Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

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Demon Prince Piccolo
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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by Demon Prince Piccolo » Fri Oct 22, 2021 2:56 pm

Yuli Ban wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 2:02 am Well, let's see!
Mr. Satan's voice is really awkward, but Drummond really captures "evil" Vegeta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHJKbn2zzqk

Likewise, it's obvious that Drummond is a better actor than Sabat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FehGqIZ7vc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szv4jYPmlWo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5nMfhiCnKQ

Makes me want to hear Ocean Kai to hear how the redub fared. Not that the Ocean crew needed time to improve considering they were always professionals, so I don't think it'd be as qualitatively better as the FUNi Kai dub, but hearing them stop treating it like an 80s Saturday morning cartoon and act more naturally, with the original music and a better script, would be great
Welp, I'm a fan of that for sure. Not sure if the clip I heard were from here of not, but then again I used to interpret Vegeta as a pseudo-good guy for most of the Boo arc, which I don't anymore haha. I think I was biased because these were literally the first episodes of Dragon Ball Z I ever watched in full, and I heard Sabat first. But I agree, Drummond is in a different class.
The story of DRAGON BALL starts from the moment Goku met Bulma. I don't really mind the Z, so long as it's understood that it's not the true beginning of the story.

I actually prefer the Goku vs Tenshinhan and Goku vs Piccolo Jr. rivalries to the Goku vs Vegeta rivalry.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by Super Sonic » Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:52 pm

Demon Prince Piccolo wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:37 pm I think some of the "Drummond not fitting Vegeta in Cell/Boo arc" sentiments also is based around his appearance/the change in art style. Saiyan Saga Vegeta was an imp, and the voice Drummond used is easy to picture with how small he was. While Vegeta later is still short, he's drawn with much more defined musculature, even in his neck, and a longer face/more defined jawbones, so Sabat's deeper, more testosterone-infused take is easier for some fans (particularly those like me who heard Sabat first) was easier to associate with the character. And there are times where Vegeta is notably drawn to appear taller in the Boo arc, like during the Goku vs Majin Vegeta fight. But I do agree with your overall point, I think some of it is pre-association bias, with some fans thinking Vegeta wasn't the bad person he was in the early arcs. Vegeta wasn't really a good guy until the fight with Kid Boo.
Kind of how some folks thought Frank Welker using his G1 Megatron voice wouldn't fit the character in the first live action movie. His Prime Megatron probably would've and heard when the later movies which I haven't watched had him back, it's similar to that one.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by 90sDBZ » Fri Oct 22, 2021 8:08 pm

I loved Drummond's early Vegeta because he was able to go full on insane and evil. His later performance was more grounded and low key, which made sense considering the character, but I didn't find it as fun to listen to. He's fine as older Vegeta, but he's outstanding as the more evil younger Vegeta. I'd say Sabat is the opposite; decent as young Vegeta but great as the older more mature Vegeta. I was really glad the Copy Vegeta thing happened actually, as you had them both playing to their strengths.

To address the topic you could argue Season 3 was Funimation's worst dub, fond of it as I am. From an acting standpoint the cast were their least experienced, although I love the Team Faulconer score so for me it's above the GT dub. I haven't seen enough of their non-DB dubs to compare, although the Z dub was much better by the Buu saga, so their other early 2000s dubs might have lost out to that.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by BootyCheeksJohnson » Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:09 am

VegettoEX wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:43 pm Drummond's Vegeta has a fascinating fandom history.

It was 1000000% derided by pre-FUNimation, existing fans upon its debut; in many ways, it was equivalent to the later Faulconer Production replacement score appraisal, where there was literally nothing positive said about it contemporaneously.

Very quickly after that, once the new fans just getting into the series through the dub upon same said debut started hopping online, they were dishing out pretty universal acclaim.

Things started changing as that first season came to an end when Vegeta starts losing his cool, because it was that "cool" that Horikawa has in spades that Drummond wasn't quite capturing. Once Vegeta's all nutso, all bets are off, and I don't think anyone's ever genuinely had anything negative to say about "You won't escape... MY WRATH!"

At that point, it was a begrudging "OK, that's a solid performance" from the old guard combined with "holy shit yes" from the new fans. (There were probably some holdouts, and I get it -- he still wasn't capturing a lot of the nuance of Horikawa's performance, but brought his own take to the table in other ways.)

Anyway, yeah, the full Dragon Ball franchise (DBZ specifically) is almost certainly FUNi's worst dub, even including other intentional "reversionings". With all the green performances and script changes and production mishaps and replacement-everythings and legacy cruft and intentional alterations and so on and so forth, is this even really a question?
Honestly I thought it was a question worth asking. I doubt that Funimation has treated any other dubs as bad as the Dragon Ball franchise, but I see Funimation get a lit of (probably overblown) hate for their modern dubs as well. So that made it worth asking to me.
We need a Steve Simmons retranslation of the manga.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by BootyCheeksJohnson » Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:13 am

MasenkoHA wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 11:22 am Is there any other dubs by FUNimation that are considered bad aside from their work on the pre-revival Dragon Ball trilogy?


I know Case Closed/Detective Conan gave the characters anglo saxon names and nearly used an American replacement score courtesy of Nathan Johnson but I don’t know if it’s considered a bad dub.


And Yuyu Hakusho seems to be about on par or slightly better than their dub of Dragon Ball: A lot of liberties taken with the script, and so so acting but the vibe is mostly left intact.
I've seen the Funimation dub of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid get a lot of hate for a scene where they completely rewrite and destroy one joke. But, outside of that no one has said anything bad about the dub aside from a forced patriarchy joke. That seems to be the case with most of their modern dubs, they make a lame joke that wasn't there originally and get possibly too much hate for it, and it colors people's perception of the whole dub. It's not like Dragon Ball where the show is pretty much completely rewritten.
We need a Steve Simmons retranslation of the manga.

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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Sat Oct 23, 2021 9:54 am

Yuli Ban wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 1:45 pm Ah, that's disappointing. Would be terribly ironic if FUNi wound up having a superior Kai dub to Ocean.

I really, honestly wish there was effort put into just one "ultra-pure" English dub that had the most fitting possible voices and script with no music changes. Just a wholesale "what we could have gotten" product. But alas...
The real irony is how the story of how Ocean producing their own dub of Kai was leaked. It was in conversation in the comments section of Sean Schemmel's since deactivated Facebook account where a mysterious individual (known online as SubZero Ice) told him Ocean's dub would be better than Funimations. Schemmel was somehow, not only aware of the Ocean Kai dub's existence, but was the one who broke the news that it would have its own musical score, and said he thought it would suck because the new score and added sound effects were terrible, and unlike Funimation's dub an inpure way of watching the show. Of course since there was that whole music scandal Funimation ended up having to use a replacement score anyway for their Kai dub, albeit one imposed by TOEI.

That said, from what we've heard about the artistic decisions behind the Kai dub, music aside Ocean did seem to be putting a lot of effort into making a faithful dub. The trouble they went through to cast Goku was because they wanted to capture the essence of the character as portrayed in the Japanese version. Drummond's Vegeta apparently uses a lower pitch, likely to capture the smoothness of Horikawa's performance. An effort was made for pronunciations to be more like the Japanese version (example Nah-Mek being changed to Naw-Mek), so we may hear Sai-Yan rather than Say-Yan, etc. It may be even closer script-wise, although sadly unless that dub sees the light of day we may never know. I really want to see it though :(
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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by Gilby1385 » Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:05 pm

SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 10:39 pm https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y47pPCPtVM (Yes, this is sourced from the 4 movie pack version with that horrible frame issue. Ugh!!!)
All I get is the "Video unavailable" message, must be a geo-blocking thing. Anyone else?
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Re: Is Dragon Ball Z Funimation's Worst English Dub?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Thu Oct 28, 2021 3:25 pm

Gilby1385 wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:05 pm
SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 10:39 pm https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y47pPCPtVM (Yes, this is sourced from the 4 movie pack version with that horrible frame issue. Ugh!!!)
All I get is the "Video unavailable" message, must be a geo-blocking thing. Anyone else?
Works for me, it is most likely geo blocked in countries outside the U.S. i would have to guess.
DB collection related goals as of now:

1.) Find decent priced copy of Dragon Box Z Vol. 4 (Done)

2.) Collect rest of manga

3.) Get rest of Daizenshuu (2-7)

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