Fionordequester wrote: ↑Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:37 pm
You know, I get most of the sentiments expressed in this thread. I only have one question...
What's everyone's deal with the music? I thought that, aside from the instruments themselves, it was an improvement in virtually every way! It's my favorite anime soundtrack to date; It's even inspired me to learn how to make music one day!
I just don't get the dislike for the Team Faulconer score
...
I can't speak for others who hate Faulconer on principle.
For me, my dislike is more that ever since I learned about what Dragon Ball was meant to be, it absolutely doesn't fit. It's like replacing John Williams' Star Wars music with funk and glam rock because that was in at the time . Are Jefferson Starship and David Bowie good artists? I think so. Would they go well with Star Wars? Does orange juice and milk go with onions & tomato juice? (And before anyone mentions Jefferson Starship being in the Holiday Special; first, that special is trash; second, it just proves my point)
If you grew up in, say, France or Turkey and had this funk/glam soundtrack for the first three Star Wars movies to the point you erroneously believe that's what Star Wars should sound like, I'm not going to deny you your nostalgia but I will tell you that you got a butchered, ridiculously unfitting version. Imagine Bowie's "Fame" playing during the Cantina scene or T-Rex's "20th Century Boy" during a confrontation with Stormtroopers. It would create an almost schizophrenic atmosphere that has nothing to do with (and might even outright betray) the original product and intent.
To me, the Faulconer soundtrack is a lot like that. By itself, it's pretty good. Well... a good chunk of it is.
Babidi Casts Spell, the Final Atonement theme, the Ginyu/180,000?! theme, Vegeta's Vision, Vegeta's Death, Sage Music, Goku and Gohan, and so on— actually good soundtrack music. I
especially love "Babidi Casts Spell".
Others just don't fucking cut it. A good chunk sound like Sesame Street music in instrumentation and progression because of this idea that DBZ's wackier moments needed that "goofy childish music". Except they soundtrack would also often use the "funny" instrumentation and progression even during serious moments if a certain character even so much as showed up on the screen or said something mildly "comical" (lines you can bet weren't in the Japanese version). Others just sound flat-out unfinished. My go-to example is Piccolo vs. Frieza. I haven't linked any songs in this post yet, but I will just for this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOMH5XI2cWk
You listen to that and tell me
THIS is fit for air. It's the kind of song that would get a "D" in a high school music class if submitted as a finished product.
Another one that has a cool-sounding melody but completely shits the bed in execution is "Frieza Fights Vegeta".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D09ZgrPOndU
If that was submitted as a final product to a show I was making, I'd tell Bruce Faulconer to just not come back into the studio. It needed several more tries.
And you wanna know something peculiar? Most of the best Faulconer tracks were the ones done for later seasons. It seems like all the
exquisitely bad ones were made for season 3 (though we did get Hell's Bells and the Super Saiyan Transformation theme out of it, as well as the aforementioned Ginyu/180,000?! Theme).
For the version of Dragon Ball Z that FUNimation was making, I guess it does work. So when people say that the electro-metal soundtrack is the one that fits Dragon Ball Z best, they aren't wrong if they're referring to that dub. If that's the only version of Dragon Ball you've ever known, then yeah. You're more than fine with it.
But even by the standards of the old FUNimation dub, the season 3 Faulconer tracks were atrocious. Way back before I ever cared about the "true" Dragon Ball or how it was "meant" to be, I still hated a plurality of the season 3 Faulconer tracks, with Piccolo vs. Frieza always being the one I pointed to and said, "Is this a fucking joke?" Yeah, I think I might even have a 9-year-old comment on a video of that track (or maybe it was a different video of the same song) where I mentioned how much of a disgrace it was, and that was just in reference to the rest of the Faulconer material.
TLDR: Imagine Star Wars with David Bowie or ABBA instead of John Williams. Not to exalt Faulconer to the level of Bowie or ABBA; just trying to communicate how unfitting it is. I'd imagine that's why most people on Kanzenshuu don't like that soundtrack.
Of course at the same time... maybe Kikuchi isn't the best choice for the Original FUNi dub anyway. Imagine those voice actors and jokes over '70s Shaw Brothers music. It'd be just as unfitting as putting Faulconer music over the original Dragon Ball (or maybe even Faulconer over Shaw Brothers films!) sounds to us!
