I love reading and listening to people talk about the background music to my favorite shows and so this episode was right up my alley. I'm also insanely jealous of you guys for being fans of a franchise that you can buy on DVD with whatever soundtrack you want (
cries at the state of the Pocket Monsters dub in 2015)
One thing that would have been interesting to hear you guys' thoughts on, though, was how the show uses silence to make certain statements. You two sorta-kinda touched upon it when talking about the dub and how it's just wall-to-wall music but I would have loved to hear you guys talk about how the decision to
not use music in certain scenes contributes to the sound of the show as a whole. The first time I watched the Japanese version I instantly noticed how the show would sometimes have entire segments without any background music playing and that, to me at least, is a big part of the show's atmosphere.
And to steal a bit from Chris Psaros'
DBZ Uncensored:
The moment Gohan gets his neck broken by Rikuum's kick is SO much more dramatic in the Japanese version, and once again, it's all because of the sound direction, or in this case, the lack thereof. What happens is that Gohan comes in to strike, and after he screams out in anger, everything goes absolutely silent. Rikuum jumps up and kicks Gohan, who falls backwards, hitting the ground, and you hear NOTHING during the whole exchange. No music, no sound effects, nothing, just utter and complete silence. The next sound you hear is Rikuum landing, then the sound of the wind blowing gradually returns. The scene is very eerie and effective, and you just sit there holding your breath with your mouth hanging open the whole time. In contrast of course, is the loud, overblown FUNimation version which is full of noises, music, voices and everything else.
I know talking about non-music in a podcast episode devoted exclusively to music might seem a bit weird but I think it would have been a fascinating discussion nonetheless. Not that it wasn't already a stellar episode already.