The end of era: Sony discontinues the Funimation brand on April 2

[MasenkoHA]

. Then again they still pronounced it wrong in uncut movie 3 so who knows?

They probably weren't allowed to pronounce it correctly. Kaioken managed to slip through but there appeared to been some sort of memo or style guide from Funimation on how to name and pronounce certain things (he's always Goku not Son Goku, the Tenkaichi Budokai is the World Martial Arts Tournament etc) either that or the Ocean Group was too use to the Sayin pronounciation to think to do it differently.

I imagine if Pioneer was the licensee from day 1 we would have gotten the correct pronunciation for Saiyan

[Kunzait_83]

I imagine if Pioneer was the licensee from day 1 we would have gotten the correct pronunciation for Saiyan

If Pioneer were the licensee from Day 1, at least 95% (minimum) of the incredibly inane, tortured arguments and bickering that the DB fanbase in the West (the U.S. in particular, but the West as a whole) has had all across the years/decades since the first dub would've ceased to ever have existed and there'd be INFINITELY less fracturing within it.

Same would go if the licensee were Viz (as they also did their share of anime too, not just manga). And a good number of other anime licensing companies from the time I could name.

And frankly so far, everyone in this forum who has tried to make a case or argument against this have been people who have proven themselves to have close to ZERO substantive knowledge (or frankly even any real interest or basic-most intellectual curiosity) about the history of U.S./English anime/manga licensing that either predates the early 2000s or that is outside of children's network television. Or both.

If all of your base of knowledge and reference about this sort of topic is centered around post-2000s anime licensing and/or network kids TV anime licensing, you are simply fundamentally ill equipped to have any real insight into this topic, as the history of U.S./English language anime licensing is VASTLY bigger than that. And it is well within this MASSIVE historical blindspot of this fanbase in which this whole "how would DB have faired had a company like Pioneer or Viz been the license holder from day one" topic firmly resides.

This isn't even me trying to take some kind of personal insulting swipe at anyone in particular: this is just a factual breakdown of the meat and potatoes foundation of this particular discussion topic itself and how it has routinely played out on this forum for pretty much the entirety of its 20 year long existence now, which is usually just a litany of cringy, completely ahistorical takes that all universally assume up front (very much falsely and incorrectly) that kids' network TV was the be-all, end-all, sole lone game in town of anime licensing in the U.S.

Which is an assumption that anyone with even a SMIDGE of working knowledge of basic Western anime licensing history can tell you is laughably, categorically full of shit nonsense that ignores SO MUCH else that was happening at the time for English language anime licensing, and HAD BEEN happening since the fucking mid/late 80s at least.

And its also not like getting some real, tangible grasp of knowledge about the long, dense history of anime licensing in U.S./English language territories outside of one's narrow niche of interest in the kids' TV end of things is in any which way difficult to do, nor has it been for some 20+ years now, given the wealth of resources that are out there at your literal fingertips: Google and Wikipedia exist for a reason, and god knows most people here are adept at using them to learn and memorize things like all 140 kajillion breeds of Pokemon, or learn the detailed ins and outs of 4Kids' dubbing and censorship process back in the day, or which animation studios handled which episodes of whichever 500+ episode anime, or whatnot.

There's basically ZERO reason at this point, in the year of our lord 2024, to be THIS eyeball deep into Dragon Ball and anime/manga fandom for THIS long (20 or more years for a whole bunch of you), and STILL not have any working basic knowledge or even simple fucking curiosity about this GIGANTIC chunk of the medium's Western/U.S. history, other than just sheer stubborn-ass myopia and narrow range of focus and interest.

Come on guys: don't force me to do a "Wuxia Thread"-like gigantic historical breakdown of THIS too. I shouldn't have to (just like I shouldn't have had to do it for Wuxia either), you're all big boys and big girls who know at least a rudimentary degree of Google Fu or even Wiki Kwan Do. Take fucking, I dunno... ten minutes out of whatever portion of your days you spend absorbing/studying animation studio and kids TV trivia or Pokemon/Sonic the Hedgehog shit to look this stuff up. Its not in any way hard to find or come across (just like Wuxia wasn't/isn't).

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

They probably weren't allowed to pronounce it correctly. Kaioken managed to slip through but there appeared to been some sort of memo or style guide from Funimation on how to name and pronounce certain things (he's always Goku not Son Goku, the Tenkaichi Budokai is the World Martial Arts Tournament etc) either that or the Ocean Group was too use to the Sayin pronounciation to think to do it differently.

I imagine if Pioneer was the licensee from day 1 we would have gotten the correct pronunciation for Saiyan

I don't recall Kaioken being mispronounced, last I checked everything was bang on in the uncut Pioneer dubs, they were produced independent of Funimation though, as Pioneer sublicensed the rights from them, Funimation was just the ultimate owner of these dubs, but Barry Watson was not involved with them at all. Although now that you mention it I asked about the alleged more accurate pronunciations in Ocean Kai during one of the Anime Time Machine livestreams and Karl Willems said pronunciations come from a guide book (so similar to what your describing) the producers provide.

Diana Gage oversaw the entire creative process and was the supervisor for the Pioneer movies as well as Ocean Kai, so I'm starting to suspect things like the right pronunciation of Kaioken in the Pioneer dubs may have been her decision. We may never know, SX10 was on the phone to Ms Gage and she said she wasn't at liberty to discuss these things because it's TOEI's IP, so the Ocean Group are a very private company, but I think they may not get enough credit for their work on Dragon Ball, as not only does Blue Water GT have very accurate scripts but Blue Water Dragon Ball fixes a lot of issues with Funimation's dub, not to mention some more accurate names and terms those dubs use. The Westwood dub could have been better, sure, but it had a rushed production schedule, and for what it's worth Kaioken was pronounced right once and they used some more accurate terms like "Instant Translocation".

[GTx10]

It's sad. First Power Rangers has ended with Cosmic Fury and now Funi. These 30 years in business thing is like saying "I will retire in two days then ya get shot." Stop saying it!

I am thankful to Funi because through their releases I was able to gather all of Dragon Ball. I can look past the lack of previews on the Blue Bricks, the widescreen of the Orange Bricks, the strange casing of the Green Bricks and so on. Hell I can somewhat look past the funky audio sfx mixing of the Kai TFC sets. (Seriously what happened there?) Being able to watch all of Uncut DB in English is great for me.

So thank you Funi for your (meh at best) releases. Yes I'm sure the releases will come out again with a Crunchyroll branding on them but nothing beats that old school funi branding for me.

[MasenkoHA]

They probably weren't allowed to pronounce it correctly. Kaioken managed to slip through but there appeared to been some sort of memo or style guide from Funimation on how to name and pronounce certain things (he's always Goku not Son Goku, the Tenkaichi Budokai is the World Martial Arts Tournament etc) either that or the Ocean Group was too use to the Sayin pronounciation to think to do it differently.

I imagine if Pioneer was the licensee from day 1 we would have gotten the correct pronunciation for Saiyan

I don't recall Kaioken being mispronounced, last I checked everything was bang on in the uncut Pioneer dubs, they were produced independent of Funimation though, as Pioneer sublicensed the rights from them

Hence why I said Kaioken slipped through as in it was an exception to those movies following established Funisms

, Funimation was just the ultimate owner of these dubs, but Barry Watson was not involved with them at all. Although now that you mention it I asked about the alleged more accurate pronunciations in Ocean Kai during one of the Anime Time .

But Gen Fukanaga was a supervisor for those movies and credited as such. The movies (for the most part) used Funimation terminology that they otherwise wouldn't have used if there was no Funimation to begin with. They weren't produced independent of Funimation, Funimation just wasn't as involved as they were with the tv series dub

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

But Gen Fukanaga was a supervisor for those movies and credited as such.

Was Gen Fukanaga in charge of any artistic/creative decisions though? I believe that was Barry's role. I would have thought Gen Fukanaga was to Funimation what Ken Morrison is to Ocean, the guy in charge of the companies finances, is in charge of deals/negotiations, etc.

Kunzait_83 : Streamline may have been a good contender for Dragon Ball, as far as I know their dubs were some of the better ones in the 90s, although maybe they would have been unlikely because Harmony Hold (who Carl Macek also owned) already had the license. I'm not sure about other options besides Viz/Pioneer who were licensing anime for English-speaking territories in the 90s but I'm sure there were other companies that would have done faithful dubs. Maybe Manga Entertainment? Although ideally a dub produced for the international market by their US office rather than the swear-fest dubs like Wicked City the UK branch made at the time. Only problem is they may have just dubbed 36 episodes, as was the case with Fist of the North Star.

[Kunzait_83]

Kunzait_83 : Streamline may have been a good contender for Dragon Ball, as far as I know their dubs were some of the better ones in the 90s, although maybe they would have been unlikely because Harmony Hold (who Carl Macek also owned) already had the license. I'm not sure about other options besides Viz/Pioneer who were licensing anime for English-speaking territories in the 90s but I'm sure there were other companies that would have done faithful dubs. Maybe Manga Entertainment? Although ideally a dub produced for the international market by their US office rather than the swear-fest dubs like Wicked City the UK branch made at the time.

As massive of a fan as I've always been of the bulk of their work (certainly in the way of their specific CHOICES of licenses and the general direction of their picks, which were usually nothing short of outstanding and more often than not firmly adult-oriented) Streamline's voice acting quality was often incredibly solid and a firm cut above that of most anime dubbing, with a wholly unique approach to the voice acting style they would often go for that I dearly wish had caught on and become more industry standard. But with all that being said, their script translations/localizations were famously rather... hit and miss, to say the least, and certainly controversial.

Still, I'm almost tempted to roll those dice simply for the opportunity to hear an in-their-Streamline-prime Greg Snegoff or Mike Reynolds or Cam Clarke doing solid voicework in a DB English cast. Streamline-era Cam Clarke was always my go-to ideal pick for English Vegeta. Imagine him bringing in some of that Liquid Snake vibe to Vegeta's haughty, snobby, elitist "looking down my nose at all you peasants and peons below me" attitude. **Chef's kiss.** We got seriously robbed there.

Manga UK though were always steaming hot garbage, and they'd have been more than plenty awful with Dragon Ball. Hell, look no further than how they handled Fist of the North Star during the time in the late 90s where they had the license. Very much comparable to FUNimation's work on DB with a comparable anime franchise to boot, meaning that I think that its more likely we'd have just gotten an alternate FUNimation-esque dub from them instead of "what if AnimeLabs got to dub rather than sub DBZ" (the latter of which would still be no less terrible as well). So yeah, hard pass there either way.

The broader Manga umbrella however, outside of the UK branch, often tended to do pretty excellent work however: Just off the cuff, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, and Wings of Honneamise in particular stand out immediately. When even the original Japanese directors of the anime in question take notice of the English dub cast and personally request they be used to dub their future work, like Kawajiri did with Ninja Scroll, which is usually unheard of... that says quite a lot. I could see a version of a DB dub under them that'd be potentially plenty worthwhile.

Aside from those options, there's still tons and tons of others. U.S. Renditions was once briefly in consideration for the DB license WAY back in the pre-FUNimation days, and they usually did incredibly solid work. I'd have loved to see what they would have done with DB, god knows it would've been at bare minimum perfectly reasonably good. ADV, while certainly not my ideal, I'd have still taken over FUNi any and every day of the week. Hell, I'd have even taken Central Park Media, for all their own faults! Under AnimEigo, we'd have gotten no dub at all and a sub-only release: but me, I'm personally just fine with that.

Overall, Pioneer, Viz, U.S. Renditions, and the non-UK branch of Manga are probably the top picks in terms of overall quality. Streamline only if they really got their act together on script translation/localization and better VA's for child characters specifically: a guarantee bullshit-free script translation from Streamline would put them head and shoulders above the rest of the pack for me, purely on the strength of their overall voicework alone: though with DB having characters like young Goku and Gohan and Dende so prominent, they'd have to seriously step up their game on child voices, which was always a glaring weak point of theirs VA-wise.

Get them a script translator/localizer who takes the material seriously and respectfully and some better voice actors for the child characters, and Streamline is easily my personal top pick and it wouldn't be close. Barring that however, I'd have been more than fine with Pioneer or Viz or even U.S. Renditions, and certainly with Manga so long as it was kept FAR away from the UK branch.

[GhostEmperorX]

Yeah, and that's not remotely theft. Or illegal. They had a family connection that allowed them to more easily promise they could make Dragon Ball a success

These two have zero relation to each other, especially that they had to rely on other established companies/licensees to do a bunch of things for them before they eventually separated from all of them.

(They also got rejected the first time so there's no merit at all to their gaining the license.)

as opposed to US Renditions, who were just as amateurish in regards to releasing anime as they only had experience in releasing anime on home video and not brokering any TV deals. Not to mention whatever talks US Renditions had with Toei would be scuttled once they were bought out by Manga Entertainment circa 1994, leaving a void for Fukunaga an co. to come in.

Don't know what part of that signifies "amateur" for you, but ok. Gonna need a source for that claim all the same though.
The only area that may have been a problem however is when a requirement to air the show on US TV would come up.

Not entirely sure about Viz due to how they've handled the manga the past 2+ decades

Was about to mention before 6 posts above this one, but their anime reputation was a lot different from the manga side. Ranma 1/2 for one.

And frankly so far, everyone in this forum who has tried to make a case or argument against this have been people who have proven themselves to have close to ZERO substantive knowledge (or frankly even any real interest or basic-most intellectual curiosity) about the history of U.S./English anime/manga licensing that either predates the early 2000s or that is outside of children's network television. Or both.

If all of your base of knowledge and reference about this sort of topic is centered around post-2000s anime licensing and/or network kids TV anime licensing, you are simply fundamentally ill equipped to have any real insight into this topic, as the history of U.S./English language anime licensing is VASTLY bigger than that. And it is well within this MASSIVE historical blindspot of this fanbase in which this whole "how would DB have faired had a company like Pioneer or Viz been the license holder from day one" topic firmly resides.

Personally, I would say the same about those who give Funimation a pass for cropping a pre-Y2K series to 16:9 (or worse, try to defend it), among other disastrous home release decisions. Also those who try to divorce the series from its original time period as well as scene, and transplant it to at least half a decade or more later.

I do have to say though, for those of us who aren't even from the US (like myself), a lot of this info can be quite hard to come by if you don't have any good reference points for a lot of it. At least for me, since I usually saw many disparate snippets of niche, retro content types here and there on the net, not knowing where they came from (i.e. the existence of licensing companies in the US that handled non-mainstream material, providing subtitles or even dubs for them, e.g. Taiho Shichauzo/You're Under Arrest!), it took diving deep into retroland (pre-Y2K) to find circles or niches where people actually know and have experience with such areas, or physical media collections of titles and other media from licensing companies along that line of material (they're all typically above average users).

I may have learned how to read Japanese and how to parse JP content I read, as well as what kinds of anime titles made it to Europe in older decades, but the US anime licensing scene was still a huge blind spot.

Honestly, I don't think that those who don't care for these aspects or for finer details such as citations and the like will be able to gain that perspective on this matter, guess the best thing to do is ask them for a source whenever they repeat the usual inaccurate claims.

Come on guys: don't force me to do a "Wuxia Thread"-like gigantic historical breakdown of THIS too. I shouldn't have to (just like I shouldn't have had to do it for Wuxia either), you're all big boys and big girls who know at least a rudimentary degree of Google Fu or even Wiki Kwan Do. Take fucking, I dunno... ten minutes out of whatever portion of your days you spend absorbing/studying animation studio and kids TV trivia or Pokemon/Sonic the Hedgehog shit to look this stuff up. Its not in any way hard to find or come across (just like Wuxia wasn't/isn't).

It would be welcome if you did, personally speaking. At the least it would put a lot of what I may have known (or not known) into perspective. It's also one of the main reasons a site like this exists, and despite its topic requirement, I believe it's always extremely important to set the contemporary stage (products, licensing companies, overall standards in a medium, etc) to discuss in what ways it may have impacted or been relevant to DB, and vice versa. Especially since there's sites even better than this one at cataloguing such information (generally speaking) and sorting every detail of it accurately.

Ironically, for a lot of those topic samples you brought up, the best sources they might have for stuff like that pretty much amount to Fandom wikias and other user-editable sites that often lack (compulsory) citations for things that may require them (even if the info may be accurate).

Since you delved a bit into the hypothetical licensee discussion though... how would the good (or at least solid) options have gotten around the requirement that Toei had to air the show on US TV?

Harmony Hold (who Carl Macek also owned)

Totally missed this, but Macek was only contracted by Harmony Gold, he didn't own it (that would be Frank Agrama).

[rs_chaosmaster]

Honestly I have nothing good to say about this situation. I am not sad that the company that has destroyed my favorite series on home media again and again is now gone. The fact that in 30 years we still don’t have a proper release of OG dragonball and Z is appalling. The DragonboxZ is still the definitive release and that in itself is a problem as that release also isn’t without its flaws. My hope is that Crunchyroll and Sony will honor Toriyama-San by releasing a definitive home media release that does everything that a dragonball and z release should do. Include the broadcast audio 4:3 proper restoration look at AB Groupe for example on 4k bluray. It’s time to put a definitive answer to the question on how fans should watch the series. Please Crunchyroll bury the past along with Funimation and do this right!!

[sangofe]

Honestly I have nothing good to say about this situation. I am not sad that the company that has destroyed my favorite series on home media again and again is now gone. The fact that in 30 years we still don’t have a proper release of OG dragonball and Z is appalling. The DragonboxZ is still the definitive release and that in itself is a problem as that release also isn’t without its flaws. My hope is that Crunchyroll and Sony will honor Toriyama-San by releasing a definitive home media release that does everything that a dragonball and z release should do. Include the broadcast audio 4:3 proper restoration look at AB Groupe for example on 4k bluray. It’s time to put a definitive answer to the question on how fans should watch the series. Please Crunchyroll bury the past along with Funimation and do this right!!

Toei and Crunchyroll both only care for money. In fact, a translator told me that CR is looking into using AI translations instead of paying translators in the future.

[rs_chaosmaster]

While I agree that is the case don’t you think a release as I described would make both companies a ton of money? ? Also I have to believe that both companies respect and would want to honor Toriyama, whether money is their ultimate objective or not.

[MasenkoHA]

Honestly I have nothing good to say about this situation. I am not sad that the company that has destroyed my favorite series on home media again and again is now gone. The fact that in 30 years we still don’t have a proper release of OG dragonball and Z is appalling. The DragonboxZ is still the definitive release and that in itself is a problem as that release also isn’t without its flaws. My hope is that Crunchyroll and Sony will honor Toriyama-San by releasing a definitive home media release that does everything that a dragonball and z release should do. Include the broadcast audio 4:3 proper restoration look at AB Groupe for example on 4k bluray. It’s time to put a definitive answer to the question on how fans should watch the series. Please Crunchyroll bury the past along with Funimation and do this right!!

They're not really gone though, just the Funimation name is. I'm sure some jobs were lost due to redundancies but it's still going to be a lot of the same people making decisions like "the fans say they want 4:3 but our numbers say 16:9 and we're not going to question WHY our wide-screen releases sell better"

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Toei and Crunchyroll both only care for money. In fact, a translator told me that CR is looking into using AI translations instead of paying translators in the future.

That's really sad because there are a lot of great translators out there that can not only adapt Japanese scripts and retain all the main points, but write good dialogue suitable for each character. Alex Kind and Paul Coldrick did a fantastic job on the Blue Water dub of GT, as did their editors Aaron Nordean, Cisco McLaren, Jason Cushing and Scott Jackson. There's no way AI can replicate the collaborative effort of people like this that we have to thank for the art of translation. I'd fully expect AI scripts to be much more direct, literal and bland by comparison.

While I agree that is the case don’t you think a release as I described would make both companies a ton of money? ? Also I have to believe that both companies respect and would want to honor Toriyama, whether money is their ultimate objective or not.

These companies often don't think like fans. As MasenkoHA said their only concern is usually the bottom line, if widescreen sells better they determine, based on confirmation bias that's what would be likely to sell again, never taking hypothetical situations (such as the market NOT being flooded with Dragon Ball Z releases in a short space of time, a low price point per volume, etc) where a fullscreen release could sell better into consideration.

The fact the marketing for Funimation's 30th anniversary set twisted the promise of 4:3 to sound like a premium product for the purists shows how completely out of touch they were with the reality of how Dragon Ball Z was created and designed to be seen by all, not just hardcore fans. Thankfully Manga UK had the common sense to understand the aspect ratio was the bare minimum and put it out as their standard edition (not just steelbooks, which Funimation released for a limited time) Blu-Ray for the mass market. Its a shame they're gone now too, but unlike Funimation, many jobs were actually lost in the process of the anime market becoming more monopolised.

Hell, back when the 2013/14 Blu-Rays were being released Funimation expressed their ignorance about what fullscreen actually was when they said "going with widescreen over standard definition was a must", granted this was in relation to how they believed their new framing of Dragon Ball Z would take advantage of HD TVs but its still a mind boggling comment to hear from someone in the field of restoration as it demonstrates a lack of understanding about what aspect ratio and picture resolution actually are.

[sangofe]

Toei and Crunchyroll both only care for money. In fact, a translator told me that CR is looking into using AI translations instead of paying translators in the future.

That's really sad because there are a lot of great translators out there that can not only adapt Japanese scripts and retain all the main points, but write good dialogue suitable for each character. Alex Kind and Paul Coldrick did a fantastic job on the Blue Water dub of GT, as did their editors Aaron Nordean, Cisco McLaren, Jason Cushing and Scott Jackson. There's no way AI can replicate the collaborative effort of people like this that we have to thank for the art of translation. I'd fully expect AI scripts to be much more direct, literal and bland by comparison.

While I agree that is the case don’t you think a release as I described would make both companies a ton of money? ? Also I have to believe that both companies respect and would want to honor Toriyama, whether money is their ultimate objective or not.

These companies often don't think like fans. As MasenkoHA said their only concern is usually the bottom line, if widescreen sells better they determine, based on confirmation bias that's what would be likely to sell again, never taking hypothetical situations (such as the market NOT being flooded with Dragon Ball Z releases in a short space of time, a low price point per volume, etc) where a fullscreen release could sell better into consideration.

The fact the marketing for Funimation's 30th anniversary set twisted the promise of 4:3 to sound like a premium product for the purists shows how completely out of touch with the reality of how Dragon Ball Z was created and designed to be seen by all, not just hardcore fans speaks volumes. Thankfully Manga UK had the common sense to understand the aspect ratio was the bare minimum and put it out as their standard edition (not just steelbooks, which Funimation released for a limited time) Blu-Ray for the mass market. Its a shame they're gone now too, but unlike Funimation, many jobs were actually lost in the process of the anime market becoming more monopolised.

Hell, back when the 2013/14 Blu-Rays were being released Funimation expressed their ignorance about what fullscreen actually was when they said "going with widescreen over standard definition was a must", granted this was in relation to how they believed their new framing of Dragon Ball Z would take advantage of HD TVs but its still a mind boggling comment to hear from someone in the field of restoration as it demonstrates a lack of understanding about what aspect ratio and picture resolution actually are.

AI scripts would suck and have a lot of mistranslations.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Even if AI translations were accurate and could be read as natural dialogue I'd love to see any attempt being made to replicate the creativity of human writers. Something like the scripts for Blue Water's dub of original Dragon Ball (adapted also by Kind and Coldrick, alongside Geoffrey Way, Mike Bridges and Rob Gerein with the same dialog editors as GT in addition to Jennifer Balabanov and Ross Clarke) which partly use Funimation's scripts with improvements I'd imagine would be near impossible for AI to do as well.

I know this thread is not about the Ocean Group, although I think these dubs are great examples of what is lost, not only by AI occupying positions previously held by humans but also what smaller companies with less concern for global consistency can offer through greater care of the product.

Hell, even when it comes to the restoration process Funimation's level sets were fine when they hired Steve Franko, who was probably a freelancer, but nonetheless not attached to a larger corporation, only for things to take a turn for the worst when they carried out the job inhouse removing all the grain and adding extra DNR to the picture. Crunchyroll will be even less likely to pay for extra hands when they have a greater stranglehold on the industry than Funimation did.

[GhostEmperorX]

The fact the marketing for Funimation's 30th anniversary set twisted the promise of 4:3 to sound like a premium product for the purists shows how completely out of touch with the reality of how Dragon Ball Z was created and designed to be seen by all, not just hardcore fans speaks volumes. Thankfully Manga UK had the common sense to understand the aspect ratio was the bare minimum and put it out as their standard edition (not just steelbooks, which Funimation released for a limited time) Blu-Ray for the mass market.

Most ridiculous thing about this situation bar none. It's a pre-Y2K production, it should have been a no-brainer what its proper aspect ratio is.
They were pretty much amateurs till the "end".

[Vorige Waffe]

Kunzait_83 : Streamline may have been a good contender for Dragon Ball, as far as I know their dubs were some of the better ones in the 90s, although maybe they would have been unlikely because Harmony Hold (who Carl Macek also owned) already had the license.

Once again, Macek never owned Harmony Gold; he was a contracted to produce dubs for them and stopped working for them by the late 80s to focus on running Streamline full time.