This is my attempt to explain every way that Viz’s English release of the DB/Z manga differs from the original Japanese (besides, you know, the general fact that it’s in English rather than Japanese). So stuff like changed lines, censorship, things that are lost in translation, etc. Dialogue changes are ranks between 1-4 stars, with **** being an absolutely massive change and * being something probably only I care about. There are some changes I might overlook if they just really, really seem like they’re not worth mentioning.
Besides the star ratings, [censor] indicates things that have been censored, [edit] indicates mainly visual edits that don’t fall under the “censorship” category (translated signs or things like that), [lost] indicates things lost in translation, [sound] is for sound effects-related things, and [note] is for, well, notes. "Tr:" marks my own personal translation of things (which I try to keep as direct as possible), while "Viz" is for how Viz has it, and "JPN" is the actual Japanese text, which I may occasionally add in for the heck of it. Please note that I’m not claiming all these changes are bad or that my translations are better, I’m just offering up a direct translation of the Japanese in order to highlight how Viz’s adaptation is different.
Viz’s DB/Z manga has many different releases, with various levels of censorship and various other differences between them. For this project I’m mainly relying on Viz’s digital release, on my Kindle.
Chapter 1
Spoiler:
[***/lost]
And so, very first of all, we have the opening narration for the series:
Tr: “Long, long ago, deep in some mountains thousands of kilometers from the city…that’s where this fantastic story starts off…”
Viz: “Long, long ago, in a deep, dark forest far from civilization, beyond a towering range of…well, you get the idea. It’s the kind of place a story like this has to begin…”
The Japanese for the opening words of Dragon Ball are mukashi mukashi no koto, “long, long ago”. It’s used as a standard opening to legends and fairy tales, so it’s essentially the Japanese equivalent of “once upon a time”. It’s a fitting way to begin the story of Dragon Ball.
Viz’s opening narration sets the tone they’ll often take with their translations: they add a certain level of ironic detachment that’s not quite present in the original. So the Japanese narration gives a straightforward fairy tale-style introduction to the story, while Viz starts to give a typical fairy tale introduction before going breaking off midway through with “well, you get the idea”.
---
[lost]
Goku’s first line is a greeting, appropriately enough:
JPN: やあ、オッス!!
Tr: “Yo, heya!”
Viz: “Hey, bro! Wuzzup?!”
Ossu is an informal Japanese greeting equivalent to howdy, heya, and things like that. It’s one of Goku’s trademark lines, as it’s how he begins each next episode preview in the anime.
---
[**]
In the original, Goku simply yells as he smashes up the log, but in Viz he shouts actual threats at it, like “prepare to die!”.
---
[**]
In the original, as it closes in on Goku’s tail, the giant fish wonders if the tail belongs to a monkey or a mountain cat, but in Viz he instead says “Got ya, ya dumb-butt little monkey!!” (the “got ya” part is in the original, just not the rest).
---
[lost]
In Japaese, Goku believes Bulma to be a youkai, a term for all manner of spooks and specters that can be a bit hard to translate, since it has some fairly unique connotations yet is still rather vague at the same time. These days, you might have heard of this term thanks to Yo-Kai Watch, but it’s also used prominently in Yu Yu Hakusho, Gegege no Kitaro (and all of Shigeru Mizuki’s works), Natsume’s Book of Friends, and all sorts of other stuff. Viz translates it as "demon", which is fine, although youkai isn't the same term used for the various demons who turn up later in the series, like Piccolo Daimao and his men.
---
[*]
Tr: “Ge…gege…”
Viz: “Yee…Gods..!!”
“Ge” is a Japanese exclamation of fear and disgust (it’s used for instance in the title of the above-mentioned series Gegege no Kitaro). I guess this isn't really a change, since "Yee Gods" means basically the same thing, but...what the hell kind of teenage girl says "Yee Gods"?
---
[*]
After Bulma shoots Goku, in the original he says he wouldn’t die from that, but in Viz he says it doesn’t hurt him. He also says that his body is as hard as stainless steel, but this isn’t present in the Viz.
---
[*]
In the original, when Goku describes how Bulma is different from him, he says she is “frail and weak”, while in Viz he calls her “softer…and bumpier!”. “Softer” is in keeping with the original, but “bumpier” is an…interesting choice.
---
[*]
For whatever reason, Viz has Bulma call Goku a “he-man” where in the original she just calls him a man/male.
---
[***]
Viz has Bulma refer to Goku with quite a wide range of terms that aren’t present in the original, mostly insults. The first is “brainiac” and it and the other insulting things Bulma calls Goku in Viz are things they added in, and don’t correspond to anything she calls him in the original. So why did Viz put them in? I think it’s an attempt to replicate Bulma’s general tone she takes with Goku, which at this point is very terse and short-tempered.
---
[**]
Bulma’s immediate reaction to Goku being surprised to learn she’s a woman:
Tr: “What a Hick”
Viz: “Heh-loh!!”
---
[*]
In the original Goku asks Bulma if she’s from the city (miyako), but in Viz it’s “civilization”. This is the second time in the chapter that miyako/city gets rendered as “civilization” (the first time being the opening narration), probably because in this case it doesn’t refer to a specific city but just a generalized idea of “the city”. And of course, the word “civilization” itself at its root means “city”.
---
[*]
Bulma’s reaction to Goku’s house
Tr: “What a dilapidated house.”
Viz: “Not much for home repair, are you?”
The meaning is the same, but in the original she directly states it, while in Viz she says it sarcastically. There’s quite a few instances of this kind of thing in Viz, and you could see it as Viz adapting the dialogue to an English audience. I'm probably not going to note the further instances of this kind of thing.
---
[**]
In the original Goku calls the 4-star ball his memento/keepsake (katami) of his grandfather, but Viz has him call it his grandfather’s “last possession”. Is this just another way of saying memento that I’m unfamiliar with?
---
[**]
Goku, on being told these strange spheres are called “dragon balls”
Tr: “Dragon…balls?”
Viz: “Y’mean…some poor dragon?”
This is, as far as I’m concerned, the single greatest Viz line ever.
---
[lost]
Normally the word “dragonball(s)” is written out in Japanese in katakana: ドラゴンボール; that is, it’s simply the English words “dragon” and “ball” written out in the Japanese script for writing foreign words. But when Bulma is first explaining about the dragonballs, they are written out 龍球, the kanji for “dragon” and “ball”, which would normally be pronounced ryuukyuu. However, ドラゴンボール is written out in tiny letters above the kanji, to show that they should still be read out as “dragon ball” rather than ryuukyuu.
The use of hiragana or katakana (the Japanese phonetic scripts) to indicate how kanji (the ideographic script) should be read is called “furigana”. In Dragon Ball and other comics aimed at young children, almost all the kanji have furigana above them to show the proper way to pronounce them, since children don’t necessarily know how to yet. In addition, sometimes furigana can be used to give kanji a different reading than it would normally have, like in the example above, where it’s used to have the kanji for “dragon” and “ball” be read like the English words for those things, rather than the Japanese.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, the dragonballs are given Mandarin Chinese names, all based on the number of stars in them (1-star ball, 2-star ball, etc). They’re written out in kanji, meaning that Japanese kids will know what their names mean, but the furigana for the kanji indicate they should be pronounced with the Chinese readings for those kanji, rather than the Japanese ones. When writing the ball names, Viz uses a direct Romanization of the Japanese way of writing these Chinese pronunciations. So basically it’s an English approximation of a Japanese approximation of Chinese. It’s roughly equivalent to if they called Bulma’s son “Torankusu”, but this is an issue best fully explored another day. Anyway, for the 4-star ball, the direct Romanization of the Mandarin Chinese name is Si Xing Qiu, while the Romanization of the Japanese approximation of that is Suu Shin Chuu, which is basically what Viz goes with.
---
[***]
When Bulma’s explaining about the second dragon ball she found, in the original she says she found it 10 days ago in the North Valley, while in Viz she instead says that she found it “after weeks searching the North Valley”. And I’m giving that 3 stars because I’m a chronology nut.
---
[*]
Bulma’s “Almost half way there!” in reference to her dragonball collecting is something Viz put in.
---
[*]
“Listen goof”: another name Bulma calls Goku that doesn’t directly correspond to anything in the original, but like most of the others this is probably meant to better convey the tone Bulma has in Japanese.
---
[lost/note]
Bulma says that the last person who gathered the dragonballs became a king. The Japanese word for king that she uses is ou-sama. Now, the term for the global king we meet later on in the series is koku-ou, literally “nation king” (the idea being that DB Earth is a single worldwide nation). Lots of people wonder if the king Bulma is talking about is the same as the global king we see in the series. Well…it’s not impossible, but like I said the terms used for each one are slightly different, and Kame-sennin later says that he picked up his dragonball about 100 years ago, meaning if the current global king is the same guy then he’d have to be at least 100 years old (700 in dog years).
---
[censor]
In both the Japanese version and some of Viz’s less censored releases, Bulma offers Goku the chance to feel up her butt in exchange for his dragon ball (he declines, saying he doesn’t want to feel her dirty butt). In Viz’s more censored release though, she instead merely tells him he can have “just one quick peep” at her butt, and he responds “why would I wanna see your dirty butt”?)
---
[*]
More Viz-added Bulma insults for Goku: “Idiot boy”.
---
[***]
When Bulma introduces the Dragon Radar, in Viz she instead simply calls it her “ball detector” for some reason. Is the name “radar” copyrighted or something?
---
[**]
Goku’s reaction to Bulma’s name
Tr: “Bulma!? Hahah, what a weird name. [ ] Hahaha-----Bulma, huh----“
Viz: “Doesn’t that mean “bloomers”?! Haw!!...Hahaha ‘Bloomers’!!”
Presumably this is Viz changing the dialog a bit to make the pun in Bulma’s name more obvious to an English audience.
---
[*]
When Bulma is tossing her capsule, Viz has her say “Thar she blows!!”, while in the original she just says “get away” and whatnot.
---
[*]
More Bulma name-calling: “Ape-boy”, which she follows up with “swing your tail up here!”
---
[note]
In the speech bubble that says “20 minutes later”, Viz’s printing has the text printed very, very small, so that most of the balloon is empty. I just found that odd.
---
[*]
Goku uses the Nyoibo for the first time
Tr: “Staff, extend!!!”
Viz: “OK staff--do your stuff!”
---
[***]
Tr: “Well well, what on Earth will happen next in Goku and Bulma’s great adventure?...Tune in next time!”
Viz: “Remember your Chinese fairy tales? You don’t? Not even the impish monkey king and his magic staff, the Nyoibo? Oh well…drop in next time and you’ll learn…”
I’d assume that Viz simply wanted to use the closing narration to explain a bit about all the references to Journey to the West, which would be unfamiliar to an English audience. Incidentally, while Sun Wukong’s staff in Journey to the West is called Nyoibo in Japanese, just like Goku’s weapon, in Chinese it would be Ru Yi Bang.
---
[sound]
These sound effects were originally in English anyway, so Viz didn’t have to translate them:
Bakokokoko..!!
Baoooom
Bom!
Toriyama uses alphabet letters rather than Japanese kana to write out sound effects fairly often. It’s one of the things that made his early manuscript stand out to his first editor at Jump, Kazuhiko Torishima, and helped open the door to his manga career. Torishima mentions this in Shenlong Times #1.
And so, very first of all, we have the opening narration for the series:
Tr: “Long, long ago, deep in some mountains thousands of kilometers from the city…that’s where this fantastic story starts off…”
Viz: “Long, long ago, in a deep, dark forest far from civilization, beyond a towering range of…well, you get the idea. It’s the kind of place a story like this has to begin…”
The Japanese for the opening words of Dragon Ball are mukashi mukashi no koto, “long, long ago”. It’s used as a standard opening to legends and fairy tales, so it’s essentially the Japanese equivalent of “once upon a time”. It’s a fitting way to begin the story of Dragon Ball.
Viz’s opening narration sets the tone they’ll often take with their translations: they add a certain level of ironic detachment that’s not quite present in the original. So the Japanese narration gives a straightforward fairy tale-style introduction to the story, while Viz starts to give a typical fairy tale introduction before going breaking off midway through with “well, you get the idea”.
---
[lost]
Goku’s first line is a greeting, appropriately enough:
JPN: やあ、オッス!!
Tr: “Yo, heya!”
Viz: “Hey, bro! Wuzzup?!”
Ossu is an informal Japanese greeting equivalent to howdy, heya, and things like that. It’s one of Goku’s trademark lines, as it’s how he begins each next episode preview in the anime.
---
[**]
In the original, Goku simply yells as he smashes up the log, but in Viz he shouts actual threats at it, like “prepare to die!”.
---
[**]
In the original, as it closes in on Goku’s tail, the giant fish wonders if the tail belongs to a monkey or a mountain cat, but in Viz he instead says “Got ya, ya dumb-butt little monkey!!” (the “got ya” part is in the original, just not the rest).
---
[lost]
In Japaese, Goku believes Bulma to be a youkai, a term for all manner of spooks and specters that can be a bit hard to translate, since it has some fairly unique connotations yet is still rather vague at the same time. These days, you might have heard of this term thanks to Yo-Kai Watch, but it’s also used prominently in Yu Yu Hakusho, Gegege no Kitaro (and all of Shigeru Mizuki’s works), Natsume’s Book of Friends, and all sorts of other stuff. Viz translates it as "demon", which is fine, although youkai isn't the same term used for the various demons who turn up later in the series, like Piccolo Daimao and his men.
---
[*]
Tr: “Ge…gege…”
Viz: “Yee…Gods..!!”
“Ge” is a Japanese exclamation of fear and disgust (it’s used for instance in the title of the above-mentioned series Gegege no Kitaro). I guess this isn't really a change, since "Yee Gods" means basically the same thing, but...what the hell kind of teenage girl says "Yee Gods"?
---
[*]
After Bulma shoots Goku, in the original he says he wouldn’t die from that, but in Viz he says it doesn’t hurt him. He also says that his body is as hard as stainless steel, but this isn’t present in the Viz.
---
[*]
In the original, when Goku describes how Bulma is different from him, he says she is “frail and weak”, while in Viz he calls her “softer…and bumpier!”. “Softer” is in keeping with the original, but “bumpier” is an…interesting choice.
---
[*]
For whatever reason, Viz has Bulma call Goku a “he-man” where in the original she just calls him a man/male.
---
[***]
Viz has Bulma refer to Goku with quite a wide range of terms that aren’t present in the original, mostly insults. The first is “brainiac” and it and the other insulting things Bulma calls Goku in Viz are things they added in, and don’t correspond to anything she calls him in the original. So why did Viz put them in? I think it’s an attempt to replicate Bulma’s general tone she takes with Goku, which at this point is very terse and short-tempered.
---
[**]
Bulma’s immediate reaction to Goku being surprised to learn she’s a woman:
Tr: “What a Hick”
Viz: “Heh-loh!!”
---
[*]
In the original Goku asks Bulma if she’s from the city (miyako), but in Viz it’s “civilization”. This is the second time in the chapter that miyako/city gets rendered as “civilization” (the first time being the opening narration), probably because in this case it doesn’t refer to a specific city but just a generalized idea of “the city”. And of course, the word “civilization” itself at its root means “city”.
---
[*]
Bulma’s reaction to Goku’s house
Tr: “What a dilapidated house.”
Viz: “Not much for home repair, are you?”
The meaning is the same, but in the original she directly states it, while in Viz she says it sarcastically. There’s quite a few instances of this kind of thing in Viz, and you could see it as Viz adapting the dialogue to an English audience. I'm probably not going to note the further instances of this kind of thing.
---
[**]
In the original Goku calls the 4-star ball his memento/keepsake (katami) of his grandfather, but Viz has him call it his grandfather’s “last possession”. Is this just another way of saying memento that I’m unfamiliar with?
---
[**]
Goku, on being told these strange spheres are called “dragon balls”
Tr: “Dragon…balls?”
Viz: “Y’mean…some poor dragon?”
This is, as far as I’m concerned, the single greatest Viz line ever.
---
[lost]
Normally the word “dragonball(s)” is written out in Japanese in katakana: ドラゴンボール; that is, it’s simply the English words “dragon” and “ball” written out in the Japanese script for writing foreign words. But when Bulma is first explaining about the dragonballs, they are written out 龍球, the kanji for “dragon” and “ball”, which would normally be pronounced ryuukyuu. However, ドラゴンボール is written out in tiny letters above the kanji, to show that they should still be read out as “dragon ball” rather than ryuukyuu.
The use of hiragana or katakana (the Japanese phonetic scripts) to indicate how kanji (the ideographic script) should be read is called “furigana”. In Dragon Ball and other comics aimed at young children, almost all the kanji have furigana above them to show the proper way to pronounce them, since children don’t necessarily know how to yet. In addition, sometimes furigana can be used to give kanji a different reading than it would normally have, like in the example above, where it’s used to have the kanji for “dragon” and “ball” be read like the English words for those things, rather than the Japanese.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, the dragonballs are given Mandarin Chinese names, all based on the number of stars in them (1-star ball, 2-star ball, etc). They’re written out in kanji, meaning that Japanese kids will know what their names mean, but the furigana for the kanji indicate they should be pronounced with the Chinese readings for those kanji, rather than the Japanese ones. When writing the ball names, Viz uses a direct Romanization of the Japanese way of writing these Chinese pronunciations. So basically it’s an English approximation of a Japanese approximation of Chinese. It’s roughly equivalent to if they called Bulma’s son “Torankusu”, but this is an issue best fully explored another day. Anyway, for the 4-star ball, the direct Romanization of the Mandarin Chinese name is Si Xing Qiu, while the Romanization of the Japanese approximation of that is Suu Shin Chuu, which is basically what Viz goes with.
---
[***]
When Bulma’s explaining about the second dragon ball she found, in the original she says she found it 10 days ago in the North Valley, while in Viz she instead says that she found it “after weeks searching the North Valley”. And I’m giving that 3 stars because I’m a chronology nut.
---
[*]
Bulma’s “Almost half way there!” in reference to her dragonball collecting is something Viz put in.
---
[*]
“Listen goof”: another name Bulma calls Goku that doesn’t directly correspond to anything in the original, but like most of the others this is probably meant to better convey the tone Bulma has in Japanese.
---
[lost/note]
Bulma says that the last person who gathered the dragonballs became a king. The Japanese word for king that she uses is ou-sama. Now, the term for the global king we meet later on in the series is koku-ou, literally “nation king” (the idea being that DB Earth is a single worldwide nation). Lots of people wonder if the king Bulma is talking about is the same as the global king we see in the series. Well…it’s not impossible, but like I said the terms used for each one are slightly different, and Kame-sennin later says that he picked up his dragonball about 100 years ago, meaning if the current global king is the same guy then he’d have to be at least 100 years old (700 in dog years).
---
[censor]
In both the Japanese version and some of Viz’s less censored releases, Bulma offers Goku the chance to feel up her butt in exchange for his dragon ball (he declines, saying he doesn’t want to feel her dirty butt). In Viz’s more censored release though, she instead merely tells him he can have “just one quick peep” at her butt, and he responds “why would I wanna see your dirty butt”?)
---
[*]
More Viz-added Bulma insults for Goku: “Idiot boy”.
---
[***]
When Bulma introduces the Dragon Radar, in Viz she instead simply calls it her “ball detector” for some reason. Is the name “radar” copyrighted or something?
---
[**]
Goku’s reaction to Bulma’s name
Tr: “Bulma!? Hahah, what a weird name. [ ] Hahaha-----Bulma, huh----“
Viz: “Doesn’t that mean “bloomers”?! Haw!!...Hahaha ‘Bloomers’!!”
Presumably this is Viz changing the dialog a bit to make the pun in Bulma’s name more obvious to an English audience.
---
[*]
When Bulma is tossing her capsule, Viz has her say “Thar she blows!!”, while in the original she just says “get away” and whatnot.
---
[*]
More Bulma name-calling: “Ape-boy”, which she follows up with “swing your tail up here!”
---
[note]
In the speech bubble that says “20 minutes later”, Viz’s printing has the text printed very, very small, so that most of the balloon is empty. I just found that odd.
---
[*]
Goku uses the Nyoibo for the first time
Tr: “Staff, extend!!!”
Viz: “OK staff--do your stuff!”
---
[***]
Tr: “Well well, what on Earth will happen next in Goku and Bulma’s great adventure?...Tune in next time!”
Viz: “Remember your Chinese fairy tales? You don’t? Not even the impish monkey king and his magic staff, the Nyoibo? Oh well…drop in next time and you’ll learn…”
I’d assume that Viz simply wanted to use the closing narration to explain a bit about all the references to Journey to the West, which would be unfamiliar to an English audience. Incidentally, while Sun Wukong’s staff in Journey to the West is called Nyoibo in Japanese, just like Goku’s weapon, in Chinese it would be Ru Yi Bang.
---
[sound]
These sound effects were originally in English anyway, so Viz didn’t have to translate them:
Bakokokoko..!!
Baoooom
Bom!
Toriyama uses alphabet letters rather than Japanese kana to write out sound effects fairly often. It’s one of the things that made his early manuscript stand out to his first editor at Jump, Kazuhiko Torishima, and helped open the door to his manga career. Torishima mentions this in Shenlong Times #1.
Spoiler:
[**]
Opening narration
Tr: “Goku and Bulma’s journey has begun to find the seven dragon balls which are said to grant any single wish.”
Viz: “In her quest for the seven dragon balls that will grant her fondest wish, Bulma has enlisted the help of the strange creature named Son Goku”
---
[*]
Goku
Tr: “Shall we camp here tonight?”
Viz: “I get the soft leaves for my bed!”
So basically, the original line is Goku directly asking if they’ll camp, while Viz’s line is Goku automatically assuming they’re going to camp and saying something else based on that assumption. Another instance of Viz adding an extra layer on. We see the same sort of thing in the next few lines.
---
[*]
Bulma, after setting up the Capsule house
Tr: “Hey, what are you doing? Come inside.”
Viz: “Well? Still lusting over those leaves?”
---
[**]
Bulma
Tr: “Are you going to camp out?”
Viz: “Cold enough to come in yet?”
---
[*]
Bulma reacts to Goku’s ignorance of electric lighting
Tr: “I didn’t think you were such a total hick.”
Viz: “You have a long way to go, Tarzan.”
Another thing which is more just an example Viz spicing up the dialogue than an actual change, but I’m including them for now so you can get a sense of how Viz handles dialogue. The word Bulma always uses to call Goku a hick is inaka-mon (inaka itself basically means “the sticks”, and both these words get used quite a lot in Dr. Slump). Incidentally, a Tarzan parody named Parzan appears in Dr. Slump.
---
[*]
Bulma, giving Goku a bath
Tr: “There’s no greater fortune than this.”
Viz: “What a waste of my babe-itude.”
Another slightly punched-up line.
---
[**]
In Japanese, Bulma refers to Goku’s tail as an “accessory” (like a fashion accessory; she uses the actual English word “accessory”), before she learns it’s real. In Viz she just calls it a phony tail
---
[***]
Bulma, after Goku casually dismisses the whole “do regular men have tails or not?” debate
Tr: “You’ve really got an easy-going personality.”
Viz: “I take it back…’weird’ doesn’t even come close…”
OK, maybe this isn’t exactly worth three stars on its own, but it’s a running joke throughout this early portion of the series that Goku is constantly referred to as being “easy-going” by everyone he meets. In Viz though, half the time they change such lines to something else, messing up the running joke.
---
[**/lost]
In the bath, Bulma further contemplates Goku’s weirdness
TR: “Geez, calling someone a witch or a demon, when he’s the most mysterious one of all!”
Viz: “Is he for real? He acts like I’m a witch or something…when he’s totally like something that jumped out of a horror m…”
Presumably in Viz Bulma was about to say “horror movie” (she cuts off her sentence when she notices Goku’s there with her). Besides the slight bit of punching up, one thing to note is how in Japanese Bulma rhetorically complains about Goku calling “someone” a witch/demon, when of course by “someone” she obviously means herself. This sort of thing is fairly common in Japanese (usually using the word hito, simply “a person”), and pops up throughout the series. One famous example is Vegeta in DBZ movie 13 chewing Hildegarn out for smashing up “somebody’s” house.
---
[***/lost]
When Bulma asks Goku how old he is, in the original she calls him “Son-kun”. This is the first time Bulma calls Goku this, and it becomes her standard way of referring to him throughout the series, kun being a Japanese honorific used mostly on young males to show familiarity. So this shows that Bulma is already treating Goku as something of a friend, or at least someone she knows. However, in Viz she simply calls him “kid”, not even using his name.
---
[*]
More Viz-added Bulma insults (VABI?): "Monkey-boy", "moron"
---
[*]
In the original, Goku mentions that he will make a whole roast out of the wolf and centipede he catches, but this gets left out in Viz. When Goku asks Bulma is she really doesn’t want some of the wolf/centipede, Viz adds in a joke where he offers to cook hers “medium” (originally he just says the wolf/centipede are almost done cooking).
---
[**]
Goku
Tr: “This futon is soft, it feels good”
Viz: “This ‘futon’ thing is going to be fun!”
Viz strongly implies that Goku has never slept on a futon before, which the original doesn’t really do, although Goku’s delight at the futon could be interpreted as due to unfamiliarity.
---
[**]
In the original Bulma explicitly asks Goku if his parents are dead, but in Viz she just asks what happened to them.
---
[*]
Goku, upon waking up
Tr: “Morning?”
Viz: “Wha?”
---
[***]
Goku sees Bulma’s crotch
Tr: “Reminds me of grandpa’s fluffy testicle pillow!”
Viz: “Well, her pillow’s not as big as grandpa’s…”
OK…so…how Goku describes his grandfather’s “pillow” in Japanese is kintamakura, which is a combination of kintama (balls/testicles; literally “golden balls”) and makura, pillow. In Viz you still get the idea of what Goku’s talking about, but it’s not as explicitly described as in Japanese.
---
[**]
Goku
Tr: “No balls…!! No wee-wee either…”
Viz: “Y-y-y-you’ve…l-l-lost your ba-ba-ba-ba…”
In Viz Goku doesn’t mention Bulma not having a wee-wee, or even finish saying “balls”. Since “wee-wee” was used in Viz back in chapter 1, I think this wasn’t done for censorship reasons, but rather to make Bulma look less stupid for thinking Goku was talking about the dragon balls.
---
[*]
Closing narration
Tr: “Bulma sighs in relief that the dragon balls are safe…But what on Earth is this creepy shadow drawing closer?!”
Viz: “…And so Bulma sighs in relief, her greatest fear averted…but perhaps she shouldn’t relax quite yet…”
---
[sound]
Another Toriyama English sound effects (TESE?): Bomb!
Opening narration
Tr: “Goku and Bulma’s journey has begun to find the seven dragon balls which are said to grant any single wish.”
Viz: “In her quest for the seven dragon balls that will grant her fondest wish, Bulma has enlisted the help of the strange creature named Son Goku”
---
[*]
Goku
Tr: “Shall we camp here tonight?”
Viz: “I get the soft leaves for my bed!”
So basically, the original line is Goku directly asking if they’ll camp, while Viz’s line is Goku automatically assuming they’re going to camp and saying something else based on that assumption. Another instance of Viz adding an extra layer on. We see the same sort of thing in the next few lines.
---
[*]
Bulma, after setting up the Capsule house
Tr: “Hey, what are you doing? Come inside.”
Viz: “Well? Still lusting over those leaves?”
---
[**]
Bulma
Tr: “Are you going to camp out?”
Viz: “Cold enough to come in yet?”
---
[*]
Bulma reacts to Goku’s ignorance of electric lighting
Tr: “I didn’t think you were such a total hick.”
Viz: “You have a long way to go, Tarzan.”
Another thing which is more just an example Viz spicing up the dialogue than an actual change, but I’m including them for now so you can get a sense of how Viz handles dialogue. The word Bulma always uses to call Goku a hick is inaka-mon (inaka itself basically means “the sticks”, and both these words get used quite a lot in Dr. Slump). Incidentally, a Tarzan parody named Parzan appears in Dr. Slump.
---
[*]
Bulma, giving Goku a bath
Tr: “There’s no greater fortune than this.”
Viz: “What a waste of my babe-itude.”
Another slightly punched-up line.
---
[**]
In Japanese, Bulma refers to Goku’s tail as an “accessory” (like a fashion accessory; she uses the actual English word “accessory”), before she learns it’s real. In Viz she just calls it a phony tail
---
[***]
Bulma, after Goku casually dismisses the whole “do regular men have tails or not?” debate
Tr: “You’ve really got an easy-going personality.”
Viz: “I take it back…’weird’ doesn’t even come close…”
OK, maybe this isn’t exactly worth three stars on its own, but it’s a running joke throughout this early portion of the series that Goku is constantly referred to as being “easy-going” by everyone he meets. In Viz though, half the time they change such lines to something else, messing up the running joke.
---
[**/lost]
In the bath, Bulma further contemplates Goku’s weirdness
TR: “Geez, calling someone a witch or a demon, when he’s the most mysterious one of all!”
Viz: “Is he for real? He acts like I’m a witch or something…when he’s totally like something that jumped out of a horror m…”
Presumably in Viz Bulma was about to say “horror movie” (she cuts off her sentence when she notices Goku’s there with her). Besides the slight bit of punching up, one thing to note is how in Japanese Bulma rhetorically complains about Goku calling “someone” a witch/demon, when of course by “someone” she obviously means herself. This sort of thing is fairly common in Japanese (usually using the word hito, simply “a person”), and pops up throughout the series. One famous example is Vegeta in DBZ movie 13 chewing Hildegarn out for smashing up “somebody’s” house.
---
[***/lost]
When Bulma asks Goku how old he is, in the original she calls him “Son-kun”. This is the first time Bulma calls Goku this, and it becomes her standard way of referring to him throughout the series, kun being a Japanese honorific used mostly on young males to show familiarity. So this shows that Bulma is already treating Goku as something of a friend, or at least someone she knows. However, in Viz she simply calls him “kid”, not even using his name.
---
[*]
More Viz-added Bulma insults (VABI?): "Monkey-boy", "moron"
---
[*]
In the original, Goku mentions that he will make a whole roast out of the wolf and centipede he catches, but this gets left out in Viz. When Goku asks Bulma is she really doesn’t want some of the wolf/centipede, Viz adds in a joke where he offers to cook hers “medium” (originally he just says the wolf/centipede are almost done cooking).
---
[**]
Goku
Tr: “This futon is soft, it feels good”
Viz: “This ‘futon’ thing is going to be fun!”
Viz strongly implies that Goku has never slept on a futon before, which the original doesn’t really do, although Goku’s delight at the futon could be interpreted as due to unfamiliarity.
---
[**]
In the original Bulma explicitly asks Goku if his parents are dead, but in Viz she just asks what happened to them.
---
[*]
Goku, upon waking up
Tr: “Morning?”
Viz: “Wha?”
---
[***]
Goku sees Bulma’s crotch
Tr: “Reminds me of grandpa’s fluffy testicle pillow!”
Viz: “Well, her pillow’s not as big as grandpa’s…”
OK…so…how Goku describes his grandfather’s “pillow” in Japanese is kintamakura, which is a combination of kintama (balls/testicles; literally “golden balls”) and makura, pillow. In Viz you still get the idea of what Goku’s talking about, but it’s not as explicitly described as in Japanese.
---
[**]
Goku
Tr: “No balls…!! No wee-wee either…”
Viz: “Y-y-y-you’ve…l-l-lost your ba-ba-ba-ba…”
In Viz Goku doesn’t mention Bulma not having a wee-wee, or even finish saying “balls”. Since “wee-wee” was used in Viz back in chapter 1, I think this wasn’t done for censorship reasons, but rather to make Bulma look less stupid for thinking Goku was talking about the dragon balls.
---
[*]
Closing narration
Tr: “Bulma sighs in relief that the dragon balls are safe…But what on Earth is this creepy shadow drawing closer?!”
Viz: “…And so Bulma sighs in relief, her greatest fear averted…but perhaps she shouldn’t relax quite yet…”
---
[sound]
Another Toriyama English sound effects (TESE?): Bomb!
Spoiler:
[*]
Opening narration
Tr: “After spending the night, Goku and Bulma were finishing up their preparation for setting off in search of the next dragonball. But what exactly is this creepy shadow that’s appeared there?”
Viz: “Bulma and Son Goku prepare to begin the second day of their quest...while closer...ever closer...crawls an ominous shadow...!!”
Pretty much the same as the original, but you can see how Viz puts their own little spin on the wording.
---
[**]
When Goku is complaining about how slow Bulma is, he says that she’ll “become a turtle”, but in Viz he just says she’s like a turtle (“what’re you, a turtle?”). A minor difference, but then when Goku meets Sea Turtle he says (both in Japanese and in Viz) “you really did become a turtle!”. Since Viz changed the earlier line, the second line ends up sort of comes out of nowhere.
---
[***/lost]
Bulma and Goku’s morning conversation
Tr.
Bulma: “And would you stop calling me ‘you’ [omae]!? I’m two years your elder, so I want you to call me ‘Bulma-san’!”
Goku: “I don’t wanna, it’s hard to say.”
Bulma: “How is that hard to say?!!”
Viz
Bulma: “For one thing, what’s with the familiar tone!? For another, I’m older and much more sophisticated than you! You should call me ‘miss’!”
Goku: “But what do you ‘miss’?”
Bulma: “Nothing, stupid!!”
In Japanese, it’s generally considered rude to use second-person pronouns to refer to someone when speaking with them (at least with people higher in social status than yourself). Thus, in the Japanese version Bulma complains about Goku referring to her as omae, one of several Japanese words for “you” (it’s fairly casual and is how Goku typically refers to people). Viz handles this cultural difference pretty well, though adding in the “miss” joke might be overdoing it a tad, since there’s no equivalent pun in Japanese (your mileage may vary).
---
[*]
Bulma, when Goku’s talking with Sea Turtle
Tr: “Who are you talking with?”
Viz: “What are you babbling about?”
So in Japanese Bulma realizes Goku is speaking with someone, while in Viz she apparently assumes she’s talking to her.
---
[lost]
Sea Turtle talks very politely in Japanese, and to represent that Viz has him talking sort of like a stereotypical English gentleman. In keeping with his politeness, Sea Turtle uses watakushi, a very polite form of “I” (it’s not used very often in DB; the other main example is probably Freeza when in “mock polite” mode).
---
[*]
When Sea Turtle explains how he got lost while out mushroom-hunting, in Japanese he says that he got separated from “everyone” (implying he was out mushroom-hunting with a group of friends…perhaps Kame-sennin and the Phoenix?). This detail drops out in Viz.
---
[*]
When Bulma’s mad at Goku for wanting to leave with Sea Turtle, she tells him to never show his face again; Viz renders this as her telling him to “never darken [her] Hoi-Poi door again”. The “Hoi-Poi door” is a very Viz-like touch (and I mean that in a good way). Then in the next panel or so, they change Bulma’s dialogue a bit:
Tr: “Dummy! Hick! Don’t come back!”
Viz: “I mean it! Never show your face again!”
So they basically move the “never show your face again” line to this panel.
---
[**]
The bear bandit, on seeing Goku carrying Sea Turtle
Tr: “Looks like they’ve brought something good…[ ] Haha---kid! Won’t you hand over that sea turtle? It’s my favorite!”
Viz: “Waiters on wheels, eh? And how did you know that sea turtle…is my favorite dish? Wa ha ha!”
Nothing too major here, but #1: the added “waiters on wheels” joke. #2: in Japanese, the bear bandit just directly states that sea turtle is his favorite dish, while Viz jazzes this up a bit with “And how did you know that sea turtle…is my favorite dish?” Not to get too repetitive here, but you can again see how dialogue that is very plain and direct in Japanese sometimes gets an extra layer added on in Viz: they use things like sarcasm or (in this case) a rhetorical question to express the same idea that was originally just stated flat-out. That’s characteristic of how they handle the DB/Z manga, but I’ve noticed it’s something they pretty much never do with their translation of One-Punch Man, to bring up the other Viz translation I’ve looked over in-depth (frankly, sometimes I wish Viz’s OPM translation was a bit more like their DB translation). I assume a big part of this is simply due to the two manga series being handled by different translators, but I also wonder if Viz has changed their approach in the years since they put out their DB/Z manga, or if there’s something about DB’s dialogue that just lends itself to this approach more.
---
[**]
During the bear incident, Bulma calls Goku “Son-kun” again in Japanese, but Viz changes this to “pee-wee”. So far Bulma has never called Goku by name in Viz’s translation, in stark contrast to the Japanese version.
---
[*]
Goku refused to hand over Sea Turtle to the bandit
Tr: “I won’t give nothing to you!”
Viz: “Nyah, nyah! Fooey on youey!”
---
[*]
Bear bandit, after Goku’s refusal
Tr: “Well if that’s the case, I guess I’ll take the brat first…
Viz: “Well, I do aim to please…”
---
[**]
The Tori-bot on the tree by the sea (say that three times fast)
Tr: “This isn’t Penguin Village.”
Viz: “Is this Penguin Village…?”
As the note Viz adds says, Penguin Village is the setting of Toriyama’s second most popular manga, Dr. Slump. Goku will later visit Penguin Village during the Red Ribbon Army arc. The fact that the Tori-bot is clinging to the palm tree is also a visual reference to Dr. Slump, where various odd things are always seen clinging to palm trees (triceratops, pigs, etc). This is also the first time Toriyama appears in Dragon Ball. While he showed up so much in Dr. Slump that he was pretty much a regular character, in Dragon Ball he won’t turn up again until the Boo arc.
---
[***]
Bulma, wondering what the reward Sea Turtle mentions is
Tr: “It’s not going to be a tamate-bako, is it?”
Viz: “I can’t wait to see a turtle’s idea of a reward…”
Viz glosses over this reference to the famous Japanese folk tale of “Urashima Taro”. Long story (somewhat) short, a boy named Urashima Taro saves a sea turtle that is being harassed by some kids, and in gratitude it takes him to a dragon palace at the bottom of the sea, where a beautiful princess lives. He lives there with the princess for three hundred years, which to him seem like only three days, until he longs to go back and visit his family. The princess reluctantly agrees, and gives him the tamate-bako, a magic box, as a gift, but says he must not open it. Urashima Taro goes back the surface, but finds that everyone he knows is long dead (it’s only here that he learns how long he’s been gone). Unable to return to the dragon palace and not sure what to do, he opens the tamate-bako. However, the tamate-bako turns out to contain his true age, and so he instantly becomes an old, old man, and dies. As my very first Japanese teacher said, “sometimes life is like this”.
This story is often referenced in anime. In Dr. Slump for instance, Suppaman is inspired by this story to go in search of a turtle to save, in the end forcing a kid at gunpoint to harass a turtle so that he can then “save” it.
---
[*]
For Kame-sennin’s first line, in the Japanese version he says the English greeting “Hello”. Viz has him say “Aloha”, presumably because for English speakers it’s a widely known foreign greeting, just as “hello” is for the Japanese (and of course it matches the tropical beach setting).
---
[*]
Bulma’s reaction to Kame-sennin
Tr: “…A flashy old man”
Viz: “Just what we need…an old man…”
This is one of my favorite Viz lines.
---
[**]
Closing narration
Tr: “The turtle they helped brought back a funky old man! Who could he be!?”
Viz: “Careful, Bulma…don’t be so quick to dismiss this old man…”
Opening narration
Tr: “After spending the night, Goku and Bulma were finishing up their preparation for setting off in search of the next dragonball. But what exactly is this creepy shadow that’s appeared there?”
Viz: “Bulma and Son Goku prepare to begin the second day of their quest...while closer...ever closer...crawls an ominous shadow...!!”
Pretty much the same as the original, but you can see how Viz puts their own little spin on the wording.
---
[**]
When Goku is complaining about how slow Bulma is, he says that she’ll “become a turtle”, but in Viz he just says she’s like a turtle (“what’re you, a turtle?”). A minor difference, but then when Goku meets Sea Turtle he says (both in Japanese and in Viz) “you really did become a turtle!”. Since Viz changed the earlier line, the second line ends up sort of comes out of nowhere.
---
[***/lost]
Bulma and Goku’s morning conversation
Tr.
Bulma: “And would you stop calling me ‘you’ [omae]!? I’m two years your elder, so I want you to call me ‘Bulma-san’!”
Goku: “I don’t wanna, it’s hard to say.”
Bulma: “How is that hard to say?!!”
Viz
Bulma: “For one thing, what’s with the familiar tone!? For another, I’m older and much more sophisticated than you! You should call me ‘miss’!”
Goku: “But what do you ‘miss’?”
Bulma: “Nothing, stupid!!”
In Japanese, it’s generally considered rude to use second-person pronouns to refer to someone when speaking with them (at least with people higher in social status than yourself). Thus, in the Japanese version Bulma complains about Goku referring to her as omae, one of several Japanese words for “you” (it’s fairly casual and is how Goku typically refers to people). Viz handles this cultural difference pretty well, though adding in the “miss” joke might be overdoing it a tad, since there’s no equivalent pun in Japanese (your mileage may vary).
---
[*]
Bulma, when Goku’s talking with Sea Turtle
Tr: “Who are you talking with?”
Viz: “What are you babbling about?”
So in Japanese Bulma realizes Goku is speaking with someone, while in Viz she apparently assumes she’s talking to her.
---
[lost]
Sea Turtle talks very politely in Japanese, and to represent that Viz has him talking sort of like a stereotypical English gentleman. In keeping with his politeness, Sea Turtle uses watakushi, a very polite form of “I” (it’s not used very often in DB; the other main example is probably Freeza when in “mock polite” mode).
---
[*]
When Sea Turtle explains how he got lost while out mushroom-hunting, in Japanese he says that he got separated from “everyone” (implying he was out mushroom-hunting with a group of friends…perhaps Kame-sennin and the Phoenix?). This detail drops out in Viz.
---
[*]
When Bulma’s mad at Goku for wanting to leave with Sea Turtle, she tells him to never show his face again; Viz renders this as her telling him to “never darken [her] Hoi-Poi door again”. The “Hoi-Poi door” is a very Viz-like touch (and I mean that in a good way). Then in the next panel or so, they change Bulma’s dialogue a bit:
Tr: “Dummy! Hick! Don’t come back!”
Viz: “I mean it! Never show your face again!”
So they basically move the “never show your face again” line to this panel.
---
[**]
The bear bandit, on seeing Goku carrying Sea Turtle
Tr: “Looks like they’ve brought something good…[ ] Haha---kid! Won’t you hand over that sea turtle? It’s my favorite!”
Viz: “Waiters on wheels, eh? And how did you know that sea turtle…is my favorite dish? Wa ha ha!”
Nothing too major here, but #1: the added “waiters on wheels” joke. #2: in Japanese, the bear bandit just directly states that sea turtle is his favorite dish, while Viz jazzes this up a bit with “And how did you know that sea turtle…is my favorite dish?” Not to get too repetitive here, but you can again see how dialogue that is very plain and direct in Japanese sometimes gets an extra layer added on in Viz: they use things like sarcasm or (in this case) a rhetorical question to express the same idea that was originally just stated flat-out. That’s characteristic of how they handle the DB/Z manga, but I’ve noticed it’s something they pretty much never do with their translation of One-Punch Man, to bring up the other Viz translation I’ve looked over in-depth (frankly, sometimes I wish Viz’s OPM translation was a bit more like their DB translation). I assume a big part of this is simply due to the two manga series being handled by different translators, but I also wonder if Viz has changed their approach in the years since they put out their DB/Z manga, or if there’s something about DB’s dialogue that just lends itself to this approach more.
---
[**]
During the bear incident, Bulma calls Goku “Son-kun” again in Japanese, but Viz changes this to “pee-wee”. So far Bulma has never called Goku by name in Viz’s translation, in stark contrast to the Japanese version.
---
[*]
Goku refused to hand over Sea Turtle to the bandit
Tr: “I won’t give nothing to you!”
Viz: “Nyah, nyah! Fooey on youey!”
---
[*]
Bear bandit, after Goku’s refusal
Tr: “Well if that’s the case, I guess I’ll take the brat first…
Viz: “Well, I do aim to please…”
---
[**]
The Tori-bot on the tree by the sea (say that three times fast)
Tr: “This isn’t Penguin Village.”
Viz: “Is this Penguin Village…?”
As the note Viz adds says, Penguin Village is the setting of Toriyama’s second most popular manga, Dr. Slump. Goku will later visit Penguin Village during the Red Ribbon Army arc. The fact that the Tori-bot is clinging to the palm tree is also a visual reference to Dr. Slump, where various odd things are always seen clinging to palm trees (triceratops, pigs, etc). This is also the first time Toriyama appears in Dragon Ball. While he showed up so much in Dr. Slump that he was pretty much a regular character, in Dragon Ball he won’t turn up again until the Boo arc.
---
[***]
Bulma, wondering what the reward Sea Turtle mentions is
Tr: “It’s not going to be a tamate-bako, is it?”
Viz: “I can’t wait to see a turtle’s idea of a reward…”
Viz glosses over this reference to the famous Japanese folk tale of “Urashima Taro”. Long story (somewhat) short, a boy named Urashima Taro saves a sea turtle that is being harassed by some kids, and in gratitude it takes him to a dragon palace at the bottom of the sea, where a beautiful princess lives. He lives there with the princess for three hundred years, which to him seem like only three days, until he longs to go back and visit his family. The princess reluctantly agrees, and gives him the tamate-bako, a magic box, as a gift, but says he must not open it. Urashima Taro goes back the surface, but finds that everyone he knows is long dead (it’s only here that he learns how long he’s been gone). Unable to return to the dragon palace and not sure what to do, he opens the tamate-bako. However, the tamate-bako turns out to contain his true age, and so he instantly becomes an old, old man, and dies. As my very first Japanese teacher said, “sometimes life is like this”.
This story is often referenced in anime. In Dr. Slump for instance, Suppaman is inspired by this story to go in search of a turtle to save, in the end forcing a kid at gunpoint to harass a turtle so that he can then “save” it.
---
[*]
For Kame-sennin’s first line, in the Japanese version he says the English greeting “Hello”. Viz has him say “Aloha”, presumably because for English speakers it’s a widely known foreign greeting, just as “hello” is for the Japanese (and of course it matches the tropical beach setting).
---
[*]
Bulma’s reaction to Kame-sennin
Tr: “…A flashy old man”
Viz: “Just what we need…an old man…”
This is one of my favorite Viz lines.
---
[**]
Closing narration
Tr: “The turtle they helped brought back a funky old man! Who could he be!?”
Viz: “Careful, Bulma…don’t be so quick to dismiss this old man…”
Spoiler:
[*]
Opening narration
Tr: “Son Goku helped out a turtle. Now who the heck is this old man the turtle brought in gratitude?...”
Viz: “…Okay, so Son Goku helps a turtle. The turtle wants to give him a reward. Swell, except the ‘reward’ is…”
I'm probably going to not cover the narration too much from now on. You can see how Viz handles it: same basic idea, but with their own spin. Which is generally what their translation does overall, but they seem to play faster and looser with the narration, and sometimes it's completely different. I’ll probably keep on noting the "completely different" times though.
---
[**]
In Japanese, Kame-sennin greats Goku and Bulma with the English phrase “Good afternoon!”. Viz has him say “Howdy, young’uns!”. I’m kind of disappointed they didn’t give him another foreign greeting, like they did with “hello/aloha” last chapter.
---
[lost]
Kame-sennin talks like a stereotypical geezer in Japanese: he uses washi (a form of “I” stereotypically used by old men), he pronounces the Japanese copula verb da as ja (in other words, he says “is” weird), and he sometimes finishes his sentences with wa (a particle typically used by women).
---
[lost]
A sennin (Xian in Chinese) is a figure from Taoist mythology, the “immortal spirit of a saint living in the mountains”, who “can perform miracles, such as…flying on the back of a tortoise or on a cloud”. So Kame-sennin is the sennin of turtles (kame=turtle). Viz and the Funi dub both translate Kame-sennin as “Turtle Hermit” (though Viz often leaves the term untranslated as well). At first glance this seems like it misses the mystic connotations of “sennin”, but in fact the English word “hermit” used to not be quote so different: in the word’s original, religious sense, it refers to monks or even saints who isolate themselves from society for the sake of spiritual development. At any rate, the big joke here is that the term implies a spiritual master far above petty earthly concerns…but Kame-sennin turns out to just be a big pervert. Over in Naruto, sennin is standardly translated as “Sage” in the official English release.
Kame-sennin’s self-introduction is one of the first instances of a standard Viz practice. In Japanese he introduces himself as “Kame-sennin”, while in Viz it’s:
“I!? I am…Kame-sen’nin! The Turtle Hermit!!”
That is, they follow up the untranslated term up immediately with the English translation. It’s a good way of keeping the original Japanese terms for things while still making sure the audience knows what they mean. But it’s probably also something that works better in printed form; dialogue like this might come across as a bit awkward spoken aloud in a dub.
---
[**]
Goku, after Kame-sennin offers to give him a present
Tr: “A present?”
Viz: “Not again…”
Presumably the Viz line is a reference to how Sea Turtle promised to bring Goku a present last chapter, only to come back with Kame-sennin, who then offers Goku a present…it starts to seem like an infinite loop.
---
[lost]
The term used in Japanese here for the sadly departed “immortal phoenix”: 不死鳥/fushi-chou, literally an immortal or death-less bird. There are actually a few different words used in Japanese for the phoenix: others include the actual word “phoenix” (a word ultimately of Greek origin), Hou-ou (yes, like the Pokemon; it’s derived from the Chinese 鳳凰/Fenghuang), and Hi-no-tori (literally “firebird”, like the bird of Russian myth). Osamu Tezuka’s landmark Phoenix series is titled Hi-no-Tori in Japanese, but ends up using every word for “phoenix” at some point throughout its run.
---
[**]
Bulma, when the immortal phoenix fails to show up
Tr: “…Nothing’s coming…”
Viz: “Was that ‘immortal’…or ‘invisible’?”
---
[**]
In Japanese, Sea Turtle explains that the “immortal phoenix” died of food poisoning. Viz punches this up a little: “Sir…if you’ll recall the unpleasantness with the tainted bird seed…”
---
[lost/notes]
So 觔斗雲/Kinto-un is one of the story elements derived from Journey to the West, in which Son Wukong and others have the ability to ride clouds. While it literally means “somersault cloud” over in Chinese, this meaning isn’t readily apparent to Japanese readers, and it’s sometimes incorrectly written in Japanese as 金斗雲 (with the kin part incorrectly written with the kanji for gold). In DB, Kinto-un is written 筋斗雲; this is because 觔, the starting kanji of the Chinese name, isn’t used in Japanese, and 筋 is its Japanese equivalent. Note that in Journey to the West, kinto-un is a special technique for riding clouds, not a specific kind of riding cloud like it is in DB.
Viz usually leaves the name untranslated, but also often has people refer to it as a “magic cloud” or simply “cloud” rather than by its proper name, something characters don’t really do in the Japanese version. It’s another example of Viz alternating between an untranslated Japanese term and an English equivalent (of course, “magic cloud” isn’t exactly a translation of “Kinto-un”, but it’s not too bad of a description).
---
[*]
Having received Kinto-un, Goku asks how to eat it. Kame-sennin replies:
Tr: “This cloud’s a gift! Don’t eat it!”
Viz: “You don’t eat a magic cloud!!”
---
[**]
After Kame-sennin falls through Kinto-un
Tr:
Sea Turtle: “Wh…what’s going on?...”
Kame-sennin: “Mumu~that’s odd…”
*Goku successfully rides Kinto-un*
Sea Turtle: “He could ride it…”
Kame-sennin: “Hmm...Wha-what’s going on?...”
Viz:
Sea Turtle: “Surely it’s defective”
Kame-sennin: “Needs a little mystic tune-up, mebbe…”
*Goku successfully rides Kinto-un*
Sea Turtle: “It seems…fixed, sir…”
Kame-sennin: “Maybe just a power surge…”
---
[censor]
In my Kindle edition, characters all say “undies” rather than “panties” (Kame-sennin also refers to his “shorts”, meaning his boxer shorts). I’m fairly certain this is one of those things that differs between the various Viz editions, because I definitely don’t remember that in the print edition. Anyway, even in Japanese they literally use the English word “panties” (パンチ/panchi), so it’s not simply a translation issue. I have to assume this is intended as censorship…even though I’m not sure who would consider “panties” a dirty word. Especially since they didn’t censor Bulma flashing Kame-sennin at all. Weird priorities. If nothing else, this messes up the joke where Bulma asks Goku if he removed her panties, and he doesn’t even know what the word means. Presumably the original idea is that Goku doesn’t know the word “panties” because he’s completely unfamiliar with women in general. But him not knowing the word “undies” makes it seem like he doesn’t understand the concept of underwear.
---
[*]
Sea Turtle, after Kame-sennin asks to see Bulma’s panties
Tr: “What kind of thing is that for a hermit [sennin] to say!!”
Viz: “I say, sir! Really now! I mean, you know, really!”
Again, sennin are supposed to be spiritual, pure-minded people, who therefore should be above such petty things as panty-peeking. However, in modern English the word “hermit” no longer has that sort of connotation (though it used to). This may be why Viz has Sea Turtle reprimand Kame-sennin in generic terms, rather than specifically say he isn’t behaving as a sennin should.
---
[*]
Bulma, flashing Kame-sennin
Tr: “Sure!!!”
Viz: “Look fast!!!”
And afterward
Tr: “Kyaah, how embarrassing!!”
Viz: “Tee-hee! O-kaaaaay?!”
---
[***]
Bulma, calling Goku over
Tr: “Ha-hang on a minute, Son-ku---n!!!”
Viz: ”--Yo, Goku!!!”
Not too important on its own, but this is the first time that Bulma calls Goku by name in Viz’s translation. While Bulma’s general way of addressing Goku in Japanese is “Son-kun”, Viz has her call him “Goku”, at least for now. This is presumably because there’s no real equivalent of kun in English, Viz wouldn’t want to leave the Japanese honorific as is, and having Bulma simply call Goku “Son” would be a bit confusing for English speakers.
---
[note]
In Viz Bulma now refers to the dragon radar as a radar, while at the very start in the Viz translation she called it a “detector” for some reason (though in some editions of Viz’s manga, she says “radar” right from the start). For the record, the English word “radar” is used in Japanese for the device, so it’s not just translation-related inconsistency.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, the word that appears behind Bulma when she realized she wasn’t wearing anything underneath her pajamas is “no-pan” (ノーパン) a shortening of the English “no panties” that’s used in Japanese for…well, for that sort of thing. In Dr. Slump, there’s a chapter where Senbei goes to what he thinks is a no-pan café, a café where the waitresses don’t have any panties on. However, it turns out the place is instead called the “Lupan Café” (ルーパン), and part of the sign had simply fallen off. Anyway, here Viz renders the term as simply “naked”.
---
[*]
In Japanese Goku specifically tells Bulma that she doesn’t need a penis or balls to survive, but in Viz he simply says she doesn’t need “those parts”.
---
[lost]
Upon entering the seemingly deserted village, in Japanese Goku notes that there are human 気配/kehai…a “presence” or “indication”. In sort, subtle signs that humans are nearby. That first character, 気, is normally read as ki and throughout DB is used to refer to that shiny energy stuff characters use to fly around and blow stuff up. And Viz translates this line as “I can sense somebody…” So, is Goku sensing ki? No, not exactly. While its meaning can be very context-dependent, in general kehai means being able to tell something that isn’t visually apparent, sometimes through subtle clues, or intuition, sort of like being able to tell that someone is staring at you behind your back. More to the point, saying you can tell something via kehai is something people who say in everyday life; it’s not something inherently tied up with DB’s super-exaggerated version of ki and ki-sensing. In context, the implication is that Goku can tell that people are nearby even though Bulma can’t because growing up in the wild hunting bears and whatnot has given him sharp senses and keen intuition.
---
[**]
Closing narration
Tr: “Son Goku and Bulma have entered an eerily quiet village. What could be waiting in store for them…?!”
Viz: “A village seemingly deserted in the middle of the day…presences ‘sensed’ but unseen…what the heck is going on here?!”
Opening narration
Tr: “Son Goku helped out a turtle. Now who the heck is this old man the turtle brought in gratitude?...”
Viz: “…Okay, so Son Goku helps a turtle. The turtle wants to give him a reward. Swell, except the ‘reward’ is…”
I'm probably going to not cover the narration too much from now on. You can see how Viz handles it: same basic idea, but with their own spin. Which is generally what their translation does overall, but they seem to play faster and looser with the narration, and sometimes it's completely different. I’ll probably keep on noting the "completely different" times though.
---
[**]
In Japanese, Kame-sennin greats Goku and Bulma with the English phrase “Good afternoon!”. Viz has him say “Howdy, young’uns!”. I’m kind of disappointed they didn’t give him another foreign greeting, like they did with “hello/aloha” last chapter.
---
[lost]
Kame-sennin talks like a stereotypical geezer in Japanese: he uses washi (a form of “I” stereotypically used by old men), he pronounces the Japanese copula verb da as ja (in other words, he says “is” weird), and he sometimes finishes his sentences with wa (a particle typically used by women).
---
[lost]
A sennin (Xian in Chinese) is a figure from Taoist mythology, the “immortal spirit of a saint living in the mountains”, who “can perform miracles, such as…flying on the back of a tortoise or on a cloud”. So Kame-sennin is the sennin of turtles (kame=turtle). Viz and the Funi dub both translate Kame-sennin as “Turtle Hermit” (though Viz often leaves the term untranslated as well). At first glance this seems like it misses the mystic connotations of “sennin”, but in fact the English word “hermit” used to not be quote so different: in the word’s original, religious sense, it refers to monks or even saints who isolate themselves from society for the sake of spiritual development. At any rate, the big joke here is that the term implies a spiritual master far above petty earthly concerns…but Kame-sennin turns out to just be a big pervert. Over in Naruto, sennin is standardly translated as “Sage” in the official English release.
Kame-sennin’s self-introduction is one of the first instances of a standard Viz practice. In Japanese he introduces himself as “Kame-sennin”, while in Viz it’s:
“I!? I am…Kame-sen’nin! The Turtle Hermit!!”
That is, they follow up the untranslated term up immediately with the English translation. It’s a good way of keeping the original Japanese terms for things while still making sure the audience knows what they mean. But it’s probably also something that works better in printed form; dialogue like this might come across as a bit awkward spoken aloud in a dub.
---
[**]
Goku, after Kame-sennin offers to give him a present
Tr: “A present?”
Viz: “Not again…”
Presumably the Viz line is a reference to how Sea Turtle promised to bring Goku a present last chapter, only to come back with Kame-sennin, who then offers Goku a present…it starts to seem like an infinite loop.
---
[lost]
The term used in Japanese here for the sadly departed “immortal phoenix”: 不死鳥/fushi-chou, literally an immortal or death-less bird. There are actually a few different words used in Japanese for the phoenix: others include the actual word “phoenix” (a word ultimately of Greek origin), Hou-ou (yes, like the Pokemon; it’s derived from the Chinese 鳳凰/Fenghuang), and Hi-no-tori (literally “firebird”, like the bird of Russian myth). Osamu Tezuka’s landmark Phoenix series is titled Hi-no-Tori in Japanese, but ends up using every word for “phoenix” at some point throughout its run.
---
[**]
Bulma, when the immortal phoenix fails to show up
Tr: “…Nothing’s coming…”
Viz: “Was that ‘immortal’…or ‘invisible’?”
---
[**]
In Japanese, Sea Turtle explains that the “immortal phoenix” died of food poisoning. Viz punches this up a little: “Sir…if you’ll recall the unpleasantness with the tainted bird seed…”
---
[lost/notes]
So 觔斗雲/Kinto-un is one of the story elements derived from Journey to the West, in which Son Wukong and others have the ability to ride clouds. While it literally means “somersault cloud” over in Chinese, this meaning isn’t readily apparent to Japanese readers, and it’s sometimes incorrectly written in Japanese as 金斗雲 (with the kin part incorrectly written with the kanji for gold). In DB, Kinto-un is written 筋斗雲; this is because 觔, the starting kanji of the Chinese name, isn’t used in Japanese, and 筋 is its Japanese equivalent. Note that in Journey to the West, kinto-un is a special technique for riding clouds, not a specific kind of riding cloud like it is in DB.
Viz usually leaves the name untranslated, but also often has people refer to it as a “magic cloud” or simply “cloud” rather than by its proper name, something characters don’t really do in the Japanese version. It’s another example of Viz alternating between an untranslated Japanese term and an English equivalent (of course, “magic cloud” isn’t exactly a translation of “Kinto-un”, but it’s not too bad of a description).
---
[*]
Having received Kinto-un, Goku asks how to eat it. Kame-sennin replies:
Tr: “This cloud’s a gift! Don’t eat it!”
Viz: “You don’t eat a magic cloud!!”
---
[**]
After Kame-sennin falls through Kinto-un
Tr:
Sea Turtle: “Wh…what’s going on?...”
Kame-sennin: “Mumu~that’s odd…”
*Goku successfully rides Kinto-un*
Sea Turtle: “He could ride it…”
Kame-sennin: “Hmm...Wha-what’s going on?...”
Viz:
Sea Turtle: “Surely it’s defective”
Kame-sennin: “Needs a little mystic tune-up, mebbe…”
*Goku successfully rides Kinto-un*
Sea Turtle: “It seems…fixed, sir…”
Kame-sennin: “Maybe just a power surge…”
---
[censor]
In my Kindle edition, characters all say “undies” rather than “panties” (Kame-sennin also refers to his “shorts”, meaning his boxer shorts). I’m fairly certain this is one of those things that differs between the various Viz editions, because I definitely don’t remember that in the print edition. Anyway, even in Japanese they literally use the English word “panties” (パンチ/panchi), so it’s not simply a translation issue. I have to assume this is intended as censorship…even though I’m not sure who would consider “panties” a dirty word. Especially since they didn’t censor Bulma flashing Kame-sennin at all. Weird priorities. If nothing else, this messes up the joke where Bulma asks Goku if he removed her panties, and he doesn’t even know what the word means. Presumably the original idea is that Goku doesn’t know the word “panties” because he’s completely unfamiliar with women in general. But him not knowing the word “undies” makes it seem like he doesn’t understand the concept of underwear.
---
[*]
Sea Turtle, after Kame-sennin asks to see Bulma’s panties
Tr: “What kind of thing is that for a hermit [sennin] to say!!”
Viz: “I say, sir! Really now! I mean, you know, really!”
Again, sennin are supposed to be spiritual, pure-minded people, who therefore should be above such petty things as panty-peeking. However, in modern English the word “hermit” no longer has that sort of connotation (though it used to). This may be why Viz has Sea Turtle reprimand Kame-sennin in generic terms, rather than specifically say he isn’t behaving as a sennin should.
---
[*]
Bulma, flashing Kame-sennin
Tr: “Sure!!!”
Viz: “Look fast!!!”
And afterward
Tr: “Kyaah, how embarrassing!!”
Viz: “Tee-hee! O-kaaaaay?!”
---
[***]
Bulma, calling Goku over
Tr: “Ha-hang on a minute, Son-ku---n!!!”
Viz: ”--Yo, Goku!!!”
Not too important on its own, but this is the first time that Bulma calls Goku by name in Viz’s translation. While Bulma’s general way of addressing Goku in Japanese is “Son-kun”, Viz has her call him “Goku”, at least for now. This is presumably because there’s no real equivalent of kun in English, Viz wouldn’t want to leave the Japanese honorific as is, and having Bulma simply call Goku “Son” would be a bit confusing for English speakers.
---
[note]
In Viz Bulma now refers to the dragon radar as a radar, while at the very start in the Viz translation she called it a “detector” for some reason (though in some editions of Viz’s manga, she says “radar” right from the start). For the record, the English word “radar” is used in Japanese for the device, so it’s not just translation-related inconsistency.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, the word that appears behind Bulma when she realized she wasn’t wearing anything underneath her pajamas is “no-pan” (ノーパン) a shortening of the English “no panties” that’s used in Japanese for…well, for that sort of thing. In Dr. Slump, there’s a chapter where Senbei goes to what he thinks is a no-pan café, a café where the waitresses don’t have any panties on. However, it turns out the place is instead called the “Lupan Café” (ルーパン), and part of the sign had simply fallen off. Anyway, here Viz renders the term as simply “naked”.
---
[*]
In Japanese Goku specifically tells Bulma that she doesn’t need a penis or balls to survive, but in Viz he simply says she doesn’t need “those parts”.
---
[lost]
Upon entering the seemingly deserted village, in Japanese Goku notes that there are human 気配/kehai…a “presence” or “indication”. In sort, subtle signs that humans are nearby. That first character, 気, is normally read as ki and throughout DB is used to refer to that shiny energy stuff characters use to fly around and blow stuff up. And Viz translates this line as “I can sense somebody…” So, is Goku sensing ki? No, not exactly. While its meaning can be very context-dependent, in general kehai means being able to tell something that isn’t visually apparent, sometimes through subtle clues, or intuition, sort of like being able to tell that someone is staring at you behind your back. More to the point, saying you can tell something via kehai is something people who say in everyday life; it’s not something inherently tied up with DB’s super-exaggerated version of ki and ki-sensing. In context, the implication is that Goku can tell that people are nearby even though Bulma can’t because growing up in the wild hunting bears and whatnot has given him sharp senses and keen intuition.
---
[**]
Closing narration
Tr: “Son Goku and Bulma have entered an eerily quiet village. What could be waiting in store for them…?!”
Viz: “A village seemingly deserted in the middle of the day…presences ‘sensed’ but unseen…what the heck is going on here?!”
Spoiler:
[lost]
At the tail end of last chapter’s notes, I discussed the word kehai, used when you can “sense” or “just tell” that someone or something is nearby, through instinct, intuition, or subtle clues. It’s a term used reasonably often in everyday life, and so it’s not inherently tied in with notions of DB-style ki-sensing. Viz repeatedly translates it as Goku saying he can “sense” people nearby, which isn’t wrong, but don’t get confused: this almost certainly has nothing to do the type of ki-sensing that pops up later. Case in point, one line doesn’t even include the word kehai and literally is Goku saying “it seems like there are lots of people around”, which Viz translates as “I’m sensing all kinds of people”. Viz’s use of the word “sensing” here is a tad liberal but not too far afield, but again, the sort of “sensing” being described here is when one can just kind of tell people are nearby through more down-to-earth intuition rather than, for instance, Vegeta tracking people down on Namek or stuff like that.
---
[edit]
Even in Japanese, the guy who axes Goku on the head has “Sherman Priest” written on his door in large, friendly English letters. Strangely though, Viz changes the image so that it says “Sherman the Shaman”, which they put on a black name tag instead of having it be written straight on the door (presumably this was to make their edit of the image look better). I’d assume this is simply a gag, as a shaman is essentially a type of priest, and “Sherman the Shaman” rhymes. Of course, “Priest” would presumably be the guy’s last name, not his profession (for the record, this guy is identified as the village mayor in Daizenshuu 3’s character model sheets library). At any rate, despite having what is presumably his name written on what is presumably his house, I don’t believe this guy is ever referred to as “Sherman Priest” anywhere in the Japanese manga, anime, or guidebooks (being variously called in the guidebooks “village mayor”, “axe-wielding old man”, “father of girl who Oolong had his eye on”, etc). However, Oolong does call him “Sherman Priest” in the Funi dub. In the anime, his character design was reused for the elderly scientist who studies the Fire-Eating Bird.
---
[*]
Sherman “Axe-Wielding Old Man” Priest, when Bulma says she would have died if she had been the one to take an axe to the head rather than Goku
Tr: “I’m so ashamed”
Viz: “L-Lucky it wasn’t, eh? Heh heh”
This is the first of several non-apologies that pop up in the Viz translation of these early volumes.
---
[lost]
Like Bulma earlier, Oolong is described as a youkai, a Japanese term for monsters/goblins/demons/etc. Viz continues to translate the term as “demon” (it’s one of several terms throughout the series that can be translated that way). Shape-shifting in an ability particularly associated with youkai. In fact, in Japanese folklore ordinary animals like foxes or raccoon dogs that manage to live long enough are said to become youkai and acquire the power to shape-shift. That sorta fits in with Oolong starting out as an ordinary, everyday pig-boy who learns how to shape-shift at Shape-Shifting Kindergarten. A little bit.
---
[**/lost]
Sherman says that Oolong took the form of an oni when he came to select Sherman’s daughter as his next bride, but this gets left out in Viz. An oni is a demonic, ogre-like creature from Japanese folklore. The term is often translated as “ogre” or “demon”, though it’s also frequently left untranslated, particularly when discussing Japanese folklore. They are sometimes portrayed as the assistants of Enma Daio, the judge of the dead, which is how they later turn up in DB.
---
[***]
After the old lady says she has a dragonball, Sherman replies:
Tr: “Grandma Baozi [Paozu]?”
Viz: “You do…?”
So Viz leaves out the old lady’s name, which in fact is another one of those accursed Chinese-derived names. Baozi are Chinese steamed bun treats, and Paozu is the Japanese approximation of this Chinese name (similar to how “Shenron” is the Japanese approximation of the Chinese “Shenlong”). On the reason for this character’s name, in the guidebook Dragon Ball Forever Toriyama said “I think that’s the Chinese name for manjuu”…manjuu being a vaguely similar Japanese steamed bun. But Toriyama was mistaken, and in fact the Chinese equivalent of manjuu is actually mantou. Confused yet? Geez, no wonder Viz left this lady’s name out.
If that weren’t enough, the anime reuses the name Baozi/Paozu for the mountain where Goku and his family eventually, which is probably where most DB fans have heard the name before. However, in the manga it’s only used once, for this grandma here.
---
[lost]
Speaking of Chinese names, the 6-Star Ball pops up in this chapter. Like the other balls, its name is in Chinese: Liu Xing Qiu (the Pinyin spelling) or Liu Hsing Chi'u (the older Wade-Giles spelling), and approximated in Japanese as Ryuu Shin Chuu (for comparison, the standard Japanese reading for these kanji would be Roku Sei Kyuu). Viz spells it…well, in some editions they spell it Liu Shin Chu (a bizarre mash-up of the Chinese reading and the Japanese approximation of the Chinese reading), and in others they spell it Liu Shin Kyuu. Since Kyuu is one of the standard Japanese readings of the kanji, this makes Liu Shin Kyuu 1/3rd standard Chinese reading (Liu), 1/3rd Japanese approximation of the Chinese reading (Shin), and 1/3rd standard Japanese reading (Kyuu). Truly remarkable.
I’ll make a full-fledged guide for all this crap soon, I swear!
---
[**]
Bulma, on Goku pretending to be Sherman’s daughter
Tr: “Id-idiot! What an awful performance!! He’ll never fool him like that!”
Viz: “Oh great, he’s role-playing!! Who’d ever take him for a terrified kidnap victim…!?”
So in the original Bulma criticizes the quality of Goku’s acting, but in Viz she bizarrely criticizes him for acting at all. What did she expect him to do?
---
[**]
Whenever Oolong transforms, in Japanese he calls out “transform!” (変化/henge), while in Viz he says “presto”.
---
[lost]
Oolong refers to Goku (disguised as Sherman’s daughter) as ojou-chan, a less formal form of ojou-san, a polite way to refer to a young woman, generally one of higher social status than oneself. Sometimes it’s used sort of sarcastically, kind of like how you’d call someone “missy” to belittle them.
---
[*]
Bulma describes her bust as 85 in Japanese, and Viz has it as 34-C. I’d assume the two are equivalent.
---
[censor]
When Oolong is imaging the “puff-puff”, Viz edits out the nipples on the woman in the picture. On that note…while in the uncensored Viz volumes Oolong imagines how he could perform “puff-puffs” with Bulma’s ample bosom, in the censored editions he instead simply says “I’d like to see those…!”
---
[*? Lost? Something]
When weighing the pros and cons of choosing Bulma or Sherman’s daughter (ie Goku), In Japanese Oolong describes Sherman’s daughter with the English phrase “pretty baby”.
---
[lost]
Oolong uses ore, a masculine, casual form of “I” (most male DB characters tend to use it most of the time).
---
[**]
Oolong, after seeing Goku peeing
Tr: “[He’s] got that which I despise!!!”
Viz: “I saw it!!! I saw it!!!”
I can’t think of a really good translation of the original that doesn’t sound weird, which I guess is why Viz changed it a bit. But basically, Oolong describes penises as “that which I despise”. Next chapter, he also says he despises men. It’s an odd aspect of his personality that kind of drops out in Viz’s translation.
---
[sound]
TESE: Bakoom!
---
[*]
Sherman to Bulma
Tr: “You’ve also got a troublesome personality.”
Viz: “You know, if I had the time, I could really dislike you…”
Another line where a direct translation sounds weird. To be clear, the original line means that Bulma is another personal with a troublesome personality (Oolong and/or Goku being the others, presumably).
---
[*]
When Sherman Priest says Bulma can become Oolong’s new bride in place of his daughter, in Viz he refers to Bulma as “Miss 34-C” (in reference to her bust size). When Bulma objects, in Japanese she says there’s no way she’d go with that “monster”, but in Viz she says “What?! You think I’m wastin’ all this on an ox?!!!”
---
[*]
Oolong stutters a bit during his threats to Goku, but Viz leaves this out. It’s the first indication that Oolong isn’t all that he appears to be.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, Goku taunts Oolong by crying “dosukoi”, which is a cry sumo wrestlers make. In Viz this is rendered as “Come ‘n’ get me!!”
At the tail end of last chapter’s notes, I discussed the word kehai, used when you can “sense” or “just tell” that someone or something is nearby, through instinct, intuition, or subtle clues. It’s a term used reasonably often in everyday life, and so it’s not inherently tied in with notions of DB-style ki-sensing. Viz repeatedly translates it as Goku saying he can “sense” people nearby, which isn’t wrong, but don’t get confused: this almost certainly has nothing to do the type of ki-sensing that pops up later. Case in point, one line doesn’t even include the word kehai and literally is Goku saying “it seems like there are lots of people around”, which Viz translates as “I’m sensing all kinds of people”. Viz’s use of the word “sensing” here is a tad liberal but not too far afield, but again, the sort of “sensing” being described here is when one can just kind of tell people are nearby through more down-to-earth intuition rather than, for instance, Vegeta tracking people down on Namek or stuff like that.
---
[edit]
Even in Japanese, the guy who axes Goku on the head has “Sherman Priest” written on his door in large, friendly English letters. Strangely though, Viz changes the image so that it says “Sherman the Shaman”, which they put on a black name tag instead of having it be written straight on the door (presumably this was to make their edit of the image look better). I’d assume this is simply a gag, as a shaman is essentially a type of priest, and “Sherman the Shaman” rhymes. Of course, “Priest” would presumably be the guy’s last name, not his profession (for the record, this guy is identified as the village mayor in Daizenshuu 3’s character model sheets library). At any rate, despite having what is presumably his name written on what is presumably his house, I don’t believe this guy is ever referred to as “Sherman Priest” anywhere in the Japanese manga, anime, or guidebooks (being variously called in the guidebooks “village mayor”, “axe-wielding old man”, “father of girl who Oolong had his eye on”, etc). However, Oolong does call him “Sherman Priest” in the Funi dub. In the anime, his character design was reused for the elderly scientist who studies the Fire-Eating Bird.
---
[*]
Sherman “Axe-Wielding Old Man” Priest, when Bulma says she would have died if she had been the one to take an axe to the head rather than Goku
Tr: “I’m so ashamed”
Viz: “L-Lucky it wasn’t, eh? Heh heh”
This is the first of several non-apologies that pop up in the Viz translation of these early volumes.
---
[lost]
Like Bulma earlier, Oolong is described as a youkai, a Japanese term for monsters/goblins/demons/etc. Viz continues to translate the term as “demon” (it’s one of several terms throughout the series that can be translated that way). Shape-shifting in an ability particularly associated with youkai. In fact, in Japanese folklore ordinary animals like foxes or raccoon dogs that manage to live long enough are said to become youkai and acquire the power to shape-shift. That sorta fits in with Oolong starting out as an ordinary, everyday pig-boy who learns how to shape-shift at Shape-Shifting Kindergarten. A little bit.
---
[**/lost]
Sherman says that Oolong took the form of an oni when he came to select Sherman’s daughter as his next bride, but this gets left out in Viz. An oni is a demonic, ogre-like creature from Japanese folklore. The term is often translated as “ogre” or “demon”, though it’s also frequently left untranslated, particularly when discussing Japanese folklore. They are sometimes portrayed as the assistants of Enma Daio, the judge of the dead, which is how they later turn up in DB.
---
[***]
After the old lady says she has a dragonball, Sherman replies:
Tr: “Grandma Baozi [Paozu]?”
Viz: “You do…?”
So Viz leaves out the old lady’s name, which in fact is another one of those accursed Chinese-derived names. Baozi are Chinese steamed bun treats, and Paozu is the Japanese approximation of this Chinese name (similar to how “Shenron” is the Japanese approximation of the Chinese “Shenlong”). On the reason for this character’s name, in the guidebook Dragon Ball Forever Toriyama said “I think that’s the Chinese name for manjuu”…manjuu being a vaguely similar Japanese steamed bun. But Toriyama was mistaken, and in fact the Chinese equivalent of manjuu is actually mantou. Confused yet? Geez, no wonder Viz left this lady’s name out.
If that weren’t enough, the anime reuses the name Baozi/Paozu for the mountain where Goku and his family eventually, which is probably where most DB fans have heard the name before. However, in the manga it’s only used once, for this grandma here.
---
[lost]
Speaking of Chinese names, the 6-Star Ball pops up in this chapter. Like the other balls, its name is in Chinese: Liu Xing Qiu (the Pinyin spelling) or Liu Hsing Chi'u (the older Wade-Giles spelling), and approximated in Japanese as Ryuu Shin Chuu (for comparison, the standard Japanese reading for these kanji would be Roku Sei Kyuu). Viz spells it…well, in some editions they spell it Liu Shin Chu (a bizarre mash-up of the Chinese reading and the Japanese approximation of the Chinese reading), and in others they spell it Liu Shin Kyuu. Since Kyuu is one of the standard Japanese readings of the kanji, this makes Liu Shin Kyuu 1/3rd standard Chinese reading (Liu), 1/3rd Japanese approximation of the Chinese reading (Shin), and 1/3rd standard Japanese reading (Kyuu). Truly remarkable.
I’ll make a full-fledged guide for all this crap soon, I swear!
---
[**]
Bulma, on Goku pretending to be Sherman’s daughter
Tr: “Id-idiot! What an awful performance!! He’ll never fool him like that!”
Viz: “Oh great, he’s role-playing!! Who’d ever take him for a terrified kidnap victim…!?”
So in the original Bulma criticizes the quality of Goku’s acting, but in Viz she bizarrely criticizes him for acting at all. What did she expect him to do?
---
[**]
Whenever Oolong transforms, in Japanese he calls out “transform!” (変化/henge), while in Viz he says “presto”.
---
[lost]
Oolong refers to Goku (disguised as Sherman’s daughter) as ojou-chan, a less formal form of ojou-san, a polite way to refer to a young woman, generally one of higher social status than oneself. Sometimes it’s used sort of sarcastically, kind of like how you’d call someone “missy” to belittle them.
---
[*]
Bulma describes her bust as 85 in Japanese, and Viz has it as 34-C. I’d assume the two are equivalent.
---
[censor]
When Oolong is imaging the “puff-puff”, Viz edits out the nipples on the woman in the picture. On that note…while in the uncensored Viz volumes Oolong imagines how he could perform “puff-puffs” with Bulma’s ample bosom, in the censored editions he instead simply says “I’d like to see those…!”
---
[*? Lost? Something]
When weighing the pros and cons of choosing Bulma or Sherman’s daughter (ie Goku), In Japanese Oolong describes Sherman’s daughter with the English phrase “pretty baby”.
---
[lost]
Oolong uses ore, a masculine, casual form of “I” (most male DB characters tend to use it most of the time).
---
[**]
Oolong, after seeing Goku peeing
Tr: “[He’s] got that which I despise!!!”
Viz: “I saw it!!! I saw it!!!”
I can’t think of a really good translation of the original that doesn’t sound weird, which I guess is why Viz changed it a bit. But basically, Oolong describes penises as “that which I despise”. Next chapter, he also says he despises men. It’s an odd aspect of his personality that kind of drops out in Viz’s translation.
---
[sound]
TESE: Bakoom!
---
[*]
Sherman to Bulma
Tr: “You’ve also got a troublesome personality.”
Viz: “You know, if I had the time, I could really dislike you…”
Another line where a direct translation sounds weird. To be clear, the original line means that Bulma is another personal with a troublesome personality (Oolong and/or Goku being the others, presumably).
---
[*]
When Sherman Priest says Bulma can become Oolong’s new bride in place of his daughter, in Viz he refers to Bulma as “Miss 34-C” (in reference to her bust size). When Bulma objects, in Japanese she says there’s no way she’d go with that “monster”, but in Viz she says “What?! You think I’m wastin’ all this on an ox?!!!”
---
[*]
Oolong stutters a bit during his threats to Goku, but Viz leaves this out. It’s the first indication that Oolong isn’t all that he appears to be.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, Goku taunts Oolong by crying “dosukoi”, which is a cry sumo wrestlers make. In Viz this is rendered as “Come ‘n’ get me!!”
Spoiler:
[**]
Opening narration
Tr: “In order to obtain the villagers’ dragon ball, Son Goku is going to defend the village from the shape-shifting demon Oolong…Is Oolong’s power about to explode?!”
Viz: “Such a deal! Defeat the terrible demon Oolong and get one free dragon ball! Son Goku can’t lose…can he!?”
---
[sound]
TELE (Toriyama English Sound Effects) for this chapter:
BOMB!
BTHOOM!
BOAAAT!!
That last one is the sound made by Bulma’s boat at the end of the chapter, one of my all-time favorite sound effects. Toriyama does this sort of thing every now and then. In his short comic Lady Red, Lady Red’s car goes “speeeeeed!!” when she takes off, and in Escape, a character trying to hide accidentally kicks an aluminum can, which goes “can!”.
---
[*]
When Oolong runs away, in Japanese he says “hang on a minute” and Goku responds “are you running away?!” In Viz, Oolong says “time out!” and Goku responds “no time outs!!”
---
[**]
Oolong considers the possibility of the villagers discovering that he’s really just a little piglet. In Japanese, he worries about them making fun of him, while in Viz he has no such concerns: “I’d love to see their faces if they found out they’ve been cowering in terror from a little piglet! *snort*”. I think it’s interesting that Japanese!Oolong is afraid of being teased, since we later learn he teased Puer in school. This guy needs a psychoanalyst.
---
[*]
In Viz’s explanation for Oolong’s transformations, it says that his “magic” takes a minute to recharge, but the original doesn’t mention magic at all. His shape-shifting skills certainly seem magical, but in Japanese they’re never specifically described as such (not in this chapter, anyway).
---
[notes]
As Oolong runs off, you can see part of a sign that seems to say “Village” in English letters, though it’s cut off. In the anime we get a good look and the entire sign, which says “Aru Village”. Now, in Japanese when aru is stuck before a noun, it means “one~”, or “a certain~”. In other words, “Aru Village” is a mash-up of Japanese and English that’s equivalent to labeling the town “Some Random Village”. The joke being that this is of course a very silly thing to write up on an official sign at the entrance of town. Toriyama made similar jokes throughout Dr. Slump, writing out Japanese words in alphabet letters for signs and maps. For instance, he’d label a mountain on a map as simply yama, Japanese for mountain (but written in alphabet letters rather than kanji or hiragana), equivalent to labelling to as “A Mountain”.
Because of this, in Japanese circles “Aru Village” is never really treated as the village’s proper name (it’s called Yan-Yan Village in the game Super Gokuu-Den, for what it’s worth), but some sectors of English fandom do. Depending on your perspective, this either counts as missing the joke entirely, or just taking the joke and running with it.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, Oolong wonders at how Goku wasn’t scared of his Obake-ushi, his obake ox transformation. In Viz the “obake” part gets left out.
---
[**]
When Oolong comes back to fight Goku again, Viz adds in him says that he went away to destroy another village. In the original he just says he had some sudden bit of business.
---
[lost/notes]
The kanji on the chest of Oolong’s robot transformation: 根性/konjou, meaning “guts” or “will-power”. When he accidentally scalds his thumb in the hot soup, it changes to 熱/netsu, “heat”. Then when the kid nails him with the slingshot, it changes to 痛/tsuu, “pain”.
---
[*]
When Oolong changes into the robot, Goku complains about how he keeps on transforming rather than fight. In Viz, Goku refers to Oolong as playing dress-up.
---
[*]
When running away, Oolong says “Retreat!” in Japanese and “Farewell!” in Viz.
---
[lost/notes]
The two kanji on Oolong’s lair are in fact the kanji for his namesake, Oolong tea: 烏龍. Literally they’re the kanji for “crow” (烏) and “dragon” (龍), but in this context the “crow” kanji means “black”, so the name overall is “black dragon”. His lair has the kanji in right-to-left reading order (龍烏, so with the “dragon” character first), while his house wagon in later chapters has them in left-to-right reading order.
---
[*/edit]
Bulma, on Oolong’s spiffy liar
Tr: “You certainly live in a fancy house~ It doesn’t suit you.”
Viz: “And here I was expecting a cave…”
The most interesting thing here is that in the original, Bulma says this over two speech bubbles (“it doesn’t suit you” being in the left bubble), while Viz edits this into a single bubble. You can see how in Viz the cloud on the left simply cuts off into nothing, because in the original it was cut off by the left speech bubble, the one Viz removed. There, aren’t you glad you know that now?
---
[***]
In the original, the three girls kidnapped by Oolong are named “Hedge”, “Hogg”, and “Lee” (their names are only mentioned when their parents reunite with them). In Viz, instead of these names, their parents call them pet names: kitten, princess, and precious. On naming these characters, Toriyama said “When I was trying to think of what to name these characters, my eyes fell on a Tamiya plastic tank model with the nickname “Hedgehog”. Sure enough, Lee is also the nickname of a tank”.
---
[**/lost]
The fish that jumps out of the river says “Shuwatch” in the original. “Shuwatch” is the catchphrase of Japanese superhero Ultraman, said whenever he jumps up to fly (the fish also has Ultraman-style eyes, and the entire joke was probably inspired by the fish-like fin on Ultraman’s head). Toriyama referenced Ultraman quite often in Dr. Slump. In Viz, the fish instead says “yee-haw!”. Try and image Ultraman saying that.
---
[*]
Bulma refers to her search for the dragonballs as a “trip” in Japanese, but Viz has her and Oolong call it a “quest”. In general Viz’s translation tosses around the word “quest” quite a bit. It’s not an inaccurate description of what they’re doing, but it is a bit fancier than how it’s described in Japanese (always as a “search” or “trip” to find the dragon balls).
---
[**]
Oolong, after Goku pat-pats him
Tr: “I love women, but despise men!! Don’t do that again!!”
Viz: “And I don’t want another guy touching me—ever, okay?!!”
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but as I said last chapter, Oolong seems to have something against men a bit above and beyond simply being heterosexual (after all, he flat-out says “I despise men”, not simply “I don’t like being touched by men”). This kind of drops out in Viz.
---
[*]
Goku, in response to the above
Tr: “Oh!!”
Viz: “Why?”
---
[**]
Closing narration
Tr: “And so, Oolong has joined Bulma and Goku’s search for the dragon balls, but will he do as he’s told?”
Viz: “And so, Oolong says ‘so long’ to his reign of terror and ‘hello’ to the great dragon ball quest! But somehow, it doesn’t seem likely that anything else he says is going to be nice…”
[**/notes]
The next chapter text at the bottom in Viz says “Dim Sum and Soochong”, presumably intended as a reference to Yamcha and Puer’s name puns. Technically though, Yamcha’s name comes from yum cha, which is only a part of dim sum. And while I’m no tea expert, it seems that puer tea, which Puer gets his name from, is different from soochong tea.
Opening narration
Tr: “In order to obtain the villagers’ dragon ball, Son Goku is going to defend the village from the shape-shifting demon Oolong…Is Oolong’s power about to explode?!”
Viz: “Such a deal! Defeat the terrible demon Oolong and get one free dragon ball! Son Goku can’t lose…can he!?”
---
[sound]
TELE (Toriyama English Sound Effects) for this chapter:
BOMB!
BTHOOM!
BOAAAT!!
That last one is the sound made by Bulma’s boat at the end of the chapter, one of my all-time favorite sound effects. Toriyama does this sort of thing every now and then. In his short comic Lady Red, Lady Red’s car goes “speeeeeed!!” when she takes off, and in Escape, a character trying to hide accidentally kicks an aluminum can, which goes “can!”.
---
[*]
When Oolong runs away, in Japanese he says “hang on a minute” and Goku responds “are you running away?!” In Viz, Oolong says “time out!” and Goku responds “no time outs!!”
---
[**]
Oolong considers the possibility of the villagers discovering that he’s really just a little piglet. In Japanese, he worries about them making fun of him, while in Viz he has no such concerns: “I’d love to see their faces if they found out they’ve been cowering in terror from a little piglet! *snort*”. I think it’s interesting that Japanese!Oolong is afraid of being teased, since we later learn he teased Puer in school. This guy needs a psychoanalyst.
---
[*]
In Viz’s explanation for Oolong’s transformations, it says that his “magic” takes a minute to recharge, but the original doesn’t mention magic at all. His shape-shifting skills certainly seem magical, but in Japanese they’re never specifically described as such (not in this chapter, anyway).
---
[notes]
As Oolong runs off, you can see part of a sign that seems to say “Village” in English letters, though it’s cut off. In the anime we get a good look and the entire sign, which says “Aru Village”. Now, in Japanese when aru is stuck before a noun, it means “one~”, or “a certain~”. In other words, “Aru Village” is a mash-up of Japanese and English that’s equivalent to labeling the town “Some Random Village”. The joke being that this is of course a very silly thing to write up on an official sign at the entrance of town. Toriyama made similar jokes throughout Dr. Slump, writing out Japanese words in alphabet letters for signs and maps. For instance, he’d label a mountain on a map as simply yama, Japanese for mountain (but written in alphabet letters rather than kanji or hiragana), equivalent to labelling to as “A Mountain”.
Because of this, in Japanese circles “Aru Village” is never really treated as the village’s proper name (it’s called Yan-Yan Village in the game Super Gokuu-Den, for what it’s worth), but some sectors of English fandom do. Depending on your perspective, this either counts as missing the joke entirely, or just taking the joke and running with it.
---
[lost]
In Japanese, Oolong wonders at how Goku wasn’t scared of his Obake-ushi, his obake ox transformation. In Viz the “obake” part gets left out.
---
[**]
When Oolong comes back to fight Goku again, Viz adds in him says that he went away to destroy another village. In the original he just says he had some sudden bit of business.
---
[lost/notes]
The kanji on the chest of Oolong’s robot transformation: 根性/konjou, meaning “guts” or “will-power”. When he accidentally scalds his thumb in the hot soup, it changes to 熱/netsu, “heat”. Then when the kid nails him with the slingshot, it changes to 痛/tsuu, “pain”.
---
[*]
When Oolong changes into the robot, Goku complains about how he keeps on transforming rather than fight. In Viz, Goku refers to Oolong as playing dress-up.
---
[*]
When running away, Oolong says “Retreat!” in Japanese and “Farewell!” in Viz.
---
[lost/notes]
The two kanji on Oolong’s lair are in fact the kanji for his namesake, Oolong tea: 烏龍. Literally they’re the kanji for “crow” (烏) and “dragon” (龍), but in this context the “crow” kanji means “black”, so the name overall is “black dragon”. His lair has the kanji in right-to-left reading order (龍烏, so with the “dragon” character first), while his house wagon in later chapters has them in left-to-right reading order.
---
[*/edit]
Bulma, on Oolong’s spiffy liar
Tr: “You certainly live in a fancy house~ It doesn’t suit you.”
Viz: “And here I was expecting a cave…”
The most interesting thing here is that in the original, Bulma says this over two speech bubbles (“it doesn’t suit you” being in the left bubble), while Viz edits this into a single bubble. You can see how in Viz the cloud on the left simply cuts off into nothing, because in the original it was cut off by the left speech bubble, the one Viz removed. There, aren’t you glad you know that now?
---
[***]
In the original, the three girls kidnapped by Oolong are named “Hedge”, “Hogg”, and “Lee” (their names are only mentioned when their parents reunite with them). In Viz, instead of these names, their parents call them pet names: kitten, princess, and precious. On naming these characters, Toriyama said “When I was trying to think of what to name these characters, my eyes fell on a Tamiya plastic tank model with the nickname “Hedgehog”. Sure enough, Lee is also the nickname of a tank”.
---
[**/lost]
The fish that jumps out of the river says “Shuwatch” in the original. “Shuwatch” is the catchphrase of Japanese superhero Ultraman, said whenever he jumps up to fly (the fish also has Ultraman-style eyes, and the entire joke was probably inspired by the fish-like fin on Ultraman’s head). Toriyama referenced Ultraman quite often in Dr. Slump. In Viz, the fish instead says “yee-haw!”. Try and image Ultraman saying that.
---
[*]
Bulma refers to her search for the dragonballs as a “trip” in Japanese, but Viz has her and Oolong call it a “quest”. In general Viz’s translation tosses around the word “quest” quite a bit. It’s not an inaccurate description of what they’re doing, but it is a bit fancier than how it’s described in Japanese (always as a “search” or “trip” to find the dragon balls).
---
[**]
Oolong, after Goku pat-pats him
Tr: “I love women, but despise men!! Don’t do that again!!”
Viz: “And I don’t want another guy touching me—ever, okay?!!”
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but as I said last chapter, Oolong seems to have something against men a bit above and beyond simply being heterosexual (after all, he flat-out says “I despise men”, not simply “I don’t like being touched by men”). This kind of drops out in Viz.
---
[*]
Goku, in response to the above
Tr: “Oh!!”
Viz: “Why?”
---
[**]
Closing narration
Tr: “And so, Oolong has joined Bulma and Goku’s search for the dragon balls, but will he do as he’s told?”
Viz: “And so, Oolong says ‘so long’ to his reign of terror and ‘hello’ to the great dragon ball quest! But somehow, it doesn’t seem likely that anything else he says is going to be nice…”
[**/notes]
The next chapter text at the bottom in Viz says “Dim Sum and Soochong”, presumably intended as a reference to Yamcha and Puer’s name puns. Technically though, Yamcha’s name comes from yum cha, which is only a part of dim sum. And while I’m no tea expert, it seems that puer tea, which Puer gets his name from, is different from soochong tea.