Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" Dub Turns 14; Still Unreleased

[Singh is King]

I can't tell if this is happening or not, but Richard Ian Cox as Goku REALLY worries me- like, red flag level worry.

Richard is a great talent and he's my favorite dub Ranma and did a great job as Inuyasha, but I can't put that voice on Goku without being...scared at him sounding like that. Hopefully the voice director has directed Richard to put on a new voice for Goku he hasn't used before for the role, IF this is happening, again.

I would like to see Scott back as Piccolo and Brian back as Vegeta, but in the latter's case, please use a deeper voice like the Westwood one as opposed to that high-pitched one you used in the Saban dub, IMO.

Kid Gohan probably won't be Saffron Henderson, though she'll be missed, but I wonder who they'll go for.

Klassen's Krillin, I can take or leave, though I heard Sam Vincent may voice him: that's kind of odd.

[TheBalishChannel]

Kid Gohan probably won't be Saffron Henderson, though she'll be missed, but I wonder who they'll go for.

According to this response that she recently posted on Twitter, Saffron Henderson has returned to provide the voice for Kid Gohan in The Ocean Group's version of Dragon Ball Z Kai:



I think "got to do lots more" also solidifies the fact that the VO work for Ocean's Kai was done quite a while ago.

[Singh is King]

Kid Gohan probably won't be Saffron Henderson, though she'll be missed, but I wonder who they'll go for.

According to this response that she recently posted on Twitter, Saffron Henderson has returned to provide the voice for Kid Gohan in The Ocean Group's version of Dragon Ball Z Kai:



I think "got to do lots more" also solidifies the fact that the VO work for Ocean's Kai was done quite a while ago.

That's good if they have brought her back.

[Kakacarrottop]

Kid Gohan probably won't be Saffron Henderson, though she'll be missed, but I wonder who they'll go for.

According to this response that she recently posted on Twitter, Saffron Henderson has returned to provide the voice for Kid Gohan in The Ocean Group's version of Dragon Ball Z Kai:

That's nice to hear. The replacement they got for the Cell Games made Gohan sound like a 4 year old.

[Attitudefan]

Kid Gohan probably won't be Saffron Henderson, though she'll be missed, but I wonder who they'll go for.

According to this response that she recently posted on Twitter, Saffron Henderson has returned to provide the voice for Kid Gohan in The Ocean Group's version of Dragon Ball Z Kai:



I think "got to do lots more" also solidifies the fact that the VO work for Ocean's Kai was done quite a while ago.

ALL MY YES

SHE IS THE BEST VOICE FOR GOHAN! HE NEVER HAD IT BETTER IN ENGLISH!!!

She's awesome at children's voices, especially boys like Gohan

[NitroEX]

Well this is interesting, I do hope she's back. She's always been my favourite (kid) Gohan voice.

[NinjaGoku]

People are talking as if this dub is still coming, although it exists there is no confirmation that it will ever be released, give it up!

[NitroEX]

People are talking as if this dub is still coming, although it exists there is no confirmation that it will ever be released, give it up!

If anyone needs to "give it up" it's the people who constantly feel the need to try and stop all discussion relating to this dub. If this thread bothers you that much then just ignore it, it isn't even bumped up that often.

Also just to put things in perspective, Kai hasn't even ended in Japan yet and Funimation themselves are still dubbing final chapters. There might not be any official confirmation this dub will come out but like you mentioned, we know it does exist and that the actors have long since finished dubbing the Cell arc. For all we know they could be working on Final chapters as well.

[NinjaGoku]

Also just to put things in perspective, Kai hasn't even ended in Japan yet and Funimation themselves are still dubbing final chapters. There might not be any official confirmation this dub will come out but like you mentioned, we know it does exist and that the actors have long since finished dubbing the Cell arc. For all we know they could be working on Final chapters as well.

The question is where are they going to air it? Kai is old news, perhaps 'The Final Chapters' is fresh, but it's doubtful any English speaking country will pick up the Ocean dub. The UK even aired the original Kai on a C grade channel where they air tons of cheap shows or ones that didn't do well on other channels. I'm only being realistic because fans have been over-hyping crumbs with no sign of a license.

[TheBlackPaladin]

The question is where are they going to air it? Kai is old news, perhaps 'The Final Chapters' is fresh, but it's doubtful any English speaking country will pick up the Ocean dub.

It hasn't aired on Canadian TV yet. I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, as I've brought this up several times, but I for one find it very difficult to believe that it's a mere coincidence that Kai has not aired on Canadian TV and that the Ocean dub is also being produced in Canada.

I see where you're coming from. You're absolutely right, it's long past the point of being fresh. Metaphorically speaking, it's four years past the expiration date and covered with mold. However, the fact remains that every time we think we'll never see this dub, some speck of information pops up that suggests we will.

[MarcFBR]

The question is where are they going to air it? Kai is old news, perhaps 'The Final Chapters' is fresh, but it's doubtful any English speaking country will pick up the Ocean dub.

It hasn't aired on Canadian TV yet. I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, as I've brought this up several times, but I for one find it very difficult to believe that it's a mere coincidence that Kai has not aired on Canadian TV and that the Ocean dub is also being produced in Canada.

I see where you're coming from. You're absolutely right, it's long past the point of being fresh. Metaphorically speaking, it's four years past the expiration date and covered with mold. However, the fact remains that every time we think we'll never see this dub, some speck of information pops up that suggests we will.

Technically speaking, no we haven't. We've gotten 'some speck of information pops up' that suggests it exists, which we know. We haven't gotten any information that suggests any recording has been done recently (perhaps suggesting a slow production cycle for some reason) or that anything has been done recently (and in fact comments from people like Henderson suggest that nothing has been done for quite a long time, as her wording kind of suggests that coming back for Gohan was something she 'did'.

Someone paid for it, so I expect it'll pop out somewhere, but you're not really basing it on anything.

[NinjaGoku]

Is there any chance it could have been, you know, just a pilot they did years ago to test the water?

[MarcFBR]

Is there any chance it could have been, you know, just a pilot they did years ago to test the water?

That would normally be the assumption except that the actors have discussed it as if they've done 'amounts' of content. That doesn't quite make sense for a pilot presentation.

[Attitudefan]

Is there any chance it could have been, you know, just a pilot they did years ago to test the water?

No because Drummond himself told me, and later others, that he done plenty of episodes and finished off with Cell.

He said he lost his voice on the last scream he did when Trunks gets killed by Cell.

They've dubbed the whole show.

[NitroEX]

There's a rather old video floating around somewhere of a guy in the audience of a panel basically asking Scott McNeil if he reprised any of his roles in the Buu arc of Kai. He confirmed (at the time) that he had not reprised Majin Buu. McNeil has confirmed that he reprised his other roles multiple times at other conventions already so it's pretty clear it isn't just a pilot they worked on.

During Lee Tockar's DBZ Kai tweets in November he mentioned that "After nearly 2 years I'm finally able 2 announce that I'M playing Frieza" which confirms they dubbed the Freeza arc as well (possible over two years ago? he never specified).

Also I seem to recall Drummond tweeting something about his throat hurting from screaming. I remember immediately thinking he meant Vegeta but I can't find that tweet anymore.

[Theophrastus]

It kind of feels like at this point there's a higher probability of some disgruntled production assistant leaking this dub to the internet than of it actually airing somewhere.

[jelleline89]

We're 6 months away from this thread turning 5 years old and this dub has yet to be released. I think it's time to accept that for whatever reason, this isn't being released, and until we get official confirmation that that confirms otherwise, we should lock this thread.

[Kakacarrottop]

We're 6 months away from this thread turning 5 years old and this dub has yet to be released. I think it's time to accept that for whatever reason, this isn't being released, and until we get official confirmation that that confirms otherwise, we should lock this thread.

Why? This thread is basically a container for all discussions related to their dub of Kai. It obviously exists and isn't some fake urban legend since VAs have explicitly talked about working on it. It doesn't matter if gets released or not, there is still plenty of stuff to talk about. Perhaps the thread just needs to be renamed.

[jelleline89]

We're 6 months away from this thread turning 5 years old and this dub has yet to be released. I think it's time to accept that for whatever reason, this isn't being released, and until we get official confirmation that that confirms otherwise, we should lock this thread.

Why? This thread is basically a container for all discussions related to their dub of Kai. It obviously exists and isn't some fake urban legend since VAs have explicitly talked about working on it. It doesn't matter if gets released or not, there is still plenty of stuff to talk about. Perhaps the thread just needs to be renamed.

There's no doubt in my mind it has been dubbed but I fail to see the point of discussing it for another five years if it still isn't confirmed for some sort of a release.

For example, ADV Films acquired the rights to an anime called "Mermaid Melody" and dubbed all the episodes into English. However, the rights fell through and the dubbed episodes remained unreleased. That's pretty much what I think has happened here. Ocean acquired the rights to dub Z Kai, they did, but the rights were revoked before a release could be scheduled. And since Ocean Studios isn't usually making announcements about what anime titles they acquire or lose, there's no way for us to know for sure the current status on the rights.

If it does eventually get released in some format, I will be beyond ecstatic but as it stand right now, I'm not holding by breath on the release.

[ChibiGoku]

We're 6 months away from this thread turning 5 years old and this dub has yet to be released. I think it's time to accept that for whatever reason, this isn't being released, and until we get official confirmation that that confirms otherwise, we should lock this thread.

Why? This thread is basically a container for all discussions related to their dub of Kai. It obviously exists and isn't some fake urban legend since VAs have explicitly talked about working on it. It doesn't matter if gets released or not, there is still plenty of stuff to talk about. Perhaps the thread just needs to be renamed.

There's no doubt in my mind it has been dubbed but I fail to see the point of discussing it for another five years if it still isn't confirmed for some sort of a release.

For example, ADV Films acquired the rights to an anime called "Mermaid Melody" and dubbed all the episodes into English. However, the rights fell through and the dubbed episodes remained unreleased. That's pretty much what I think has happened here. Ocean acquired the rights to dub Z Kai, they did, but the rights were revoked before a release could be scheduled. And since Ocean Studios isn't usually making announcements about what anime titles they acquire or lose, there's no way for us to know for sure the current status on the rights.

If it does eventually get released in some format, I will be beyond ecstatic but as it stand right now, I'm not holding by breath on the release.

First off, regarding Mermaid Melody, ADV forfeited the rights to the show, simply because of the fact they could not secure a TV deal. I'm not 100% sure if they absolutely required it to be on television, per contract, but I seem to recall that it really needed to be on television for them to make any sort of money back. It wasn't simply the rights being pulled, but rather they decided to not go through with it in the end.

As for Ocean Group and Dragon Ball Kai, Ocean is, for all intents a purpose a company that is contracted work out to them. They don't actually actively maintain the rights to various shows, but rather work on shows that are given out to them for a fee. That leads to another question as to who was actually paying for the dub that was produced at company. It could be Toei Animation USA, it could've been FUNimation, maybe some other company we haven't heard about in the mix, but the truth it, we really don't know. Why the dub was produced, we also don't really have the information for either. There was speculation as it had to do with CanCon, which requires a certain percentage of Canadian content on television (they can get around this with Anime, as long as the dub is produced in Canada), but obviously no network has actively picked up the show in Canada.

Either way, there's really no reason to speculate about this. If it shows it, it'll show up. If it doesn't, it doesn't. It won't be the first, nor will it be the last, for a dub to be produced and not to be released, as evident in your mention above.