Is It Time For A Redub? Dragon Ball (OG)

[WittyUsername]

Yeah nah, we could do without those two especially Vollmer

Colleen Clinkenbeard and Monica Rial (from the Cell games onward) put out much worse than anything the former two have done, especially Clinkenbeard.

Couldn't disagree more. There's zero charm to any of their performances and Vollmer never sounds age appropriate for Bulma until Bulma until around the Buu arc.

I don’t really think she sounds any older than Monica Rial. They both honestly sound too old for 16 year old Bulma. Still, between the two of them, I would say that Monica Rial is the better Bulma on the count of her acting being better.

[ABED]

Colleen Clinkenbeard and Monica Rial (from the Cell games onward) put out much worse than anything the former two have done, especially Clinkenbeard.

Couldn't disagree more. There's zero charm to any of their performances and Vollmer never sounds age appropriate for Bulma until Bulma until around the Buu arc.

I don’t really think she sounds any older than Monica Rial. They both honestly sound too old for 16 year old Bulma. Still, between the two of them, I would say that Monica Rial is the better Bulma on the count of her acting being better.

Fair enough. Rial can pass for a woman in her 20s, though.

[gohann]

Monica Rial has problems beyond matching the age of the character, as I previously described.

[ABED]

Nadolny for me encapsulates Goku's country bumpkin in the stilted talking style and often not-so-smooth vocals, which I highly prefer over giving Goku an Alabama accent.

Stilted isn't a style, it's a lack of acting ability.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that other than maybe a few scenes in the Trunks special, Vollmer has never delivered a passable performance. Nadolny is a talented singer, but not an actress. Her performance as both Gohan and Goku are like nails on a chalkboard to me, and the single worst part of DB.

[Super Sonic]

ABED, did Ms. Nadolny break your heart or something? The way I've seen you post about her kinda makes you sound like a bitter ex-boyfriend.

[VegettoEX]

ABED, did Ms. Nadolny break your heart or something? The way I've seen you post about her kinda makes you sound like a bitter ex-boyfriend.

I don't see the need to jump to those levels. I, too, find the performance unlistenable and I'm consistently flabbergasted by people showering it with reverence.

[KBABZ]

I, too, find the performance unlistenable and I'm consistently flabbergasted by people showering it with reverence.

I can't help it, it was a cornerstone of my Age 12 Saturday nights!

Semi-related, what's your take on Clinkenbeard in the role? Does she bring any improvements to the table for you?

[Zephyr]

Her performance as both Gohan and Goku are like nails on a chalkboard to me, and the single worst part of DB.

I, too, find the performance unlistenable and I'm consistently flabbergasted by people showering it with reverence.

Jumping on this train as well. In hindsight, Nadolny is probably one of the biggest reasons for me hating GT when I was a dubbie.

[8000 Saiyan]

If it ever happens, then they should recast Kid Krillin. Get Sonny Strait to do the voice, was never fond of Laurie Steele's rendition. A bit grating and raspy for my taste.

If it was up to me, I'd recast Yamcha, Roshi and Tien as well. But I know that they would never recast those three.

[Kunzait_83]

Her performance as both Gohan and Goku are like nails on a chalkboard to me, and the single worst part of DB.

I, too, find the performance unlistenable and I'm consistently flabbergasted by people showering it with reverence.

Jumping on this train as well. In hindsight, Nadolny is probably one of the biggest reasons for me hating GT when I was a dubbie.

Also totally backing this sentiment.

Anyways, the only sort of a redub of the old series (original DB, Z, the specials and movies, and maybe GT as an optional bonus) that I'm in favor of is one that COMPLETELY and 100% junks almost every shred of the old approach taken to it. Throw out virtually the ENTIRE old FUNimation cast across the board and start 100% from scratch. None of them are "iconic" to anyone who didn't "grow up with" the old dub, and most of them are unlistenable and irritating in the extreme to anyone accustomed to even haflway decent acting in virtually anything else, up to and including Z grade monster movies.

Keep the scripts close to Simmons' translations (adjusting and tweaking it for things like matching mouth flaps and puns that don't translate into English, obviously), including all character and attack names and such. And obviously leave Kikuchi's original score the hell alone.

Moreover though, and this is the key thing here: don't approach the voice directing and overall tone like you're just cranking out a disposable and junky Saturday morning kids cartoon, which is ultimately THE key problem at the heart of most all of the old dub's problems and that has followed and haunted it across its various incarnations over the years like a ghost.

Just treat the whole thing earnestly and have the cast shine through as organic, naturalistic, smooth, and charismatic on a level that you'd find with any regular live action film or TV show. Other than RARE cases like with Pilaf maybe, don't have everyone "do an over the top caricature": just have the cast talk and converse with one another normally, and have them emote with some degree of subtlety and gravitas. They also don't have to be exact soundalikes of the Japanese voices either, obviously: but they DO have to at least match up with the general spirit and intent of the character in its original performance.

So no, Goku isn't Captain America or Superman: he's a playful yet dedicated Chinese Kung Fu hayseed from the mountains. Gohan for most of the series is a small kid, not a lung cancer patient going through remission (the same goes for Goku as a kid). Kaio is a wise and commanding, yet quirky and eccentric heavenly deity, not a South Park character. Bulma is a spunky, fiercely independent girl-genius and wealthy heiress, not a bitchy valley girl stereotype nor a total harpy who's crabbily yelling at everyone constantly for no real reason.

Muten Roshi is an old man, not a 20 or 30-something dude doing a painfully forced and obviously shitty stereotype of an "old geezer" voice. Piccolo is a demonic mystic from a far off world, not a barking drill sergeant. Vegeta is a regal and haughty space prince, not a loud idiot with trachea issues. Kuririn is a reluctantly brave and heroic Shaolin fighting monk with a Gordon Liu by way of Jackie Chan-esque charm (humble and clumsy but a total badass at the same time), not... well, another South Park character. Etc. etc.

Cipher mentioned in the thread about James Marsters' Goku Black/Zamasu how it took him seriously aback because he isn't accustomed to hearing anything DB-related in English being performed by "real actors": he's 1000% correct on this general sentiment (I haven't really listened to Marsters' actual performance myself, but I know the basic idea of what Cipher's talking about with it), and it makes a UNIVERSE worth of difference. Cast actors who can convey that same type of naturalism. The simple reason being that its the EXACT approach taken by the Japanese version, and it makes the whole series IMMENSELY more engaging and watchable to both children and grown-ass adults alike, lending it a sense of genuine respect for the audience's intelligence.

This is my non-negotiable sticking point on ANY further English dub for Dragon Ball, especially a full-blown, from the ground up redub of the classic material: throw out the "shitbag Saturday morning cartoon" mindset and just treat it with SOME degree of restraint and (relative) maturity like most anything else from outside the U.S. kids' TV realm gets treated with. And without a doubt throw out EVERYTHING that's particular and specific (translation-wise and vocal performance-wise) to the old dubs: fuck what the fanbase for those dubs think. Call it "Dragon Ball: Screw Your Childhood Nostalgia Edition" or whatever.

Anything less than this general approach, and I consider the act of redubbing the series to be completely redundant, pointless, and furthering of FUNimation's "polishing a turd" style of needlessly incrementalist and gradual improvement by a millimeter at a time. For any halfway competent production company with even a decently mediocre budget to work with, doing a halfway listenable and respectful English dub of a 30 year old children's martial arts fantasy cartoon is neither brain surgery nor is it like trying to do a literal and straight adaptation of a fucking Sartre novel, or something similarly challenging.

The manner in which FUNimation has continually not learned from many of their worst mistakes with this property over the years and the degree to which they've hopelessly shackled themselves to the worst and most problematic creative decisions and general approach of the old dub as well as the overly-clingy whims of its original (and now aging) fanbase is beyond ridiculous.

Keep the scripts faithful (to an actually excellent English translation that's already been long-since completed now and sitting right there waiting), leave the music alone, and cast halfway decent actors and direct them to give something approaching REAL performances instead of "Saturday morning PEW!! PEW!! cartoon caricature" performances.

End of the day, its less budget and resources than it is just the actual WILL and faith in the material itself that's needed to take this approach, as well as the willingness to tell the old dub's fanbase to just forget about the original dubs already because they were, by most sane objective metrics, fuck-awful and moreover completely antithetical to even just the basic-most spirit of Dragon Ball.

[Zephyr]

as well as the willingness to tell the old dub's fanbase to just forget about the original dubs already because they were, by most sane objective metrics, fuck-awful and moreover completely antithetical to even just the basic-most spirit of Dragon Ball.

That shouldn't even be necessary, honestly. Were a new dub to do everything right from scratch, that wouldn't delete the old dub from existence. Those who swear by that old dub would very much so still have it.

[Kunzait_83]

as well as the willingness to tell the old dub's fanbase to just forget about the original dubs already because they were, by most sane objective metrics, fuck-awful and moreover completely antithetical to even just the basic-most spirit of Dragon Ball.

That shouldn't even be necessary, honestly. Were a new dub to do everything right from scratch, that wouldn't delete the old dub from existence. Those who swear by that old dub would very much so still have it.

I agree completely. But the old dub's fanbase seems to always be constantly re-asserting most of the old dub's problems as being "the real Dragon Ball" because "its what we grew up with!" and pounce upon ANY improvements made to FUNimation's later iterations as some sort of downgrade that's "inauthentic to the original" (pause to note the irony there). Look no further than Kai's few re-castings (nearly all of which were IMMENSE upgrades from their predecessors) and the immense amounts of bitching and complaining and outcry that resulted. Lets not even get into the whole Faulconer thing.

Push comes to shove, its somehow or other usually the original Cartoon Network airings from 20 years ago (and in some rarer cases, the Ocean incarnations) that are clung to as sacred, holy writ, never to be questioned or messed with: generally because "its what we saw first!" As if that means anything whatsoever to its actual quality. As much as I don't care for Kai in general, I'm at least glad that its dub version exists if for NO other reason than to at least chip away at this stubbornly clung-to mindset that won't seem to go away, no matter how many years/decades fall off the calendar.

I can't say with 100% certainly exactly WHAT it is that motivates FUNimation's refusal to totally let go of the old dub's "90s kids action cartoon" tone and creative approach: but on SOME level, at least SOME of it at least seems to be a case of "its what the fans know and are used to". And if that's in ANY way part of the mindset that keeps them from moving past shit like "all the big guys like Nappa and Reacoom are drooling idiots" or "lets never acknowledge that Ki is a thing that this whole series' premise hinges upon" or "lets shoehorn in references to Power Levels at every other turn even well after the only two arcs where Power Levels are really even a thing" etc. then I say its a mindset that VERY much needed to be cast aside completely decades ago.

[ABED]

ABED, did Ms. Nadolny break your heart or something? The way I've seen you post about her kinda makes you sound like a bitter ex-boyfriend.

I'll admit to posting a tad too much in the past about my dislike of her performance in particular. I haven't done so as much in recent memory, and don't intend to from here on out, but I will occassionally make my view known, I just won't go out of my way to do so. So no, I don't know her personally, which is why I've kept my criticisms to her performance and not her as a person.

[KBABZ]

To be clear I'm totally aware of the dub's flagrant in-authenticity to Dragon Ball and Wuxia as a whole, and I'd never try to shove it in the face of someone who prefers the pure stuff from Japan.

[8000 Saiyan]

Her performance as both Gohan and Goku are like nails on a chalkboard to me, and the single worst part of DB.

And to think I actually used to like her as Kid Goku. Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. I'd say that McFarland's Roshi's just as bad, but that's just my opinion. People say that he sounds like an actual old man, but I can't think of any person that sounds like that in real life.

[ABED]

Her performance as both Gohan and Goku are like nails on a chalkboard to me, and the single worst part of DB.

And to think I actually used to like her as Kid Goku. Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. I'd say that McFarland's Roshi's just as bad, but that's just my opinion. People say that he sounds like an actual old man, but I can't think of any person that sounds like that in real life.

He doesn't and the performance isn't good, though there are a few line deliveries I recall making me laugh.

[Kunzait_83]

To be clear I'm totally aware of the dub's flagrant in-authenticity to Dragon Ball and Wuxia as a whole, and I'd never try to shove it in the face of someone who prefers the pure stuff from Japan.

You know something only just now occurred to me that I somehow neglected to ever once bring up in all the years I've been on here and in all the many, many, many, MANY dub related threads I've taken part in during all that time.

One of the BIGGEST sticking points of mine in the all the various dubs' voice acting compared to that of the original Japanese has always been the Kiais; the fighting sounds, screams, and cries that the characters all make throughout the series.

Now this much regarding that specific issue I've always talked about a lot: how the dub actors, almost across the board uniformly, are utterly horrendous at doing credible, non-cringe worthy fighting yells, and they sound instead almost distractingly homoerotic in their general gruntiness (the other go-to joke being they sound like they're straining to push out a huge turd) as opposed to kung fu warriors doing battle Kiai shouts.

Here's what I've never commented on before though that only JUST NOW this moment dawned on me to actually delve into: how in many scenes in Japanese, the characters, when gathering their Ki, won't even yell or Kiai at all: instead they'll take these deep, deep breaths and exhale sloooooooooowly. They'll do this for a bit before finally releasing their Ki (as an attack or whatever) and transitioning smoothly from these deep breaths into a full blown Kiai shout. Ryo Horikawa's Vegeta is ESPECIALLY pronounced when doing this, but everyone from Piccolo to Goku to Kuririn to Tenshinhan, etc. all do it throughout the whole entire series at various points.

This is actually a REALLY fundamentally crucial element to Kung Fu fiction and Wuxia as a whole: I've gone into detail before in the Wuxia thread about how Ki actually works within Chinese Wuxia myths, how deep breathing stemming from the body's core/central "Dantian" region is absolutely key to control and mastery of one's Ki energy, and harnessing it for martial arts techniques throughout most all of these kinds of stories. Hell, deep breathing exercises (for better strengthening the core muscles and the diaphragm for better endurance) is effectively what "Ki control" actually IS in actual real life martial arts training.

Well... yeah. That's the exact reason for why it is the characters in Japanese take all these deep, throaty breaths and exaggerated exhalations before finally letting loose into a Kiai/Ki attack. Its something that's SO absurdly commonplace across pretty much ALL Wuxia media, that honestly its just an unconscious given that you rarely ever think much about. Which is probably why I never thought to single it out and address it before for all these years now.

Hell, while I don't know this for certain obviously, I wouldn't be at all shocked to find out if this were something that the Japanese voice directors and actors have never even actually bothered discussing for their performances behind the scenes: its such an ubiquitous part of martial arts fantasy media like this throughout Asia, that most people who consume enough of this stuff just know it reflexively, unconsciously, and instinctively.

Its something that's ALWAYS from day 1 20 years ago nagged at me incessantly about the dub (since everyone in it is always shrieking, grunting, straining, and doing pro wrestling noises all the time), and is one of those incredibly subtle yet at the same time GLARING things, one of those things that only the back of your mind actually notices or picks up on subconsciously, about the dub that makes it feel so, so, SO utterly wrong and so un-Dragon Ball-like and is one of zillions and zillions of other factors that helps contribute to lending the dub this sense that the series is being awkwardly divorced away from mystical martial arts entirely.

Guarantee you that this is something that NOBODY involved in the FUNimation dub is in any which way aware of whatsoever; and like I said before, I wouldn't be surprised to find out if it were likely something (I'm willing to venture a guess anyway; I could well be wrong and this may have been something they actually worked out behind the scenes) that's just an instinctive, unconscious choice on the part of the Japanese cast and voice directors, due to how ubiquitous this type of martial arts media and their assorted tropes like this one are across Japan and various other Asian territories.

But yeah, that's something else super important that I'd want to see be sufficiently addressed in any kind of "proper/faithful" redub: make sure the actors are able to do credible Kiai noises and controlled martial arts breaths for the fight scenes. Have them study and look through fight scenes across various Kung Fu/Wuxia films or whatever helps them get the hang of it. But having the voice actors just randomly yell and scream their heads off like they're doing an Ultimate Warrior impersonation... yeah that just ISN'T going to cut it, and its one of the BIGGEST things about the various dubs' performances for fight scenes that just make them an utter faceplaming chore to sit through.

And yes, contrary to what dub fans insist upon, its also one of the BIGGEST factors that makes Schemmel's Goku so fucking atrocious, even in the later material where he's "improved". No matter how much better he sounds as relaxed/casual Goku, he can NEVER seem to be able to do any kind of fights scene in a manner that isn't ear-splittingly terrible to stomach. And Goku as an overall character... kinda spends an awful LOT of his screentime fighting.

[KBABZ]

You're... welcome?

[Kunzait_83]

You're... welcome?

Heh, sorry. Something about this whole discussion just knocked it loose from me.

[ABED]

What I found interesting about the kiai post was how well thought out it was because there is a version of that where someone just complains about it in a paragraph and doesn't talk about cultural differences, including the different types of stories people watch, which lead to such different performances during the kiai.