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

[Cure Dragon 255]

SOOOOOO....Toei announced the cast of World Trigger. I hope that finds itself on TV along with Ocean!Kai.

[Hellspawn28]

I rather see a Ocean dub of Super. Kai is 6/7 years old, it's not the hot DB show like it was a few years back.

[eledoremassis02]

I rather see a Ocean dub of Super. Kai is 6/7 years old, it's not the hot DB show like it was a few years back.

I'd like to see that too! Whats up with Kai on FUNimations end. It seems forzen on both sides is there just not interest anymore?

[Kuririn Fan]

I rather see a Ocean dub of Super. Kai is 6/7 years old, it's not the hot DB show like it was a few years back.

I'd like to see that too! Whats up with Kai on FUNimations end. It seems forzen on both sides is there just not interest anymore?

It's coming... Sean said that he finished his job.
It'll probably air after Kai 1.0 on Toonami, it seems that Toei wants TV deal.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I rather see a Ocean dub of Super. Kai is 6/7 years old, it's not the hot DB show like it was a few years back.

I'd like to see that too! Whats up with Kai on FUNimations end. It seems forzen on both sides is there just not interest anymore?

It's coming... Sean said that he finished his job.
It'll probably air after Kai 1.0 on Toonami, it seems that Toei wants TV deal.

Toei wanting a TV deal actually appears to be the hold-up for both of the English dubs of Kai. I don't think it's a lack of interest...after all, Korea, France (and I think maybe one or two other places) have already aired their dubs of the Buu arc of Kai, and other countries, like Mexico and Brazil, have officially announced it.

[Super Sayian Prime]

Well, the post-Funimation Canadian dubs have all been TV-only releases anyway.

The annoying part about Funimation's Kai: TFC release is that a bunch of international markets are reliant on their material. They've essentially made them wait a few years for a US-only TV run. Amusingly, this would've been the perfect opportunity for an Ocean dub of TFC to supplant Funimation's.

[Ree]

Off topic but i thought VoE had an uncut version already? why waste money on another uncut dub?

[Valerius Dover]

Off topic but i thought VoE had an uncut version already? why waste money on another uncut dub?

I believe it's because it's based on a later Japanese release that includes scenes deleted from the original broadcast.

[Super Sayian Prime]

Off topic but i thought VoE had an uncut version already? why waste money on another uncut dub?

It's easy for Funimation to do that when it's not their own money being "wasted."

Bandai Entertainment was only ever given the Japanese TV version of Escaflowne. That cut was edited for time compared to the home video release, which later became the basis for the HD remaster. What was removed was largely inconsequential and amounted to <10 minutes of footage. Is that realy worthy of redubbing the entire show and its movie? Well, Funimation felt so.

[NitroEX]

Is that realy worthy of redubbing the entire show and its movie? Well, Funimation felt so.

My guess is the new Texas cast are looking to capitalise on the convention scene when the new dub is released. There's more than likely an ulterior motive behind the redub otherwise they'd have just used the old cast, I mean as far as I can tell the originals are all still active in the industry.

[Super Sayian Prime]

Is that realy worthy of redubbing the entire show and its movie? Well, Funimation felt so.

My guess is the new Texas cast are looking to capitalise on the convention scene when the new dub is released. There's more than likely an ulterior motive behind the redub otherwise they'd have just used the old cast, I mean as far as I can tell the originals are all still active in the industry.

Funimation is too cheap to afford Vancouver VAs. Though, given they crowdfunded Texaflowne, they could've made the goal whatever fee Ocean would've charged. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[TheBlackPaladin]

Is that realy worthy of redubbing the entire show and its movie? Well, Funimation felt so.

My guess is the new Texas cast are looking to capitalise on the convention scene when the new dub is released. There's more than likely an ulterior motive behind the redub otherwise they'd have just used the old cast, I mean as far as I can tell the originals are all still active in the industry.

Funimation is too cheap to afford Vancouver VAs. Though, given they crowdfunded Texaflowne, they could've made the goal whatever fee Ocean would've charged. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, I wouldn't say they're "too cheap," if only because there's a number of factors when determining a dub's budget, not the least of which is what the original animation company is willing to put into it. However, you're right in that, upon looking at the original cast list, it looks like the original dub was an ACTRA (Canadian actor's union) dub. The reason that's significant is because ACTRA dubs are, as it turns out, the most expensive English dubs you can possibly request. They're even more expensive than SAG-AFTRA (the US actor's union) dubbing rates.

ACTRA dubbing rate (adjusted to U.S. dollar value): $80 per hour of studio time (rounded up).
SAG-AFTRA dubbing rate: $64.25 per hour of studio time.
Typical non-union dubbing rate ("typical" because there are no official standards in the non-union world): $50 per hour of studio time.

Sadly, between the rates, piracy, the original Japanese companies pushing for higher profits, and established business relationships with other dubbing companies, this is why you don't see a lot of ACTRA dubs anymore. Apparently even DBZ was an ACTRA dub back when the Ocean cast was doing it.

As it relates to the Ocean dub of Kai...we don't know for a fact if it was an ACTRA dub or a non-union dub, because both have come out of Canada before, with the Ocean and Westwood dubs being union, and the Blue Water dubs being non-unon. However, the fact that they got so many members of the original cast back suggests that perhaps this was an ACTRA dub, which just makes this all the more confusing as to why this dub was green-lit before a TV deal was in place.

[Super Sayian Prime]

I believe every Ocean dub is an ACTRA production. Blue Water uses unionized talent as well, but they use CLAC, a union with lower rates. ACTRA doesn't like that (CTRL+F "CLAC" here).

[Cure Dragon 255]

Sooooo... FamilyCHRGD is going to air the Iron Man anime. I REALLY hope this means channels are more open minded towards anime.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I believe every Ocean dub is an ACTRA production. Blue Water uses unionized talent as well, but they use CLAC, a union with lower rates. ACTRA doesn't like that (CTRL+F "CLAC" here).

Super Saiyan Prime, this is friggin' fascinating to me, thanks for the find! I had never heard of CLAC before. Upon digging into it further, it seems that they're quite the controversial union, due in no small part to their lower standards. Some people online are apparently even accusing it of being a "union" in name only. I have no idea if this is true or just somebody's opinion, but one thing I read about them states...

"The Christian Labour Association of Canada, not to put too fine a point on it, is a fake union. They're an association with no standing in the Canadian Labour Congress. They oppose Wage Equity and anti-sexual discrimination campaigns because they believe they 'undermine the foundations of such institutions as marriage and the family.' CLAC is the bosses favorite union. Employers bring them in to keep real unions out."

As a SAG-AFTRA member myself, that's fascinating. We're constantly doing our best to keep things unionized and to re-unionize productions that have gone non-union. Of all the things that non-union productions have tried, creating a new (pseudo-)union with comparatively sub-par conditions is not one of them. What I also find interesting is that, in discussing Blue Water online with a Canadian voice actor friend of mine, they described Blue Water as, "A pleasant place to work, albeit non-union." They didn't bring up CLAC. So either they didn't know about it, or they don't really consider CLAC to be a particularly good/legitimate union, as the above statement implies.

There have been rumors going around for a while that the Ocean dub of Kai would make use of both Ocean and Blue Water talent, with most of the roles going to Blue Water, but the bigger roles going to Ocean. The reasoning apparently was that Blue Water was cheaper...but I wondered if that meant the dub was non-union, since it's highly unusual for a union production to pay its actors below union scale. Perhaps the Ocean dub of Kai is an ACTRA and CLAC co-production? I don't know how Canadian law works, but perhaps using two unions at once might have been the loophole they used to get both studios involved.

Wow, call me a dork, but as both a SAG-AFTRA member and someone who is interested in labor unions in general, that's one heck of an interesting case. Thanks again!

[Super Sayian Prime]

I'm not an expert on labour unions, but I'm going to guess that if CLAC didn't have some legal ground they wouldn't still be around.

The Ocean <-> Blue Water collaboration dub idea isn't exclusive to Kai. They've recorded a few shows like that, including B-Daman Fireblast and Little Battlers eXperience. I'm sure they're skirting the line of ACTRA's acceptance by paying the Vancouver voice actors their proper rates, while the Calgary cast get CLAC'd.

Not directly related to this conversation, but it looks like Blue Water might have opened a second recording studio in Edmonton, Alberta. The end credits for the most recent Cardfight Vanguard season says it was recorded in Calgary and Edmonton. It looks like they're expanding ... or maybe they moved locations mid-production.

Sooooo... FamilyCHRGD is going to air the Iron Man anime. I REALLY hope this means channels are more open minded towards anime.

I'm not sure that's an opening for anime so much as it is a broadcaster desperate to run something to tie-in with Captain America: Civil War. But hey, it's more than what we had last week.

[Arian]

So I emailed Canadian network, Teletoon with the following question:

Spoiler:

Has Teletoon or any network owned by Corus been offered to air the Dragon Ball Kai program?

And this was their response:

Spoiler:

Hi Arian,

Thanks for your email.

There is currently no plan on adding this show to our programming line-up. For up-to-date schedule information, please visit our SCHEDULE page.

Regards,

TELETOON

Just the fact that the show hasn't even been pitched after all this time really makes me lose steam in this.

[NitroEX]

Even if it had been pitched to them I doubt they would freely admit it in an email.

[VejituhTheWarriorGuy]

It's dead at this point, it's probably been recorded but it's not coming out. Would it have been cool to see? Oh hell yeah, but with a replacement score and possibly some other very ancient decisions being made with it, maybe it's a good thing that it never became a thing especially because we have FUNi's dub for our go to English version of the show.

[Arian]

Even if it had been pitched to them I doubt they would freely admit it in an email.

True, but there's a chance that they'd say it's coming if they had signed it.