Post
by TheGreatness25 » Thu Feb 08, 2018 10:59 am
I think that the Faulconer score was fine. I liked the Shuki Levy score, but the Faulconer music was good in its own way. People compare it to the Kikuchi score -- which is fair, I guess -- but the Faulconer music wasn't as bad as many make it seem. My one chief complaint was that it always sounded synthesized. Maybe if it had stronger drums or something, I'd like it more. Though the tunes themselves, for the most part, were catchy. I didn't like the "in-between" music, though (like Goten and Trunks running around, etc.). I mean, it is what it is and it wasn't this horrendous, terrible thing. It was just a replacement soundtrack to a cartoon that came from Japan. It wasn't something crazy, especially in the time. Many people look at it from a 21st century anime-exposed world angle of, "How dare they change the music and script?!" When really, that was just kind of standard practice back in the day. Power Rangers got that treatment (and it's live action!), Yu-Gi-Oh got that treatment, Pokemon got that treatment, Sailor Moon got that treatment. Street Fighter II The Animated Movie (an incredible release) got that treatment. Hindsight is 20/20. Even back in 1998 or whenever, there was a relatively small pocket of fans that explored DB further and liked the Japanese version more, even that was hindsight because the series got dubbed before then. I just think that it's a little silly to judge a series that was released between 1996-2002, by today's standards. The anime boom in the U.S. didn't happen until after that. And in 2007, Funimation released the orange bricks with the dub using the Japanese BGM. Hey, points for that. And even to this day, that's their preferred track (look at the Dragon Box release, Funimation Now, and when it was on Hulu).
But, back to Faulconer. It's fine. It's not on the same emotional level as the Kikuchi score, obviously, but I do find it pretty cool in its own way. It certainly feels like it might have pulled some inspiration from the video games (I can totally see the Dragon Ball Greatest Legends soundtrack influencing the music, even though I know it didn't). Again, my only real complaint against it, was that it sounded too synthesized. It sounded too manufactured and wasn't as natural as a Batman the Animated Series score, or even a Tom & Jerry score. But that was kind of a fit for the dub, in my opinion. The majority of the voice acting sounded too manufactured as well, which is why I always found the Ocean actors to be much more natural-sounding. But that's another argument for another time.