The notion that Dragon Ball didn't catch on with the Harmony Gold dub

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

On one hand fans who claim this (of which there are many) are not wrong, but on the other could any show have done better in Dragon Ball's circumstances?

Animerica Vol. 8, Issue 7 seems to think the show was not well liked:

"It seems that Harmony Gold owned the distribution rights rights to Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump for a number of years in the 1980's, and although no official source will say so, at least five episodes were dubbed by Harmony Gold as pilots for the series. The first and third movies were also dubbed and edited together to form a single, longer film which aired on serveral small stations around the country. The pilot episodes were apparently test-marketed on various independent networks. The response was so lackluster, however, that nothing more ever came of it, and Harmony Gold seems to have forgotten it ever happened. What was it like? Most of the names were changed: Goku was named Zero, Bulma was Lena, Oolong was Mao-Mao, Yamcha was Zedaki, etc. An opening theme that followed the original tune was produced.... Despite heavy editing, it was still an amusing, action-packed show."

I've not seen any schedules other than the WGPR 62 one for January 1st-5th 1990 where the 5 episodes aired at 3pm, which as MasenkoHA pointed out before doomed the episodes because they only aired in two states when the target audience was in school. As we can see here:

However looking at a usenet discussion from the time it sounds like the episodes were repeated in February but there was still only 5 episodes.

Did the episodes ever air at a better timeslot after the WGPR run though? It seems bizarre if Harmony Gold were indeed testing the market Response they could have gotten it a better timeslot. Hell, the movie was shown at 8pm:



Is the idea the response was lackluster a narrative Harmony Gold sprung because they realized after the fact there was no way they could edit the show to their liking? Or do we have evidence Dragon Ball fared poorly compared to other shows in similar timeslots on small stations the vast majority of America didn't have.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I think the closest to someone being introduced to Dragon Ball via Harmony Gold, was a member here getting told "Oh Dragon Ball I watched that when I was little" and the member thinking the guy just had Mandela Syndrome but that it was likely the guy saw the Harmony Gold broadcast because the time frame matched and the post ended with the member being said they didnt ask them more.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I think the closest to someone being introduced to Dragon Ball via Harmony Gold, was a member here getting told "Oh Dragon Ball I watched that when I was little" and the member thinking the guy just had Mandela Syndrome but that it was likely the guy saw the Harmony Gold broadcast because the time frame matched and the post ended with the member being said they didnt ask them more.

I remember that post, as I recall the person in particular didn't know about the Harmony Gold dub when the older guy commented "oh wow Dragon Ball, I used to watch that when I was a kid" and only years later when he heard of Harmony Gold wished he had asked the guy more.

I have seen some YouTube comments where people claim to have seen the Harmony Gold dub with the first 13 episodes, but I think these people are mandelaing that because if they only saw the Harmony Gold dub when they were 3 or 4 and saw the BLT dub at 8 or 9 I could easily see them getting the two confused as an adult with the passage of time naturally distorting our memories more.

Since the Harmony Gold episodes have been found though, I think we can say quite definitively other than movies 1 and 3 all they dubbed of the TV series was the first 5 episodes because Yamcha knowing what the Dragon Balls are in episode 5 suggests Harmony Gold were goings-on to skip episodes 6-9 to avoid bikini-clad kid Chi-Chi, playboy bunny Bulma and say they found another Dragon Ball on the way. Harmony Gold also probably didn't know how they could tone down Oolong's wish for underwear.

Ultimately while I don't hate the Harmony Gold dub and think the acting is largely fine I think it's a blessing in disguise they didn't find a way to adapt the rest of the series and be the company who had it for decades. Neither the Japanese version nor an uncut dub would have ever been commercially available for English audiences, not to mention we'd have fans calling other fans weebs for referring to "Zero" as Goku .

In any case I suspect the reason we don't hear more people say they got into Dragon Ball through the Harmony Gold dub is a combination of things:

• The broadcast being too short for fans to get attached to the series
• Most of the target audience not being home when it aired
• Most who did see it being too young to give it that much thought
  • Or in the above example seen the BLT dub a few years later, which they (understandably) conflated with whatever they saw of Harmony Gold when they were much younger

Actually I think Meri said she seen the Harmony Gold dub and posted some clips on Temple O Trunks, but I think it was just the movie 3 part of their feature, which a friend recorded and passed on to her though.

[MrSatan2099]

Obviously the lack of visibility for the HG dub is reason we don't see more fans who got into Dragon Ball at that time. If we're talking about airing in limited test markets on independent stations, the potential audience is already limited.

To me the question is, where would they have gone from there? Say you're a kid who just happened to see the five episode run of the series. Maybe it's your favorite thing ever, maybe you're dying to see more. You're in the pre-internet days (for the vast majority of people anyway) so you don't even know if there are more episodes.

There probably were people who caught the show at that time and got really intrigued, but with limited resources to explore the rest of the series I'm sure it ended there. They got older, probably didn't even notice it by the time it came back to the US in the 90s. Kids are fickle like that. We take for granted how easy it is today to become an instant mega fan of something, but without consistent access, most kids would have just gone on to the next thing.

Independent television was really interesting back then though. There was a very small independent station where I grew up. Never had a schedule, I'd see it in the newspaper TV listings and it would just say "Local Programming". It might be sitcom reruns, might be a church broadcast, it might be a bootleg of a pay per view wrestling event. So who knows. If some small station got those tapes from Harmony Gold and held onto them, maybe somebody did see that dub at 3am in 1993 in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure more people saw it than we'll ever know. Interesting to think about at least.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Independent television was really interesting back then though. There was a very small independent station where I grew up. Never had a schedule, I'd see it in the newspaper TV listings and it would just say "Local Programming". It might be sitcom reruns, might be a church broadcast, it might be a bootleg of a pay per view wrestling event. So who knows. If some small station got those tapes from Harmony Gold and held onto them, maybe somebody did see that dub at 3am in 1993 in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure more people saw it than we'll ever know. Interesting to think about at least.

That's true, I'm not sure how much academic attention is given to broadcast history, I'm sure it's been done, although that book Derek Padula is writing will certainly be the first of its kind for Dragon Ball, but it would nonetheless be a fascinating niche to explore as I think we have reason to suspect a lot of interesting facts about TV airings are at risk of being lost to time.

In a similar fashion we can't say for certain when Funimation's dub of Dragon Ball Z premiered in America, the earliest as documented by newspapers available online is September 12, 1996, although anecdotal evidence suggests it may have been as early as the 7th that month. Of course personal accounts online should be taken with a grain of salt, but as VegettoEX says even written evidence from the media doesn't prove 100% any given show aired on such and such given date as programming changes may not be published.

I'm just happy the Harmony Gold episodes were eventually found and faithfully restored by KBABZ so we can know the stories we always heard about this dub existing were not false memories (though I never had much doubt they were).

[MrSatan2099]

[/quote]
I'm just happy the Harmony Gold episodes were eventually found and faithfully restored by KBABZ so we can know the stories we always heard about this dub existing were not false memories (though I never had much doubt they were).
[/quote]

Oh yeah, I was so glad when they finally popped up! Knowing Harmony Gold as I did (also a massive Robotech fan) I always believed the episodes had to be real. Honestly we're lucky they even dubbed that much. Surprising they didn't stop at the telefilm or a single episode.