"Getting Used To" The Original Version

[TheBlackPaladin]

I thought this might be interesting. I have come to love the original Japanese version of the Dragon Ball animes, but getting to the point where I loved it was a very gradual process. I don't even want to say "gradual transition," because I still love the dub cast, especially now that they're being given scripts that are very much line with what the characters were actually saying in the original version...by the time I realized just how off the DBZ dub scripts were, the Kai dub had begun, so I never really "left" the dub cast.

Some things were easier to get used to about the original version than others, though. So, the question: what was the hardest thing for you to get used to about the original version, and what was the easiest thing?

Hardest: Maskao Nozawa's voice for Goku as an adult. I love it now, but man, it took a while. I think part of it was that my introduction to her voice for adult Goku was in DBZ, and I don't believe that's the best point of introduction. Starting from Dragon Ball episode 1 and then letting her voice and performance evolve from that was a much easier, more memorable, and more acceptable introduction to her voice for adult Goku.

Easiest: The music. Kikuchi is, in my opinion, amazing. For the longest time, I didn't even know the music was replaced in the dub. I didn't hate the dub music, I just didn't think much of it. It was just sort of...there. When I picked up my first orange brick DVD set and saw the phrase "English dub with original Japanese music" on the back, though, I was intrigued. I switched to that audio track and never looked back. Kikuchi's beautiful orchestral score took zero getting used to for me.

What about you guys?

[fadeddreams5]

Hardest: Kikuchi. Kills the intensity of certain scenes for me. Just... a drag a lot of times.

Easiest - Goku's voice. I dislike it, but eh. Knew what to expect going in.

[Naruto6583]

I grew up being exposed to the saban portion and the inhouse portion of z so I witnessed both ost's but looking back they're okay. When I first heard the Japanese version I was a little bit on the fence about it but it grew on me and slowly but surely I grew to love the kikuchi score mostly because I love orchestra. After hearing about us getting a accurate English dub I was so ecstatic finally an accurate English dub. Looking back I realize just how bad the old dub was treated but I still do enjoy it but I prefer the Japanese dub and I won't ever look back. On a good note because one of my rescores requires I do a kikuchi z placement I get to hear certain characters as they first sounded in Japanese. So yeah it was slow process but overall the Japanese version is the one for me following the English kai dub

[dae428]

Honestly, I never really had to get used to the original version. I just naturally gravitated towards it when I first came across it in a Dragon Ball Z release of the Boo arc. I guess it just had to do with the fact that I had already experienced Dragon Ball in different a language other than English when I was a kid due to my visits to Korea as a kid. Funnily enough, I actually remember borrowing a DVD of Freeza fighting Goku as a kid from my local Hollywood video store and finding that Freeza's Japanese voice was really weird. It was just one of those things I had just never experienced before in my entire life. So I guess the only thing I had to get used to was Freeza's voice but honestly it wasn't even a hate thing, it was more of a "what is this?" kind of thing.

[MajinMan]

Hardest: Watching all 444 episodes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z from start to finish without skipping anything. Now it wasn't actually "hard," but it was a big commitment and took me a couple of months to finish. The only things I haven't seen in Japanese are GT (I saw the first two episodes and the special) and some of the DBZ + all the DB movies.

Easiest: Kikuchi for sure. Clicked right away, since I had already seen some of the original Dragon Ball in English.

[Gaffer Tape]

Hardest: Watching all 444 episodes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z from start to finish without skipping anything. Now it wasn't actually "hard," but it was a big commitment and took me a couple of months to finish.

A couple of months?! To get through all 444 episodes? I've been doing the same thing, and I've gotten through 365 episodes (and twelve movies and two TV specials) so far... and it's taken me since January... of 2014!

[precita]

The music in Dragonball was a lot better than the music in DBZ.

There is far too much silence in the Saiyan/Freeza arcs, and he plays that same dull action tune all the time whenever there is a fight. The fast paced drum theme everytime someone fights in the Freeza arc...I swear its played in almost every single episode. I love that track, but I don't need to hear it in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.

I was also surprised when I watched the Japanese Goku transforming into a Super Saiyan scene for the first time, expecting there to be some amazing music...but it was one of the same themes they used over and over again from past episodes.

[Pokewhiz7]

I "grew up" watching Dragon Ball Z on Toonami (in quotes because I was like 6 when the last episode aired in the US), but by the time I was getting back into the series, I had already discovered this forum, so for me it didn't really take much adjustment. In other words, I wasn't here long before I stopped watching the show in English.

[kei17]

There is far too much silence in the Saiyan/Freeza arcs, and he plays that same dull action tune all the time whenever there is a fight. The fast paced drum theme everytime someone fights in the Freeza arc...I swear its played in almost every single episode. I love that track, but I don't need to hear it in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.

I'm sure you're referring to M814 here. I agree that it's overused until the Freeza arc, but keep in mind that the show was originally meant to be seen on a weekly basis. The overuse gets far more obvious when you watch the show in the marathon style. Also, it's not him (I think you're referring to Kikuchi) who placed the score for the TV series. The music was placed by the director of each episode and Shigeru Miyashita who was in charge of music placement throughout the series, from DB to DBGT. Kikuchi just provided the stock music.

To be fair, there's some reasons why they had to overuse M814. A lot of the pieces from the previous series sound a little too happy or oriental for Z, and some of them contain the melody of Makafushigi Adventure which shouldn't be used. As a result, they had to mostly stick with the tracks newly composed for Z which were not very sufficient at the time. Also, DBZ movie 2 and 3 had a very few pieces of battle music, which resulted in the overuse of the score from DBZ movie 1 (the M800 series.) Blame Daisuke Nishio for leaving battle scenes silent in DBZ movie 2 and 3!

[JulieYBM]

I wish Nishio had brought that mentality to the television series with regards to the use of music during battle scenes. I think a little more silence would've been pretty neat. The amount of silence in Dragon Ball Z is already pretty ear-catching. I love that the silent moments themselves feel as calculated as the moments that use music. The lack of music really creates just as much atmosphere.

[Gaffer Tape]

A lot of the pieces from the previous series sound a little too happy or oriental for Z, and some of them contain the melody of Makafushigi Adventure which shouldn't be used.

To be fair, Z movies 1 and 2 both featured brand new Makafushigi Adventure instrumentals, so it's not as if it was without precedent. Nor did I ever get the impression they shied away from music from the first series early on in Z. I mean, certainly not to the extent that people who criticize the music for (as in, the tired of argument of, "The Japanese Z score is just the same music from Dragon Ball, and it doesn't fit!"). But, and maybe I'm missing something, but the progression of new tracks versus the phasing out of old tracks seems the same to me as it does at any other point in the series. Hell, if anything, the Saiyan and early Freeza arcs seems a lot more melodically diverse than, say, the Cell arc, which just seems to use the same pieces from movies 5 and 6 repeatedly to the near-exclusion of everything else.

[theoriginalbilis]

Having to "get used" to the original version of the show just proves how much drastic of a difference the presentation of FUNimation's Dragon Ball Z dub was. If the dubs were more similar to the Ocean-cast dubs of Movies 1-3, Kai, or hell, any of the previous international dubs, there wouldn't be such a needlessly huge divide.

That said, I grew up on the Toonami/Cartoon Network broadcast, and once I got ahold of those first uncut releases of Movies 1 & 2, I was immediately impressed by the improved voice acting (both the Japanese the Ocean VAs) and the higher-quality music (Thanks, Kikuchi!). Even the dialogue just sounded a heck of a lot better. Characters weren't spouting constant one-liners or puns, and they even cursed once in a while. By the end of Movie 2, I was already fine with the Japanese cast, even Nozawa, which I'll admit, came off as a bit strange to me at first.

You could say I never looked back; I pretty much only watched the DBZ dub on CN so I could fill in gaps between fansubbed episodes I hadn't seen.

Hardest: Watching the whole show in Japanese. In my neck of the woods, the dub was easily available thanks to having cable, but Japanese episodes were rather hard to get. There were small mom-and-pop shops and flea markets in my town that sold fansubbed VHS tapes, but the DragonBall stuff was limited to the Cell Games and onward. Most of the earlier episodes and movies couldn't be found. That said, as FUNimation started releasing more and more of their backlog via DVD singles, I was able to eventually watch the whole of DB and Z in Japanese.

Easiest: The original music. The OP/ED themes kicked ass and the score by Kikuchi, as well the long periods of silence, immediately ramped up the emotion/intensity of each scene. I'll admit that I do think it sounds like 60's/70's martial arts movie music, or "Godzilla music" as I called it as a kid, but that's what DragonBall is: a bombastic over-the-top martial arts series. So it fits perfectly.

[thaman91]

Speaking of Makafushigi Adventure, does the Z series (not the movies) ever play it or any sort of variation of it? I've only seen Z with Kikuchi's score up to the Namek episodes and didn't notice it.

[Fionordequester]

Hardest: The music. Scott Morgan, Mike Smith, and Julius Dobos are, in my opinion, amazing. In fact, I fell in love with it before I ever even got to hear it in the show itself. Back then, I was either too young to watch Dragon Ball Z, or it was not airing on T.V., so the only exposure I got to the show was through video games like Dragon Ball Z Budokai and Dragon Ball Z Legacy of Goku II. And when I first heard the OST in LoG II, I fell in love with it, before I had even known it was used in the show!

And when I realized that most of those same tunes were in the show itself? And also that there were something like 600 other songs like it in the show? That made me so happy! It was like I finally got to see where all those tunes came from! This is of course, not even getting into just how amazingly diverse and beautiful it was, or the clear abundance of effort put into the OST! Heck, the guys would even go out of their way to compose awesome music like this and this, despite the fact that said tunes would would only be used 1 or 2 times! And to top it all off, creating the music wasn't the only thing those three did! No, they actually did most of the music PLACEMENT as well! And whether or not you think Kikuchi is better, I don't believe he was ever quite THAT intimately involved in placing and scoring so much of the show!

So yes, that was the hardest adjustment for me. In fact, having Kikuchi instead of Faulconer was the number 1 issue that kept me from ever watching all of the Japanese version of Z (though I did watch all of Kai). The show just was not as emotionally vibrant and rich without the Team Faulconer music.

Easiest: The voices. Actually, I don't have a lot of complaints about most of the voices, aside from a few nitpicks here and there. I actually got used to Nozawa's portrayol of Goku pretty quickly, due to how excellent she is as the character. Of course, I don't think she should have voiced absolute everyone related to Goku, and I don't think she was as good as Sean Schemell...but she's definitely still my second favorite Goku voice! And in regards to the other voices, most of them were either on par with the dub performances in the old Z dub, or were actually superior to them, so again, no complaints.

[kei17]

To be fair, Z movies 1 and 2 both featured brand new Makafushigi Adventure instrumentals, so it's not as if it was without precedent.

Music productions for movies are funded by anime companies themselves, but it's record companies who pay for TV anime scores. It was up to Toei whether or not they use Makafushigi arrangements for movies, but they had to push the newest theme song when it comes to the TV series for the sake of Columbia Japan's sales.

But, and maybe I'm missing something, but the progression of new tracks versus the phasing out of old tracks seems the same to me as it does at any other point in the series. Hell, if anything, the Saiyan and early Freeza arcs seems a lot more melodically diverse than, say, the Cell arc, which just seems to use the same pieces from movies 5 and 6 repeatedly to the near-exclusion of everything else.

Yes, phasing out of old tracks happens at other points, too, but the others are a little more gradual shifts because there were a number of filler episodes before the Android and Buu arcs. Also, the overuse of M814 lasted from the arrival of Vegeta and Nappa to the end of the Freeza arc, which corresponds to 80-ish episodes. It's notably longer than the period of the overuse of the movie 6 score which corresponds to about 50 episodes. These episodes often use plenty of the pieces from movie 4 and 7 unlike your exaggeration, though.

[MajinMan]

Hardest: Watching all 444 episodes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z from start to finish without skipping anything. Now it wasn't actually "hard," but it was a big commitment and took me a couple of months to finish.

A couple of months?! To get through all 444 episodes? I've been doing the same thing, and I've gotten through 365 episodes (and twelve movies and two TV specials) so far... and it's taken me since January... of 2014!

Well I did watch like 3-4 episodes almost every night before I went to sleep. It was usually around 12:00-2:00 AM so yah lol.

[B]

The hardest part was the mono audio. When I flip my TV over back to live television, or put in another DVD, or watch Netflix, it's incredibly loud as a result of turning up the volume for Dragon Ball's Blue Bricks.

The easiest part... was all of it! It's a great show!

[Gaffer Tape]

Yes, phasing out of old tracks happens at other points, too, but the others are a little more gradual shifts because there were a number of filler episodes before the Android and Buu arcs. Also, the overuse of M814 lasted from the arrival of Vegeta and Nappa to the end of the Freeza arc, which corresponds to 80-ish episodes. It's notably longer than the period of the overuse of the movie 6 score which corresponds to about 50 episodes. These episodes often use plenty of the pieces from movie 4 and 7 unlike your exaggeration, though.

But you're talking about one piece of music (and, again, one I've never felt has been overused more than any other popular piece... hell, the only time I've felt it was overused was on the menus for the American DBoxes), which is really not representative of the score as a whole. I did just get done reviewing kenisu's list of cues just to be sure, and, yeah, while it does show up fairly frequently (perhaps averaging about every other episode from the 20s through the 60s before starting to taper off), I still don't see that as any more often than, say, M1308 in the Cell arc. It seems to me that no matter what the era, they have one "go-to" battle piece that they tend to overuse a bit. As for my exaggeration, I will concede to movie 4 getting a lot of play, but 7? Can't say I agree. They really didn't use movie 7 tracks in earnest until the Boo arc, and even then it's still mostly just "The Androids March" (M1404 and M1405) and almost nothing else. And for a lot of the timeframe you're mentioning, music from movies 2, 3, and 4 also gets a lot of play. At any rate, I'm not disagreeing that the piece was used quite a bit during that span, and I'll admit quite a bit more than I remembered before having just looked it up. But it just doesn't seem to me like it's any better or worse in other parts of Z.

[Kuririn Fan]

Hardest: Watching all 444 episodes of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z from start to finish without skipping anything. Now it wasn't actually "hard," but it was a big commitment and took me a couple of months to finish.

A couple of months?! To get through all 444 episodes? I've been doing the same thing, and I've gotten through 365 episodes (and twelve movies and two TV specials) so far... and it's taken me since January... of 2014!

I watched all 444 episodes and all movies in 2 months, it was that good. Masako Nozawa required a little bit of getting used to but everything else was perfect. It was all thanks to you and your dissection series that i became a purist and experienced the true version of the series. I am grateful to you for the rest of my life.

[ABED]

Not long. Goku's voice was a shock at first, but didn't take long for me to fall in love with the original cast. I already prefered the music. That happens quite a bit with the things i enjoy. Some things that I love are acquired tastes, such as listening to Metallica or Led Zeppelin, but it doesn't take me that long, maybe a few listens to get used to it.