What would a DB dub, with an A-list budget, look like?

[huzaifa_ahmed]

For a long time (to this day, even) anime in non-Japanese territories has been treated either as the butt of the joke (hentai, anyone?) or reluctant tolerance (DBZ, Pokemon, GitS, Akira - of all things), or "nerd" acceptance (for "reversioned"/crossover stuff like Transformers, Battle of the Planets, Voltron, etc.). While I am not sure exactly how the Japanese economics work on anime, what I do know is that regardless of subsequent popularity, literally every anime ever to be licensed to the States, was dubbed on virtually no budget, & 90% of the time with very little input from the Japanese. If it ever, God forbid, became popular (no thanks to shitty non-existent advertising/funding), it always always remained a non-budgeted production, or we made our own, 'Murican version.

We had to have those comfy-budgeted Mario, Megaman, Zelda, Captain N, Street Fighter, Sonic the Hedgehog (who's anime was...dubbed non-union - for Christ's sake, Sega! Treat your product right!) cartoons (& the God-forsaken Hollywood CGI Astro Boy movies).

When Pokemon became a massive hit on TV broadcast, Crispin Freeman (who was writing the English scripts at the time) felt that the show should at least be a unionized production, whereas 4Kids!...not so much. In 2006, NoA even cheaped out on the non-union cast, replacing them with barely-legal amateurs.

Again, while I have honestly very little understanding of how & why this has always been the case with licensing (i.e. they don't treat it properly), if possible I would have imagined Marvel licensing & funding the show's English-dub instead.

Marvel, who had connections with Toei since the 1980's, having had a dropped animated series produced by them, as well as (admittedly) having a Japanese live-action Spider-Man (which became Sentai...which came back over here as Power Rangers...full circle).

They also had their own X-Men Evolution animated in Japan (to be fair, many US cartoons do), as well recorded not just in Canada, but specifically at Ocean Group studio, where, of course recorded...was Dragon Ball Z (& pre-Z as well).

Marvel would later go on to contract (Madhouse, of course - they shot for qualty) an anime to be produced, & to be fair, while the dub wasn't complete A-list a la Ocean Group's Kai...they did fund it well enough to bring in famous live-actors, as well as other fine B-C-list ADR actors.

What would the cast of a faithful dub from either Ocean Group, or a Jack Fletcher/Kris Zimmerman LA dub with high-end actors, look like?

[RedRibbonSoldier#42]

It would look a lot like DBZ kai looks. The English side of DB is pretty good now, and I think anime in general is not being mistreated by western licensees. Even on the Japanese side, its not like anime is made with truckloads of money.

[RedRibbonSoldier#42]

Also, how is Pokemon "reluctantly tolerated" It's massive, everyone loves it

[Hellspawn28]

^Well you have people that love the games and manga, but hate the anime.

[Naruto6583]

^Well you have people that love the games and manga, but hate the anime.

How long has the anime been going on anyway?

[sintzu]

How long has the anime been going on anyway?

April 1st 1997.

As of now 914 episodes and 19 movies have been produced.

[Naruto6583]

How long has the anime been going on anyway?

April 1st 1997.

As of now 914 episodes and 19 movies have been produced.

Jeez and its still going?

[Kunzait_83]

Also, how is Pokemon "reluctantly tolerated" It's massive, everyone loves it

Not by anyone who wasn't roughly 5 to 10 years old during the late 90s/early 2000s. If you genuinely think that most typical 30 to 40+ year olds anywhere today give two shits about Pokemon in ANY fashion, you are DEEP within the millennial-shonen bubble. Pokemon is all but exclusively the domain of today's early to mid-20 somethings (maybe a few late 20-somethings here or there at the absolute oldest) and younger. Its audience is certainly massive, but hardly universal.

[Ringworm128]

The stuff you listed is from like 10-20 years ago. Most anime gets an accurate, respectable dub and a subtitled version. We even have dubs that use honerifics. While not everything has been perfect we've had:

Dragonboxes (with supurb subs)
A good dub with Kai
Good dubs with just about everything else)
4:3 Blu Rays, even if they didn't last long.

DB doesn't really get mistreated anymore outside of the home video department, even the slight liberties with Kai were due to Funi trying to please both dub and sub fans.

[Hellspawn28]

I remember rumors of a animated series based on Dragon Ball Evolution was in works if the movie was popular enough. I would imagine a American properly DB series would end up awful like Speed Racer: The Next Generation and the new Voltron show from a couple years ago. I think a DB American comic book series could work if they get the right people behind it. With a good artist that can capture the feel of Dragon Ball and a good writer, I could see IDW or Boom! Studios making a DB comic book series.

Pokemon is all but exclusively the domain of today's early to mid-20 somethings (maybe a few late 20-somethings here or there at the absolute oldest) and younger. Its audience is certainly massive, but hardly universal.

Pokemon was popular with kids from 4-12 in the US. So I would imagine people born between 1986-1995 got into the G1 Pokemon hype in 1998-1999.

[Adamant]

Also, how is Pokemon "reluctantly tolerated" It's massive, everyone loves it

Not by anyone who wasn't roughly 5 to 10 years old during the late 90s/early 2000s. If you genuinely think that most typical 30 to 40+ year olds anywhere today give two shits about Pokemon in ANY fashion, you are DEEP within the millennial-shonen bubble. Pokemon is all but exclusively the domain of today's early to mid-20 somethings (maybe a few late 20-somethings here or there at the absolute oldest) and younger. Its audience is certainly massive, but hardly universal.

Yep.
They brought in 33-year-old Tatsuya Fujiwara to play one of the main characters in last year's Pokemon movie, and reading interviews and commentary from him on the subject made it pretty clear that while he knew and had a lot of respect for how enormously huge and long-lasting the franchise is, he had next to no clue what the hell it was actually about. The man was born in 1982, meaning he was 14 at the time the games were released in Japan, just old enough to most likely not have taken an interest in them at the time.

[Kunzait_83]

Pokemon was popular with kids from 4-12 in the US. So I would imagine people born between 1986-1995 got into the G1 Pokemon hype in 1998-1999.

Yep, that sounds about right. Which is all well and good granted, but that hardly makes Pokemon's appeal transcend to ALL age groups. Unless you're someone who somehow sincerely believes that the entire planet's populace is solely made up of people age 25 and younger (at this point, I've heard people believe in weirder and stupider things).

They brought in 33-year-old Tatsuya Fujiwara to play one of the main characters in last year's Pokemon movie, and reading interviews and commentary from him on the subject made it pretty clear that while he knew and had a lot of respect for how enormously huge and long-lasting the franchise is, he had next to no clue what the hell it was actually about. The man was born in 1982, meaning he was 14 at the time the games were released in Japan, just old enough to most likely not have taken an interest in them at the time.

I'm 32, born in 1983. My 20s still weren't THAT long ago (the vast bulk of my posting history here was done during my early to mid-20s: gah) and I still vividly remember gaggles upon gaggles of overzealous Gen Y Millennial anime fans throughout my college years (some even being from this very forum, *ahem*) being absolutely BAFFLED and dumbstruck to their very core as to why I didn't in any way, shape, or form know or care anything about Pokemon.


(Typical reaction that would follow.)

"I was in fucking high school by the time this shit came about" evidently was never seen as an acceptable enough answer to keep the torches and pitchforks from coming out.

Pokemon fans are an endlessly mystifying bunch.

[MajinMan]

It would look something similar to the current Funimation dub with maybe different quality when it comes to voice acting. The one thing it won't have are the dub holdovers Funi has kept. No "King Kai," "Master Roshi," "Korin," etc. I would assume that the pronunciations would also be correct and that there would be little to no censorship, at least in the uncut version.

[Mewzard]

We even have dubs that use honerifics.

I would argue that's not really treating a series properly (An English dub really shouldn't be using Japanese honorifics).

That said, I do otherwise agree that anime dubbing has come a long way and would argue it's quite respectful now, for the most part. Dragon Ball is being treated very well at this point.

[huzaifa_ahmed]

The stuff you listed is from like 10-20 years ago. Most anime gets an accurate, respectable dub and a subtitled version. We even have dubs that use honerifics. While not everything has been perfect we've had:

Dragonboxes (with supurb subs)
A good dub with Kai
Good dubs with just about everything else)
4:3 Blu Rays, even if they didn't last long.

DB doesn't really get mistreated anymore outside of the home video department, even the slight liberties with Kai were due to Funi trying to please both dub and sub fans.

I'm talking about the non-budgets for the dubs. When the Japanese care about our market, they hire A-list VA's. This never happens with anime dubs outside Canada

[precita]

How long has the anime been going on anyway?

April 1st 1997.

As of now 914 episodes and 19 movies have been produced.

Jeez and its still going?

It really surprises you the Pokemon anime is still going? It covers every set of new games Nintendo releases. I think a better question is why they didn't axe Ash and bring in a new male lead every generation, but that's another issue.

[Naruto6583]

It really surprises you the Pokemon anime is still going? It covers every set of new games Nintendo releases. I think a better question is why they didn't axe Ash and bring in a new male lead every generation, but that's another issue.[/quote]
I actually stopped watching it a long ago so yeah I was surprised

[Hellspawn28]

The Pokemon anime is made to promote the games and to sell toys. So Pokemon will go on forever.

[Super Sonic]

It really surprises you the Pokemon anime is still going? It covers every set of new games Nintendo releases. I think a better question is why they didn't axe Ash and bring in a new male lead every generation, but that's another issue.

I actually stopped watching it a long ago so yeah I was surprised[/quote]

TBH, I thought they would do that similar to how Digimon did at the end of season 2, without the parts folks complained about with an epilogue of Ash being a well accomplished trainer and marrying Misty with the Hoenn stuff focusing on Brendan and May.

[MarcFBR]

You think you're out and they pull you back in...

For a long time (to this day, even) anime in non-Japanese territories has been treated either as the butt of the joke (hentai, anyone?)

You get everything is the butt of a joke right? This isn't really specific to anime. Sure it isn't heavily respected like anime fans want, but 90% of the time, the larger places making jokes about it are doing it out of love.

or reluctant tolerance (DBZ, Pokemon, GitS, Akira - of all things)

Same as someone else, I don't really get the 'reluctant tolerance' here at all.

or "nerd" acceptance (for "reversioned"/crossover stuff like Transformers, Battle of the Planets, Voltron, etc.)

So are we saying Pokemon is respected less than Voltron? And Transformers would be defined as an American cartoon by the way we tend to define animation (Transformers seems to pop up a ton in this type of argument, but I'll give it the benefit since the original toys were Japanese.)

While I am not sure exactly how the Japanese economics work on anime, what I do know is that regardless of subsequent popularity, literally every anime ever to be licensed to the States, was dubbed on virtually no budget, & 90% of the time with very little input from the Japanese

Tight budgets... certainly. 'Literally ever' ever? Not at all. If it was literally 'every' we wouldn't have John C. Reilly in a recent anime dub.

And no input from the Japanese? In general a good chunk of them have input. Certainly many/most pre-2000s were done without much input, but that hasn't really been true in a very very VERY long time (in general, the dubs they have relatively low input on tend to seem to go smoother. Unlike say... Eureka 7.)

If it ever, God forbid, became popular (no thanks to shitty non-existent advertising/funding), it always always remained a non-budgeted production, or we made our own, 'Murican version.

I'm really not sure the point here, it appears to be more ranting than anything.

We had to have those comfy-budgeted Mario, Megaman, Zelda, Captain N, Street Fighter, Sonic the Hedgehog (who's anime was...dubbed non-union - for Christ's sake, Sega! Treat your product right!) cartoons (& the God-forsaken Hollywood CGI Astro Boy movies).

I... you realize they didn't have full Mario, Mega Man, or Zelda series at the time right? And our Street Fighter series was specifically meant to be a sequel/tie in to the movie. And there was no Sonic series when they made the various American Sonic shows.

You realize MOST anime dubs are non-union right? And Sega didn't do the dub themselves?

Not to mention the (one) CGI Astro Boy movie wasn't as Hollywood as you'd think... I mean, it was done by Imagi who hired a decent chunk of American staff.

When Pokemon became a massive hit on TV broadcast, Crispin Freeman (who was writing the English scripts at the time) felt that the show should at least be a unionized production, whereas 4Kids!...not so much. In 2006, NoA even cheaped out on the non-union cast, replacing them with barely-legal amateurs.

Crispin Freeman has said he worked on some adapted scripts, but I don't believe the number was known, so it's probably be more accurate to say he wrote 'some' of the English scripts. And again, I'm not sure how them choosing to leave it non union matters. It was a non-union production, it stayed one. Not sure where you get 'barely legal' from. It's not like actors need a license to be able to act.

Again, while I have honestly very little understanding of how & why this has always been the case with licensing (i.e. they don't treat it properly), if possible I would have imagined Marvel licensing & funding the show's English-dub instead.

You know Marvel was about on it's last breath around that time right?

Marvel, who had connections with Toei since the 1980's, having had a dropped animated series produced by them, as well as (admittedly) having a Japanese live-action Spider-Man (which became Sentai...which came back over here as Power Rangers...full circle).

This really has nothing to do with the subject on hand.

They also had their own X-Men Evolution animated in Japan (to be fair, many US cartoons do), as well recorded not just in Canada, but specifically at Ocean Group studio, where, of course recorded...was Dragon Ball Z (& pre-Z as well).

Again, I'm not sure what this has to do with your subject. Marvel didn't make X-Men Evolution. They are credited on it because they were partners. It was made by Film Roman/Warner.

Marvel would later go on to contract (Madhouse, of course - they shot for qualty) an anime to be produced, & to be fair, while the dub wasn't complete A-list a la Ocean Group's Kai...they did fund it well enough to bring in famous live-actors, as well as other fine B-C-list ADR actors.

I thought literally every anime ever was dubbed on a tight budget? Also, you know those anime generally weren't recieved that well right?

What would the cast of a proper (either Ocean or A-list Los Angeles) DB be like?

You know the primary reason many companies used Ocean was they were cheaper and worked non-union right?

...and that Ocean did dub Dragon Ball?


I feel like you have a large misunderstanding on how much of this stuff works.