When Funimation got the license for Dragon Ball were they aware of the Creative Corp Product dub?

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Given the similarities fans have noted between Funimation and Harmony Gold's scripts for the first 5 episodes of original Dragon Ball, the fact Funimation nearly used all the Harmony Gold names when they were dubbing the first movie, keeping Master Roshi, even to this day and leaving the episode titles mostly intact it is very clear the former was influenced by the latter.

Of course, as many of us here know, Funimation's dub of original Dragon Ball was not the second English dub to air, as a few months prior to its debut in 1995 Creative Corp Product aired their own dub in the Philippines after their Z dub went on hiatus. Sadly, while the movies and some Z episodes Creative Corp dubbed have been found, episodes of their original Dragon Ball dub remain lost, so we may never know for sure whether they had any influence on Funimation's scriptwriting. Nonetheless Creative Corp's dub of Mystical Adventure does confirm said company uses the term "Wolf Fang Fist" during Yamcha's fight, so we know this isn't a Funimation dubism, but could it be a coincidence both Funimation and Creative Corp came up with the same name? The attacks original name is "Fist Of The Wolf Fang" so it's not too unlikely for Funimation to have thought of the same name, even if they'd never heard of the Creative Corp dub.

I remain skeptical Funimation knew of this dub however. The scripts for Creative Corp's Z dub, based on the few episodes that have been found are extremely accurate, so it seems unusual Funimation wouldn't have based their scripts on Creatives, considering they were so willing to do the same with the Harmony Gold episodes. It is also strange TOEI would have given Funimation crappy translations for Z when they could have offered Creative Corp's perfectly fine scripts, so my guess is Funimation asked for translations without knowing these scripts and a Filipino English dub did in fact exist at the time.

[MasenkoHA]

Wolf Fang Fist is a pretty straight translation of Roga Fufu Ken so it's more likely a case of both Funimation and Creative Corps getting the same translation from Toei. It's not an asspull the same way Destructo Disk and Special Beam Cannon were.

I doubt they knew about it, they probably only knew the Harmony Gold existed because Toei gave them HG material to work off of

[Kakacarrottop]

There was an old thread on alt.fan.dragonball (or something similar to that) from early 1996 where someone who had visited the Philippines mentioned the existence of the Creative Products Corp dub, in a discussion about the announcement of Funimation's DBZ dub. It doesn't seem that far fetched to think Funimation were aware of it.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

more likely a case of both Funimation and Creative Corps getting the same translation from Toei.

Nannie Co (vice president and producer for Creative Corp) said in an interview they had a Japanese translator. It's not clear if this was an inhouse translator or a TOEI translator, although considering she says it was for censorship reasons an argument could be made for the former as the ideal person for that job would have been someone intimately familiar with Filipino kids TV that knew what would and wouldn't be appropriate for RPN9.



Come to think of it Gen Fukanaga's uncle did work for TOEI, no idea if they were close but if they were you'd think he must have at least mentioned in passing there was readily available dub scripts because Dragon Ball had been licensed for English broadcast in the Philippines, although maybe this did happen and Funimation opted to write from TOEI's raw translations because it was cheaper? Wouldn't be out of character for them. Unlike Harmony Gold, Creative Corp's rights hadn't reverted back to TOEI at this point so it would have saved Funimation the hassle of having to deal with two companies.

There was an old thread on alt.fan.dragonball (or something similar to that) from early 1996 where someone who had visited the Philippines mentioned the existence of the Creative Products Corp dub, in a discussion about the announcement of Funimation's DBZ dub.

That's fascinating. Would love to read if that thread has been archived anywhere. Old and obscure forums can be a goldmine for this kind of information.

I imagine there were probably at least some Filipino fans that grew up with this dub who came to the US or other English-speaking territories at some point who discovered the Funimation version and thought "that's not my dub" or similar .

[Kakacarrottop]

more likely a case of both Funimation and Creative Corps getting the same translation from Toei.

Nannie Co (vice president and producer for Creative Corp) said in an interview they had a Japanese translator. It's not clear if this was an inhouse translator or a TOEI translator, although considering she says it was for censorship reasons an argument could be made for the former as the ideal person for that job would have been someone intimately familiar with Filipino kids TV that knew what would and wouldn't be appropriate for RPN9.



Come to think of it Gen Fukanaga's uncle did work for TOEI, no idea if they were close but if they were you'd think he must have at least mentioned in passing there was readily available dub scripts because Dragon Ball had been licensed for English broadcast in the Philippines, although maybe this did happen and Funimation opted to write from TOEI's raw translations because it was cheaper? Wouldn't be out of character for them. Unlike Harmony Gold, Creative Corp's rights hadn't reverted back to TOEI at this point so it would have saved Funimation the hassle of having to deal with two companies.

There was an old thread on alt.fan.dragonball (or something similar to that) from early 1996 where someone who had visited the Philippines mentioned the existence of the Creative Products Corp dub, in a discussion about the announcement of Funimation's DBZ dub.

That's fascinating. Would love to read if that thread has been archived anywhere. Old and obscure forums can be a goldmine for this kind of information.

I imagine there were probably at least some Filipino fans that grew up with this dub who came to the US or other English-speaking territories at some point who discovered the Funimation version and thought "that's not my dub" or similar .

Here it is
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.an ... 3mwOF-RqAJ
Turns out it was from the thread VegettoEX found regarding the lost "Vendar Dub"

Here's another thread I found which shows that Daniel Cocanougher, a producer from Funimation, was actually using these old message boards back in 1996
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.an ... hEUZP5j0cJ

[MasenkoHA]

more likely a case of both Funimation and Creative Corps getting the same translation from Toei.

Nannie Co (vice president and producer for Creative Corp) said in an interview they had a Japanese translator. It's not clear if this was an inhouse translator or a TOEI translator, although considering she says it was for censorship reasons an argument could be made for the former as the ideal person for that job would have been someone intimately familiar with Filipino kids TV that knew what would and wouldn't be appropriate for RPN9.



Come to think of it Gen Fukanaga's uncle did work for TOEI, no idea if they were close but if they were you'd think he must have at least mentioned in passing there was readily available dub scripts because Dragon Ball had been licensed for English broadcast in the Philippines, although maybe this did happen and Funimation opted to write from TOEI's raw translations because it was cheaper? Wouldn't be out of character for them. Unlike Harmony Gold, Creative Corp's rights hadn't reverted back to TOEI at this point so it would have saved Funimation the hassle of having to deal with two companies.

Then yeah it sounds like Creative Corp had their own in-house translator and their translator and Toei's translator just came up with the same translation for Rogafuguken. Not a big stretch really.

I have no clue how easy it would be for Funimation to get their translations from an existing dub, Harmony Gold's scripts (and maybe completed episodes for reference?) wouldn't be a problem since, like you said, Harmony Gold has no right to them and they were Toei's to provide.

Not sure if it mattered though, I always felt Funimation (and the fandom) way overexaggerated how bad those Toei Engrish scripts were. There were plenty of times in those first 3 seasons where the English dialog is pretty close (the Raditz episodes really weren't that far off for example) and even after hiring Simmons as a translator, their scripts didn't get much better as far as just misinterpretating dialog or just completely making shit up.

[Adamant]

Not sure if it mattered though, I always felt Funimation (and the fandom) way overexaggerated how bad those Toei Engrish scripts were. There were plenty of times in those first 3 seasons where the English dialog is pretty close (the Raditz episodes really weren't that far off for example) and even after hiring Simmons as a translator, their scripts didn't get much better as far as just misinterpretating dialog or just completely making shit up.

They're pretty bad, but they're not so bad you can't work out what they're trying to say, especially when you have the visuals and contextual familiarity with the show.

[MasenkoHA]

Not sure if it mattered though, I always felt Funimation (and the fandom) way overexaggerated how bad those Toei Engrish scripts were. There were plenty of times in those first 3 seasons where the English dialog is pretty close (the Raditz episodes really weren't that far off for example) and even after hiring Simmons as a translator, their scripts didn't get much better as far as just misinterpretating dialog or just completely making shit up.

They're pretty bad, but they're not so bad you can't work out what they're trying to say, especially when you have the visuals and contextual familiarity with the show.

Right. I figured they were bad enough you wouldn't use them for an official subtitle track (which is why Simmons was hired in the first place, I believe) and would need to rework for a "legitimate English script" but not so bad the Funimation writers had to "blindly guess" what the characters were saying.