Post
by MultilangDBZ » Wed Feb 01, 2006 9:47 pm
As an advocate of accuracy in Dragon Ball, I would find the majority of edits from the Japanese original deemed as unnecessary. So, I'll just deem such edits as unnecessary per se without going into too much elaboration as to the justifications for them - e.g. suitability for children, moral values etc. Fortunately, in the dubbed versions of Dragon Ball that I've seen, there were much, much fewer edits compared to the English (FUNi) dub, so they can be easily pinpointed.
Apart from watching the entire DB/DBZ/GT series in Japanese, I've seen the whole of DBZ and GT in Cantonese and DBZ for Mandarin. However, I've only seen about 10 episodes of the English FUNi dub of each of DB/DBZ/GT so I can't really comment on the FUNi dub or draw comparisons with it.
In the Cantonese version of DB/DBZ/GT (that aired in Hong Kong and some parts of Southern China), a few of Kame Sennin's sexual antics on Bulma were cut - like in episode 2 of DBZ for instance, when Muten Roshi tells Bulma with an outstretched hand that he wants to touch her breasts; along with some of the connotations relating to promiscuity/sex before marriage being changed - i.e. in episode 122 when Mirai Trunks tells Goku about why Bulma isn't with Yamucha, him being a 'playboy' was changed to 'they had a fight'.
The use of profanity was tamed considerably in the Cantonese version also - words like kuso and kusotare from the Japanese original were reduced to hor woo in the Cantonese dub, meaning 'despicable'. But phrases with words like 'die' and 'hell' were kept intact using the Cantonese equivalents in line with the story.
For violence, I only recall one 2-second cut which was in episode 121 of DBZ - the part when Mirai Trunks gives a frenzy of extra slices with his sword and then seeing Freeza's hovering remains spinning in the air was cut. Of course, the segment before that involving the splitting of Freeza into two was kept along with the following segment of Freeza's remains being disintegrated by Trunks' Burning Attack. Now, I have to say that I was really disappointed with that one violence edit since that and episode 122 are my favorite episodes in DBZ, and that they couldn't have picked a worse time to place an edit. I guess that TVB (the broadcasting company in charge of that dub) felt that dicing a foe crossed the line into heinousness from just killing, but nevertheless, they ruined the episode for viewers who have seen the Japanese original.
Other than the above edits, everything else such as the original BGM and episode numbering (291 episodes) is the same.
In the Mandarin version of DB/DBZ/GT (that aired in Taiwan, Northern and most of China, and Singapore), everything is the same with the Japanese original apart from one or two profanity changes.
The only edit on profanity was exactly the same as the Cantonese version, which were also on the words kuso and kusotare, being changed to ke wu (the same word of 'despicable' above except in Mandarin pronunciation). However, on some occasions for Vegeta, who uses the most profanity, the Mandarin version allowed for a cruder word of hun zhang ('bastard' or 'son of a bitch') whereas the Cantonese version disallowed it.
Likewise, everything else like the BGM, including the sexual antics, references to promiscuity and violence that were cut in the Cantonese version was left untouched the Mandarin version.
Edits aside, although the Mandarin version is almost the same as the Japanese original, I love the Cantonese dub the most (albeit having a couple of edits) due to its extremely accurate use of voice actors and voices that accurately reflect tone, pitch and attitude of characters of the original. After all, a good dub should show dexterity in voice acting and the Cantonese version nails it perfectly (perhaps due to sufficient resources because of Hong Kong cinema). Although that being said, the voice acting in the Mandarin version is only off by a small amount.
The analytical enigma. 分析性的不解之谜.
