Would a “true” faithful dub ever be possible?

[Aim]

This has nothing to do with what I said. I said Funimation won’t and a hypothetical new licensee has no reason too.

Not in America. I do think if a fan who had the means to do it, they would do it.

Where are the multiple opportunities? Kai?

Yes.

Dragon Ball is going to drop popularity again one day, that will be the day there’s a chance for resurrection of the series.

Here’s the thing Dragon Ball hasn’t been allowed to die or be forgotten in the West. After GT, Funimation immediately goes back to redub the first 67 episodes and first 3 Z movies with their homegrown cast in 2005. Then the season sets come out in 2007. Which sold extremely well like in the top 10. They still sell well. Mike’s podcast interview with a former Funimation brand manager had him mentioning Z outsold Kai 2 to 1 even when they were pushing Kai as the definitive version.

And then of course Kai came out almost immediately following the season sets and then Super and then all the video games in between.

This isn’t like Sailor Moon where for a good decade the franchise ceased to exist in the West allowing for a complete redub in 2014. (Also the censorship in the old Sailor Moon dub has always been a joke with its erasing of queerness, Dragon Ball’s censorship of whitewashing eastern religion and culture and downplaying sexual antics has always been more socially acceptable to a Western audience) Dragon Ball hasn’t gone anywhere and it isn’t going anywhere to be forgotten.

And no some anime company in 2040 isn’t going to redub some anime from the 80s and 90s[/quote]
Highly unlikely but still possible. Releasing videos for home release isn’t the same as airing a TV show on a channel. My point is most of these people shilling for funimation are long time fans.

It’s not a cop out, it’s just a matter of fact that you don’t want to hear.

Everyone knows it’s unlikely, to just constantly bring up the same talking points is a cop out. In case you haven’t noticed I enjoy discussion, so repeating something over like an npc does get a little frustrating, though by no means is it something I don’t want to hear, with some coherent arguments to go with it there’s potential for some interesting discourse. There’s only ever really been one dub, to try and compare something that doesn’t exist yet to something that does exist really sounds to me like you’re trying really hard to reach to conclusions that otherwise can’t be objectively stated as true.

It’s not even a matter of “a new generation could like a redub” it’s a matter of why. Dubbing is not cheap. Even if we ignore the specials and movies and only redub the original Dragon Ball and Z that’s 444 episodes. Why would any company pay for that when the existing dub no matter how bad it is still sells well?

That’s just capitalism I guess. We’d need to have a company that isn’t as grotesque as funimation or someone who has the wealth to spend and wants to make a new dub.

There’s only one dub and no competition, I don’t think it’s reasonable to say with some competition things might be different.

[TheBlackPaladin]

AKSHUALLY, its better to redub for a video streaming service than DVD's. Toei just redubbed the entirety of the Saint Seiya anime for Netflix.

But that has the novelty of a redub and also has what Masenko Ha said: A long absense.

Well, the reason that show got a "re-dub" is because it didn't really have a complete English dub to begin with. It had two English dubs prior to this, both of which were never completed. The farthest either of the previous dubs got to was the 60th episode. So, from episode 61 and onward, the English dub of Saint Seiya on Netflix is not a re-dub, it's the first time it has been dubbed at all in English. Similar logic with the English re-dub of Sailor Moon...the first two seasons were dubbed in an edited-only format, and the last season was never dubbed.

Generally, there are only three reasons an anime will get a re-dub:

1 ) The existing dub didn't cover the entirety of the show.

2 ) The creatives in Japan aren't satisfied with the existing dub.

3 ) On some occasions, it's cheaper to re-dub the show from scratch than to buy the rights to the existing dub (a few animes that originally aired on Netflix are getting re-dubbed in Houston for this very reason).

None of these three conditions apply to FUNimation's dub of DBZ.

[Forte224]

Well, your interpretation of a “faithful” dub will definitely never happen. Adult Goku keeping the same voice he had for kid Goku isn’t something that’s absolutely crucial to his character and frankly probably can’t be pulled off by hardly anyone not Masako Nozawa, certainly not in English anyway.

Also, asking for no line changes is ridiculous. It’s 2021, we should all know by now that localization is necessary because tons of things would just make no sense when translated directly from Japanese. However, I do agree that FUNimation continually makes stupid/lackluster decisions with their localizations, but that doesn’t mean Dragon Ball shouldn’t be properly localized.

[dragonmagico]

I think keeping the same VA *could* be done in dragon ball, but probably would have to start having younger goku voiced by a man not a woman. Most western women just dont have the range that nozawa does. Maybe someone like peter kalamis could have done it, but that ship has sailed. Heck dragon ball is already on its 2nd or 3rd(depending on how you want to count it) redub with the funimation dub. And I cant see anymore happening. Especially since like others have said, most the big name redubs only happened because there wasnt a complete uncut dub by a single studio for those anime. Or the japanese owners of the IP wanted a redub, i cant see toei wanting to move away from funi with how much theyve invested on making the funimation names the official english names.

[MasenkoHA]

I think keeping the same VA *could* be done in dragon ball, but probably would have to start having younger goku voiced by a man not a woman. Most western women just dont have the range that nozawa does. Maybe someone like peter kalamis could have done it, but that ship has sailed

Kelamis voiced young Goku in some Dragon Ball era flashbacks for the Ocean dub of the Cell saga. It was terrible and cringe as hell and just made wonder why they didn’t use Saffron Henderson for those flashbacks since she already voiced young Goku for the BLT dub of Dragon Ball.


Adult men voicing young boys rarely works unless the child having an adult voice is part of the joke or the character is suppose to have an “air of maturity about him” most times its just really awkward.



The standard woman voicing Goku as a child (who will go on to voice young Gohan for Z) and an adult male voicing Goku as an adult is fine. I think most dubs go that route anyways.

[dragonmagico]

I think keeping the same VA *could* be done in dragon ball, but probably would have to start having younger goku voiced by a man not a woman. Most western women just dont have the range that nozawa does. Maybe someone like peter kalamis could have done it, but that ship has sailed

Kelamis voiced young Goku in some Dragon Ball era flashbacks for the Ocean dub of the Cell saga. It was terrible and cringe as hell and just made wonder why they didn’t use Saffron Henderson for those flashbacks since she already voiced young Goku for the BLT dub of Dragon Ball.


Adult men voicing young boys rarely works unless the child having an adult voice is part of the joke or the character is suppose to have an “air of maturity about him” most times its just really awkward.



The standard woman voicing Goku as a child (who will go on to voice young Gohan for Z) and an adult male voicing Goku as an adult is fine. I think most dubs go that route anyways.

I was unaware he did that... ok then never mind.

I do agree with your statements. , sasuke worked really well both young and old I think in naurto. While naruto's VA was a bit iffy to say the least in shipuuden.

Personally I dont have any problem changing VAs as a character ages. Never understood why anyone would. If the artists making the show dont want to and can do it well fine, but thats the only "reason" i can see not to.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I think keeping the same VA *could* be done in dragon ball, but probably would have to start having younger goku voiced by a man not a woman. Most western women just dont have the range that nozawa does. Maybe someone like peter kalamis could have done it, but that ship has sailed

Kelamis voiced young Goku in some Dragon Ball era flashbacks for the Ocean dub of the Cell saga. It was terrible and cringe as hell and just made wonder why they didn’t use Saffron Henderson for those flashbacks since she already voiced young Goku for the BLT dub of Dragon Ball.


Adult men voicing young boys rarely works unless the child having an adult voice is part of the joke or the character is suppose to have an “air of maturity about him” most times its just really awkward.



The standard woman voicing Goku as a child (who will go on to voice young Gohan for Z) and an adult male voicing Goku as an adult is fine. I think most dubs go that route anyways.

Yeah that was um...really weird because Peter just couldn't do a boy voice like that at all and hearing adult Goku's voice coming out of kid Goku in said parts was bizarre to say the least. Them getting Henderson to do it (assuming this was before she left the dub) would've been better instead of having the adult Goku actor of the time try and totally fail at voicing the same character as a kid Nozawa style.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I mean, I'm probably not the best person to give this opinion since I never thought Nozawa's voice for adult Goku ever sounded believably like an adult male. Her acting is consistently phenomenal no matter which character she's playing and no matter which stage of their life they're in, I just never bought that her voice sounded like an adult male when she voiced adult male characters. I basically rationalized it by saying, "Eh, whatever, it's a cartoon, cartoon characters can have cartoony voices."

That said, if we really wanted to go the route of getting an actor who both sounded similar to Nozawa and could potentially sound like her when she voices adult Goku, I felt Barbara Goodson would have been a great choice.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I mean, I'm probably not the best person to give this opinion since I never thought Nozawa's voice for adult Goku ever sounded believably like an adult male. Her acting is consistently phenomenal no matter which character she's playing and no matter which stage of their life they're in, I just never bought that her voice sounded like an adult male when she voiced adult male characters. I basically rationalized it by saying, "Eh, whatever, it's a cartoon, cartoon characters can have cartoony voices."

That said, if we really wanted to go the route of getting an actor who both sounded similar to Nozawa and could potentially sound like her when she voices adult Goku, I felt Barbara Goodson would have been a great choice.

Goodson's voice for young Goku in the Harmony Gold dub of DB ep 1-5 and the movie 1/3 was pretty good, i could see her having worked if they had continued on.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Goodson's voice for young Goku in the Harmony Gold dub of DB ep 1-5 and the movie 1/3 was pretty good, i could see her having worked if they had continued on.

Plus, and I think this is an important consideration for anybody playing a main member of DBZ's cast, her voice is very powerful in that it can handle a lot of screaming. Tony Oliver once said that it got to the point where they had to give her a different mic than the rest of the cast members for her Power Rangers dubbing sessions because her screams were that loud.

[MasenkoHA]

I guess I just don’t see why Goku needs to have the same voice actor as a child and adult just because Japan did it. How many dubs have actually kept Goku’s VA the same as a child and adult besides the Japanese dub?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I guess I just don’t see why Goku needs to have the same voice actor as a child and adult just because Japan did it. How many dubs have actually kept Goku’s VA the same as a child and adult besides the Japanese dub?

I think the Japanese version is the only one to have Goku's voice remain the same between both ages, most other of the various dubs have a woman voice Goku as a child and a man voicing him as an adult.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I guess I just don’t see why Goku needs to have the same voice actor as a child and adult just because Japan did it. How many dubs have actually kept Goku’s VA the same as a child and adult besides the Japanese dub?

It's kinda cool that the same actor plays the character from start to finish in the Japanese version, but I agree, it is by no means a necessity.

As for the other dubs, the French dub kept the same voice actress who played him as a child when he became an adult....for Dragon Ball. For DBZ and onward, he was recast with an adult male voice actor.

[MyVisionity]

He doesn't *need* to have the same voice from child to adult, but it's a nice bit of continuity for the character. I also think it would be cool to see an adult male voiced by a female because it's different from the norm and stands out more.

[Super Sonic]

Sometimes it can work out fine as we saw with Naruto. And while Yuri Lowenthal does great as him, part of me still thinks Tara Strong could've been older Ben 10.

Also redubbing costs money. For example, think a few folks wouldn't have minded if the Mega Man collections had new and better dubs for Mega Man 8 and X4, but Capcom doesn't do so to not spend money, and believe me, those would've needed it. The US cartoon had much better voice acting than they did.

[Aim]

Well, your interpretation of a “faithful” dub will definitely never happen.

Lots of people thought Dragon Ball wouldn’t return and it did, I wouldn’t say never, there’s always a shot, even if it’s unlikely?

Adult Goku keeping the same voice he had for kid Goku isn’t something that’s absolutely crucial to his character and frankly probably can’t be pulled off by hardly anyone not Masako Nozawa, certainly not in English anyway.

No ones tried it, all anyone has ever tried to do is replicate the English dub, there has never been an attempt at a proper Goku.

Also, asking for no line changes is ridiculous. It’s 2021, we should all know by now that localization is necessary because tons of things would just make no sense when translated directly from Japanese. However, I do agree that FUNimation continually makes stupid/lackluster decisions with their localizations, but that doesn’t mean Dragon Ball shouldn’t be properly localized.

There’s only one person in this thread that asked for that, literally everyone else has been reasonable.

I think keeping the same VA *could* be done in dragon ball, but probably would have to start having younger goku voiced by a man not a woman. Most western women just dont have the range that nozawa does. Maybe someone like peter kalamis could have done it, but that ship has sailed. Heck dragon ball is already on its 2nd or 3rd(depending on how you want to count it) redub with the funimation dub. And I cant see anymore happening. Especially since like others have said, most the big name redubs only happened because there wasnt a complete uncut dub by a single studio for those anime. Or the japanese owners of the IP wanted a redub, i cant see toei wanting to move away from funi with how much theyve invested on making the funimation names the official english names.

I think there’s probably someone out there, after all the western VA world is still small compared to Japan. We’ve had Luffy and even Naruto voiced by women, it’s not impossible to find someone who can do it. There’s a man in Japan who mimics Masako Nozawa basically on point. The problem here is firstly, people struggle to imagine finding someone in the west to do it because there’s this idea a English Son Goku can only sound like an arrogant punk screaming through a microphone filter, and second, unfortunately funi has a grip on the series at the moment, which now we will have to wait a little while longer before the series can reach a cap while it’s still off the air. Doesn’t help even if we had the means to a new dub, a lot more people would go mask off and try to stop it from happening.

I mean, I'm probably not the best person to give this opinion since I never thought Nozawa's voice for adult Goku ever sounded believably like an adult male. Her acting is consistently phenomenal no matter which character she's playing and no matter which stage of their life they're in, I just never bought that her voice sounded like an adult male when she voiced adult male characters. I basically rationalized it by saying, "Eh, whatever, it's a cartoon, cartoon characters can have cartoony voices."

That said, if we really wanted to go the route of getting an actor who both sounded similar to Nozawa and could potentially sound like her when she voices adult Goku, I felt Barbara Goodson would have been a great choice.

I was watching DB from beginning to end in Japanese for the first time a few years ago, and I was surprised to notice a change in his voice when he became older, like, it’s something you’d only really hear if you’ve watched him as a child. At this time my grandparent was actually watching as well, I eventually showed her a video of the English voice and she said she couldn’t imagine Goku sounding like that. To me, Nozawa does really fit Goku. If you want to see a believable adult sound like Goku search up Identity Tajima, it essentially is Nozawa.

I’ve heard people suggest the VA for Timmy Turner since she is really great at creating voices.

[Aim]

I guess I just don’t see why Goku needs to have the same voice actor as a child and adult just because Japan did it. How many dubs have actually kept Goku’s VA the same as a child and adult besides the Japanese dub?

Because the jump from Goku as a child to adult wasn’t a drastic change, it got deeper but it was still Goku.

I’d argue there’s probably only one variant of Goku that’s properly captured the spirit out there.

[ikaos]

This question is very hypothetical - is it possible, sure, anything's possible.

Will it actually happen? Nope. FUNi has had the opportunity to do such a thing and has not (although Kai is fairly close and good enough for me). They have 0 incentive to do any kind of redub with how most American fans prefer the current Z dub, Kai, or the original Japanese. New fans are more concerned with Super than anything else. In the event of FUNi giving up the license (which will never happen), then sure, another company could do a more faithful dub. But again these are pipe dreams.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I guess I just don’t see why Goku needs to have the same voice actor as a child and adult just because Japan did it. How many dubs have actually kept Goku’s VA the same as a child and adult besides the Japanese dub?

Because the jump from Goku as a child to adult wasn’t a drastic change, it got deeper but it was still Goku.

And that's a perfectly valid choice on Toei's part, nothing wrong with it...but that's not necessarily the way it needed to be. That's just the route that Toei decided to go. There was nothing preventing them from casting an older-sounding male voice actor to play Goku who could, even if he sounded older, still act the part well and embody the spirit of what Nozawa had established.

[Aim]

I guess I just don’t see why Goku needs to have the same voice actor as a child and adult just because Japan did it. How many dubs have actually kept Goku’s VA the same as a child and adult besides the Japanese dub?

Because the jump from Goku as a child to adult wasn’t a drastic change, it got deeper but it was still Goku.

And that's a perfectly valid choice on Toei's part, nothing wrong with it...but that's not necessarily the way it needed to be. That's just the route that Toei decided to go. There was nothing preventing them from casting an older-sounding male voice actor to play Goku who could, even if he sounded older, still act the part well and embody the spirit of what Nozawa had established.

I personally highly doubt that, a voice too deep and you get the dub effect and it begins to really start to feel like a high school student decided to can the VA and replace her with a man for the sake of it. Then again I could be wrong. I wonder if it was Toriyama having a say in having Nozawa stay? I dunno, I hope they at least try and keep Nozawa’s voice around for as long as possible and then later start training Identity to be a successor if he wants.

I guess my greatest fear is seeing the authors characters and world begin to lose what it once was. It’s already kind of happening with heroes, some of those characters do not look at all like DB. I imagine Toriyama probably isn’t happy but there’s not much he can do considering there’s people at the top who also own the licenses.