I started watching in the year 2000 when the Saban dub started airing in the UK. Although I didn't have internet access until 2004, I did go back and check out many old forums and knew all too well how hated the Funimation dub was by the online fandom at the time. The thing that you've failed to mention is the fact that those fans were and still are a minority. The overwhelming majority of the audience from the US and other English speaking countries where kids too young to be posting on the internet until several years later.ABED wrote:You keep saying the dub was a success. It was DRAGON BALL that was a success. DB has been a success everywhere no matter what was done with it. DBZ got the most cheap and slipshod dub imaginable. Cheap music, cheap (and miscast) actors, and even cheap DVD/VHS cover art. Yet, despite all that, DBZ found huge success in the US. It seems that you're trying to claim that it's a success BECAUSE of those changes. Casual fans weren't watching the dub. They watched DBZ.
It was objectively not a quality dub. It was cheap. The actors were chosen because they were inexpensive and the talent pool was incredibly small, and they were hired not for their talent but for their ability to sound like the previous cast. None of this is remotely controversial. It's very well known. I don't know if you were around back when DBZ was first airing, but fans weren't enthusiastic about the new voices when season 3 started. At some point, that changed and people DBZ fans came to love them. That leads me to believe it's nostalgia of the casual audience. It's what they grew up with.
They weren't there when DB was at its peak in the US.And why aren't they nostalgic for the Menza/Jonson scores too?
I know you want to claim this is a slam dunk argument, but plenty of people are nostalgic towards the previous cast.Are they somehow objective about voice acting but not music?
If I had to give it a rough estimate I'd say the dub fans began to emerge online in their masses around 2007, by which time they were old enough to post online and more and more houses were getting access to the internet.
And again I have to stress I'm not attributing the entirety of the dubs success to the changes. I'm just pointing out that stuff like the Faulconer score and the various dub lines are still brought up fondly to this day. When you look at dub fans conversing amongst themselves you don't hear them say "DBZ was awesome. Except the music and stupid lines". On the contrary those things are brought up and praised regularly, especially the Faulconer score which many say fits the show perfectly and that the show would feel incomplete without it.
Your whole counterargument hinges on some outlandish claim that everyone who still likes the aspects of the old dub is a slave to nostalgia, and incapable of rational thought even after 15 years. At the same time you are somehow immune to having your judgement clouded and understand all of their minds better than they do themselves.
Where did you get your data to arrive at this conclusion? What survey did you conduct? What questions did you ask? How did you interpret and relate the answers to nostalgia blindness?