A dub before Harmony Gold?

[GreatSaiyaJeff]

So this youtuber I follow, LsupersonicQ does a series of videos on lost media, uploaded one about a dub that may have happened before the Harmony Gold Dub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aprunUZjoJQ

I found this facinating, how about you guys?

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Nice one, I'm all for raising awareness of Dragon Ball's lost media, especially the likes of the Frontier Enterprises dub where next to nothing is known.

I wonder if any of the airlines that received Frontier Enterprises materials have a copy in their archives? Could be worth looking into if we can find out which particular airlines they were distributed to, although I'd be amazed if they preserved them after all these years.

[Hellspawn28]

From what I've been told that most of Frontier's work is probably sitting in some vault in Japan, probably at Toei. They did so much work for Toei than Toho, and their work was once distributed here by Celebrity (With Princess from the Moon being one exception). I'm a fan of Frontier's work as someone who loves Japanese and cult cinema.

[Robo4900]

This is rather interesting.

I must admit, I still find the 2005/2006 Animax Asia dub to be the most interesting "Lost" dub by far (and the one I'd be most keen to get my hands on), but this is certainly a rather neat thing to hear about. It's cool we're still learning new things about Dragon Ball's dubbing in 2019.

[VegettoEX]

This has been brought up a few times in the past-

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=42379

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=43589

Also worth noting that comics/anime press were operating under the assumption in 1995 that Nippon Suppan Hanbai / U.S. Renditions had the license when FUNimation suddenly announced they had it.

[DrBriefsCat]

From what I've been told that most of Frontier's work is probably sitting in some vault in Japan, probably at Toei. They did so much work for Toei than Toho, and their work was once distributed here by Celebrity (With Princess from the Moon being one exception). I'm a fan of Frontier's work as someone who loves Japanese and cult cinema.

I doubt it. Some of Frontier's other dubs, like the Lupin III dub from the '70s, no longer exist in a copy from the Japanese licensor. For Discotek's DVD release of the Mamo movie, they had to reconstruct the dub from multiple sources (an edited Italian DVD and fan-circulated VHS copies). Frontier's dub of Dragon Ball was never released, so it's probably lost to time. Toei also doesn't have a particularly good track record of preserving things.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Frontier's dub of Dragon Ball was never released, so it's probably lost to time. Toei also doesn't have a particularly good track record of preserving things.

Exactly. Toei is unfortunately not even good at preserving the original Japanese broadcast audio of their own shows. What a pity...it would have been fun to hear what this dub sounded like!

[Robo4900]

The real tragedy isn't that this might not exist, it's that if it does exist, there's no way it ever will be released. Funi just don't do releases of the sort that would have this, and no one else puts out their own, independent English releases of the show.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

The real tragedy isn't that this might not exist, it's that if it does exist, there's no way it ever will be released. Funi just don't do releases of the sort that would have this, and no one else puts out their own, independent English releases of the show.

Worse still, even if the masters still exist TOEI may not allow distributors to use them. When I reached out to Madman recently asking about whether or not they would ever consider releasing the Canadian dubs they said they won't because TOEI told them to only release Funimation's dubs, so there is a good chance that any efforts to release the Frontier Enterprises dub would be met with a similar response.

[Robo4900]

The real tragedy isn't that this might not exist, it's that if it does exist, there's no way it ever will be released. Funi just don't do releases of the sort that would have this, and no one else puts out their own, independent English releases of the show.

Worse still, even if the masters still exist TOEI may not allow distributors to use them. When I reached out to Madman recently asking about whether or not they would ever consider releasing the Canadian dubs they said they won't because TOEI told them to only release Funimation's dubs, so there is a good chance that any efforts to release the Frontier Enterprises dub would be met with a similar response.

Toei's talk with Madman will have been advisory. If the distributor wants to buy a particular dub for release, they're giving Toei money, Toei won't care.

[TheBlackPaladin]

The real tragedy isn't that this might not exist, it's that if it does exist, there's no way it ever will be released. Funi just don't do releases of the sort that would have this, and no one else puts out their own, independent English releases of the show.

Worse still, even if the masters still exist TOEI may not allow distributors to use them. When I reached out to Madman recently asking about whether or not they would ever consider releasing the Canadian dubs they said they won't because TOEI told them to only release Funimation's dubs, so there is a good chance that any efforts to release the Frontier Enterprises dub would be met with a similar response.

Toei's talk with Madman will have been advisory. If the distributor wants to buy a particular dub for release, they're giving Toei money, Toei won't care.

Overall, I"m inclined to agree. To play devil's advocate, though, we know via some accidentally-intercepted emails between Toei and "Wow!", the upcoming Canadian TV network, that Toei's representative was pushing the FUNimation dub of Kai while also discouraging the Wow representative from acquiring the Ocean dub, noting that the FUNimation dub's footage is HD-compatible, whereas the Ocean dub's footage isn't. So it's not inconceivable to me that Toei would have a preference...

...That said, I ultimately agree that, when it comes to "preferences," their biggest preference is whichever dub a licensee will pay the most money for.

[Danfun64]

When I reached out to Madman recently asking about whether or not they would ever consider releasing the Canadian dubs

Wait, what? The only Canadian dubs Australia received were those affiliated with Funi. Since Westwood Z, Blue Water DB, and Blue Water GT never aired in Australia, I don't see a market for those dubs there.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

When I reached out to Madman recently asking about whether or not they would ever consider releasing the Canadian dubs

Wait, what? The only Canadian dubs Australia received were those affiliated with Funi. Since Westwood Z, Blue Water DB, and Blue Water GT never aired in Australia, I don't see a market for those dubs there.

True, but there would still be a market to import them if it was a collector's edition type release like Rock the Dragon. The Westwood and Blue Water dubs are highly sought after for never having a home release, especially because the former features most of the old classic cast from the Saban days.

Suffice to say this topic is about the Frontier dub, point is it may take convincing TOEI to let other distributors do home releases with non-Funi dubs because things of this nature point to TOEI having their own reasons, perhaps advisory, for only wanting Funimation's dub to be available for purchase. It may be its to prevent over saturation and/ market confusion, but we may never know.

[Robo4900]

Suffice to say this topic is about the Frontier dub, point is it may take convincing TOEI to let other distributors do home releases with non-Funi dubs because things of this nature point to TOEI having their own reasons, perhaps advisory, for only wanting Funimation's dub to be available for purchase. It may be its to prevent over saturation and/ market confusion, but we may never know.

Toei don't give a rat's ass.

Rock The Dragon happened, the Big Green DVDs were made available in ~2004, the BLT DVDs didn't go out of print until 2009, and when Funi were putting their boxset of the DB movies together, they considered just putting the original BLT dub of movie 1 on there...
MangaUK's Dragon Ball season 1 DVDs literally contain the BLT dub of DB movie 1 to this day. (As does Madman's, I think?) You can walk into a store and buy a Dragon Ball DVD with 26 episodes of Funi plus an Ocean movie, as the standard release of that material in the UK.

And oversaturation? Have you seen how frequently Funi have pointlessly re-re-re-re-released DBZ?

All Toei care about is money. If something will make money, they will be behind it. If a licensor wants a particular version released, and they think it'll make money, Toei will be behind it. Even if it doesn't make much money, the licensor will have still had to pay Toei to get ahold of the specific dub, so Toei wins either way.

Toei have no preference. Any ideas that Toei have a preference is just people jumping to conclusions, trying to build some kind of narrative, a reason for things to have happened a certain way. Because it's comforting to imagine that we didn't get, say, the Ocean Kai dub for a specific reason, that it wasn't basically just a random choice, or just a matter of things just so happening to line up to be more convenient to not favour that dub getting a release until now.
Realistically, these companies rarely ever have any kind of agenda except money. And assigning any kind of agenda to them is, to me, rather silly if you don't have some damn good insight into what's going on behind the scenes from verifiable sources. Still, the part that actually bothers me isn't a couple of people subscribing to this silliness, it's spreading this around as information, when it's essentially baseless speculation. We already have plenty of that in the Dragon Ball fandom as it is, so can we at least make an effort to not add this particular piece of nonsense to the pile too?