Does Funimation really treat Dragonball that bad?

[Kunzait_83]

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[Vekurotto]

Damn, the Windaria dub sounds like Robotech without the part of it making any sense. But you really can't compare Robotech to the three series it was made from because it's an adaption of those series rather than an actual translation of the events in the series much like the Super Sentai to Power Rangers conversions. They use the same material but actually create their own stories that do not interfere with the original story whatsoever.

Funi's Dragon Ball series on the other hand tries to pass off what happens in the dub as the real thing rather than a separate continuity when it's glaringly wrong and noncontinuous a good chunk of the time.

There is a difference.

BTW: Zyuranger was awesome.

[shenron002]

Yeah that was a bad example, but what about "Sailor Moon" which was sorta the same scenario as "Dragon Ball Z", which was produced by "Toei" and bastardized by "Saban".

Oh since, were kinda on the "Power Rangers" topic check this out, my brother put this together in August 2006.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91_nWXNL13E

[Tsukento]

Agreed with the whole dialogue shifts that end up impacting moods and even change the point of what the original script was trying to prove. One of the most glaring things regarding this is when they feel they have to add in a joke every now and then.

As shown earlier, Yamcha's little singing diddy regarding cat loving food was obviously non-existant in the original. How do you get a conversation regarding wondering when Goku will get back home and the usual current events to Yamcha singing about Puar liking food while she's drinking juice?

Then of course, you also have the incredibly lame exchanges such as Burter trying to land a hit on Goku. Buttah in the original was extremely angry that he couldn't land a single hit on Goku and angrily questioned him about what the hell was with him, to which Goku merely replied that he simply trained very hard to be able to become faster. However, in the dub, we get lines such as "It must be my diet." "Your diet, huh? Well then, how about eating my fist?!"

It just turns the mood from a serious tone to a goofy one as we never expected Goku to have gained such a boost in speed or power and be able to take on the Ginyu Special Corps so easily when Vegeta, Kuririn and Gohan were nearly killed by just Reacoom.

Then you have the constant flub ups. The ones they KNOW they got incorrect. Fixed. Then flubbed again. Two examples come to mind.

Kaio-Ken and Tao Pai Pai

When Saban was with FUNi, we had Kaio-Ken being pronounced as "Kayo-Ken." This was glaringly incorrect as the damn attack still has the first three letters of Goku's teacher's dub name: Kai. They eventually even refer to the others as Kais down the road. Which makes no sense to pronounce it as Kay.

Now we move onto the three dubbed movies released with the cooperation of Pioneer. Goku uses Kaio-Ken in movies 2 and 3 and actually pronounces the attack as it should be pronounced. Wonderful! They finally got it right after saying it wrong for several episodes. Glad that's fixed.

...Except when the dub picked up once again with FUNi on their own, Kaio-Ken ONCE AGAIN becomes "Kayo-Ken." This is the third name that's pronounced completely different from its spelling (first being Kamehame-Ha being switched between Kaméhaméah in early dub Dragon Ball to KaméHaméha through out the rest of its existence, and second being Saiyan being pronounced as if the I were supposed to be silent).

Now we move onto Tao Pai Pai. FUNimation gets around to dubbing Dragon Ball after having dubbed the Androids arc of the Cell Saga. In one episode, Roshi explains to Maron (or is it Marron? Blasted filler character's existance will always confuse me on this one since Kuririn's daughter has the same name...) about the existance of the Red Ribbon Army and why they're after Goku now.

Because that portion of Dragon Ball had not occured in the dub by that time, viewers were given background story by Roshi to fill them in on what happened. We first get introduced to Tao Pai Pai here if we had not been following Dragon Ball...except his name isn't Tao Pai Pai here. For whatever reason, Tao Pai Pai becomes "General Tao." Not only do they also fudge the whole thing up by saying Dr. Gero was the commander of Red Ribbon Army, but also fudges up the fact that Tao Pai Pai was actually a hired assassin and not actually part of the RR Army.

So along comes the Dragon Ball dub and, apparently due to several fan backlash or because they felt like actually translating, "General Tao" became Mercenary Tao. Not his full name, but close enough because he was merely an outsider hired by the RR Army to assassinate Son Goku. Great.

But then comes the merchandise! Namely the video games. For whatever reason, it's not Mercenary Tao we see in character selects. It's GENERAL Tao we see instead. So this ends up supporting the whole notion that FUNi likes to pretend Dragon Ball didn't exist and threw their own translation out the window.

Also, I believe it was Rach who brought this up before regarding the eventual release of the first thirteen episodes of Dragon Ball and the first movie. I can honestly say I don't see this happening. It's far too late to release these by now as the other sets have been discontinued, with only the movie boxset and 10th anniversary movie being the only piece of original Dragon Ball DVDs being sold.

By the time that sublicense ends, FUNi will likely be shifting their eyes towards "remastering" Dragon Ball. Or hell. They'll probably just end up forgetting the damn set should exist and never release it. But at this point, it's far too late to release a two-disc set in the same fashion as the others.

[Bardock the Mexican]

It is very simple and easy to explain for me at least. They released the Mexican dub on DVDs in widescreen, with all the messups and bad masters, and the like. When DB and DBZ came out in Mexico there was no television that would need or use a widescreen format. Only movie theaters had anything resembling a widescreen format as a necesscity. They screwed up the reputation of the Mexican dub and lost my respect. I will not give a cent more to these idiots.

[Vekurotto]

Yeah that was a bad example, but what about "Sailor Moon" which was sorta the same scenario as "Dragon Ball Z", which was produced by "Toei" and bastardized by "Saban".

Yeah you could(it was DiC and Cloverway that did Sailor Moon though). Because they tried to say that the Dub was the exact same as the original when that's so glaringly false that you don't even have to have knowledge of the original version and you still know that it's different.

Has anybody else noticed that Toei productions get bastardized a lot by R1 companies. Super Sentai, One Piece, Digimon, Sailor Moon, Fist of the North Star(to a lesser degree), Saint Seiya, and Dragonball for example. I guess that's why Toei gives R1 anime companies crappy video/audio masters to work with.

[Conan the SSJ]

Has anybody else noticed that Toei productions get bastardized a lot by R1 companies. Super Sentai,

I wouldn't necessarily say they got "bastardized" regarding Super Sentai. If anything, the adaptation of the "action/battle" footage to Power Rangers (which I must say, for a low budget, had some creative edits to blend with the American stuff) heightened the popularity of the franchise. Hell, Japan even airs Japanese versions of the various Power Rangers series. A lot of people around the world (outside of Japan; North America, Australia, etc.) got into Super Sentai for the simple fact that they were originally into Power Rangers. Power Rangers at its prime was so popular that it pumped out two theatrical movies made without any Sentai footage, I personally think that says something for its effect on the English speaking fans of the Japanese counterparts. If something is that popular and can actually continue into a ridiculously redundant 16th (?) season on just one channel, it definitely says something. Super Sentai wasn't bastardized IMO, it was adapted for a western audience of children and evolved to a point where people in their 20s whom were fans of the old Tommy/Kimberly relationship are now hunting down fansubs to see Brai's conflicts in Zyurangers or some of the more recent series.

Sorry if I got too off topic. >>

[Onikage725]

As shown earlier, Yamcha's little singing diddy regarding cat loving food was obviously non-existant in the original. How do you get a conversation regarding wondering when Goku will get back home and the usual current events to Yamcha singing about Puar liking food while she's drinking juice?

Let's not forget- Krillin's in da house! Or anything like that (You da man Goku! Piccolo you da bomb!).

Then of course, you also have the incredibly lame exchanges such as Burter trying to land a hit on Goku. Buttah in the original was extremely angry that he couldn't land a single hit on Goku and angrily questioned him about what the hell was with him, to which Goku merely replied that he simply trained very hard to be able to become faster. However, in the dub, we get lines such as "It must be my diet." "Your diet, huh? Well then, how about eating my fist?!"

I'm partial to the rule that anything Vegeta said had to be extra dickish (yet they trumped him up like he was the hero of the show in merchandise- I swear I saw one dvd that referred to the Z Senshi in the write-up as "Vegeta and friends"). Look at the whole "Android" arc. I'm pretty sure he just derisevely calls them overgrown wind-up dolls. yet the dub goes to fricken town on as many mechanical-related insults as they can ("ultimate tub of lard bucket of bolts" and the whole "toaster oven/washing machine bit come to mind).

When Saban was with FUNi, we had Kaio-Ken being pronounced as "Kayo-Ken." This was glaringly incorrect as the damn attack still has the first three letters of Goku's teacher's dub name: Kai. They eventually even refer to the others as Kais down the road. Which makes no sense to pronounce it as Kay.

Remeber Budokai 1? They actually wrote it out in the attack lists as "King Kai Fist." I just thought that was interesting. And has anyone else noticed that with the KameHameHa they seem to be playing both sides of the fence? In the original dub, it was fllat out wrong across the board. but nowadays, they pronounce it the old way in casual convo but kinda say it the right when when actually firing the attack.

But then comes the merchandise! Namely the video games. For whatever reason, it's not Mercenary Tao we see in character selects. It's GENERAL Tao we see instead. So this ends up supporting the whole notion that FUNi likes to pretend Dragon Ball didn't exist and threw their own translation out the window.

Oddly enough he's BOTH in the games. I *think* (don't hold me to this) one of the two Tenkaichi games has him as Mercenary Tao in the manual. In know in BT2 he is referred to as such in the write-up of his biography in the game. Yet the name under character select, and in all advertising/press releases/etc. is General Tao.

Also, I believe it was Rach who brought this up before regarding the eventual release of the first thirteen episodes of Dragon Ball and the first movie. I can honestly say I don't see this happening. It's far too late to release these by now as the other sets have been discontinued, with only the movie box set and 10th anniversary movie being the only piece of original Dragon Ball DVDs being sold.

Have those rights honestly not come up yet? Pioneers' were long gone. Hell, ADV can put out Macross now without being tied up by Robotech. Who is this non-entity desperately grasping at the Pilaf Saga, despite not having any aspirations to do anything with it?

By the time that sublicense ends, FUNi will likely be shifting their eyes towards "remastering" Dragon Ball. Or hell. They'll probably just end up forgetting the damn set should exist and never release it. But at this point, it's far too late to release a two-disc set in the same fashion as the others.

Ya know, you guys have a point about FUNi's different approach to DB. Look at...say... DBZ's instrumental OP themes. Look at GT...not finishing that sentence, one should never subject themselves to that. But then with DB, they handle it the same way as they did with Yu Yu hakusho, producing English versions of the classic Japanese songs. love or hate 'em, you have to admit the effort was a nice touch. Especially compared to other efforts.

But the overall answer was best summed up by Kunzait- When it comes to Dragon Ball (as a whole), FUNimation's only consistency is that they are inconsistent. Funny tidbit. When the flashback in DBZ showed Goku's finishing blow on Daimaou aired on TV, it was left uncut. Yet when snipping around DB for the edited broadcast of the actual scene, they pull a Raditz on that scene and cover the hole.

[Vekurotto]

Alright Conan I see what you're saying about Sentai and Power Rangers.

But that still doesn't change all the other titles I mentioned. One Piece with 4Kids was terrible and nearly the worse recent anime dub, that was not an adaptation, ever. And Sailor Moon was done horribly with DiC and even with Toei's subsidiary company Cloverway. I would say both Sailor Moon and One Piece were worse than what happened to Dragonball Z when Saban was in charge and now with Funimation. I mean if I could rank those title I put from least to greatest bastardized Dragonball would probably be the 3rd least bastardized.

But anybody with common knowledge of Funimation's work knows that they can do competent, non-retarded actions for every title they own but Dragonball.

[Chuquita]

I didn't know the original yellow ranger was a guy until just last night.


Nor did I know Power Rangers originated in Japan as a completely different show until maybe sometime last year.

[Conan the SSJ]

But that still doesn't change all the other titles I mentioned. One Piece with 4Kids was terrible and nearly the worse recent anime dub, that was not an adaptation, ever. And Sailor Moon was done horribly with DiC and even with Toei's subsidiary company Cloverway. I would say both Sailor Moon and One Piece were worse than what happened to Dragonball Z when Saban was in charge and now with Funimation. I mean if I could rank those title I put from least to greatest bastardized Dragonball would probably be the 3rd least bastardized.

Nothing is worse than 4Kids' One Piece in my honest opinion, not even Sailor Moon. Everything in One Piece just stunk to the point where it has to be considered an adaptation, because calling it an actual dub would be an insult. 32 episodes being wiped out, along with countless merged episodes and entire arcs cut. Then there's the character backgrounds, deaths, even races of a person being completely screwed over, very unnecessary name/attack/etc. changes, random digital paint edits and cuts left and right, etc. etc. And that's just the icing on that very poisonous cake, I won't bother touching on the very terrible "BGM" put in there. Does it make things better that there was very little merchandise going on for the thing and that Al Kahn was false advertising uncut DVDs? I dare anyone here to point out a North American adaptation of something that is worse than what One Piece got before FUNi saved it, I seriously believe it's the worse of anything in the anime community.

There are heavily altered anime dubs/adaptations out there like Robotech's arcs or Voltron that people after so many years just like or love because of the creativity put into them. One Piece is nothing like that, it was just horrendously horrible on all counts, I'm frankly surprised Cartoon network even had the nerve to give FUNimation the stipulation that new episodes had to take up where 4Kids left off rather than go back to the beginning. The two will be so insanely different, any dubbies that are actually out there will have the wake-up call of the year.

I didn't know the original yellow ranger was a guy until just last night.

Really? Surely you must've suspected something when "Trini" never wore a skirt and made many concerned advances toward Pink Ranger. ^^;

[Chuquita]

But that still doesn't change all the other titles I mentioned. One Piece with 4Kids was terrible and nearly the worse recent anime dub, that was not an adaptation, ever. And Sailor Moon was done horribly with DiC and even with Toei's subsidiary company Cloverway. I would say both Sailor Moon and One Piece were worse than what happened to Dragonball Z when Saban was in charge and now with Funimation. I mean if I could rank those title I put from least to greatest bastardized Dragonball would probably be the 3rd least bastardized.

Nothing is worse than 4Kids' One Piece in my honest opinion, not even Sailor Moon. Everything in One Piece just stunk to the point where it has to be considered an adaptation, because calling it an actual dub would be an insult. 32 episodes being wiped out, along with countless merged episodes and entire arcs cut. Then there's the character backgrounds, deaths, even races of a person being completely screwed over, very unnecessary name/attack/etc. changes, random digital paint edits and cuts left and right, etc. etc. And that's just the icing on that very poisonous cake, I won't bother touching on the very terrible "BGM" put in there. Does it make things better that there was very little merchandise going on for the thing and that Al Kahn was false advertising uncut DVDs? I dare anyone here to point out a North American adaptation of something that is worse than what One Piece got before FUNi saved it, I seriously believe it's the worse of anything in the anime community.

There are heavily altered anime dubs/adaptations out there like Robotech's arcs or Voltron that people after so many years just like or love because of the creativity put into them. One Piece is nothing like that, it was just horrendously horrible on all counts, I'm frankly surprised Cartoon network even had the nerve to give FUNimation the stipulation that new episodes had to take up where 4Kids left off rather than go back to the beginning. The two will be so insanely different, any dubbies that are actually out there will have the wake-up call of the year.

I didn't know the original yellow ranger was a guy until just last night.

Really? Surely you must've suspected something when "Trini" never worse a skirt and made many concerned advances toward Pink Ranger. ^^;

I haven't watched Power Rangers since I was 9.
I wouldn't remember any of that. ^_^;;;


The pink ranger had a skirt?

[Conan the SSJ]

I haven't watched Power Rangers since I was 9.
I wouldn't remember any of that. ^_^;;;
The pink ranger had a skirt?

Yep, she did. And I know the feeling, back in them days, Saban was crafty enough that a lot of us had no idea half the footage originated in Japan. It was only a few years ago I learned "the truth". But hey, who could blame us? We were young, watching kids at a juice bar become spandex wearing heroes when there was no internet, and whatnot else.

[Vekurotto]

I didn't know the original yellow ranger was a guy until just last night.

Ironically his name was, "boi" pronounced "boy". I remember finding it hilarious when a guy would play the Yellow Ranger in power rangers too because I thought it was the same thing as male pink ranger, only to find out later that in the first ever Super Sentai series the Yellow Ranger was a guy and that there are rarely any female yellow rangers in Sentai. Hell it's hard to find a Super Sentai team with more than one female even though power rangers almost always has two females.

Now back to the topic.

Here's the thing I can understand that the Japanese version may have problems, but everything that's there that you could probably complain about you count on one finger. Whereas Funimation's dub you could write a college paper on everything that's wrong with it, bad sadly there are people on youtube that think the dub has the same emotions as mood as the original.

[TripleRach]

Also, I believe it was Rach who brought this up before regarding the eventual release of the first thirteen episodes of Dragon Ball and the first movie. I can honestly say I don't see this happening. It's far too late to release these by now as the other sets have been discontinued, with only the movie box set and 10th anniversary movie being the only piece of original Dragon Ball DVDs being sold.

Have those rights honestly not come up yet? Pioneers' were long gone. Hell, ADV can put out Macross now without being tied up by Robotech. Who is this non-entity desperately grasping at the Pilaf Saga, despite not having any aspirations to do anything with it?

Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, it was Kidmark/Trimark, currently known as (or more likely, absorbed by) Lion's Gate. The last news I recall hearing from FUNimation about it was roughly a year and a half ago, where one of their reps at a con mentioned trying to work out a deal, since the sub-license apparently lasts until the end of time.

I actually emailed Lion's Gate about it back in 2001 or 2002, and explained the fandom predicament about how the content of their release was edited and all, and the rep replied to me with something along the lines of, "Oh, we plan on holding onto that for a very long time." Sadly enough, the Saga of Goku set (the North American one) seems like it's still in print, even now, while FUNi's sets are just dwindling away as overstock.

[Onikage725]

I haven't watched Power Rangers since I was 9.
I wouldn't remember any of that. ^_^;;;
The pink ranger had a skirt?

Yep, she did. And I know the feeling, back in them days, Saban was crafty enough that a lot of us had no idea half the footage originated in Japan. It was only a few years ago I learned "the truth". But hey, who could blame us? We were young, watching kids at a juice bar become spandex wearing heroes when there was no internet, and whatnot else.

I always knew! I think I read it in a magazine. Plus, thanks to a certain early SNES game, I was already a fan of Ultraman, and thus sort of into tokusatsu. I was also already into anime (might have still been calling it Japanimation at that point) thanks to things like Guyver, Vampire Hunter D, Robot Carnival, and Lodoss.

Considering that at that young age I was already a die hard horror movie fan (Evil Dead anyone?) and had gotten used to these crazy Japanese cartoons that were made for older audiences. The blood in Guyver, the nudity in Devil Hunter Yohko, the pathos in Vampire Princess Miyu... it kind of made Ninja Turtles and He-Man seem a little tame.

Not to disrespect US cartoons by any means. I have as many fond memories of David the Gnome and the Gummi Bears as I do Guyver and Bubblegum Crisis, and as a kid I thought Gargoyles was every bit as hardcore as any adapted anime on TV (my then-favorite being Ronin Warriors, which, like DBZ, hooked me inspite of edits and a "hipper" script). I'm just saying that even as an impressionable middle-schooler I could smell TV censorship a mile away. Hell, I knew before I was 12, and before anyone ever told me for a fact, that Sven of the Voltron Force wasn't simply "injured." Did anyone think the citizens around Nappa and vegeta's landing site really booked about 10 miles in 20 seconds? Or that the farmer took a bullet to the face and was still groaning on the ground like it was a flesh wound?

The funniest thing to me about MMPR was how that sort of thing was used as part of the original story. look at any time a Ranger cast change was needed, like... pre-Lost Galaxy where a Ranger actually temporarily kind of dies. A World-Peace conference? So a group of TEENS gave up being the worlds most kickass super heroes and pilots of giant combining mecha in order to hang out at the UN? Tommy losing his powers was pretty deep until they rebuilt him as Captain Invincible and had him steal Jason's job (and the original fight scenes during that period, post Zyu2 footage but before they started ganking footage from Kakuranger and Ohranger, was lame on an epic scale). Oh... and why did Rocky give up his gig as 2nd in command of the Power Rangers so a 12 year old kid could take over? Because he threw his back out while performing a roundhouse kick during a practice sparring match. Granted, Steve Cardenas (Rocky) really did hurt himself that way, but they could have cooked up something more believable for the character's exit. All that "morphing" technology and they couldn't treat a sprained muscle?

Heh, I think I went just a bit off topic... but its all in the same spirit as the main topic :p

[Rocketman]

The yellow ranger was a guy?

[Onikage725]

The yellow ranger was a guy?

http://www.supersentai.com/database/199 ... g-boy.html

[Vekurotto]

Let's not forget the other badass male Yellow rangers

http://www.supersentai.com/database/197 ... ooiwa.html
http://www.supersentai.com/database/198 ... angou.html
http://www.supersentai.com/database/199 ... -kazu.html
http://www.supersentai.com/database/200 ... kouta.html

That's more male yellow rangers than power rangers ever had and that's just from a few of the 31 series so it's not weird or uncommon for a guy to play the yellow ranger. I think that Ninja Storm was the only power rangers with a male yellow ranger.

[Lobster_Rage155]

Or that the farmer took a bullet to the face and was still groaning on the ground like it was a flesh wound?

Hate to nitpick, but the bullet actually just nails his gun in the anime version... but eh. Just felt like pointing that one out.

Carry on. >_>