Is it time to accept Faulconer OST did it better than the original?

[MasenkoHA]

One of the many problems I have with the Faulconer score is it doesn't feel like part of a whole. First, the dub scores are all different so it doesn't feel coherent, and then there's the issue of a US score over a very Asian show.

I’m kind of surprised Funimation just didn’t use recycled Faulconer music for the Ultimate Uncut release. I understand there was some sort of falling out between Funimation and Bruce Faulconer but given how it didn’t stop Funimation from including the Faulconer music as an option for the season sets and Blue Rays I don’t know if it would have prevented them from using it for the 2005 dub.

Regardless it’s for the best Funimation is placing their Z dub with the original Japanese score as a preference.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

One of the many problems I have with the Faulconer score is it doesn't feel like part of a whole. First, the dub scores are all different so it doesn't feel coherent, and then there's the issue of a US score over a very Asian show.

I’m kind of surprised Funimation just didn’t use recycled Faulconer music for the Ultimate Uncut release. I understand there was some sort of falling out between Funimation and Bruce Faulconer but given how it didn’t stop Funimation from including the Faulconer music as an option for the season sets and Blue Rays I don’t know if it would have prevented them from using it for the 2005 dub.

Regardless it’s for the best Funimation is placing their Z dub with the original Japanese score as a preference.

I know right, even to the point where the FUNi Dragon Boxes didn't have the dub with Nathan Johnson/Team Faulconer replacement score included at all though given the intended target audience of that release along with the front and center prominence of the Japanese audio track it was pretty obvious as to why it was left off. Nostalgic fans who liked said dub already had the Orange Bricks even when it wasn't the exact dub they had watched on Toonami as kids less than a decade earlier in 1999.

[ABED]

Agreed. It seems to be a problem with composing being handled by a group of people rather than one person alone, and when they have to make too many just to fill up the silence (as a consequence of Funimation's bad direction). And there's also the previously mentioned tidbit of its late arrival in the show.
It ends up being a broken clock that misses a lot but only hits a few times.
But then it wasn't used for the original DB, which is at least good enough.

I mean that each series was scored by someone else
DB has the original score, Z has Faulconer, GT has Menza.

[It_Is_Ayna_You_Flips]

I will say it's not just synth music though, there are some genuine impressive non-synth themes like this one:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ufq0OBvg2k

That's literally synth music.

Does not sound like what most people that hate the Faulconer score think of when they say synth music though.

That's fair. Synth is just one of those things everyone hates without knowing what it actually is. Like with most things, I blame Styx for overusing it in all of their music.

[MasenkoHA]

Agreed. It seems to be a problem with composing being handled by a group of people rather than one person alone, and when they have to make too many just to fill up the silence (as a consequence of Funimation's bad direction). And there's also the previously mentioned tidbit of its late arrival in the show.
It ends up being a broken clock that misses a lot but only hits a few times.
But then it wasn't used for the original DB, which is at least good enough.

I mean that each series was scored by someone else
DB has the original score, Z has Faulconer, GT has Menza.

Even the Faulconer score only applies to episode 68-291 of Z. So the Z dub alone feels disjoined musically without even including the Kikuchi score in Dragon Ball and Menza score in GT

[GhostEmperorX]

I mean that each series was scored by someone else
DB has the original score, Z has Faulconer, GT has Menza.

GT is also scored in JP by someone other than Kikuchi but yeah it's not like the dub versions. Then again dubbed DB has always had issues of one sort or the other, from being originally dubbed by the Ocean Group to Funimation then taking over. If it wasn't one of the first few shows to be dubbed and not adapted then it probably wouldn't have had these issues.

But merely having more than one person scoring each series if done right isn't much of a problem. A series in a somewhat similar (but still very different) situation would be Naruto as they changed composers (from Toshio Masuda to Yasuharu Takanashi) after the first show segment, but that one is far more consistent on its OST (though changing a lot from what the first one was).

Even the Faulconer score only applies to episode 68-291 of Z. So the Z dub alone feels disjointed musically without even including the Kikuchi score in Dragon Ball and Menza score in GT

Exactly, that's even one of the main problems I mentioned before. It was late.

[ABED]

Fair point about GT, but in ail fairness, it does have a different feel from DB and Z, but it sure as hell ain't droning dark music.

But merely having more than one person scoring each series if done right isn't much of a problem.

It's not about different people, it's completely different feels. A change of composer is fine. It happens all the time on shows, but it's usually not so damn radical a change of direction.

[GhostEmperorX]

Fair point about GT, but in ail fairness, it does have a different feel from DB and Z, but it sure as hell ain't droning dark music.

But merely having more than one person scoring each series if done right isn't much of a problem.

It's not about different people, it's completely different feels. A change of composer is fine. It happens all the time on shows, but it's usually not so damn radical a change of direction.

Also correct, the handling is still a lot better over there. The dub version didn't have consistency for the most part.
I also said "if done right". It definitely wasn't there.

[ABED]

Of course it wasn't. The dub didn't get the genre it was working in.

[GhostEmperorX]

More modern =/= better.

Wish one of the Kai producers remembered that...

DBZ is an OLD show, and trying to make it more modern only works until the moment the OP ends and you snap back to the 80s/90s art style on decades-old film stock, which no amount of 7.1 cinematic orchestrals ripped from Avatar can cover up.

Exactly, they could simply have remastered the show before making Kai, but that’s expecting too much from Toei clearly as they can’t resist butchering it.
Still though, I don’t think the OST needed to be even older than the show, recording quality and all.

a martial arts story based on a Chinese fantasy genre.

Everyone says the OST is based on old martial arts film music (which I can see as working for original DB very well), but it doesn’t sound all that different from what Kikuchi did for non-martial arts series as well. It’s more of his own universal style across most of his works rather than one that sounds different enough.

[Arteaga4K]

Nothing wrong with synth. People like to throw that term around with a negative connotation. As much as I prefer Kikuchi's score, the Faulconer score does have a unique sound and produced some damn good music (Goku's death, Vegeta's red power, Goku's spirit bomb, anyone? No? Okay ) The biggest killer was the 24/7 nonstop music and bloat for sure, but when it hit, it hit.

[Hellspawn28]

The original Japanese music feels more authentic and closer to the wuixa roots of Dragon Ball. I never like Faulconer's score that much and I thought it was bad even as a kid.

[Xell]

I liked Faulconer’s OST as a kid and it felt special to me being a fan of DBZ in the UK in the midst of watching the Android Westwood dub with its corny Megaman music..
That being said, when I first heard the Japanese score, it blew everything out of the water. Alongside the inaccurate fan subs, hearing the Japanese score made me feel like I was watching something from a different world. The idea that a cartoon could be super brutal and mature..
I soon learned Gotenks doesn’t actually shout ‘What the fuck is this?!’ when he’s being absorbed by Buu.. But the Japanese score still has the feeling of tension when it needs to, it has its goofy moments and overall it all fits into the show.
I still love it. I can’t say the same about Faulconer’s music.. A few select tracks hold a special place in my heart, but I feel sorry for parents being subjected to their kids watching DBZ on Cartoon Network with that awful dialogue and music.

[TheOverlyMadHatter]

Speaking as someone who primarily views the series with the Japanese score, I still give some merits to the Faulconer score; music placement is more deliberate, while there are occasionally times on the Japanese side of things where it seems more arbitrary. Makes sense, since Faulconer Prod. specifically composed it for the show while the Kikuchi score pulled most of its music from the movies. And while I think it never should have been done in the first place, it did accomplish its goal of giving DBZ a "modern" edge.

Still, I prefer the Japanese score. The US score relies too much on synth that makes it sound cheap at times (and this coming from a huge synthpop fan). Doesn't really know when to stop playing, either. Just wall to wall music. Also, I don't really know how to explain this, but the scoring feels a little too... formulaic? Like, it follows a predictable pattern. Vegeta shows up on screen to deliver a speech about pride? Time to play Hell's Bells. Major villain defeat? Ginyu Transformation. Hearing SSJ Vegeta's theme during his first transformation and the Final Flash, but did we really need to hear that theme as many times as we did?

[jjgp1112]

I'm a fan of the dub score but holy FUCK what kind of biased, loaded question is this? What an absurd thread premise.

But no fans don't need to "accept" a score that was needlessly imposed on the dub and also clashes with the tone. It's also not particularly modern anymore and it's attempt to sound modern actually dated it worse than Kikuchi's score. Not to mention the very idea of "modern" as a point of subjective critique is often arbitrary and strips something of its uniqueness.

[GhostEmperorX]

Nothing wrong with synth. People like to throw that term around with a negative connotation.

Especially considering that it was used a lot in Japan itself as well, for numerous anime intros in the 80’s and 90’s, plus Solid State Scouter. Even Cha-La-Head-Cha-La has some of it being used.

[Drepanosaurus]

The title seems very flame baity to me. Nothing beats the original Japanese score if you ask me.

[GhostEmperorX]

Anyways, even if the Funimation-requested OST didn’t put most of the tracks on one scale, it still sounded generally similar, and as some others said, predictable. So disregarding individual tracks, as an overall package it doesn’t quite fit the bill. Of course, I also judge the original score based on the overall package, for different reasons because there’s quite a handful of decent works in there even though a lot of it was pulled from the movies to begin with and maintained the old recording aesthetic (which is probably a feature and not a bug but still).
But I still maintain that it would likely be a better situation had Chūmei Watanabe or Kōhei Tanaka (among numerous others) had done the OST as well as not using the same stuff for movies and shows (which necessitates that said themes not be explicitly tied with who they were made for), that way the OG material likely wouldn’t be able to receive as much flak as it does.

The title seems very flame baity to me. Nothing beats the original Japanese score if you ask me.

Well, within DB, but outside of it...

[VDenter]

The only thing i accept is that thankfully this soundtrack has disappeared from all future DB material and if new fans are going to get into the series it will be likely with the original superior in every single way OST. Faulconer was never good. I actually once went through the entire list out of curiosity to see if there was even a single track that could be considered decent and tried to give this soundtrack a fair shake, and i didn't find any single good track. It is just obnoxious sound that doesn't fit any material, especially not DB.

It says something to me that the sound quality of the GBA Legacy of Goku 2 and 3 wasn't that much worse than it was in the show, and might have been better in a few select moments. It just indicates how poor the Faulconer score really is when the GBA hardware can output sound that is pretty much identical to the shit music that was used for the equally shit dub.

[Ajay]

The title seems very flame baity to me. Nothing beats the original Japanese score if you ask me.

The majority of Kokonoe's threads since returning from their temporary ban have been transparently bait-based, and if they think we don't see that, then... Hmm.

People respond in good faith so we let them stand.