The FUNimation Dub's "Story" Changes

[Anonymous Friend]

Many of us here are aware of the instances when the english dub made changes to the dialog that resulted in false info being passed along. Such things as Goku's father being a brilliant scientist, Bardock leading his men into a confrontation with Frieza, and Dr. Gero being the mastermind behind the Red Ribbon Army.

When I first watched the series and these things came up, I didn't really pay them that much attention. They were little bits of dialog that were spoken and didn't really mean that much to me. and it wasn't until I started researching Dragonball a little more on the internet that I found out that they were incorrect.

But, how do you fell about them? For those who watched the dub first, what was your reaction when you learned the truth?

To me, I don't count it as being a big deal if only for the fact that if you were to go to almost any site about Dragonball you should come across a section that would tell you that these are wrong and give you the correct info and explain why this occured. Or if you mentioned these on any forum you should get a really quick response correcting you.

For the most part, these little things don't really affect much of the story. It just sucks that it had to happen in the first place.

[Raki]

For me, it was just pure shock that Funimation was that lazy with the DBZ dub script.

[TheGreatness25]

I don't think they were lazy. I think it would be even lazier for them to just follow the direct translation. Instead they wrote their own stuff. It's not called lazy, just... weird. I haven't noticed too much of the story to change. Lets forget Bardock the brillian scientist, when dubbing they had no idea that Bardock would ever appear. And Vegeta never said he was literally a scientist, just said that he was smart and invented the moon light ball thing. As for the rest, I don't really care and didn't even notice.

[VegettoEX]

And Vegeta never said he was literally a scientist, just said that he was smart and invented the moon light ball thing.

Your father was an average fighter, Kakarot, but he was a BRILLIANT scientist!

[Slickmasterfunk]

And Vegeta never said he was literally a scientist, just said that he was smart and invented the moon light ball thing.

Your father was an average fighter, Kakarot, but he was a BRILLIANT scientist!

What's so funny about that is, it was really the opposite. Bardock was an ABOVE average fighter for his class and that's what made Freeza so worried!

[TheGreatness25]

Well yeah, but he didn't say that's what he did. Could be referring to how smart he was. Again, I'm not saying that it's justifiable, I'm just saying that they didn't even know Bardock would come into the picture. They purchased the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball, and as far as Z went, all they had to work with was up until the Ginyu fight. No sign of Goku's dad, so might as well make it just a bit more personal between the two, having Goku potentially killed by his own father's creation. Again, whatever, they redubbed it accurately enough.

A lot of things that were done by the Pioneer/Ocean/whatever you want to call them team, were necessary. They HAD to censor the series, and they HAD to make it look like whenever someone was killed that they were still alive. When Nappa blew up a plane, they'd say, "I see their parachutes, they'll be okay!" It's because during that time censors were strict. A lot of people don't take into account that they weren't allowed to make it look like anyone was killed. Which is also why Tien hinted at himself having the power to regenerate limbs. Whatever was done by the Ocean team shouldn't be taken into account because it was a different time then. When all of DBZ was redubbed, why do we STILL have people going back and talking about what the dub before them did?

[VegettoEX]

They HAD to censor the series

Harmony Gold didn't have to censor T'ao Paipai sticking his tongue through Gen. Blue seven years earlier.

[TheGreatness25]

Was that on US TV?

[Kunzait_83]

b

[Kaboom]

Kunzait, I hereby present to you the "Post of the Year" award.

Normally, you'd wait 'til the year is over or almost over to do that, but... Yeah.

[TheGreatness25]

Yes the censorship was enforced by Saban. Why? Because Saban didn't want to make all these episodes just for them to be told to cut a ton of it out later anyway. Why deal with the problem when you get to it if you know what the problem is going to be? Why not prevent it ahead of time? Hearing commentary from the director of the animated Batman show in the 1990's, he always said how he was surprised that they let him get away with gunfire itself, let alone some of the crazier things. There was a scene where a bunch of cars and buildings were being blown up and he joked, "Yeah, don't worry, nobody lives in those. Nobody's driving those cars" and it was a "movie". They made them animate seatbelts for when Batman was chasing someone. So don't think that at that time, ESPECIALLY on WB (which is where they were playing Dragon Ball Z) that it was anything goes.

I'm not saying that the censoring was a good thing, or that there was really a need for it (in terms of protecting children and whatnot). But it was the only way they could air the damn show, and if they wouldn't chop it to pieces, you wouldn't know what DBZ was in the United States.

[Raki]

Kunzait_83,good grief. You just put up the core of what's wrong with the Dub of DBZ. I'm sure you can go on for hours about the details within the details.

[Captain Awesome]

Wow.

Kunzait, you really said everything that needed to be said.

I applaud you sir.

[TheGreatness25]

Really, don't get me wrong. The dub can be pretty awful sometimes. But sometimes you should just roll with it. It's not going to change the action of the show or how much you love it. "Oh my God! Goku said that he was a bit nervous during the fight, when in reality, he said that he was excited! How dare those bastards?! I can't watch the show anymore!"

Think of it as two versions. The Americanized version, and the Japanese version. The Japanese version is great for that mystical old feeling, and the American version is more of the "hip, modern" type. That's how I see it. Sometimes I'm in the mood for the original, sometimes I'm in the mood for the dub. I see it basically as two parallel shows. Dub mistakes are not the end of the world.

[Captain Awesome]

the American version is more of the "hip, modern" type.

Now you sound like an executive at Funimation.

As a relatively young person, I can safely say there isn't anything "hip" about the Funimation dub, which in my opinion it has struggled to reach a point where it's watchable.

And hip things don't struggle.

[TheGreatness25]

Except I'm sure all the kids that are under the age of 13 when they watched the show didn't even know, or cared about the fact that there was a Japanese version. You think it became so popular in the United States because people wanted to watch the Japanese version? They hit their target audience pretty damn well.

And please. Quite frankly, I'm not at all a big fan of FUNimation's. I like DB/Z/GT, but that's all they got that I like. Shin-Chan has its moments. I'm waiting to laugh at the first person to complain about them changing the script on that show.

[Herms]

I go on at length often about the religious/mythological elements of Dragon Ball, but it’s a pretty huge element at key moments throughout the series. Ignoring them just leaves all sorts of gaping leaps in logic. Like the Kaios and Kaioshins for instance. If they aren’t gods, then what are they? Aliens? Catfish people from Venus?

I couldn't agree with you more, on this and your other points. I've always had an interest in mythology, so the mythological elements of Dragon Ball are a big draw for me. So the fact that these elements are completely ignored in the dub has always bugged me greatly.

Anyway, "Catfish people from Venus?" remind me of how in Legendary Super Warriors for the GBC, Kaio's planet is referred to as 'Neptune'. Really. Which is strange, because the translations in that game otherwise seem to be pretty good.

Or what about “Energy” and “Powering up”? Powering up from what? An electrical socket? Does Vegeta need to reach 1.21 Gigawats to become SSJ?

To be fair, the Japanese version does sometimes use the English word 'energy' (enerugii; for some reason they say it with a hard g) as a seeming synonym for ki. It's mostly in the Buu arc, with Babidi and Kaioshin both explaining that in order to revive Majin Buu Babidi needs to gather 'energy'. The difference between 'energy' and ki, if any, is never explained in the series as far as I know.

The Japanese version also uses 'power up' (again as a borrowed English phrase, pawaa appu) a whole lot. However, they only use it for when a character gets more powerful than they were before, rather than simply getting revvied up to fight, which is how the dub seems to use the term. So for instance, Goku drinking the Super God Water is an example of the Japanese usage of 'power up', while Vegeta preparing to fight Goku is an example of the dub usage (the Japanese version refers to this sort of things as somebody 'releasing their ki' or variations on that).

[Vekurotto]

Yes the censorship was enforced by Saban. Why? Because Saban didn't want to make all these episodes just for them to be told to cut a ton of it out later anyway. Why deal with the problem when you get to it if you know what the problem is going to be? Why not prevent it ahead of time? Hearing commentary from the director of the animated Batman show in the 1990's, he always said how he was surprised that they let him get away with gunfire itself, let alone some of the crazier things. There was a scene where a bunch of cars and buildings were being blown up and he joked, "Yeah, don't worry, nobody lives in those. Nobody's driving those cars" and it was a "movie". They made them animate seatbelts for when Batman was chasing someone. So don't think that at that time, ESPECIALLY on WB (which is where they were playing Dragon Ball Z) that it was anything goes.

I'm not saying that the censoring was a good thing, or that there was really a need for it (in terms of protecting children and whatnot).

I feel that the thing that Kunzait is talking about goes beyond censorship though. Think about it, Funi got away with cutting very little of the show for the TV edits after they took over completely. They let characters bleed, they kept most of the violence, and they acknowledged that people were dying and in the US all of that constituted as TV-Y7 FV on CN which is the same rating that the hacked up Saban enforced edit got. Then they showed the UUE version on TV and nobody gave a flying fuck. 100% uncut and sometimes shown on Toonami. So in the end they really didn't have to censor as much as they did, they were just paranoid which in turn let to a sloppy product.

As for the OP, I've already acknowledged my displeasure with the dub. The story changes make it so that if your average guy off the street who doesn't care or know about anime went solely by the dub, they'd instantly wish they'd never watched anime again. I'm displeased at how the season sets turned out. They really gave me hope. When I heard they were redubbing from scratch I was thinking, "Funi's a good dubbing company now. They dub the DB video games better than what they used to and their anime dubs are amazing. This is DBZ's big chance to be done right." And what do I find? That it's the same old shitty dub with cheap trills like widescreen and film damaging remastering packaged for our enjoyment.

I read a long time ago that the reason that Funi had so many script errors was that they got "Engrishy" scripts from Toei that were incoherent and they had to decipher things on their own. Now that would be all fine and dandy if they didn't leave out the part that they deliberately changed the script and the mood of the show to fit "American tastes" (as they said before) which was the same reason why they cut and edited the show in the first place. Mind you, this is after Saban in 1999. And the thing is, if Funi really was having a hard time with script translations they could have made a script based around Steve Simmons' translations from the Japanese version. But nope. They intentionally spent time and money to create screw ups that were never nesscessary because they scripts and the translations were right in fucking front of them. I don't see why they replaced the original BGM in their dub either when they now, after almost 10 years, put it back in. And for what? Seriously, for what? There's no reason other than Funi's BS excuse that, "The Japanzes Musiks and Skriptz are oldd, Boreding, and won't fitt Amerikan's taztees." That they used back in the day which time and time again has been proven wrong since, I don't know, since every dub around the entire fucking world used the original music and mostly stayed true to the original without changing anything to fit their culture and it was still a hit. It's just plain ignorance and xenophobia on Funi's part since they've dubbed everything else other than DB stuff while staying as close as possible to the original, and guess the fuck what? People liked it fucking regardless if they mention God and Hell.

Funi really just boggles my mind. They only screw with DBZ and it's fans and everything else that they own, even it if has one fan, gets treated like a platinum diamond. With the treatment that they continuously give to DB stuff you'd think that DB's the worst property that they own rather than being their best franchise. Hell they've seen that they can make money off of a shitty product anything and isn't that the only thing that matters?

[Kunzait_83]

b

[Vekurotto]

The dub is not now, nor was it ever “hip”… it’s what a painfully out-of-touch 40 or 50 something marketing executive would perceive as hip.

True dat. I know children, at the time, who watched the toonami edit of Kenshin. And did they get bored? No, in fact they loved the hell out of it and it. Did Bang Zoom try and change Kenshin into something more "accessible to American audiences"? No. Even the toonami edit was still accurate and wasn't changed to be more hip or American. It's just stupid when somebody thinks they have to do things to something to fit "American tastes" or make it more "hip" when it's been proven that leaving stuff the fuck alone is better than falling into such a ridiculous line of thought and fucking everything up.