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

[Chrono Trigger]

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.

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.

I've always felt Peter Kelamis was good at this (and actually sounding like a martial artist and not some dude yelling in a booth)

[Dragon Ball Gus]

Okay, with that, it's time to close this thread. Thank you guys for having this very fun discussion, even though it turned into chaos in the end. Stay tuned tomorrow, because we're gonna be talking about GT next. Until then, hope you have a good day. And I'll catch you guys, later. Peace!

[VegettoEX]

We don't close topics just because it's requested, and you're free to create additional topics at any time (rather than waiting until the next day). There's no need to "sign off" like that - discussions can and will continue onward!

[Robo4900]

So, I've held off on posting in this thread for many reasons, but y'know what, I'm going to let loose right now to drop my 2 cents in, because... Well, because I enjoy writing stuff like this, and why not, right?
So, here we go.

Putting aside the issue of whether Funimation will do this, I would say absolutely 100% yes they should do a full redub of OG DB from the ground up, but it still wouldn't be good enough.
That's my basic thesis on this, but there's a lot of whys and hows underneath this, so basically the remainder of my post will be disecting this and going into detail.

So, why should they do a full redub of OG DB, and why should it be "From the ground up"? (And also, what does "From the ground up" mean?)
To put it bluntly, Funimation's dub of OG DB sucks. It sucks significantly less than most of their other pre-Kai dubs, but "Less bad" does not mean good. The leads can't act, the scripts are corny and barely count as translations, they screwed up the insert songs, the cast in general is full of questionable choices, the acting in general is various flavours of bad, and like all of the dubs Funimation were doing around this time, it's very clear there's no real respect for the source material going into this.

I'm going to break this down point-by-point, and that should bring us home rather nicely...

The leads can't act - Stephanie Nadolny and Tiffany Vollmer consistently failed to emote well, and their performances in Dragon Ball are characterised by awkward line deliveries, grating/screechy yells, and an overall massively unfitting characterisation. Nadolny sounds like a 60-year-old chain-smoker, not just in the tone of her voice, but in that her performance gives the vibe Goku profoundly doesn't give a crap about anything, and Vollmer sounds like the worst possible version of a teenage girl, to the point that she's practically a strawman -- she's a whiny nag who doesn't care one bit about any of the people she's interacting with on this journey. Nozawa's Goku is laid-back and chilled-out, but he's highly curious, and cares very much about the world and people around him; Tsuru's Bulma is whiny and vain, but ultimately is rather caring once you get to know her, she's just thrown off her game a little by the craziness going on in her life. The two leads in this dub failed in their performances; you could say they're trying to play it subtlely and understated, which seems to be the case in most of Funimation's dubbing work past the midpoint of their dub of Z, but the problem is they're not good at it, so they just end up not emoting at all, and giving totally flat performances that fail to deliver any character whatsoever.

The scripts are corny and barely count as translations - People often make out that OG DB, the Boo arc of Z, and even GT were pretty well-translated by Funi for their dubs, and are perfectly acceptable, accurate, proper dubs of that material, but this is entirely false. It is true that in the later dubs, Funimation preserved more of what was said in the original Japanese, but in these cases, the lines were almost always recontextualised, changing the emphasis and intent of the line, usually as a part of their usual process of adding as much extra dialogue as they could to make someone be talking at all times during their dub. Many jokes were added, the typical characterisation changes to expect were there(Goku being pretty much Superman, for instance), and the acting was still terrible, and added to the characteristaion problems.
Arguably, OG Dragon Ball is even worse from this point of view in some ways, since at least episodes 1-13 basically took the BLT dub's scripts(Which, despite common belief, was actually a pretty faithful dub, actually more faithful than Funi's uncut one...), and added a layer of Funi-isms on top, so it's all the typical Funimation baggage, but on top of a script that was already adapted and somewhat censored for American TV. And given the fact some evidence suggests BLT's scripts were at least partially based on Harmony Gold's scripts(Not entirely, though; Ian Corlett has said in the past that they at least heavily referenced direct translations to build the BLT scripts. The evidence I speak of in regards to BLT being based on HG basically boils down to BLT's movie 1 and HG's movie 1 having suspiciously similar scripts, though somewhat surprisingly, HG's script is slightly more accurate), it's entirely possible Funimation based their later scripts on Harmony Gold's scripts, and just added their own adaptations to it(We can't know for sure, since we don't have access to the scripts HG wrote for the ~60 episodes they supposedly wrote scripts for, unfortunately). At the very least, though, the first 13 were done based on the BLT dub, and it's entirely possible they'd written scripts for episodes 14-26 of BLT's dub too, and thus been able to base their uncut dub on existing scripts for those too, given their initial plans, and the existence of provisional episode titles for 26 episodes.

They screwed up the insert songs - Next to all the other issues with this dub, this point will feel like a count of jaywalking on top of arson and murder, but this is supposed to be an uncut dub, which many people cite as being very accurate and among Funimation's best pre-Kai dubbing work... And yet, even though they supposedly used the original Japanese score, they left nearly all insert songs out, with only silence taking their place in the music track. At least the Blue Water dub(Which basically took Funimation's dub scripts, corrected most of the terminology, rewrote about half of the total scripted material based on direct Japanese translations, and used better actors, and pretty much in general was just a better TV dub than Funimation's TV cut of their dub was... And honestly, is just a better dub overall than Funi's uncut dub, even) used some of the Ocean music library to fill in the spaces where they couldn't license the insert songs. And as much as that is an imperfect solution, it works for a dub that was only ever intended to air on TV. Funimation's dub is an uncut dub, intended to be the definitive dub of the show, and is used as the default viewing option on the DVD releases. Funimation have no excuse for leaving total silence in the place of the insert songs. I dare you to figure out how to make this scene feel anything like it's supposed to without the iconic sound of Mezase Tenkaichi.

The cast in general is full of questionable choices - Let's talk about Piccolo. I am not a fan of Chris Sabat's Piccolo. I feel that, next to Scott McNeil's definitive portrayal, Sabat feels disappointing and flat. However, he does make his portrayal work by going all-in on the zen master side of Piccolo, which is a little questionable up until at least Namek, but it does just about work. Thing is, they had Sabat voice Demon King Piccolo too. In Japanese, Piccolo Jr. had a fairly smooth tone to his voice not unlike Sabat's, but King Piccolo was played by a different actor, with a much more menacing voice. Funimation did not do this. So, Chris Sabat plays the over-the-top demon king who wants to take over the world the same way he plays the zen master with a dark past, who's best friends with a young man who he's pretty much become a surrogate older brother/second father to...
Honestly, I think Sabat is one of the better actors in the pre-Kai dubs, and he does try to make King Piccolo work, but he's just no-where near as menacing or imposing as he should be. He either sounds too zen-like, because he sounds like Boo-era Piccolo, or he sounds like a mindless brute like when Sabat had only just taken over as Piccolo... King Piccolo is not just a mindless brute, he's a cunning force of pure evil who will sit in a big throne, and every year draw a number to decide which segment of Earth's population he's going to obliterate. He's an over-the-top, fun, menacing, cartoonishly evil villain, and Sabat just doesn't pull it off.
There are many castings that were rather poorly chosen in the pre-Kai dubs(One I will never shut up about that persists to this day -- not an OG DB one, but quite a notable example -- is Kaio. I'm sorry, but he just sounds like a poor man's Don Brown, with none of Brown's version's capacity for gravitas), and I could probably write something equally long here about many of them, but Piccolo is the one that bothers me the most; Piccolo is my favourite character in all of Dragon Ball, and when he's done right(The Japanese voices, Scott McNeil, the Blue Water voice of Demon King Piccolo, the TeamFourStar voice...), he dominates every scene he's in, and draws my eyes and ears every time he appears, but when he's done wrong(Sabat's King Piccolo), he's dull, flat, and makes me wish it would cut away to something else. This is why I'm focusing on him today.
It's a shame, because Sabat has proven himself a great actor in dubs like Kai, but when an actor is miscast, there's no way around it -- they're going to come off badly whatever they do.

The acting is various flavours of bad - This one, I don't really need to go too in-depth in, because there's just not much to talk about, and I've already gone into this above, but one thing I will say is I don't think many of the actors are actually bad in the pre-Kai dubs, I think many of them were pretty middling or not-great at the time these dubs were being recorded, but I think the director(Or directors, perhaps) is/are equally(Maybe moreso) to blame for why the acting in the pre-Kai dubs was so incredibly bad.

It's very clear there's no real respect for the source material going into this - So many additional jokes and such were added to the scripts, so many unnecessary adaptation changes were made... It's pretty clear they had a defined idea of what they wanted to put on TV, and they would change the show to fit that mould, rather than what someone with a respect for the source material would do, which is to change your methods to fit what the show is doing. Extra dialogue was constantly added to the show, original dialogue was often discarded in favour of coming up with their own nonsense. I would say in their defense that a certain portion of this is down to the fact they simply didn't have access to any good information about the show; their translations were incredibly bad, so they basically had to just throw together what they could salvage... But the fact they were willing to throw Ocean's assistance in this regard aside(Remember how good a job they did with the Pioneer dub. Plus, Ocean did a really great job with the BLT dub. And I'm not talking about the acting here, I'm referring purely to the scripting facilities; Ocean have a number of services they provide, many of which Funimation never used while working with them, so they could easily have gone ahead and moved the cast in-house, but kept translations at Ocean) shows that the production guys were perfectly willing to just throw that all aside in favour of just putting out something cheap and safe.

So, where does that leave us?
What we have in the pre-Kai dubs is a total mess. At some point, they should have thrown it all out, and started from scratch; re-audition all the actors, and don't be afraid to recast anybody or ask the actor to try a different take, and the scripts should have been newly-produced scripts based on proper translations. All the terminology and names should have been re-examined and corrected(No more Crane Hermit > Master Shen, causing Shen > Hero. No more Mafuba > Evil Containment Wave, Tao Pai Pai > Mercenary Tao, Son Goku > Goku, etc.), the insert songs should have been licensed and used, all the ED animations of OG DB should have been used rather than just the first one, the OP/ED songs' vocals for DB and GT should have been put over the original instrumentals(Which do exist), and Z's OP/ED songs should have had dub versions produced. If Toei had started Kai from the actual beginning of the story, and Funimation had been willing to be a little drastic with their measures of improving the dubbing, this could have essentially been what Kai was, but unfortunately, that was not the case.

Realistically, the best we can hope for is a Kai-type redub, where the modern Kai-era actors go back and redo it using scripts based on the originals, but with major corrections based on proper Japanese translations. I think even this is a stretch, really(Especially given the DB movie 1 redub used the Kai actors, but basically just used the BLT script, but with adjustments that end up making it make less sense, and make it less accurate), and honestly, I don't think Funimation will ever redub this older material, but if people are willing to join me on this, I'd love to try petitioning Funimation to redub this material someday. I don't know how this would be done, but I'd be on-board as hell. Funimation have a lot of talented actors in their current casting pool, so even if they reused the old scripts just with the Kai cast, and some other recasts(Hopefully including King Piccolo. Who knows, maybe they could even get Scott McNeil in. That'd be a good casting gag, and a legit really great casting choice. But really, there are tons of actors they could bring in to do the job who'd do a great job), it'd be a big improvement.
If we could get Kai-like scripts using a cast as I've described, then it would be mission accomplished, and we'd finally have a good Funimation dub of the entire "Main canon" as it is in the modern day(DB, Kai, Super). I would still be rather critical of it, because Funimation's scripts, in my opinion, still aren't good enough, but the acting would be a massive improvement, fixing the insert songs would be really nice, and having scripts of a Kai standard would be a massive, worthwhile improvement.

So yes, 100% they should redub it. Not only is it time for a redub, but we're long overdue for one.

[8000 Saiyan]

So, I've held off on posting in this thread for many reasons, but y'know what, I'm going to let loose right now to drop my 2 cents in, because... Well, because I enjoy writing stuff like this, and why not, right?
So, here we go.

Putting aside the issue of whether Funimation will do this, I would say absolutely 100% yes they should do a full redub of OG DB from the ground up, but it still wouldn't be good enough.
That's my basic thesis on this, but there's a lot of whys and hows underneath this, so basically the remainder of my post will be disecting this and going into detail.

So, why should they do a full redub of OG DB, and why should it be "From the ground up"? (And also, what does "From the ground up" mean?)
To put it bluntly, Funimation's dub of OG DB sucks. It sucks significantly less than most of their other pre-Kai dubs, but "Less bad" does not mean good. The leads can't act, the scripts are corny and barely count as translations, they screwed up the insert songs, the cast in general is full of questionable choices, the acting in general is various flavours of bad, and like all of the dubs Funimation were doing around this time, it's very clear there's no real respect for the source material going into this.

I'm going to break this down point-by-point, and that should bring us home rather nicely...

The leads can't act - Stephanie Nadolny and Tiffany Vollmer consistently failed to emote well, and their performances in Dragon Ball are characterised by awkward line deliveries, grating/screechy yells, and an overall massively unfitting characterisation. Nadolny sounds like a 60-year-old chain-smoker, not just in the tone of her voice, but in that her performance gives the vibe Goku profoundly doesn't give a crap about anything, and Vollmer sounds like the worst possible version of a teenage girl, to the point that she's practically a strawman -- she's a whiny nag who doesn't care one bit about any of the people she's interacting with on this journey. Nozawa's Goku is laid-back and chilled-out, but he's highly curious, and cares very much about the world and people around him; Tsuru's Bulma is whiny and vain, but ultimately is rather caring once you get to know her, she's just thrown off her game a little by the craziness going on in her life. The two leads in this dub failed in their performances; you could say they're trying to play it subtlely and understated, which seems to be the case in most of Funimation's dubbing work past the midpoint of their dub of Z, but the problem is they're not good at it, so they just end up not emoting at all, and giving totally flat performances that fail to deliver any character whatsoever.

The scripts are corny and barely count as translations - People often make out that OG DB, the Boo arc of Z, and even GT were pretty well-translated by Funi for their dubs, and are perfectly acceptable, accurate, proper dubs of that material, but this is entirely false. It is true that in the later dubs, Funimation preserved more of what was said in the original Japanese, but in these cases, the lines were almost always recontextualised, changing the emphasis and intent of the line, usually as a part of their usual process of adding as much extra dialogue as they could to make someone be talking at all times during their dub. Many jokes were added, the typical characterisation changes to expect were there(Goku being pretty much Superman, for instance), and the acting was still terrible, and added to the characteristaion problems.
Arguably, OG Dragon Ball is even worse from this point of view in some ways, since at least episodes 1-13 basically took the BLT dub's scripts(Which, despite common belief, was actually a pretty faithful dub, actually more faithful than Funi's uncut one...), and added a layer of Funi-isms on top, so it's all the typical Funimation baggage, but on top of a script that was already adapted and somewhat censored for American TV. And given the fact some evidence suggests BLT's scripts were at least partially based on Harmony Gold's scripts(Not entirely, though; Ian Corlett has said in the past that they at least heavily referenced direct translations to build the BLT scripts. The evidence I speak of in regards to BLT being based on HG basically boils down to BLT's movie 1 and HG's movie 1 having suspiciously similar scripts, though somewhat surprisingly, HG's script is slightly more accurate), it's entirely possible Funimation based their later scripts on Harmony Gold's scripts, and just added their own adaptations to it(We can't know for sure, since we don't have access to the scripts HG wrote for the ~60 episodes they supposedly wrote scripts for, unfortunately). At the very least, though, the first 13 were done based on the BLT dub, and it's entirely possible they'd written scripts for episodes 14-26 of BLT's dub too, and thus been able to base their uncut dub on existing scripts for those too, given their initial plans, and the existence of provisional episode titles for 26 episodes.

They screwed up the insert songs - Next to all the other issues with this dub, this point will feel like a count of jaywalking on top of arson and murder, but this is supposed to be an uncut dub, which many people cite as being very accurate and among Funimation's best pre-Kai dubbing work... And yet, even though they supposedly used the original Japanese score, they left nearly all insert songs out, with only silence taking their place in the music track. At least the Blue Water dub(Which basically took Funimation's dub scripts, corrected most of the terminology, rewrote about half of the total scripted material based on direct Japanese translations, and used better actors, and pretty much in general was just a better TV dub than Funimation's TV cut of their dub was... And honestly, is just a better dub overall than Funi's uncut dub, even) used some of the Ocean music library to fill in the spaces where they couldn't license the insert songs. And as much as that is an imperfect solution, it works for a dub that was only ever intended to air on TV. Funimation's dub is an uncut dub, intended to be the definitive dub of the show, and is used as the default viewing option on the DVD releases. Funimation have no excuse for leaving total silence in the place of the insert songs. I dare you to figure out how to make this scene feel anything like it's supposed to without the iconic sound of Mezase Tenkaichi.

The cast in general is full of questionable choices - Let's talk about Piccolo. I am not a fan of Chris Sabat's Piccolo. I feel that, next to Scott McNeil's definitive portrayal, Sabat feels disappointing and flat. However, he does make his portrayal work by going all-in on the zen master side of Piccolo, which is a little questionable up until at least Namek, but it does just about work. Thing is, they had Sabat voice Demon King Piccolo too. In Japanese, Piccolo Jr. had a fairly smooth tone to his voice not unlike Sabat's, but King Piccolo was played by a different actor, with a much more menacing voice. Funimation did not do this. So, Chris Sabat plays the over-the-top demon king who wants to take over the world the same way he plays the zen master with a dark past, who's best friends with a young man who he's pretty much become a surrogate older brother/second father to...
Honestly, I think Sabat is one of the better actors in the pre-Kai dubs, and he does try to make King Piccolo work, but he's just no-where near as menacing or imposing as he should be. He either sounds too zen-like, because he sounds like Boo-era Piccolo, or he sounds like a mindless brute like when Sabat had only just taken over as Piccolo... King Piccolo is not just a mindless brute, he's a cunning force of pure evil who will sit in a big throne, and every year draw a number to decide which segment of Earth's population he's going to obliterate. He's an over-the-top, fun, menacing, cartoonishly evil villain, and Sabat just doesn't pull it off.
There are many castings that were rather poorly chosen in the pre-Kai dubs(One I will never shut up about that persists to this day -- not an OG DB one, but quite a notable example -- is Kaio. I'm sorry, but he just sounds like a poor man's Don Brown, with none of Brown's version's capacity for gravitas), and I could probably write something equally long here about many of them, but Piccolo is the one that bothers me the most; Piccolo is my favourite character in all of Dragon Ball, and when he's done right(The Japanese voices, Scott McNeil, the Blue Water voice of Demon King Piccolo, the TeamFourStar voice...), he dominates every scene he's in, and draws my eyes and ears every time he appears, but when he's done wrong(Sabat's King Piccolo), he's dull, flat, and makes me wish it would cut away to something else. This is why I'm focusing on him today.
It's a shame, because Sabat has proven himself a great actor in dubs like Kai, but when an actor is miscast, there's no way around it -- they're going to come off badly whatever they do.

The acting is various flavours of bad - This one, I don't really need to go too in-depth in, because there's just not much to talk about, and I've already gone into this above, but one thing I will say is I don't think many of the actors are actually bad in the pre-Kai dubs, I think many of them were pretty middling or not-great at the time these dubs were being recorded, but I think the director(Or directors, perhaps) is/are equally(Maybe moreso) to blame for why the acting in the pre-Kai dubs was so incredibly bad.

It's very clear there's no real respect for the source material going into this - So many additional jokes and such were added to the scripts, so many unnecessary adaptation changes were made... It's pretty clear they had a defined idea of what they wanted to put on TV, and they would change the show to fit that mould, rather than what someone with a respect for the source material would do, which is to change your methods to fit what the show is doing. Extra dialogue was constantly added to the show, original dialogue was often discarded in favour of coming up with their own nonsense. I would say in their defense that a certain portion of this is down to the fact they simply didn't have access to any good information about the show; their translations were incredibly bad, so they basically had to just throw together what they could salvage... But the fact they were willing to throw Ocean's assistance in this regard aside(Remember how good a job they did with the Pioneer dub. Plus, Ocean did a really great job with the BLT dub. And I'm not talking about the acting here, I'm referring purely to the scripting facilities; Ocean have a number of services they provide, many of which Funimation never used while working with them, so they could easily have gone ahead and moved the cast in-house, but kept translations at Ocean) shows that the production guys were perfectly willing to just throw that all aside in favour of just putting out something cheap and safe.

So, where does that leave us?
What we have in the pre-Kai dubs is a total mess. At some point, they should have thrown it all out, and started from scratch; re-audition all the actors, and don't be afraid to recast anybody or ask the actor to try a different take, and the scripts should have been newly-produced scripts based on proper translations. All the terminology and names should have been re-examined and corrected(No more Crane Hermit > Master Shen, causing Shen > Hero. No more Mafuba > Evil Containment Wave, Tao Pai Pai > Mercenary Tao, Son Goku > Goku, etc.), the insert songs should have been licensed and used, all the ED animations of OG DB should have been used rather than just the first one, the OP/ED songs' vocals for DB and GT should have been put over the original instrumentals(Which do exist), and Z's OP/ED songs should have had dub versions produced. If Toei had started Kai from the actual beginning of the story, and Funimation had been willing to be a little drastic with their measures of improving the dubbing, this could have essentially been what Kai was, but unfortunately, that was not the case.

Realistically, the best we can hope for is a Kai-type redub, where the modern Kai-era actors go back and redo it using scripts based on the originals, but with major corrections based on proper Japanese translations. I think even this is a stretch, really(Especially given the DB movie 1 redub used the Kai actors, but basically just used the BLT script, but with adjustments that end up making it make less sense, and make it less accurate), and honestly, I don't think Funimation will ever redub this older material, but if people are willing to join me on this, I'd love to try petitioning Funimation to redub this material someday. I don't know how this would be done, but I'd be on-board as hell. Funimation have a lot of talented actors in their current casting pool, so even if they reused the old scripts just with the Kai cast, and some other recasts(Hopefully including King Piccolo. Who knows, maybe they could even get Scott McNeil in. That'd be a good casting gag, and a legit really great casting choice. But really, there are tons of actors they could bring in to do the job who'd do a great job), it'd be a big improvement.
If we could get Kai-like scripts using a cast as I've described, then it would be mission accomplished, and we'd finally have a good Funimation dub of the entire "Main canon" as it is in the modern day(DB, Kai, Super). I would still be rather critical of it, because Funimation's scripts, in my opinion, still aren't good enough, but the acting would be a massive improvement, fixing the insert songs would be really nice, and having scripts of a Kai standard would be a massive, worthwhile improvement.

So yes, 100% they should redub it. Not only is it time for a redub, but we're long overdue for one.

This is well written. And I also rather like Blue Water King Piccolo, although I think Scott could do much better.

[WittyUsername]

As far as King Piccolo is concerned, I honestly would have to say that I prefer Sabat’s King Piccolo over the Blue Water voice. My problem with the Blue Water voices in general is that they just seem so generic. I’m not saying they’re terrible, and I do think that the Blue Water voice for Pan is better than her Funimation voice, but there usually seems to be something a bit off about the voices in terms of the way they sound, and their inflections. I’m not saying that the Funimation dubs don’t also have some faulty inflections, but I feel like it’s more noticeable with Blue Water than it is with the post 2001 dubs that Funimagion has done.

Also, I should point out that Chris Sabat’s King Piccolo voice wasn’t exactly the same as his voice for Piccolo Jr. His King Piccolo voice was more smooth sounding and had a lower pitch.

[Robo4900]

As far as King Piccolo is concerned, I honestly would have to say that I prefer Sabat’s King Piccolo over the Blue Water voice. My problem with the Blue Water voices in general is that they just seem so generic. I’m not saying they’re terrible, and I do think that the Blue Water voice for Pan is better than her Funimation voice, but there usually seems to be something a bit off about the voices in terms of the way they sound, and their inflections. I’m not saying that the Funimation dubs don’t also have some faulty inflections, but I feel like it’s more noticeable with Blue Water than it is with the post 2001 dubs that Funimagion has done.

Also, I should point out that Chris Sabat’s King Piccolo voice wasn’t exactly the same as his voice for Piccolo Jr. His King Piccolo voice was more smooth sounding and had a lower pitch.

I mean, to each their own, but I would say that Blue Water's King Piccolo is far more distinct than Sabat's King Piccolo.
While a lot of the Blue Water voices have a similar tone and style to their voices, I think they often feel more believable in their roles; Funimation would go out of their way to make every voice sound different, even with their incredibly limited casting pool(Almost certainly smaller than Blue Water's), leading them to adopt goofy accents, and generally resulting in a lot of unnatural-feeling characterisations, despite them being more distinct from each-other than the Blue Water voices.

But, having said that, I think that King Piccolo is one of the key exceptions to the Blue Water voices having a similar tone to them; he's gives a very distinct monstrous, evil, cunning, fairly over-the-top performance. Granted, most of this is almost ceratinly down to the way he acts it having a strong sense of fun and theatricality to it moreso than the voice(Which is the case about 70% of the time with voice characterisation anyway; any voice actor will tell you this: 30% of it is doing voices, 70% of it is acting. Even if you can't do a voice to save your life, the acting part of it is what will make you good).
Meanwhile, Sabat's Piccolo is a fairly bland, calm tough guy. He's playing it subtlely, but even if he could pull off a subtle performance as King Piccolo in 2001(Spoiler: He couldn't), it's not the right way to characterise him, and it kind of jars against the nature of the arc, and the writing.

You point out that King Piccolo was smoother and lower than Piccolo Jr. under Sabat, the problem is that if you're right about that, then it's even worse than I've been making it out to be; my entire thesis against Sabat as King Piccolo is that his voice is too smooth, zen-like, and subtle. That kind of portrayal can work for Piccolo Jr.(After all, Sabat pulls it off pretty well in Kai), but King Piccolo is not a subtle, zen-like guy; he's a monster who wants to destroy the world, sit on a big throne, kill anyone who gets in his way, and wish for eternal youth so he can rule the world forever with his army of demons. Sabat's portrayal just doesn't gel with that. He's too smooth, too subtle... Honestly, I'd even say he's a bit dull.
Say what you will about the Blue Water King Piccolo voice, at least he sounded like an evil, ancient demon who -- now that he's just woken up -- immediately wants to spawn a bunch of little demons and wish himself young so he can take over the world, and sit on a big throne as the world's ruler for eternity, watching all the remaining humans suffer and struggle to survive, while he cackles away and destroys a large portion of the world every year on a certain date. He's an over-the-top, monstrous villain in every sense, and unfortunately Sabat's version just doesn't capture it at all. Maybe he'd somehow pull it off if a redub was done now, but at the very least Sabat circa 2001 didn't manage it at all, unfortunately.

Ultimately, King Piccolo is not an interesting character, not is he a particularly good villain as-written on the page. Him being a good villain has to come from the performer behind the character having enough charisma and fun to make him a delightfully evil villain like Ryusei Nakao or Chris Ayres did with Freeza.

[Super Sonic]

With a similar note, thought I'd ask guys who were thinking there should be a redub, should they redub this scene from "Transformers"so that Soundwave's voice is consistent in future releases, or should they leave as it is? His actor is still alive.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I don't think Funimation will ever redub this older material, but if people are willing to join me on this, I'd love to try petitioning Funimation to redub this material someday. I don't know how this would be done, but I'd be on-board as hell. Funimation have a lot of talented actors in their current casting pool, so even if they reused the old scripts just with the Kai cast, and some other recasts(Hopefully including King Piccolo. Who knows, maybe they could even get Scott McNeil in. That'd be a good casting gag, and a legit really great casting choice. But really, there are tons of actors they could bring in to do the job who'd do a great job), it'd be a big improvement.
If we could get Kai-like scripts using a cast as I've described, then it would be mission accomplished, and we'd finally have a good Funimation dub of the entire "Main canon" as it is in the modern day(DB, Kai, Super).

I agree with most of the Blue Water vs Funi dub comparisons. The former is clearly a better dub all things considered, the latter is a step in the right direction at best but it leaves a lot to be desired.

I would be all for petitioning Funi to redub anything pre-Kai. Maybe when we have another Dragon Ball drought, UHD hasn't become a thing with animated series and they need to milk the series more, a new DB dub would be an excuse.

Scott McNeil dubbing King Piccolo would be one hell of a dream casting, I always thought it was a shame he didn't get to do that (significant I might add) part of the character's arc. Maybe if someone can get the word out to Sabat via Tweeting, asking at conventions he could try look into it with Funimation. Obviously, much like the broadcast audio situation there's no guarantee, but Sabat truly cares about what the fans want (as seen by casting Drummond as Copy Vegeta) so it would do no harm to pass on the suggestion.

[WittyUsername]

As far as King Piccolo is concerned, I honestly would have to say that I prefer Sabat’s King Piccolo over the Blue Water voice. My problem with the Blue Water voices in general is that they just seem so generic. I’m not saying they’re terrible, and I do think that the Blue Water voice for Pan is better than her Funimation voice, but there usually seems to be something a bit off about the voices in terms of the way they sound, and their inflections. I’m not saying that the Funimation dubs don’t also have some faulty inflections, but I feel like it’s more noticeable with Blue Water than it is with the post 2001 dubs that Funimagion has done.

Also, I should point out that Chris Sabat’s King Piccolo voice wasn’t exactly the same as his voice for Piccolo Jr. His King Piccolo voice was more smooth sounding and had a lower pitch.

I mean, to each their own, but I would say that Blue Water's King Piccolo is far more distinct than Sabat's King Piccolo.
While a lot of the Blue Water voices have a similar tone and style to their voices, I think they often feel more believable in their roles; Funimation would go out of their way to make every voice sound different, even with their incredibly limited casting pool(Almost certainly smaller than Blue Water's), leading them to adopt goofy accents, and generally resulting in a lot of unnatural-feeling characterisations, despite them being more distinct from each-other than the Blue Water voices.

But, having said that, I think that King Piccolo is one of the key exceptions to the Blue Water voices having a similar tone to them; he's gives a very distinct monstrous, evil, cunning, fairly over-the-top performance. Granted, most of this is almost ceratinly down to the way he acts it having a strong sense of fun and theatricality to it moreso than the voice(Which is the case about 70% of the time with voice characterisation anyway; any voice actor will tell you this: 30% of it is doing voices, 70% of it is acting. Even if you can't do a voice to save your life, the acting part of it is what will make you good).
Meanwhile, Sabat's Piccolo is a fairly bland, calm tough guy. He's playing it subtlely, but even if he could pull off a subtle performance as King Piccolo in 2001(Spoiler: He couldn't), it's not the right way to characterise him, and it kind of jars against the nature of the arc, and the writing.

You point out that King Piccolo was smoother and lower than Piccolo Jr. under Sabat, the problem is that if you're right about that, then it's even worse than I've been making it out to be; my entire thesis against Sabat as King Piccolo is that his voice is too smooth, zen-like, and subtle. That kind of portrayal can work for Piccolo Jr.(After all, Sabat pulls it off pretty well in Kai), but King Piccolo is not a subtle, zen-like guy; he's a monster who wants to destroy the world, sit on a big throne, kill anyone who gets in his way, and wish for eternal youth so he can rule the world forever with his army of demons. Sabat's portrayal just doesn't gel with that. He's too smooth, too subtle... Honestly, I'd even say he's a bit dull.
Say what you will about the Blue Water King Piccolo voice, at least he sounded like an evil, ancient demon who -- now that he's just woken up -- immediately wants to spawn a bunch of little demons and wish himself young so he can take over the world, and sit on a big throne as the world's ruler for eternity, watching all the remaining humans suffer and struggle to survive, while he cackles away and destroys a large portion of the world every year on a certain date. He's an over-the-top, monstrous villain in every sense, and unfortunately Sabat's version just doesn't capture it at all. Maybe he'd somehow pull it off if a redub was done now, but at the very least Sabat circa 2001 didn't manage it at all, unfortunately.

Ultimately, King Piccolo is not an interesting character, not is he a particularly good villain as-written on the page. Him being a good villain has to come from the performer behind the character having enough charisma and fun to make him a delightfully evil villain like Ryusei Nakao or Chris Ayres did with Freeza.

I wouldn’t call Chris Sabat’s King Piccolo subtle. I think giving him a lower pitch to his voice was most likely done to make him sound older and more imposing than his son. He still had his fair share of hammy moments that I’d imagine were most likely intentional.

[Robo4900]

I wouldn’t call Chris Sabat’s King Piccolo subtle. I think giving him a lower pitch to his voice was most likely done to make him sound older and more imposing than his son. He still had his fair share of hammy moments that I’d imagine were most likely intentional.

He ends up not being subtle, because he couldn't play subtle, so he ends up not leaving any impression unless he's in a scene where he's shouting.

He has hammy moments, but they aren't delightful moments of evil ham, they're the actor not being given proper instruction by the director, and thus suddenly going from 0 to 100, making the character he's trying to portray one way suddenly do a U-turn and go hammy and loud for a moment.

But, even if it did work, even if the moments of ham worked, it still wouldn't be right, because King Piccolo isn't a character who has moments of ham, his entire existence is based on ham. At risk of sounding repetitive: He's a giant green demon who sits on a giant throne and has an annual holiday named after himself in which he obliterates a section of the population based on a lottery. This is not someone who occasionally goes ham, this is someone who's over-the-top, theatrical, and insane. Somewhat comparable to Freeza. And yet, Sabat's portayal is smooth and calm... Like Freeza. He kind of took the wrong lesson from Freeza, I feel.

I would be all for petitioning Funi to redub anything pre-Kai. Maybe when we have another Dragon Ball drought, UHD hasn't become a thing with animated series and they need to milk the series more, a new DB dub would be an excuse.

Scott McNeil dubbing King Piccolo would be one hell of a dream casting, I always thought it was a shame he didn't get to do that (significant I might add) part of the character's arc. Maybe if someone can get the word out to Sabat via Tweeting, asking at conventions he could try look into it with Funimation. Obviously, much like the broadcast audio situation there's no guarantee, but Sabat truly cares about what the fans want (as seen by casting Drummond as Copy Vegeta) so it would do no harm to pass on the suggestion.

Yeah.
Sabat doesn't come to the UK very often, so I doubt I'd be able to ask about this at a con or something, but if you're in support of this, let's try to spread the word, and get the conversation going. The only way to get Funimation to do something like this is to create demand and buzz for it. A redub of OG DB could be really great. I'm unsure if they actually could/would get McNeil in to do King Piccolo; it would be perfection if they could, and I'd like to push for that in any situation where this conversation is happening, but I understand if they can't do it.

And yeah, Sabat definitely cares about what the fans want, and very clearly pushes to get that stuff done in the best way it can be done. He's an awesome dude, he's probably the best person in the world to be in his position of influence over the dubbing side of Dragon Ball, and he has my total respect. I'd love to meet him at a con sometime.

[8000 Saiyan]

I wouldn’t call Chris Sabat’s King Piccolo subtle. I think giving him a lower pitch to his voice was most likely done to make him sound older and more imposing than his son. He still had his fair share of hammy moments that I’d imagine were most likely intentional.

He ends up not being subtle, because he couldn't play subtle, so he ends up not leaving any impression unless he's in a scene where he's shouting.

He has hammy moments, but they aren't delightful moments of evil ham, they're the actor not being given proper instruction by the director, and thus suddenly going from 0 to 100, making the character he's trying to portray one way suddenly do a U-turn and go hammy and loud for a moment.

But, even if it did work, even if the moments of ham worked, it still wouldn't be right, because King Piccolo isn't a character who has moments of ham, his entire existence is based on ham. At risk of sounding repetitive: He's a giant green demon who sits on a giant throne and has an annual holiday named after himself in which he obliterates a section of the population based on a lottery. This is not someone who occasionally goes ham, this is someone who's over-the-top, theatrical, and insane. Somewhat comparable to Freeza. And yet, Sabat's portayal is smooth and calm... Like Freeza. He kind of took the wrong lesson from Freeza, I feel.

I would be all for petitioning Funi to redub anything pre-Kai. Maybe when we have another Dragon Ball drought, UHD hasn't become a thing with animated series and they need to milk the series more, a new DB dub would be an excuse.

Scott McNeil dubbing King Piccolo would be one hell of a dream casting, I always thought it was a shame he didn't get to do that (significant I might add) part of the character's arc. Maybe if someone can get the word out to Sabat via Tweeting, asking at conventions he could try look into it with Funimation. Obviously, much like the broadcast audio situation there's no guarantee, but Sabat truly cares about what the fans want (as seen by casting Drummond as Copy Vegeta) so it would do no harm to pass on the suggestion.

Yeah.
Sabat doesn't come to the UK very often, so I doubt I'd be able to ask about this at a con or something, but if you're in support of this, let's try to spread the word, and get the conversation going. The only way to get Funimation to do something like this is to create demand and buzz for it. A redub of OG DB could be really great. I'm unsure if they actually could/would get McNeil in to do King Piccolo; it would be perfection if they could, and I'd like to push for that in any situation where this conversation is happening, but I understand if they can't do it.

And yeah, Sabat definitely cares about what the fans want, and very clearly pushes to get that stuff done in the best way it can be done. He's an awesome dude, he's probably the best person in the world to be in his position of influence over the dubbing side of Dragon Ball, and he has my total respect. I'd love to meet him at a con sometime.

Here's the voice I think Scott should use for King Piccolo if he reprises the role:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJhGK4IFOg

[WittyUsername]

Here's the voice I think Scott should use for King Piccolo if he reprises the role:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJhGK4IFOg

I would actually argue that his voice in those particular clips would be too subdued for King Piccolo. Don’t get me wrong, Scott McNeil is a talented voice actor, so I’m certainly not saying he wouldn’t be able to pull off King Piccolo, especially since he can really ham it up when he needs to (just look at all the characters he plays in Beast Wars), but I’m not sure if the voice he uses for Piccolo Jr. in particular is a great fit.

[8000 Saiyan]

Here's the voice I think Scott should use for King Piccolo if he reprises the role:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJhGK4IFOg

I would actually argue that his voice in those particular clips would be too subdued for King Piccolo. Don’t get me wrong, Scott McNeil is a talented voice actor, so I’m certainly not saying he wouldn’t be able to pull off King Piccolo, especially since he can really ham it up when he needs to (just look at all the characters he plays in Beast Wars), but I’m not sure if the voice he uses for Piccolo Jr. in particular is a great fit.

What do you think McNeil should sound like as Jr, then? Rattrap?

[WittyUsername]

Here's the voice I think Scott should use for King Piccolo if he reprises the role:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPJhGK4IFOg

I would actually argue that his voice in those particular clips would be too subdued for King Piccolo. Don’t get me wrong, Scott McNeil is a talented voice actor, so I’m certainly not saying he wouldn’t be able to pull off King Piccolo, especially since he can really ham it up when he needs to (just look at all the characters he plays in Beast Wars), but I’m not sure if the voice he uses for Piccolo Jr. in particular is a great fit.

What do you think McNeil should sound like as Jr, then? Rattrap?

I wasn’t saying that McNeil’s voice for the regular Piccolo is bad. I was saying that particular voice might not be a great fit for King Piccolo.

[sintzu]

The best we can hope for is a Kai-type redub, where the modern Kai-era actors go back and redo it using scripts based on the originals, but with major corrections based on proper Japanese translations.

I don't know how accurate this is but I read that Funimation wasn't going to re-dub Kai and instead they were just going to copy and paste their Z dub onto Kai. If that's what they were going to do with a new product of the popular Z at a time when nothing new was coming out then what are the chances of us ever getting anything DB related from them ? Look what they did with the movies, they had the cast working on the 1st one which would've been a great chance to fix the other 3 but they didn't so realistically speaking, original DB is never going to get re-dubbed.

[Blondiebear_17]

I am one of those crazy people who think there is nothing wrong with the old dub so I would say I pass on that. I would say that the Bardock movie is embarassingly bad sounding today and that could use a new dub but no new redubs at this point are really necessary everybody already has the option for subs plus I literally love it when Chris Sabat does thatl kid vegeta voice and I know that would never pass by today's standards.

[sintzu]

I am one of those crazy people who think there is nothing wrong with the old dub so I would say I pass on that.

I can watch it without many issues but still, A Kai quality re-dub would still be a major improvement.

[8000 Saiyan]

I would actually argue that his voice in those particular clips would be too subdued for King Piccolo. Don’t get me wrong, Scott McNeil is a talented voice actor, so I’m certainly not saying he wouldn’t be able to pull off King Piccolo, especially since he can really ham it up when he needs to (just look at all the characters he plays in Beast Wars), but I’m not sure if the voice he uses for Piccolo Jr. in particular is a great fit.

What do you think McNeil should sound like as Jr, then? Rattrap?

I wasn’t saying that McNeil’s voice for the regular Piccolo is bad. I was saying that particular voice might not be a great fit for King Piccolo.

I wasn't suggesting Scott using his Jr. voice for King Piccolo.

And besides, you can tell that there are some differences how he delivers the lines in the two voices.

[ABED]

Was there maybe a rights issue that precluded them from keeping the insert songs?