Opinions on the original Funi Dragon Ball dub

[Shaddy]

...One Piece later got a good dub, while Dragon Ball only eventually got to something presentable with Kai, decades after the show ended. Which is better, don't get me wrong, but you're making a false equivalence to fit opinions driven by nostalgia.

Dragon Ball succeeded in spite of it's dub. One Piece didn't fail because of it's dub, it failed because it got fucked around across like three different networks and a bunch of timeslots while never being able to air fully in any of them. 4kids was just as terrible on Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Sonic X, yet those shows saw success where One Piece didn't. There is no meaningful difference in quality between any of these dubs, and if you want to equate them to suit a narrative, you have to make sure that narrative is actually consistent.

If you say "Dragon Ball succeeded because of Funi's changes", you're either saying that the show wasn't as good before they fucked with it, or that American children possess the unique trait of thinking bad things are good in a way no other version of the show would be able to capitalize on.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

DBZ clicked. It wasn't the dub that clicked.

Maybe not, but the vast majority of fans in English-speaking countries today started with the dub. I say if it introduced them to this franchise and they checked out the Japanese version later the dub did something right. Evidently it's still a major selling point for the home releases that a lot of people still want.

[MasenkoHA]

. To this day fans still watch the former. Meanwhile you'd be hardpressed to find anyone still watching the latter.

As far as I know the 4Kids One Piece dub pretty fell off the face of the earth once the Funimation redub kicked in. The Funimation dub of Z hasn’t gone anywhere.

A better comparison to 4Kids One Piece would be Funimation’s dub of DBZ with the Ocean Group. That dub was incredibly popular and it’s success on Cartoon Network ensured the show’s survival after Saban dropped them. But because Funimation went back and redubbed those episodes and those episodes haven’t been available on any home media since 2003? You’d be hard pressed to find too many people who remember it. Despite the fact that most DBZ fans in America started out with that version.


4Kids censorship and changes didn’t kill One Piece

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Casual fans may have forgotten the Saban dub, but it's still very well loved by the hardcore's at least for the voices and production values. The same can't be said for the 4Kids dub of One Piece, other than Zoro's voice being well liked by some. I think the fact Rock the Dragon happened is proof of how well the Saban dub is loved. Honestly can't see an equivalent DVD set ever being made for the 4Kids One Piece dub.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Casual fans may have forgotten the Saban dub, but it's still very well loved by the hardcore's at least for the voices and production values. The same can't be said for the 4Kids dub of One Piece, other than Zoro's voice being well liked by some. I think the fact Rock the Dragon happened is proof of how well the Saban dub is loved. Honestly can't see an equivalent DVD set ever being made for the 4Kids One Piece dub.

The 4Kids OP dub strikes me as being little more than an obscure oddity these days, and there's literally been no further releases after the dub only single discs that came out while the dub was concurrently airing. Ever since FUNi snapped up the license and continued onward with their version the former has effectively been all but relegated to the trash heap of history. FUNi's dub was and is such an improvement that there is literally no reason to go back to the 4Kids version. Considering how much of a laughing stock it is among the One Piece fandom i'm not at all surprised, because OTOH while the '96-'98 dub of DBZ isn't a faithful translation of that portion of the show it's more or less enjoyable for what it is.

[ABED]

DBZ clicked. It wasn't the dub that clicked.

Maybe not, but the vast majority of fans in English-speaking countries today started with the dub. I say if it introduced them to this franchise and they checked out the Japanese version later the dub did something right. Evidently it's still a major selling point for the home releases that a lot of people still want.

This isn't the dub or sub thing. It's a simple matter of the story shining through in spite of the changes. It's not the dub that people are responding to, it's Toriyama's story.

[MyVisionity]

It's not the dub that people are responding to, it's Toriyama's story.

You can't separate the two. In this case, people were responding to both the story and the dub. Toriyama's story was fused together with the dub, and no matter how much more the original story was what captured audiences' attention, the dub still left an impression. It was a packaged deal.

[ABED]

It's not the dub that people are responding to, it's Toriyama's story.

You can't separate the two. In this case, people were responding to both the story and the dub. Toriyama's story was fused together with the dub, and no matter how much more the original story was what captured audiences' attention, the dub still left an impression. It was a packaged deal.

You absolutely can because the two are so at odds with each other. They don't work together at all. The dub is remembered fondly because DB is remembered fondly. In no way is it a package deal and I'm baffled why you think so. DB has been popular everywhere it's gone. What the hell makes you think it would've been different had we gotten a more accurate dub?

[MyVisionity]

The dub is remembered fondly because DB is remembered fondly.

Yes, they are both remembered fondly. They both clicked with fans. Not just one over the other. It may have been the original story which attracted audiences, but the end result is that the dub is remembered fondly. Because once the Funimation version was made, the dub and the original story became bound to one another. There's no appreciating one part without appreciating the other for the Funi audience.

[ABED]

The dub only clicked because it was Dragon Ball. What exactly do you think about the dub itself struck a chord with the audience? Was it the overall lack of seasoned quality talent that anyone listening could tell were literally people picked off the street? Was it the cheap sound quality? Was it the atrocious dialog that was at least a decade out of date?

Of course the dub is remembered fondly. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Power Rangers is also remembered fondly by fans who grew up with it. That doesn't prove it was a quality show.

I asked you why and you just restated your point.

[MasenkoHA]

The dub is remembered fondly because DB is remembered fondly.

Yes, they are both remembered fondly. They both clicked with fans. Not just one over the other. It may have been the original story which attracted audiences, but the end result is that the dub is remembered fondly. Because once the Funimation version was made, the dub and the original story became bound to one another. There's no appreciating one part without appreciating the other for the Funi audience.

Dragon Ball clicked with audiences and of course fans are going to be bounded by the version they grew up witg but that doesn’t mean if Funimation went the more faithful route it wouldn’t have been just as popular.

All the mental gymnastics fans do to convince themselves Funimation’s changes and missteps were necessary to make Dragon Ball succeed in America are completely wrong.

[MyVisionity]

The dub only clicked because it was Dragon Ball. What exactly do you think about the dub itself struck a chord with the audience? Was it the overall lack of seasoned quality talent that anyone listening could tell were literally people picked off the street? Was it the cheap sound quality? Was it the atrocious dialog that was at least a decade out of date?

The dub itself doesn't necessarily have to strike a chord at all. As long as one part clicks, the other part does. DB is remembered fondly so the dub itself is remembered fondly. They became one, is what I'm trying to say. Why? I guess that's just the nature of Funimation's dubbing process. Blending two different things that are at odds with each other resulted in a unique whole. I don't know, chemistry I guess. Opposites attracting or whatever.

[ABED]

It doesn't become a whole. It's a mess that is at odds with itself. What chemistry is there? Why do you think there's chemistry? Because the show is popular? Of course it's popular, it's DB. Any DB dub was going to be popular because DB was popular.

We know this to be the case because not only was the previous dub already popular, we practically have a laboratory experiment proving that no matter what changes were made to the series, if its put on a channel and at a time when people will watch, it always finds an audience. This crosses cultural boundaries.

[MyVisionity]

A messy whole is still a whole. Bad chemistry is still chemistry.

I don't disagree that any dub would have been popular because it's DB.

[ABED]

A messy whole is still a whole. Bad chemistry is still chemistry.

I don't disagree that any dub would have been popular because it's DB.

Bad chemistry is most certainly NOT chemistry. It's the opposite of what people mean by chemistry.

[MasenkoHA]

A messy whole is still a whole. Bad chemistry is still chemistry.

I feel like you’re just saying words to say words.

[Shaddy]

You can't tell me it doesn't have legs! Because it's a table, and tables have legs!

It's just a plank of wood.

[DBZAOTA482]

Definitely a step up from the original FUNi dub for Z and decent for its time but is weak sauce compared to the dub for Kai and FUNimation's newer dubs. There's still a lot of weird discrepancies and the voice acting hasn't fully matured.

[Raki]

DBZ clicked. It wasn't the dub that clicked.

Maybe not, but the vast majority of fans in English-speaking countries today started with the dub. I say if it introduced them to this franchise and they checked out the Japanese version later the dub did something right. Evidently it's still a major selling point for the home releases that a lot of people still want.

I don't understand why people refuse to admit that. For DBZ I prefer the Japanese version but it's obvious the dub was a monster hit in the USA

[Shaddy]

It's not people "refusing to admit" anything, you just have bad logic.

Dragon Ball succeeded because Dragon Ball is a good series. It could have the big green dub the whole way through and people still would have watched it if it was on at the right time and place.

If you deny that, you're inherently devaluing the work Toriyama and Toei put in by claiming a bunch of randos messing with it overseas is the real reason it got popular.