Would you have liked to see Pioneer dub the franchise?

[ABED]

I have a question. Why was Tree of Might dubbed twice by Ocean Dub? One version has Ian Corlett as Goku, the other has Peter Kelamis voicing him.

It was originally dubbed during and aired as a part of season 2. Literally. It was split into three episodes (with some stock footage added in to pad it out) and just aired in between two episodes with no indication of what it was, that it was a movie, or that it was not part of continuity. Very confusing. And it was actually Ian Corlett's last appearance as Goku. Later on, it was stitched together as a movie to air on Toonami, since it meant they wouldn't have to censor it for broadcast, as it already was.

But then when Pioneer did the three movies as movies, they naturally redid it as an actual movie, closer to the original and uncensored. And by that time, Peter Kelamis had taken over the role of Goku.

While interesting, I don't think that's what the question was asking. I think it was "Why are there two versions?" And it's a great question. Did FUNi have to fill an order of episodes and decided to pad out the order by making movie 3 into three episodes?

[Kunzait_83]

Actually, Ranma 1/2 was handled by Viz Media, only DISTRIBUTED by Pioneer.

I'm more than well aware that Ranma was handled by Viz. I actually sort of even forgot while I was typing that that Pioneer was even in the equation for Ranma at the time (you're right on that though of course, thanks for the memory refresher) because of how closely associated Ranma has for so long been with Viz in my mind. The comparison had nothing to do with the specific companies themselves though and more with just the general business model of distribution at the time. Ranma was a GIANT and highly globally popular Shonen oriented anime and manga series, and it was a runaway smash success in the U.S. entirely on home video and without ever once showing its face on Television all throughout the early and mid 90s. Dragon Ball more than easily could have followed suit in a similar fashion under Pioneer at the time.

A lot of people don't feel that way, and are just unable to foresee any other scenario whatsoever other than what happened under FUNi for Dragon Ball to have found an audience here (nevermind that it already had one before it was licensed, and nevermind that the manner in which it DID end up here under FUNi was so absurdly loopy and ridiculous): and I just look at the utter phenomenon and level of success that Ranma was in its time (again without any hint of an appearance on TV) and posit if that could do it, no way in hell Dragon Ball didn't at barest possible minimum have a more than excellent shot at doing likewise. Both were very much directly comparable in their popularity and level of notoriety at the time, even while Ranma was licensed and DB/Z wasn't.

Giant Shonen shows weren't a part of the "core", non-TV anime-licensing business model for a very long period of the early days (for a lot of very understandable economic reasons), but Ranma functioned as solid evidence that it COULD do well within that paradigm of the time without any huge corporate influence from TV advertisers, so long as both the material and the level of pre-license audience interest and hype was strong enough (both Ranma and DB/Z were fansub culture darlings to very comparable degrees well before either got picked up, and most people who knew anime were very familiar with both before they got any kind of official release) and the distributor just had enough faith in it to work and to seriously push it.

Not that I think or would even WANT for a very large assortment of such giant shonen shows to have become so much an ever-present part of the culture and landscape of the time, the way that they have for the last decade and a half now (there's a lot of other non-economic based reasons as to why a lot of other such gigantic shonen shows also DIDN'T even have any kind of strong pre-licensing fan interest in those days to begin with: another can of worms entirely in itself), but I think there was at the very least just enough room to have allowed for something like Dragon Ball to find a similar place in the landscape of the time that Viz's golden goose franchise had occupied.

All post-mortem speculation obviously, but its just my own two cents on the matter. I strongly feel the precedent was there.

As far as seeing how Pioneer would handle it though...I guess I'd be sort of interested, though for the most part I figure they likely still would have outsourced to Ocean and maybe even likely had a similar cast to what it had, even without FUNi's involvement. As such, there'd be voices I'd be okay with, and voices I wouldn't be.

The odds of outsourcing the voice talent to Ocean is certainly high (a fair number of other anime dubs on the direct video market of the time made use of them too, including the aforementioned Ranma), but I would argue that at least a significant portion of the specific casting and moreover the general direction of the overall tone would've been different. Maybe not WORLDS different (compared to the as-is Pioneer movie dubs: obviously it would've been whole galaxies different from how FUNi/Saban were doing things on their end), but different enough to be very, very, very much noticeable were we to have a trans-dimensional portal to look at such a hypothetical dub from an alternate universe and compare it to our own Pioneer versions. I certainly think that a number of different translations and scripting choices also would've been used, as again there was a lot even on that end that was mandated carry-overs from the TV dub.

Particularly egregious voices like Kaio's have VERY good odds of having been handled dramatically differently I think without there being an already-present syndicated and heavily edited for (American) kids TV dub taking a thuddingly over-literal, on-the-nose direction with these things that all other material would then be saddled with having to go along with for "consistency's" sake.

It in no way would've been a 1 to 1 identical similarity to the parameters in which Pioneer had to work within with FUNimation and Saban's TV dub as a part of the mix had they been free of such obligations from the beginning and were just working on this by themselves from scratch and without having to worry about "potentially confusing" an audience of culturally clueless children. The audience this dub would've been aimed at was a COMPLETELY different kind of audience with a completely different and set of contexts and persuasions than the kind of audience that was much younger and glued to little more than Saturday morning kids' TV at the time.

As far as edits go, I'm of the mind that edits are perfectly fine so long as an equally uncut version is also made available, but the removal of a TV airing would probably remove the need for edits in the first place too so...I'unno.

Oh it DEFINITELY wouldn't have been a factor at all. The ONLY things that had "edited and unedited" versions on that end of the anime market in those days were REALLY extreme and excessive material like Violence Jack and Urotsukidoji (graphic gang-rape, genital mutilation, etc.). Dragon Ball would've been nothing at all anyone would've been even vaguely concerned with editing for content. This is the same market that welcomed Akira, Fist of the North Star, Genocyber, and the earlier aforementioned exploitationy titles among countless others exactly as-is with wide open arms.

A great thought in it's own way, that the edits never would have existed, but...some of them are such great narm material nowadays that I'd almost hate to lose that too.

I think that if stuff like Chris Sabat's incessant grunting and straining and "WWE Drill Sergeant" renditions of various characters (not to mention surfer/stoner Yamucha) or Cat Loves Food memes etc. suddenly became things I'd never in my life be exposed to, somehow some way I'd be able to find the strength within me to pick up the broken pieces of my shattered and devastated existence and soldier forth without it.

One man's RiffTrax-worthy narm is another man's unlistenably irritating white noise.

The journey Dragon Ball took to get through to it's completion here in the US, and even further to get treated with proper respect, is certainly an ugly one...but in a way, it's kind of so ugly it's beautiful, IMO.

Agree to very much disagree. I see it all as just completely and utterly senseless and stupid and drastically adding grossly unneeded layers of dense cultural baggage on top of what should just simply be a silly, whacked out little fantasy martial arts anime/manga series.

No DBZ on Toonami, very likely does mean no Gyt discovering it. And considering it was through that that I became a fan of the anime and manga 'genre' period, as well as meeting all of my friends and most importantly my longest real life friend/girlfriend/fiancée...well, without all of that, I can honestly say I would be a very different (ie: far more depressed) person than I am today, if I were even still around at all. So seeing as I do kind of enjoy my life as it is now (other than it's own fair share of hang ups, but hey, what life doesn't have those?), the notion of never coming across Dragon Ball is, quite frankly, terrifying to me.

This is getting dangerously close to territory I'd rather not go near. Nonetheless, stuff like what you're describing here are primarily reasons why I would add the caveat that I was (largely) being somewhat jocular and tongue in cheek with that sentiment. I mean I get it: its the whole "A butterfly flaps its wings and causes gigantic ripple effects across time and space" adage at work here.

No I don't in ANY way, shape, or form want to see the trajectory of other people's lives in any way ruined or substantially messed with over a silly little cartoon not coming to fruition a certain way, and yes I totally and unwaveringly WAS being intentionally selfish to the point of asshole-ishness in my earlier assessment. From your (and a LOT of other people I know as well) vantage point, discovering anime on Toonami was a life-altering experience that had untold levels of positive impact on your life.

But... the overall effects of what Toonami's broader impact (which was indeed seismic for the U.S. industry in more ways than a lot of people realize, that goes much, MUCH further beyond just DB) helped do to OTHER areas of anime fandom from before it wasn't exactly very positive at all as well. Its a perfect example of how messy and random life often is: something happens (culturally or otherwise) and for some people its an amazingly positive force that infinitely benefits and enriches their lives, and for others its... fairly the opposite of that. A storm sweeps through a country and for some villages it means much needed rainwater and fruitful crops after a drought, and for another it means their homes are devastated in giant wind currents and flooding. Its just the way shit is.

Like I said, this is getting awfully close to shit I've been avoiding touching for way, waaaaaay too long now (and once more I'm feeling increasingly worn down to maybe TRY to tackle it at some point? Oy vey). So before this becomes a thing, I'll just say that of course (of fucking course) I'm beyond happy for what finding anime in this particular manner has done for you and your life, as well as that of the countless thousands of other kids of that era who are still active in fandom to this day because of it. To pull from a favorite Tarantino quote: "I may be a bastard, but I'm not a fucking bastard."

But once more, to keep things and perspectives in balance here, for some of us from earlier on... yeah, the overall paradigm shift brought onto the Western landscape by Toonami and its fanbase wasn't really a particularly great thing for us in the long run. For as many newer, younger fans as it brought in, it also helped eventually lead to a ton of older ones becoming impossibly alienated and thus exiting the scene in frustration and disgust as well (I clung on for quite awhile thereafter, albeit after a substantial period of downtime in between, cause I'm just generally stubborn and cement-headed that way: runs in my family). The Yin and Yang of life as it were.

Its definitely fitting that Toonami is named for a Tsunami: it really did sweep through the Western anime market with the swiftness and ferocity of its namesake, leading to as much devastation and destruction to the landscape as it did to seeding new life in its wake. By that same token, its always long been very frustrating and baffling to me that the vast majority of the fanbase created in its wake still to this day (even with all the information gathering tools at their disposal and their still-highly invested level of passion and interest to learn more) stubbornly continue to have a very narrow and limited vision of the overall broader history of anime fandom in the U.S. - particularly from before their time - and still have no comprehension whatsoever that for as many brand new fandoms were created by CN at the turn of the millennium, a whole crapton of other pre-existing ones were also trampled over and (over the following few years after) discarded carelessly into the dustbin of forgotten obscurity in the process.

You on the one hand are coming from a perspective of celebrating the creation of a new fanbase (which includes your own) that came from it - as is your absolutely understandable and justified right to - but I'm from a position of being bummed over the loss and dissipation of the one before it. That's all it really boils down to.

If I'm being a totally self-centered asshole, goddamn YES I'd personally love it if things turned out VERY differently, and wish dearly still that so much of the nature of Western anime fandom wasn't totally and fundamentally flipped and subverted in the way that it was during the changeover from the 90s to the 00s. But I try my best not to be a totally self-centered asshole where it counts, so no, I don't in the same breath wish even so much as the slightest tinge ill will on people like you who got a LOT of incredible, incalculable worth out of this particular turn of events. I'd been a (impossibly long-winded) member of this community - however off and on - for beyond long enough that I would think/hope that for the older members who remember me from my heyday here, that that sentiment should go without saying.

The real tragedy in all of this is that I don't think that there's really very many scenarios sadly (that I can think of offhand at least, but who knows: I'm not exactly the sharpest pencil on the desk most of the time) where everyone everywhere would've been able to just universally come together into anime and all be happy at the same time under the same roof without one side of a particular spectrum or the other getting nuked away in the process: I've alluded to this in the past but there's just completely irreconcilable differences between how one era/set of fans sees the nature of what anime can/should do and be focusing most on compared to the other. We'd all be pulling and tearing the whole thing down the middle into two WILDLY and comically contrasting and differing directions.

There's also however a LOT that was just totally and inherently unfair and screwy with how the entire spectrum of anime was ultimately framed within the U.S. in the first place and there's a lot of blame that can be thrown towards most of the licensing companies themselves of the time having a very short-sighted view of things once a quick - and admittedly enormous - money grabbing opportunity presented itself: so its not like all or even most of my scorn is relegated strictly and specifically to the innocent and clueless 8-13 year old versions of most of you all, in spite of how my mangled/tortuously worded posts on this topic evidently read to a lot of you. But that too is a VERY involved, convoluted topic unto itself.

You guys from the Toonami generation though ultimately "won" in the evolutionary direction of U.S. fandom going forward - largely on sheer overwhelming numbers and without even knowing it and without even knowing to almost any degree the extent of the effect that just your mere presence in the market was having - whereas the previous generation's voice and views were just buried in the avalanche of drastic and fast change and wiped out of history to the point of being relegated into, what essentially amounts for most fans today at least, irrelevant apocrypha: and the place that the U.S. industry and fandom has been in presently for a very, VERY long time now is in most ways the direct result of it. For better and (from my vantage point at least) for worse.

And also bear in mind that this is all ENTIRELY from a Western/America-centered perspective on the market and fanbase, and what was happening to the anime industry and audience spectrum over in Japan is also in itself a TOTALLY separate (and in many ways equally or more depressing) can of worms.

[Bansho64]

I'm surprised there are so many postive responses to the question at hand. I honestly didn't imagine that many people enjoyed the voices of the Ocean dub. It's a shame that Pioneer wasn't able to produce any more material than they did. It may have cost a lot of money but it definitely would've been worth while in the end.

[theoriginalbilis]

I'm surprised there are so many postive responses to the question at hand. I honestly didn't imagine that many people enjoyed the voices of the Ocean dub. It's a shame that Pioneer wasn't able to produce any more material than they did. It may have cost a lot of money but it definitely would've been worth while in the end.

The problem with that initial FUNi/Ocean dub wasn't the voice cast, but it was pretty much else (editing, scriptwriting, replacement music, over-censorship, etc.)

Outside of those first 3 movies, the closest thing we'll probably ever get to a faithful dub of DBZ voiced by Ocean Studios is their mystical "lost" dub of Kai. Then again, who knows how faithful it would've ended up, it was being produced for a TV-only market. Anyway, that seems to have been lost to the ether.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Wait WHAT? Where did the Funimation Kai dub go in your equation? It IS the most faithful version of Z ever, and you have no way of knowing if the Ocean dub would have been more accurate.

[Hellspawn28]

And even IF by some bizarre, freakish miracle it never finished its first run at a U.S. license, another licensing company would've just inevitably taken another crack at it: or else barring that we'd have all just inevitably downloaded fansubbed rips of the Dragon Boxes anyway once those hit.

It will probably be like Fist of the North Star and Lupin the Third were the English dub was never finish, but a company like Discotek Media would have end up putting out a compete DVD set years later. If Pioneer did dub DBZ, I could see it somehow airing on Toonami. We did get Tenchi Muyo! on Toonami back in 1999 or 2000 after all. Even if DBZ never did got a TV airing in the US, the anime market would still exist today. Pokemon would still end up becoming popular and another anime would have been the "DBZ" of the late 90's and early 2000's. Not to mention, we still had anime in the US before DBZ on Sci-Fi Channel and on VHS.

[Kunzait_83]

It will probably be like Fist of the North Star and Lupin the Third were the English dub was never finish, but a company like Discotek Media would have end up putting out a compete DVD set years later.

That's also a possible scenario I could easily see happening (in this hypothetical alternate version of events).

If Pioneer did dub DBZ, I could see it somehow airing on Toonami. We did get Tenchi Muyo! on Toonami back in 1999 or 2000 after all.

That's certainly possible also, but its fair to bear in mind that those later anime shows wound up on the channel at least in SOME part based on the momentum of DBZ's initial success on the channel (which stretches back a year before into '98 as I recall). Again, who the hell ultimately knows. I'd certainly be more than interested in seeing if a VASTLY more faithful and better handled DBZ dub making it to the channel originally and being exposed to the very same audience at the very same point in time that lead to where we are today would've had any kind of significant impact on the trajectory of Western fandom within that alternate universe of events that might've made things turn out at all any differently.

I honestly DOUBT it very much in the overall grand scheme of things, but its a very, very interesting question to ponder all the same. Your guess is ultimately as good as mine.

Even if DBZ never did got a TV airing in the US, the anime market would still exist today.

Of course, obviously. In what FORM it would exist though is a whole other matter. Again, the Cartoon Network explosion had a TON of repercussions on how anime would be marketed and licensed in the U.S. from then on after and to whom its prime audience was.

Not to mention, we still had anime in the US before DBZ on Sci-Fi Channel and on VHS.

And a ton of other outlets besides those (limited theater runs, MTV, HBO/Showtime, etc). But largely and predominantly VHS. Saturday Anime on Sci Fi began a bit later into things (maybe around '95-ish or so?) actually. You are indeed one of the only few people I ever see on this forum who insistently continues to bring this up at all as a relevant piece of the conversation about wider U.S. anime history (that it goes way, way, WAY the hell back much further than just Cartoon Network in the late 90s), and I give my utmost props to you for it. And for the Urotsukidoji avatar.

But yeah, there were MULTIPLE generations of Western/U.S. anime fans from long, loooooooong, many years prior to Cartoon Network (I myself am HARDLY from the earliest ever crop of them by ANY remote stretch: U.S. anime fandom was at least like 10/15 years old by the time I ever got there in the late 80s, so I'm NOBODY special on that front), and a LOT of what it originally used to represent got shot out of a cannon come the big CN revolution and its new breed of fans who landed on the original landscape like Dorothy's house into Oz and who were, by and large, after something very, very radically different from their overall choices in anime which helped shape the market going forward from there.

[huzaifa_ahmed]

I'm surprised there are so many postive responses to the question at hand. I honestly didn't imagine that many people enjoyed the voices of the Ocean dub. It's a shame that Pioneer wasn't able to produce any more material than they did. It may have cost a lot of money but it definitely would've been worth while in the end.

The problem with that initial FUNi/Ocean dub wasn't the voice cast, but it was pretty much else (editing, scriptwriting, replacement music, over-censorship, etc.)

Outside of those first 3 movies, the closest thing we'll probably ever get to a faithful dub of DBZ voiced by Ocean Studios is their mystical "lost" dub of Kai. Then again, who knows how faithful it would've ended up, it was being produced for a TV-only market. Anyway, that seems to have been lost to the ether.

Nah, the voices WERE a problem. What people DO like is the attitude toward the dub. But they also didn't have Japanese audio, so the casting is WAY off.

More realitically - Saffron Henderson- Masako Nozawa, Cathy Weseluck- Kuririn, Roshi- Garry Chalk, Matt Hill- Yamcha, Mark Hildreth- Tenshinhan/16, Christopher Judge- Kenji Utsumi, Venus Terzo- Bulma, Don Brown- Kaio-sama, Tara Strong- Chi-Chi, Brian Dobson- Piccolo, RIC- Vegeta, David Sobolov- Nappa, Lee Tockar- Freeza, Kirby Morrow- Trunks, & between David S & K, Scott McNeil, & the Dobson bros, hopefully we'd cover the bases of Lord Gori.

[ABED]

Speak for yourself, with the exception of a few actors, the cast of the Ocean dub was excellent. The voices weren't the issue, it was the script and direction.

[VegettoEX]

There was absolutely vocal dislike of the Ocean Studios cast from fans at the time. In particular, Drummond's Vegeta was severely criticized.

[ABED]

There was absolutely vocal dislike of the Ocean Studios cast from fans at the time. In particular, Drummond's Vegeta was severely criticized.

I'm well aware, but the operative phrase is "at the time."

[Kunzait_83]

There was absolutely vocal dislike of the Ocean Studios cast from fans at the time. In particular, Drummond's Vegeta was severely criticized.

I still remember that. Scott McNeil's Piccolo and Ted Cole's Yamucha were really the only stand out voices that seemed to go over generally well all across the board from the getgo (I'm also personally fond of Ocean's Shen Long: I'd say that that's such a hard character to fuck up, but with the dubs that this series has had...). Ian Corlett's Goku had some fans from the beginning also and grew on more and more people over time.

Literally almost everyone else in the cast across the board was completely fair game for vigorous sniping from the then-fanbase, who at the time was largely still made up of pre-dub era fans who'd been watching the series almost exclusively in Japanese for years by that point (or perhaps Spanish in some cases): the number of legitimately new folks that the Saban/Ocean dub picked up in its original syndicated run was pretty limited in the grand scheme of things, especially when compared to when it landed on Cartoon Network a few years later and just grabbed a gigantic tidal wave of new fans.

In those weird syndication/pre-Cartoon Network limbo years when the dub was JUST starting out but hadn't really taken off yet, the general landscape for DB fandom seemed like it was still made up largely of something like 85/90% old schoolers who'd been following the series since at least the Japanese run of the Cell arc (on average) and maybe 10/15% newly minted post-dub people at the VERY most (generous estimate).

Drummond's Vegeta was definitely the voice for whom the general consensus within the fandom changed the most radically by FAR over time. That one literally went from intense, seething loathing to immense fondness and love over a period of maybe a couple of years. Huge, huge turnaround on that one.

I'll go on record also as saying that there's never, EVER been an English voice for Muten Roshi or Kaio in ANY incarnation of the dub that was anything other than agonizingly unlistenable and irritating in the extreme. I don't know what it is about those two particular characters that pulls so much unmitigated hacky shittiness from all English incarnations of DB/Z, but good lord. Both characters are total jokes who are played COMPLETELY straight and serious in the original, the stark contrast of which is what makes them so damned effective, likable, and memorable: and yet in all versions of an English dub, they're just broad, surface-level caricatures in the most overly-literal, on-the-nose fashion which robs virtually all the personality and distinctiveness that they naturally had to begin with and just renders them into punchable, nails-on-a-chalkboard monstrosities of stereotypical "cartoon" over-acting.

The Saban/Ocean version was obviously no exception there. Their Karin was pretty wretched also from what I can vaguely recall.

[Adamant]

Scott McNeil's Piccolo (...) were really the only stand out voices that seemed to go over generally well all across the board from the getgo.

*raises hand* I disliked it. Way too deep and growly.

[ABED]

Literally almost everyone else in the cast across the board was completely fair game for vigorous sniping from the then-fanbase

I disagree and think that's being unfair. Henderson was great, Lindbjerg, Dave Squatch Ward, and so are the overwhelming majority of the ancilary characters. The biggest issues I recall were Freeza and Tenshinhan and Kelamis. I actually have a soft spot for Don Brown. Yeah, the voice is on the goofier side, but I can take him serious when he's being earnest, unlike Schemmel.

Both characters are total jokes who are played COMPLETELY straight and serious in the original,

Do you honestly believe that Muten Roshi and Kaio-sama are played completely straight and serious in the original?

Their Karin was pretty wretched also from what I can vaguely recall.

You have low tolerance for these voices. It was perfectly fine. It sounded like Harvey Firestein.

and yet in all versions of an English dub, they're just broad, surface-level caricatures in the most overly-literal, on-the-nose fashion which robs virtually all the personality and distinctiveness that they naturally had to begin with and just renders them into punchable, nails-on-a-chalkboard monstrosities of stereotypical "cartoon" over-acting

Vollmer and Nadolny are nails on a chalk board. I don't know when the last time you watched the Ocean dub was, but because Roshi wasn't allowed to be his perverted self, he's played fairly straight in the dub. That's what robbed him of his distinctiveness.

[NitroEX]

Wait WHAT? Where did the Funimation Kai dub go in your equation? It IS the most faithful version of Z ever, and you have no way of knowing if the Ocean dub would have been more accurate.

I'm pretty sure theoriginalbilis was referring to the fact that Ocean only had one chance to dub the main series, the scripts for which were largely unfaithful due to those in charge (Saban and Funimation).

Judging from the rumors surrounding Ocean Kai's production there was a very good chance the dub would have had a faithful script translated from the ground up. Not only have Ocean translated accurate scripts in the past but the producers on kai supposedly wanted more accurate pronunciations of words such as "Namek" and seemed to have cast a more faithful Goku so you never know.

Nah, the voices WERE a problem. What people DO like is the attitude toward the dub. But they also didn't have Japanese audio, so the casting is WAY off.

First off, I'm pretty sure Ocean did have some access to the Japanese version, at least during the beginning of the Z dub. I mean wasn't there an easter egg during one of the Saban episodes where Chi-chi hummed a specific tune found only in the Japanese soundtrack? How else would they have known about that? Also I think it's worth mentioning that Funimation allegedly had Barry Watson involved in the casting process so for all we know he was the reason for casting choices such as Freeza having a female VA, not necessarily Ocean.

I know that it's been said in multiple interviews that Funimation got their sources from Mexico due to the wait from Japan to America being too long or something but, surely this would have only been a problem after Cartoon Network started ordering more episodes from them. If that's the case then it would have only affected the in-house Texas production (and, by extension, the westwood dub too). I don't believe this would have been an issue during the dubbing of the first 53 episodes or Ocean's initial casting process.

More realitically - Saffron Henderson- Masako Nozawa, Cathy Weseluck- Kuririn, Roshi- Garry Chalk, Matt Hill- Yamcha, Mark Hildreth- Tenshinhan/16, Christopher Judge- Kenji Utsumi, Venus Terzo- Bulma, Don Brown- Kaio-sama, Tara Strong- Chi-Chi, Brian Dobson- Piccolo, RIC- Vegeta, David Sobolov- Nappa, Lee Tockar- Freeza, Kirby Morrow- Trunks, & between David S & K, Scott McNeil, & the Dobson bros, hopefully we'd cover the bases of Lord Gori.

Some of these seem like decent casting choices but overall I think you're being a little overly stringent when it comes to the English casting. I agree that casting soundalikes can be preferable in some cases (I am a fan of Kelamis' Goku after all) but casting only soundalikes is a flawed way to do it in my opinion. Not only are you going to run into logistical issues in finding the right VAs but you'd also be discounting original and unique sounding performances that could potentially be just as good, if not better than the original. I for one think Scott McNeil brings more of a demonic presence to the role of Piccolo than Furukawa and yet, according to you he wouldn't be fit for the role due to sounding too different from the original.

[DBZfan2015]

Although I love Chris Sabat and Sean, I miss Ian Corlett and Brian Drummand as Goku and Vegeta. Brian Drummand's Vegeta was CREEPY as heck, especially when he laughs evily after killing someone. Ian Corlett's voice fits Goku more than the other US Goku voice actors (I still love Sean).

[ABED]

Although I love Chris Sabat and Sean, I miss Ian Corlett and Brian Drummand as Goku and Vegeta. Brian Drummand's Vegeta was CREEPY as heck, especially when he laughs evily after killing someone. Ian Corlett's voice fits Goku more than the other US Goku voice actors (I still love Sean).

Corlett is a terrific actor, but his performance is more straightforward hero and not Goku the fight loving man child.

[Kunzait_83]

Scott McNeil's Piccolo (...) were really the only stand out voices that seemed to go over generally well all across the board from the getgo.

*raises hand* I disliked it. Way too deep and growly.

Ha!

Considering the smorgasbord of shitty performances on hand across both the two main non-Kai English dubs, I got little to nothing against McNeil's Piccolo in comparison. He's got some pretty great moments and line deliveries: he's got his lesser moments too for sure, but stuff like his one snarling utterance of "Then you die!" to Tullece in the Pioneer version of the 3rd movie is probably by far the closest to Toshio Furukawa's more demonic Piccolo moments that any English dub VA has ever come within lightyears of.

(I'm frankly amazed I was even able to call that moment to memory honestly: the shit that rattles loose from your noggin sometimes...)

Especially when comparing him to Sabat, who's just unbelievably unbearable and intolerable in the role (like most of his others), McNeil sounds downright amazing in comparison.

I disagree and think that's being unfair.

I was simply recounting what the fanodm consensus was at the time. Though I myself was pretty much squarely in alignment with it obviously. The Saban/Ocean dub may have been "better" in some ways than what FUNi ended up doing in-house later on, but that still left plenty of room for it to be awful itself. For every gem of a Ted Cole there's three or five more Dave Wards (who I couldn't disagree with you more on: guy was pretty damn embarrassingly bad as Kaio) among the cast to outnumber the good ones.

Can't remember the name of the guy who originally did Tenshinhan, but yeah, he was among the shittier voices too with tons and tons of cringe-worthy line deliveries.

Do you honestly believe that Muten Roshi and Kaio-sama are played completely straight and serious in the original?

The characters themselves as written and conceived are goofy, silly stereotypes (Roshi in particular), but their Japanese actors totally do not treat them that way in their approach to their performances in the slightest. With Roshi I'm speaking specifically about his original Japanese VA Kohei Miyauchi (Roshi's other various seiyuu following him were varying levels of meh to awful). Miyauchi is easily one of the most layered and versatile performances in the entire damn series, going from silly and wacky to fatherly and warm to grizzly stone cold badass on a dime and TOTALLY selling each and every one of these sides to the character with equal amounts of authority and conviction. Guy was damned talented.

Kaio's in a similar fashion: he's dippy in both his physical appearance and personality, but Joji Yanami gives the character amazing degrees of depth in how he plays him, being able to sell the character as both a goofball with a corny sense of humor as well as a genuine deity with a commanding, divine presence. Totally clashing personality traits to be sure, and yet it all coalesces and takes a simple, silly character and gives him nuance and gravitas.

They both deliver an actual (and successful) stab at genuine acting in other words.

What the U.S. VAs do with the characters is play them as not only tonally broad, but totally one dimensional and thuddingly literal: what you see is what you get. Kaio looks like a catfish person and makes stupid jokes, so he should sound like a moron with a speech impediment. Muten Roshi is a very old man, so lets get a guy who's clearly in his 20s or 30s to do his best over the top doofy "old geezer" voice that can in NO way be taken the least bit seriously when it comes time for the character to have actual dramatic scenes and legit action sequences (which he has plenty of pre-Z).

Dragon Ball is a silly cartoon, but what makes the Japanese version great is that the production doesn't TREAT it like its a silly cartoon. Its a silly cartoon treated as if its grandiose, epic myth (albeit often with tongue in cheek still), and the conviction behind that is what helps push the anime from being just another dumb shonen show into being something genuinely special and memorable.

Both the Ocean and original FUNi dub do not in any way follow in this approach: they treat the series as just another disposable, schlocky 80s or 90s American Saturday morning cartoon: one of the most awful, and worthless genres of anything in existence (IMO: I'm well aware that this view is very much an odd one out here).

You have low tolerance for these voices. It was perfectly fine. It sounded like Harvey Firestein.

No sane human being could conceivably see that as a good thing. Nothing against Firestein in general, but there isn't a single character anywhere in a series like DB I can in any remote way see as being befitting with that particular style of voice. Least of all Karin, who's supposed to be another mystical sage that slips from being silly to serious and back again at the drop of a hat.

Vollmer and Nadolny are nails on a chalk board.

Never said they weren't. As bad as the Ocean dub was, the FUNi dub was leagues and leagues worse. The former, for all its numerous faults, had at least some vague vestige of basic quality control and professionalism to it that the latter completely and totally lacked for the vast overwhelming majority of its run.

As much as I disliked it, I was able to sort of passively follow the Saban/Ocean dub during its original syndication in a very "rubbernecking the scene of a nasty car crash" sort of morbid curiosity. With in-house FUNimation I couldn't even manage that and tapped out pretty damned fast.

[ABED]

I was simply recounting what the fanodm consensus was at the time.

Fair enough, but nothing about internet fan communities have changed. They tend to be overly harsh. The good cast members outnumber the good ones, though they tended to have smaller roles. You will get no argument from me that the original JPN actors who played Kaio and Roshi were amazing, but the characters they played were more often than not played for comedy. When the time was right they could also be earnest, so I wouldn't say they were played completely straight.

What the U.S. VAs do with the characters is play them as not only tonally broad

Not true. Roshi isn't played broad in the Ocean dub. His humor is actually downplayed because of the broadcast standards.

so he should sound like a moron with a speech impediment.

You're thinking Sean's performance. Brown fits the look more than Yanami, and it still works, albeit in a different way.

No sane human being could conceivably see that as a good thing.

I am sane, and I had zero problem with it. Nothing about that voice suggests the inability to go from broad to serious. In fact he does sound serious quite often from what little we see of him. It's not like his original voice isn't silly sounding.

[gokaiblue]

It would have been uncut and most likely better, but I'm not sure it would have been as succesful. Dragon Ball Z airing on Toonami made anime a phenomenon and larger than just syndication and DVDs. Of course, one could argue that Pokémon made just as large of an impact, but I think there equal in impact.

Despite the errors and mustranslations, I do feel things worked out for the best.