years before its conclusion? more than halfway across the hump of its lifespan) had well beforehand amassed a MASSIVE global following and would crop up in plenty of nerd-friendly outlets of the time.

It wasn't Star Wars by any stretch obviously; but some barely-seen Nikos Nikolaidis movie this most certainly was not either. No, you weren't going to just click on any random TV station and just happen to catch it on whenever of course. But people have a tendency to VASTLY overplay just how "deep underground and impossible to find out about" it actually was in the early to mid 90s. To the point that it gets pretty damn silly. I was some dingbat 6 or 7 year old kid (who'd never left the U.S., much less been to Japan, in my life) when I'd first heard of it... in 1990.

Getting ahold of fansubbed tapes for it in 1993 certainly took a little more effort than it would to just go down to the local Hollywood Video and pick it up on a giant shelf filled with zillions of copies... but really, only a little (unless it was episodes from the Saiya-jin arc, which actually WAS on the difficult side - but again, not impossible - to find tapes for for a little while back then). By the mid-90s, even before the dub came along, it was among the most heavily circulated fansubbed anime out there. To pretty sizable degrees.

Dragon Ball was so ubiquitous among anyone who so much as dipped a toe into the waters of Japanese anime for about as long as I can remember in my lifetime, that I honestly don't know HOW far back you'd have to venture into the series' original Japanese lifespan to reach a point where it genuinely was about as obscure and thoroughly impossible to know the existence of within any corner of the U.S. entirely to the degree that modern fans today seem to think that it somehow always was before the dub. 1984/85 maybe? When the manga was first starting up perhaps?

I don't even wanna marry myself to THAT answer though, honestly. Unlike most people from the Toonami-era, I (as well as most other people who were late 80s/early 90s fans for this stuff for that matter) had generally always recognized that U.S. anime and manga fandom has been around and spreading its hentai-esque tendrils since well long many years before my ass ever entered the picture during the Akira days, and never just assumed that all this stuff and the people who'd clearly been into it and spreading it around for awhile now had all just suddenly sprouted into existence out from oblivion right at the moment I was first made aware of it.

Even back around 1990, around roughly the time when the series was doing the whole "Ginyu switches bodies with Goku" shenanigans, you could enter plenty of given discussions about anime at the time and find at least SOME people or other talking Dragon Ball somewhere within the mix. That's basically how I first found out it existed as young as I was: just listening in on anime fans talking about various then-major titles that were going on at the time (since I was just a fresh faced n00b myself at that point). And it was pretty apparent that the folks back then discussing DB/Z, they'd been riding with it for some degree of time by then.

Really: end of the day, we're only talking about Dragon Ball Z here, not the unearthing of the Ark of the Covenant. If some random dorky 3rd graders like me and my friends growing up could find a way to watch the bulk of it back then (within the confines of our shitty little corner of the city no less), then it wasn't exactly being kept away from the entirety of the public's view within a titanium vault. Almost none of this stuff from Japan ever was, really. People were collecting Godzilla bootlegs since long many ages before most of y'all were born: you think anime somehow went so many years completely escaping the notice of enterprising nerds of decades past?

As far as the Ocean fans that you (cRookie_Monster/Scott Morgan) were encountering... bear in mind that this was 1999. The Ocean dub had made its Cartoon Network debut around maybe a year or so prior and had looped through the first arc and a half of Z over and over and over enough times to attract an already sizable following of precisely the kinds of kids who WOULD only just discover the existence of Dragon Ball (and anime in general) for the first time in their lives around that point. To say nothing of the similarly new fans it had managed to rack up during the Ocean dub's initial syndicated run a couple years prior (which wan't as many, but still enough to give the show some legs right out the starting gate on CN).

Of COURSE you were gonna get a heapton of kids who had no clue what Dragon Ball, or anime (or apparently Japan as a country, if some people in here are to be believed) were things that existed before then right around that point. You guys were just entering into the initial fever pitch of the show's white hot apex of popularity among its target audience (kids who were up till then not "in the know" so to speak). However many thousands of older anime fans who were already acquainted with all of this that you might find out there, they're gonna get drowned the fuck out by the legions upon legions of swarms of grade schoolers who evidently were primarily glued to nothing but the kids' TV stations 99% of the time, and who would in short order over the next few years go on to largely "replace" and white-out most traces of the older audience from before, if only by sheer, raw numbers and sugar-rushed enthusiasm.

Rest assured though, that the internet, even at that point, was still plenty chock full of older fans who'd been devotees of the anime and manga for quite some years prior to the dub. One particular individual among that generation of fans even made quite a bit of noise at the time among the new kids running a particular website (aimed at then-new fans who were average kids just discovering DBZ through the FUNimation dub) devoted to comparing and analyzing/eviscerating the stark differences and creative alterations between them. You'll also find plenty of archived e-mails there from back then: some from new kids being newly introduced to all this, but also plenty of others from us old-timers who'd seen and loved the series for years by then, and were also none too pleased with how the dub turned out.

To all you haters out there who don't feel the Faulconer score. I'm sorry about that. To me, when I don't feel something and so many other people are, I usually look to myself to see what *I* am missing. Sometimes I can find it, sometimes not (eg Pearl Jam ugh...haha*).

Look man... I do get it. You're a creative talent, and even though this was ultimately a paycheck job, any job that requires ANY amount of creative energy is gonna likely have SOME portion of yourself poured into it. So there's pride to be taken in that usually, and no matter what other people, or even you yourself on whatever level, think of the work you did... its still at the end of the day, to one extent or another, a piece of you that's contained inside this thing. Almost anything you make, from wholecloth out of your own mind, is gonna be something that you're gonna want to defend the integrity of, no matter what the circumstances or unflattering realities behind its original inception and development. By all means that is totally understandable and human, and I completely feel you on that (from personal experience even, to one degree or another).

At the end of the day, opinions are like assholes, etc. etc. What I, or other Kikuchi fans on here, think of the Faulconer Productions score should ultimately be not of too much concern to you personally. Not enough to feel any real compulsion to have to defend it against the distaste of a bunch of total strangers nearly some two decades later. Because at the end of the day, you DID ultimately work your whole life to develop a talent for an artistic craft, and you got to apply that craft in a professional manner, and out the other end of all that you even ended up cultivating a following of fiercely loyal, devoted fans who passionately adore your work and sing its praises almost 20 years after the fact. Some who even go so far as to cite it as an artistic influence that inspired them to take up music themselves.

When all's said and done, that's MORE THAN BEYOND what most people end up ever coming within light-years of ever accomplishing in their lives. So on that score, you are certainly someone who has been very much unbelievably blessed. Enjoy that, enjoy your fans who love your work, and screw what some other portion of people who don't dig your work ultimately say about it (myself totally included here). Far as I'm concerned at least, you've got nothing to prove to anyone, certainly not around here. And that's coming from someone who has... not the most flattering view of that work shall we say... no less.

You're a lucky dude. All the best to you. For whatever my opinions on your work, much respect.



*Oh, just one last small quibble here though: I'm hardly the biggest, most ardently fanatical Pearl Jam fan that you'll find out there by any means, but come on man. At the very least, Ten is a more than solid as all hell grunge album (especially if you're someone who skews more on the "stadium rock" end of the spectrum: I'm mostly not for what its worth, but I still can recognize and appreciate the musical value present here) that largely holds up incredibly well and justifies the massive impact that it helped to wreak on mainstream rock music at the time.

[ABED]

While it changes nothing about my feelings for the actual replacement score, much like the interview with the GT writer didn't make me like the end result any more, I still found the discussion by those who were there to be interesting and enlightening. Some of the blame I and others have placed should be directed elsewhere.

[Forte224]

While it changes nothing about my feelings for the actual replacement score, much like the interview with the GT writer didn't make me like the end result any more, I still found the discussion by those who were there to be interesting and enlightening. Some of the blame I and others have placed should be directed elsewhere.

Where was the blame being placed before? I kinda always assumed it was towards the higher ups that wanted to Americanize things not the composers themselves

[ABED]

The blame was being placed on both.

[Kokonoe]

I want to note that cheap doesn't equate to quality in the way it's being portrayed here. There are a lot of video games from the classic era that were "cheap" in terms of what was payed but ended up being amazing music that people consider classics.

It really depends on who's working on the music, and I cannot attest enough about how much I love their usage of synth.

[NitroEX]

I want to note that cheap doesn't equate to quality in the way it's being portrayed here. There are a lot of video games from the classic era that were "cheap" in terms of what was payed but ended up being amazing music that people consider classics.

That's comparing two different standards though. Video game music, especially back in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, was always traditionally of a lower sound quality than what you'd expect from music in TV or movies, this is why being compared to video game music was always more of a negative criticism. To be clear, I'm not talking about the compositions in video game music (although I'm sure they too were affected by data limitations forcing them to loop more frequently), I just mean the instruments and how well produced the tracks are. TV and movies obviously didn't have the same limitations (storage space on game discs and cartridges), they mainly had to worry about budget and time constraints while video game composers had to worry about all that on top of also needing to also keep file sizes down to save space.

I can appreciate classic VGM but when listening to music from TV or movies my standards of what I consider good are usually higher. I think that's how most people generally view that stuff.

[Kokonoe]

I want to note that cheap doesn't equate to quality in the way it's being portrayed here. There are a lot of video games from the classic era that were "cheap" in terms of what was payed but ended up being amazing music that people consider classics.

That's comparing two different standards though. Video game music, especially back in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, was always traditionally of a lower sound quality than what you'd expect from music in TV or movies, this is why being compared to video game music was always more of a negative criticism. To be clear, I'm not talking about the compositions in video game music (although I'm sure they too were affected by data limitations forcing them to loop more frequently), I just mean the instruments and how well produced the tracks are. TV and movies obviously didn't have the same limitations (storage space on game discs and cartridges), they mainly had to worry about budget and time constraints while video game composers had to worry about all that on top of also needing to also keep file sizes down to save space.

I can appreciate classic VGM but when listening to music from TV or movies my standards of what I consider good are usually higher. I think that's how most people generally view that stuff.

I think the thing is, a lot of people give synth a lot of flack but I love synth I don't see it as "cheap" music even if it is actually cheaper to make. I see it merely as a style, and although everyone prefers orchestral based soundtracks, I think more often than not I prefer synth.

[Bardo117]

[quote="Kunzait_83"][/quote]


You're so bent on jarringly explaining to us who like the music that it sucks and it doesn't fit the narrative.... If only you could just sit back and enjoy the show with the Falcouner music.

[ABED]

You're so bent on jarringly explaining to us who like the music that it sucks and it doesn't fit the narrative.... If only you could just sit back and enjoy the show with the Falcouner music.

His fundamental point wasn't about his personal preference, it's about whether it fits. If he thinks it sucks, of course he's not going to sit back and enjoy DB with the Faulconer score.

[Forte224]

You're so bent on jarringly explaining to us who like the music that it sucks and it doesn't fit the narrative.... If only you could just sit back and enjoy the show with the Falcouner music.

This isn't possible to do for people who don't like it