Why hire an old lady when you can get a dude?

[WittyUsername]

Point being that little children's voices change quick. If a kid voiced Gohan, we would've had at least 15 by now. You're not taking into account all the different video games over the years.

The video games aren't important to me.

Even if we limit it to the anime. Gohan was a kid for several years, then there's Kai. We would've burned through 4 or 5 Gohans.

Perhaps, and I understand the rationale behind having women playing these characters, but it’s still not something I’m particularly fond of.

[RandomGuy96]

I've been idly considering the idea that Goku's English VA should've had an Appalachian drawl.

[Hellspawn28]

Goku is not macho like Kenishro or the Joestar family. So Goku having a high pitch voice fits his man-child nature.

[Super Sonic]

Sometimes the opposite happens as during the Amazon Lily arc of One Piece, the dub has one woman Sweet Pea voiced by a man. In Japanese, she's voiced by the lady who voiced Japanese Orochimaru, but not in English. Heck, Doug Goodrich even joked about it in the commentary of how he and two others were different than their characters. Sarah Weidenheft mentioned she was really short in comparison to her character being really tall, and he said he wasn't a woman.

[Tian]

Sean's Goku sounds like a Macho deep voiced manly hero who ALSO is goofy. When it's mostly other way round.

That's exactly what I think. The Japanese version sees Goku as a goofy man child who also is the strongest guy in the earth while in most dubs, it's the other way around (the strongest guy in the earth who also is a goofy manchild).

[mrpinbert]

Because I'm pretty sure she has been voicing the character from the beginning.

[Kunzait_83]

Regarding Fist of the North Star's Kenshiro and his voice.

Just something crucial to note: while Kenshiro's voice is normally fairly deep and masculine, that's not QUITE the case exactly when he's fighting. Rather famously/iconically so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvcWqzTHw8

Like many martial arts heroes, Kenshiro's kiai noises while fighting are very much high pitched and squaky, in the Bruce Lee-esque tradition.

As a consequence of Nozawa's Goku performance, that's quite honestly how ALL of Goku's fight scenes throughout DB/Z come across: like similarly Bruce Lee-ish high pitched "Hwah TAAA!!!" Kiai shouts. Even Yamucha's Japanese voice actor Toru Furuya, does much the same thing throughout many of Yamucha's fights, as do many other various characters throughout the Japanese version while fighting.

Nozawa, when in serious scenes as adult Goku, is also more than capable as needed of taking Goku's voice down to a much lower, and at times genuinely menacing, register.

https://youtu.be/PbEmExeyTWQ?t=105

As she also does even more frequently with evil characters she voices like Bardock, Tullece, and Goku Black.

[ekrolo2]

https://youtu.be/PbEmExeyTWQ?t=105

As she also does even more frequently with evil characters she voices like Bardock, Tullece, and Goku Black.

Man, Nozawa used to be good as Goku, what happened?

[Bebi Hatchiyack]

https://youtu.be/PbEmExeyTWQ?t=105

As she also does even more frequently with evil characters she voices like Bardock, Tullece, and Goku Black.

Man, Nozawa used to be good as Goku, what happened?

What happened simple she aged, she is 82 years old so of course her voice doesn't sounds as well as before. But I fear the day she will pass away who will voice Goku afterward. Does they have already an actor who are ready to take upon the mantle of Nozawa-san ?

[ekrolo2]

https://youtu.be/PbEmExeyTWQ?t=105

As she also does even more frequently with evil characters she voices like Bardock, Tullece, and Goku Black.

Man, Nozawa used to be good as Goku, what happened?

What happened simple she aged, she is 82 years old so of course her voice doesn't sounds as well as before. But I fear the day she will pass away who will voice Goku afterward. Does they have already an actor who are ready to take upon the mantle of Nozawa-san ?

I don't think I agree with it being age, she sounds fine if non-Super stuff but when she's recording the main thing now, her voice losses absolutely all range with Goku.

[Bebi Hatchiyack]

Man, Nozawa used to be good as Goku, what happened?

What happened simple she aged, she is 82 years old so of course her voice doesn't sounds as well as before. But I fear the day she will pass away who will voice Goku afterward. Does they have already an actor who are ready to take upon the mantle of Nozawa-san ?

I don't think I agree with it being age, she sounds fine if non-Super stuff but when she's recording the main thing now, her voice losses absolutely all range with Goku.

Well if it's not her age I don't know what is it then. It's the only logical reason to me.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Well if it's not her age I don't know what is it then. It's the only logical reason to me.

She just might be exhausted from playing that role while still pretending she loves it. Yes, she's amazing as Goku but she's already in her 80's and Masako Nozawa deserves to retire and take a long vacation from all that DB stuff.

The normal age for people to pass away is anywhere from 50-100 so she's nearing the end of the road, as morbid as that may be to admit it.

P.S. Yeah, there are actors and actresses who played their roles all the way to the end of their lives and that was their decision but even still, it was excessive because they didn't give themselves time to appreciate their time that they had while they were alive and enjoy doing, eating, seeing and whatever.

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

Well if it's not her age I don't know what is it then. It's the only logical reason to me.

Directing from the voice director could be to fault.

[MasenkoHA]

I feel like they could always...just stop making new Dragon Ball stuff. We wouldn’t even have the new stuff if not for Dragon Ball Evolution being a thing that exist apprently

[JohnnyCashKami]

Do they have already an actor who are ready to take upon the mantle of Nozawa-san ?

Most likely. Dragon Ball for TOEI Animation goes way beyond than just Akira Toriyama, Masako Nozawa, Shunsuke Kikuchi or what BANDAI Namco Entertainment does because it's too profitable to kill it off.

Dragon Ball without Goku simply wouldn't work properly. Even SDBH has like two Gokus (SSJ4 and Blue) at all times unless you'd also want to count "Evil Saiyan" that also resembles another Goku clone. lol

[Kunzait_83]

I feel like they could always...just stop making new Dragon Ball stuff. We wouldn’t even have the new stuff if not for Dragon Ball Evolution being a thing that exist apprently

This a thousand times over.

Examining why it is exactly that there are so many people who are seemingly incapable of letting this thing go or accepting that the original 1984-1995 run was already a MASSIVELY dense, jam-packed experience with more than enough material that can easily last someone a lifetime over and was about as far the exact polar opposite of something that had all this untapped potential and didn't have a chance to flesh itself out enough, is enough of a fandom-wide complex that's at this point worthy of its own thread.

[Doctor.]

Man, Nozawa used to be good as Goku, what happened?

What happened simple she aged, she is 82 years old so of course her voice doesn't sounds as well as before. But I fear the day she will pass away who will voice Goku afterward. Does they have already an actor who are ready to take upon the mantle of Nozawa-san ?

I don't think I agree with it being age, she sounds fine if non-Super stuff but when she's recording the main thing now, her voice losses absolutely all range with Goku.

I disagree. I think she and others just phone it in when voicing videogames or promo material. Nevertheless, the cause of her lackluster performances in Super is: direction. Goku's characterization in Super is off, so her performance feels off as well since she's not really portraying Goku.

Unless you're talking about screams; some of her screams are weak, but she can still let out powerful ones.

[JohnnyCashKami]

I feel like they could always...just stop making new Dragon Ball stuff. We wouldn’t even have the new stuff if not for Dragon Ball Evolution being a thing that exist apprently

This a thousand times over.

Examining why it is exactly that there are so many people who are seemingly incapable of letting this thing go or accepting that the original 1984-1995 run was already a MASSIVELY dense, jam-packed experience with more than enough material that can easily last someone a lifetime over and was about as far the exact polar opposite of something that had all this untapped potential and didn't have a chance to flesh itself out enough, is enough of a fandom-wide complex that's at this point worthy of its own thread.

You could say the same thing about Star Wars which is being run to the ground but as long as it's lucrative for Disney and EA, they don't care.

[WittyUsername]

I feel like they could always...just stop making new Dragon Ball stuff. We wouldn’t even have the new stuff if not for Dragon Ball Evolution being a thing that exist apprently

This a thousand times over.

Examining why it is exactly that there are so many people who are seemingly incapable of letting this thing go or accepting that the original 1984-1995 run was already a MASSIVELY dense, jam-packed experience with more than enough material that can easily last someone a lifetime over and was about as far the exact polar opposite of something that had all this untapped potential and didn't have a chance to flesh itself out enough, is enough of a fandom-wide complex that's at this point worthy of its own thread.

You could say the same thing about Star Wars which is being run to the ground but as long as it's lucrative for Disney and EA, they don't care.

In the case of the Star Wars franchise, Disney is supposedly going to be scaling things back after Solo bombed. With that being said, I can’t imagine Dragon Ball having a flop anytime soon.

[Kunzait_83]

You could say the same thing about Star Wars which is being run to the ground but as long as it's lucrative for Disney and EA, they don't care.

I certainly can and would if this were a Star Wars site.

A decent chunk of nerd properties in general throughout the past few decades now are simply aging or ancient properties being continuously dug up from their coffins and run into the ground long past their end point in lieu of investing in new and original IP, and its godawful. I understand fully why the corporations behind this do it ($$$) so that's not even where a lot of my dumbfounded awe at the whole thing goes to: its more at the actual fans themselves who refuse to stop rewarding this crap with their wallets and behave at times almost like shameless smack addicts, reacting with almost a Pavlovian response of grotesque gluttony to corporate marketing and pandering to their inner 3rd grader's id.

The constant cultural wallowing in mindless nostalgia that has defined so much of 21st century pop culture now is a symbiotic two-way street, with the corporate IP holders acting as pushers, and the fanboys as willing and eager dope fiends who'll always reliably come back and back and back and back, cash in hand, for another hit, fruitlessly chasing the dragon of highs that they obsess over and fetishize from decades ago when they were little.

Dragon Ball is merely one of the latest in a long, long ongoing trend of this type of nonsense, and its just as tiresome and soul-deadening here as its been everywhere else.