Do you think Dragon Ball dub would have benefit from an English Recast?

[Shineman]

In other words, do you think the English dub of Dragon Ball (Funimation) would have benefitted from a complete recast of genuine voice actors during Dragon Ball Kai run, or a complete shift from the company to another dubbing studio altogether?

This thought pop in my mind when I was watching the Bardock Special in both Japanese and English, when I noticed the numerous differences the two versions—the latter including added content never uttered in the original show, in favor of softening up Bardock’s character. When the remastered came around, I thought this was a chance for a redub everything—but that did not happened (as far as I am aware of…)

Which begs the question; Dragon Ball Kai came around and it was an attempt to do a redub of the show to align more closely with the original script than their horrendous take on the original anime. Although there were recasts here and there, overall, the cast remained the same; which strikes as a bad problem in my eyes; majority of them are not experience actors, but they were not let go from their duties. Is there a fear of backlash from the toonami generations for replacing some actors, that they couldn’t recast these guys with new and professional ones?

[Thanos]

Which begs the question; Dragon Ball Kai came around and it was an attempt to do a redub of the show to align more closely with the original script than their horrendous take on the original anime. Although there were recasts here and there, overall, the cast remained the same; which strikes as a bad problem in my eyes; majority of them are not experience actors, but they were not let go from their duties. Is there a fear of backlash from the toonami generations for replacing some actors, that they couldn’t recast these guys with new and professional ones?

It seems like Kai was a half-hearted attempt on FUNimation's part. They wanted to go back to the drawing board and be faithful to the source material, yet not alienate their core dub fans. That's my read of the situation, and it is contradictory... but it shows. You have really good recasts (Freeza, to name but one shining example), yet leaving half of the cast up to Sabat for no reason and leaving Schemmel with his head-scratching Kaio voice. Not to mention... dubisms. There was no reason to keep them. Tien Shinhan? Destructo Disc? Spirit Bomb? At the very least, better translations would've sufficed, but it seems like they got cold feet with the whole operation.

[8000 Saiyan]

I'm pretty sure that when most of the returning actors came back for Kai, they already were experienced.

As for your question yes. Goku and Bulma were recast and I would have liked Master Roshi and Tenshinhan to get the same treatment.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Would it have benefited artistically? I'm sure it would have. Everybody involved with the dub now is far, far more aware of what a good dub of Dragon Ball should should like, from the directors, to the actors, to the writers, and even the engineers. They were beginners when they first worked on the show, and they're not beginners whatsoever anymore. That said, would it have benefited financially? Good Kami, no. That would mean bringing in directors, writers, actors, and recording engineers for the dub of a 153-episode, 4-film show. Not to mention packaging of DVDs (and possibly Blu-Rays, distribution, and marketing). That is, to put it lightly, not cheap. As much as us fans of the original Japanese version may bemoan the dub, it's hard to believe that we're a big enough audience to justify the financial investment that would be required for a complete re-dub of a show that big. There's no way FUNimation would even make their money back, let alone turn a profit, over a re-dub of that magnitude.

I know many people tend to think of the Kai dub as a "re-dub," and while that's understandable--it could be considered a re-dub in a loose sense--we have to remind ourselves that it's technically not a re-dub, it's a dub of a show that just happens to have a heck of a lot in common with an existing one.

Which begs the question; Dragon Ball Kai came around and it was an attempt to do a redub of the show to align more closely with the original script than their horrendous take on the original anime. Although there were recasts here and there, overall, the cast remained the same; which strikes as a bad problem in my eyes; majority of them are not experience actors, but they were not let go from their duties. Is there a fear of backlash from the toonami generations for replacing some actors, that they couldn’t recast these guys with new and professional ones?

They may not have been professional actors when they started, but they most definitely are now. They've been doing Dragon Ball for twenty years, and many of them have since gone on to perform in other anime dubs and even other pre-lay shows. My thought is, if an actor gives a great performance, then I don't care if they've been voice acting for four decades or for one minute. A good performance is a good performance. I think it's an uphill battle to argue that the quality of the cast's peformance nowadays is inter-changeable, quality-wise, with the performances they gave when they first started out. They've improved by leaps and bounds, to put it lightly.

[Robo4900]

Which begs the question; Dragon Ball Kai came around and it was an attempt to do a redub of the show to align more closely with the original script than their horrendous take on the original anime. Although there were recasts here and there, overall, the cast remained the same; which strikes as a bad problem in my eyes; majority of them are not experience actors, but they were not let go from their duties. Is there a fear of backlash from the toonami generations for replacing some actors, that they couldn’t recast these guys with new and professional ones?

It seems like Kai was a half-hearted attempt on FUNimation's part. They wanted to go back to the drawing board and be faithful to the source material, yet not alienate their core dub fans. That's my read of the situation, and it is contradictory... but it shows. You have really good recasts (Freeza, to name but one shining example), yet leaving half of the cast up to Sabat for no reason and leaving Schemmel with his head-scratching Kaio voice. Not to mention... dubisms. There was no reason to keep them. Tien Shinhan? Destructo Disc? Spirit Bomb? At the very least, better translations would've sufficed, but it seems like they got cold feet with the whole operation.

Agreed.

Funi should have done what Ocean did, and run re-auditions for everyone, and been totally unafraid to recast anyone and everyone who isn't a legit really great casting for that role.

But, Funi should have done a lot of things.

[KBABZ]

Personally I don't think the original Dragon Ball show requires a total re-dub as it's 90% fine for me, but redoing a few lines here and there for better accuracy, as well as Schemmel's entire Teen Goku performance, wouldn't have hurt for the DVD release.

[Forte224]

In other words, do you think the English dub of Dragon Ball (Funimation) would have benefitted from a complete recast of genuine voice actors during Dragon Ball Kai run, or a complete shift from the company to another dubbing studio altogether?

Yes and yes. I am not a fan of FUNimation at all. They constantly take liberties in their dubs that, while they don't change the base storyline, they do change the subtle nuances of the characters to a point that it annoys me. This is done even further in their dub of Super. Kai 1.0 was as accurate as FUNimation Dragon Ball has ever been (even more so than the 3 Pioneer movies), but even so it was too afraid to go even further. What I really want is a whole new studio and whole new actors to dub the show from episode 1 of Dragon Ball. Will that happen? No. would it benefit from a quality standpoint? I think it could, for sure.

[Kataphrut]

You know what the best part about ignorant dub threads on this board are? Half the time it's saying "oh Funi should've done this" for things they actually did. They recast Gohan, Bulma, Freeza and a number of minor roles for Kai, clearly they weren't averse to it. Apparently they reckoned everyone else was good enough, and for the most part they were. You can't just say because the cast wasn't experienced at the time of the original dub they should be replaced. They had about 10 years experience on them when they did Kai.

[8000 Saiyan]

In other words, do you think the English dub of Dragon Ball (Funimation) would have benefitted from a complete recast of genuine voice actors during Dragon Ball Kai run, or a complete shift from the company to another dubbing studio altogether?

Yes and yes. I am not a fan of FUNimation at all. They constantly take liberties in their dubs that, while they don't change the base storyline, they do change the subtle nuances of the characters to a point that it annoys me. This is done even further in their dub of Super. Kai 1.0 was as accurate as FUNimation Dragon Ball has ever been (even more so than the 3 Pioneer movies), but even so it was too afraid to go even further. What I really want is a whole new studio and whole new actors to dub the show from episode 1 of Dragon Ball. Will that happen? No. would it benefit from a quality standpoint? I think it could, for sure.

I don't remember the Pioneer dubs having lines such as "I hate the media!"

[Forte224]

In other words, do you think the English dub of Dragon Ball (Funimation) would have benefitted from a complete recast of genuine voice actors during Dragon Ball Kai run, or a complete shift from the company to another dubbing studio altogether?

Yes and yes. I am not a fan of FUNimation at all. They constantly take liberties in their dubs that, while they don't change the base storyline, they do change the subtle nuances of the characters to a point that it annoys me. This is done even further in their dub of Super. Kai 1.0 was as accurate as FUNimation Dragon Ball has ever been (even more so than the 3 Pioneer movies), but even so it was too afraid to go even further. What I really want is a whole new studio and whole new actors to dub the show from episode 1 of Dragon Ball. Will that happen? No. would it benefit from a quality standpoint? I think it could, for sure.

I don't remember the Pioneer dubs having lines such as "I hate the media!"

Well, lines like that were few and far between in Kai 1.0 (unlike Kai TFC, BoG/RoF, Super, etc), and attack names like Kienzan and Makankosappo being used are what, in my eyes, elevated it over the Pioneer movies in the accuracy department. But it's really too close a call that I shouldn't have stated what I did so definitively.

[MasenkoHA]

You know what the best part about ignorant dub threads on this board are? Half the time it's saying "oh Funi should've done this" for things they actually did. They recast Gohan, Bulma, Freeza and a number of minor roles for Kai, clearly they weren't averse to it. Apparently they reckoned everyone else was good enough, and for the most part they were. You can't just say because the cast wasn't experienced at the time of the original dub they should be replaced. They had about 10 years experience on them when they did Kai.

Recasting some actors due to unavailability or realizing Chris Sabat doesn’t need to voice EVERYBODY isn’t the same as beint willing to do a total recast.

They only recast Freeza because apparently Linda Young couldn’t keep up with the new dubbing process they even tried to keep her for Kai (she’s in the first episode) so that tells us the exact opposite of what you’re trying to claim that yes Funimatiom was completely aversed to recasting roles if they could help it.

I don’t think we ever got a definitive answer er to what happened to Vollmer and Nadolny had retired from voice acting by Kai. They just weren’t available anymore and I doubt Funimation’s casting had a epiphany that Vollmer sounded like she always had a sore throat and Nadolny always sounded like a lung cancer patient

[Kunzait_83]

You can't just say because the cast wasn't experienced at the time of the original dub they should be replaced. They had about 10 years experience on them when they did Kai.

And as I've argued on here many times, it REALLY doesn't show NEARLY as much as it should. 99% of the "classic" FUNimation cast all still sound about roughly almost as terrible now as they did when they started, with only MILD improvement around the edges in the overall grand scheme of things. The biggest improvements by far and away were the tiny few voices that they recast totally from scratch: and that's NOT a coincidence in any way, shape, or form.

This is because, when you get right down to it, most of the original FUNimation cast just AREN'T very good or talented actors. They not only shouldn't have been voicing these roles back in the day, they by and large shouldn't still be voicing them today and should have been booted ages and ages ago.

And yes, as much as people loathe to hear this, I'm still gonna use the N word here: the ONLY reason that they get as much love and praise as they do is 1000% entirely due to nostalgia. The degree to which fans have bent themselves over backwards and contorted themselves into ridiculous pretzel logic time after time after time to make increasingly absurd excuses for any and all faults in these actors' performances throughout the years makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever until you factor in that most fans are simply working backwards from raw, gut-instinctual emotional attachment and an almost childlike sentimental clinginess rather than even the most reasonable of critical standards.

So yes, as I've argued many, many, many times now throughout the years, what Dragon Ball has long, long always DESPERATELY needed was a completely fresh, 100% from scratch do-over for its dub from the ground up; and in all honestly I'd prefer if it were from a company totally different from FUNimation altogether, since at this point they don't have a single ounce of trust from me and simply carry far, far too much baggage with this series.

This would entail not only a complete recasting of ALL the voices (at the end of the day there's like... only the tiniest, fractional handful of performances from the old dub that I'm at all fine with to any extent whatsoever) as well as a script that remains as faithful to the original as is humanly possible, with dialogue alterations only accounting for things like lip flaps and timing as well as puns that don't translate... but also more importantly overall, just a complete and total rethinking of the entire core approach taken to dubbing Dragon Ball in the first place.

At the end of the day, THAT is where the core problem lies that everything else originally stems from with FUNi's dub: the foundational approach itself was corrosive and broken from the onset. To borrow from a recent political saying, "the fish rots from the head down".

The original sin from which all of the other problems with the old dub come from was its initial origins as something that was made to air on U.S. syndicated children's television in the mid to late 1990s. Tailoring it not only for the norms of puritanical soccer moms in the backwoods and suburbs of Utah and Nebraska and such, but also - and more damagingly in the long term - for the bargain basement low quality standards of programming of that particular demographical venue and era.

What sets Dragon Ball apart not only from other Japanese Shonen anime, but moreover from standard U.S. kids' TV (across ANY era) is that its written, directed, and overall executed as if its an authentic 1970s or 1980s Hong Kong kung fu movie; THAT is Dragon Ball's actual creative roots, and its something who's stylistic and tonal identity is WHOLLY and diametrically at odds with what FUNimation wanted to market and sell this series as back in 1996 and 1999. Its the textbook definition of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.

So any future attempt at dubbing it, preferably without the hand of FUNimation involved in any way, should come at it from a TOTALLY different and flat-out opposite approach than FUNimation's: casting for the roles should not only use the Japanese voices as a basic directional blueprint (and trust that Toriyama and the anime directors actually knew what the hell they were doing when casting them) but moreover they should be directed, as the Japanese voices largely were, to act in a MUCH more organic, naturalistic, and conversational manner, as if they are performing in a "real" film rather than mindlessly yelling, grunting, and putting on purposefully on-the-nose ridiculous voices into a microphone for some dumb Saturday morning children's action cartoon. And moreover, the vocal direction for the fight scenes should always remember and emphasize that these characters are mystical martial arts masters doing Kiai shouts and deep breathing control rather than just generic wrestler-types who are just randomly yelling and shrieking their heads off for no reason.

No, that DOESN'T mean that I'm expecting or asking for Oscar caliber material here, or anything even vaguely close to it (god knows most of the same Shaw films that DB got most of its influence from didn't even have that much of the time): just something that matches up with BASELINE quality standards in non-children's film and television media: something which Dragon Ball, in English, has NEVER had at ANY point in its entire cringingly embarrassing history. If we even got actors who are of marginal primetime network TV level talent, that in itself would be an upgrade of exponential proportions above that which FUNimation has always done with it (which is to keep it at about the level of an early 90s G.I. Joe knockoff).

In other words: for fuck's sake, just let some actual, honest to god emotional subtlety and authenticity creep its way into this thing.

Of course absolutely none of that's ever going to happen obviously, but that isn't the point of threads like this: this is purely an "in an ideal world" fantasy scenario.

The other problem though, and the one that is very rarely discussed in any serious detail throughout this fanbase is the other elephant in the room besides FUNimation themselves: their fans. Specifically the fact that there are a not insubstantial number of U.S. Dragon Ball fans who like the FUNimation dub and its approach precisely and specifically because it is stylistically in the same vein as a drugstore knockoff of a shitty late 80s Saturday morning action cartoon made solely to sell cheap toys to bratty kids.

There is a fairly large portion of U.S. DBZ dub fans who are themselves intrinsically attracted to and emotionally attached to that specific flavor of low-grade quality cartoons, and want Dragon Ball to remain forever married to it for that very reason. Apart from FUNimation themselves and the obvious financial and licensing barriers that they represent, this specific corner of U.S. Dragon Ball fandom (which again, represents a decently large slice of it; or at the very least a tremendously vocal one) would pose a great deal of resistance toward ANY sort of change that would break the series away from the tonal realm of "crappy, cornball, Masters of the Universe or Power Rangers-esque kids' cartoon".

[ABED]

I know what a Kiai shout looks and sounds like but I don't know what it's supposed to be.

For an approach like this to work, it seems like the diretors/writers would need to have a good understanding of Japanese culture at large and not just DB.

[Kunzait_83]

I know what a Kiai shout looks and sounds like but I don't know what it's supposed to be.

For an approach like this to work, it seems like the diretors/writers would need to have a good understanding of Japanese culture at large and not just DB.

I've already gone into what the detailed mechanics of Kiai shouts and deep breathing exercises are in both real life martial arts as well as Wuxia fiction and folklore and how they're inexorably tied into the over the top super-powered fighting we see in DB both in the Wuxia thread as well as in numerous other threads throughout the forums: so I won't regurgitate all of that here.

I'll just say that its less Japanese culture that the people dubbing the series should understand (since really, what DB is taking its story and concepts from is mainly Chinese culture and myths) and more just martial arts in general: both practical martial arts and more importantly martial arts myths and Wuxia lore in a very generalized sense. You don't even need to be academic EXPERTS or anything on this stuff: just have at least a FUNCTIONAL understanding, rather that just complete and abject cluelessness.

And before some dub fan rolls their eyes at this and accuses me of being too fanboy-ish here: having the production crew behind translating and producing an English language version of a martial arts fantasy show have an at least rudimentary understanding of the subject matter is in NO way some sort of tall order to expect. This is incredibly basic, baseline quality control and professional standards I'm talking about here: things that up till now have been largely foreign to English language DB.

Having things like a "technical consultant" on hand to help the production team iron out some specifics of the show's subject matter - like in the case of DB say, hey why is it that these characters are able to fly around and throw beams of light out of their palms? Does it have anything to do with the specific way in which they move their hands and bodies, the very Asian (usually Chinese) uniforms and robes that they're always wearing, and the very specific ways in which they're depicted as meditating, shouting, and taking deep, measured breaths? These things seem like they're fairly deliberate and that they might actually be important to understand and grasp some of the nuances behind before we go about making our own creative decisions with it - this is something that is in NO WAY at all unique or uncommon to have in a professional film or television production crew.

[ABED]

Having things like a "technical consultant" on hand to help the production team iron out some specifics of the show's subject matter - like in the case of DB say, hey why is it that these characters are able to fly around and throw beams of light out of their palms? Does it have anything to do with the specific way in which they move their hands and bodies, the very Asian (usually Chinese) uniforms and robes that they're always wearing, and the very specific ways in which they're depicted as meditating, shouting, and taking deep, measured breaths? These things seem like they're fairly deliberate and that they might actually be important to understand and grasp some of the nuances behind before we go about making our own creative decisions with it - this is something that is in NO WAY at all unique or uncommon to have in a professional film or television production crew.

Sure, just like cop shows have policemen as consultants. I just wonder how much of what you're talking about is almost innately understood by the Japanese staff. I take it the stories and genres DB took its ideas from are as common in Japan as Western fables and fairy tales are to western cultures, if that makes any sense.

[Kunzait_83]

Sure, just like cop shows have policemen as consultants. I just wonder how much of what you're talking about is almost innately understood by the Japanese staff. I take it the stories and genres DB took its ideas from are as common in Japan as Western fables and fairy tales are to western cultures, if that makes any sense.

Right. There is, like it or not, an issue of cultural divide here. Martial arts fantasy fables, Wuxia, whatever you want to call them, are so much more common to the general public and culture throughout Japan, China, etc. that a Japanese or Chinese production crew wouldn't necessarily need that sort of technical expertise on hand per se just for bare-minimum things like understanding where the basic narrative themes and tropes stem from and what purpose and function they serve in the story. Just like how in the Western world, you wouldn't need a "technical consultant" on the production team for a vampire or werewolf movie just to have a basic understanding of what the supernatural "rules" governing vampires and werewolves throughout horror fiction entails: we all know this stuff.

Similarly to this, most everyone in that part of the world knows on a very basic level what Ki/Chi is and what it can do throughout Eastern folklore and how it relates to martial arts fables and fairy tales related to Taoist mysticism and how it would/should be portrayed in media. They've got generations upon generations worth of widely known and regarded culturally iconic works from which to draw from and that have seeped into the general zeitgeist there since literal centuries ago.

Since we DON'T have that same basic, innate cultural understanding and grasping of these concepts throughout much of Western culture (unless you're something of an uber-dork), then obviously there's just going to be much more of a need for someone on a Western production team who at least has some general knowledge and expertise in these areas when tackling any kind of a title that falls within this genre. What's omnipresent and ubiquitously common knowledge in one corner of the world can sometimes be a specialized, relatively niche area of expertise in another.

[Robo4900]

Well, lines like that were few and far between in Kai 1.0 (unlike Kai TFC, BoG/RoF, Super, etc)

Ehhhhh... Not really. It did better than all the other dubs, but still usually had one or two per episode.
From the bit where Chichi feints in the Saiyan arc: "Krillin, get the smelling salts!"
From when Popo is taking Bulma to God's ship: "If you've come here to do anything improper, you should know I've been taking judo since I was 8 years old, so you do not want to get on my bad side! [popo jumps up the mountainside] Wait, it was just a joke!"

The thing is, because most people who talk positively about the dubs don't really look at it with a critical eye, as in they often tend to take the approach of "oh look how good it is!" without really considering its negative aspects, this nonsense that still constantly inserts itself into the scripts is often ignored, and when brought up, dismissed as "oh it's just a little off line to fill lip flaps. at least they don't do it like they did back then." or some other such nonsensical excuse.

attack names like Kienzan and Makankosappo being used are what, in my eyes, elevated it over the Pioneer movies in the accuracy department.

Except they only did that for about 20 or 30 episodes before unceremoniously dropping it... So, if you watch uncut, you'll find they suddenly switch attack name conventions one episode with no explanation or clear reason. Not only does this, at least in my view, totally negate any goodwill generated from using proper namings, but it makes this dub really inconsistent to watch, and destroys some serious functionality of the thing from a casual viewer's perspective.

And yes, as much as people loathe to hear this, I'm still gonna use the N word here: the ONLY reason that they get as much love and praise as they do is 1000% entirely due to nostalgia. The degree to which fans have bent themselves over backwards and contorted themselves into ridiculous pretzel logic time after time after time to make increasingly absurd excuses for any and all faults in these actors' performances throughout the years makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever until you factor in that most fans are simply working backwards from raw, gut-instinctual emotional attachment and an almost childlike sentimental clinginess rather than even the most reasonable of critical standards.
[...]
The other problem though, and the one that is very rarely discussed in any serious detail throughout this fanbase is the other elephant in the room besides FUNimation themselves: their fans. Specifically the fact that there are a not insubstantial number of U.S. Dragon Ball fans who like the FUNimation dub and its approach precisely and specifically because it is stylistically in the same vein as a drugstore knockoff of a shitty late 80s Saturday morning action cartoon made solely to sell cheap toys to bratty kids.

There is a fairly large portion of U.S. DBZ dub fans who are themselves intrinsically attracted to and emotionally attached to that specific flavor of low-grade quality cartoons, and want Dragon Ball to remain forever married to it for that very reason. Apart from FUNimation themselves and the obvious financial and licensing barriers that they represent, this specific corner of U.S. Dragon Ball fandom (which again, represents a decently large slice of it; or at the very least a tremendously vocal one) would pose a great deal of resistance toward ANY sort of change that would break the series away from the tonal realm of "crappy, cornball, Masters of the Universe or Power Rangers-esque kids' cartoon".

Yes. Definitely.
There's a reason why Funimation's god-awful horrendous monstrosity of a dubbing job on the Z Boo arc and OG DB are excused as "that was when they got better!", but no one has anything to say about how the hell GT happened.
And there's also a reason why people go online and tear down all the alternate dubs, usually including Funi's Kai dub, usually without even giving those dubs any more time than looking at a YouTube video uploaded with the intent to mock it.
And there's a reason absolutely no one will let you say a word against Funi's still really bad dubbing jobs on TFC and Super.

Nostalgia is very clearly what's up here, and unfortunately it's gripped people too hard to let up within our lifetimes.

The original sin from which all of the other problems with the old dub come from was its initial origins as something that was made to air on U.S. syndicated children's television in the mid to late 1990s. Tailoring it not only for the norms of puritanical soccer moms in the backwoods and suburbs of Utah and Nebraska and such, but also - and more damagingly in the long term - for the bargain basement low quality standards of programming of that particular demographical venue and era.

What sets Dragon Ball apart not only from other Japanese Shonen anime, but moreover from standard U.S. kids' TV (across ANY era) is that its written, directed, and overall executed as if its an authentic 1970s or 1980s Hong Kong kung fu movie; THAT is Dragon Ball's actual creative roots, and its something who's stylistic and tonal identity is WHOLLY and diametrically at odds with what FUNimation wanted to market and sell this series as back in 1996 and 1999. Its the textbook definition of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.

I will say that I think this is one reason the Blue Water dubs of Dragon Ball and GT are a lot better than people give them credit for. The acting is still on about the same level as Funi's dubbing, and as good as GT's scripts are, the DB scripts waver in accuracy a lot of the time, but it feels like the guys doing the Blue Water dub at least had some clue what they were doing, and what Dragon Ball is supposed to be. There's still mistakes, other studios could have done better, and they're still not great dubs, but aside from the Pioneer dubs, they're probably the closest we ever got to Dragon Ball dubbing being done with the right mindset. It's commendable and notable, at least. And it does make them the superior option to the crap Funi put out, however dubious that honour may be.

[JohnnyCashKami]

It's perfectly fine for me and I like it but if Dragon Ball were to be remastered in HD (not by FUNimation!) for a Blu-ray release and to be premiered on TV, that would be completely justifiable. The FUNimation Dragon Ball dub is missing stuff like the insert songs and not as accurate as it could have been.

Dragon Ball remastered + original Japanese broadcast audio would make it well worth buying it. I don't even mind if it does or doesn't have the correct colors.

[CTAkuma]

Spirit Bomb? At the very least, better translations would've sufficed, but it seems like they got cold feet with the whole operation.

Genki Dama literally means Spirit or Soul Bomb. atleast look up what the actual Japanese words mean before trying to sound pretentious

[Lunatic Fringe]

I’d like to think that with the positives strives that the core cast of the FUNi dub have made over the years, along with the good casting decisions since Kai (including recasts), any benefits from a complete recast feel like a roll of a twenty-sided dice. In other words, an overall reaping of immense benefits wouldn’t exactly be the most likely outcome, since I couldn’t imagine that most of the recasts would be that much better than what we have right now (for the most part, anyway).

That being said, if there were any main cast changes I wouldn’t feel iffy about, it’d be recasting Strait in the role of Kuririn, Schemmel in the role of North Kai, Martin in the role of Mr. Buu, MacFarland in the role of Muten Roshi, and Sabat in the roles of both Yamcha and Vegeta.