Post
by penguintruth » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:30 pm
It's a question I tackled in a certain article I wrote for my blog (linked in my signature), and I thought for a while on it.
There's never been a good Dragon Ball Z English dub, that's the main conclusion I've come to.
The Ocean dub, as we all know, was the victim of Saban's rampant censorship, but it also had a pretty poor script, which may be more the fault of Ocean itself.
The main cast had some decent voice actors, I thought. Peter Kelamis' turn as Son Goku in season 2 was acceptable, because he brought a certain high-energy, child-like charm to the role. Brian Drummond had a certain halting, pointed way of talking as Vegeta, making the character seem very self-important, like he enjoys everything he's saying, which suits the character.
However, there were a lot of issues with minor characters. Most of the minor characters had voices which were plain at best, and painful at worst. I'm reminded of the voices of King Kai and Freeza, for instance. Bulma's voice was pretty bland, I recall.
The Ocean dubs of the first three movies were a bit better, probably the best English dub DBZ has ever received. This could be because of the inclusion of the Kikuchi score and the lack of most of the minor characters from the show, though.
Then there's the Funimation dub. Here was a dub that, at best, was uncensored as far as actual video content, on the DVDs. This made a difference, to be sure, but it still isn't worth the downside of this particular dub. That is, the scripting is still terrible, and the voices are even worse than the Ocean dub's.
This is, of course, my own opinion, but I can now barely sit through a couple of episodes of this dub at a time, and wonder how I ever did when it first aired. The voices are painful. Sean Schemmel, while not a terrible VA, sounds like he's tearing his vocal cords up trying to be Goku, and the worst thing is, he's just doing a bad impression of Ian Corlett half the time. Chris Sabat plays half the roles in this dub, and most of them sound exactly the same: bad. His Vegeta improves eventually, but his Piccolo always seems wrong. Linda Young's Freeza sounds like a tranny. Bulma sounds worse than before thanks to Tiffany Vollmer's Valley Girl approach to the role (but, to be fair to her, it could be bad directing).
The scripting is still bad, leading to things like "General Tao", "Whatever turns you on", "Mondo nuts!", "He took me from my father as a child! Don't let him do it to anyone else!", and various other lines that didn't just sound weird and clunky, but actually at times completely changed the connotation of a scene.
The re-dub of the earlier seasons is only slightly better, but they use a lot of the scripting from the previous attempt, and with it lacking the nostalgic value of the Ocean dub, any attempt at accuracy at that point fell flat, because it was too little, too late. If they'd completely scrapped the old script and started anew, I could accept it, but all there was were some minor alterations here and there, and it still felt pretty lame. Still, I can't blame them for trying, at least for continuity's sake.
At least they eventually ditched the awful techno-rock Falcouner music for the re-dub and stuck with the original Kikuchi score.
Neither dub had a good Freeza, Yamcha, Tenshinhan, King Kai, Ginyu Force, Chi-Chi, Bulma, or several other characters.
Now, I have limited experience with the later material in the Ocean dub. I didn't follow the UK-aired Ocean dub of the later seasons. I've only seen clips of it on the internet. It seems like Ocean didn't really rise up, either, to be honest.
So, as I began, my conclusion is, neither dub is great. I have more nostalgic sentiment for the Ocean dub, but I'm not under any impression that it's good. It's certainly less painful to listen to, though.
I've largely stuck with the Japanese version for the past seven or eight years.
Kentai wrote:Son Gokuu is a fascinating character anyway, because he is - at face value, anyway - an idiot savant. The victim of violent head trauma as an infant [...] he's a simple bumpkin with a fair share of brain damage who's natural talents to work out what's wrong compensate for his broad lack of common sense. But he's also a fighter, through and through [...] he fight until he has, in no uncertain terms, beaten his enemy on terms they can both acknowledge. He doesn't want to kill anyone, or even prove that he can win... he just wants to know he can. He's an ineffably charming bastard who's manly leanings were really incendental, and yes, the fact that he was voiced by a squeaky woman made the combination perhaps all the more charming.
Dragon Ball (Z) Kai Reviews!
Can I get a Schemen?
How is Babidi's name horribly pronounced? It sounds exactly the same as it did in Japanese. 
