If Funimation Started from Scratch

[Kunzait_83]

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[DBZGirl]

*WARNING, THIS POST IS OBNOXIOUSLY LONG. WASN'T GONNA BE, BUT IT JUST WOUND UP BECOMING "ME THINKING OUT LOUD IN A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS-LIKE MANNER." FEEL FREE TO IGNORE IT IF THIS SORT OF THING BOTHERS YOU.*

Oh most definitely it would've been done properly in the above alternate universe scenario. That just goes without saying. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if FUNimation even did the series in the right order; Dragon Ball before Dragon Ball Z. What a difference THAT would've made.

But either way, it would have actually been translated, as opposed to just rewritten and winged on the fly, using cliff's notes of the series as reference. The music would've been kept natch, and more than that, I'm sure most of the voices would've actually been damn good.

Going off some of the above posts, I'm getting the vibe that some people think that most of the voices would have been cast the same; somehow I have my doubts about that.

Don't forget, one of the major problems isn't just that most of the voices suck... it's that a whole bunch of them are just flat out miscast altogether. Freeza is probably the most blatant example. In a parallel world where FUNi acquired DBZ much later in the game after they had become a "legit" anime dubbing studio... no way in hell would Linda Young be voicing the character.

It's not that she's a bad actress; she's proven herself in other FUNimation dubbed anime (most notably to my mind Yu Yu) that she's got talent; she's just NOT the right vocal type for Freeza at all. You need someone who can do that whole spoiled aristocrat thing while retaining a really deep and menacing tone, and can switch to raving murderous psychopath at the drop of a hat (the more you think about it, it is a fairly demanding role).

And that's just Freeza; let's not even get into Muten Roshi. Or young Gohan and young Goku for that matter.

My point is that it's a good bet that much of the cast would have been shuffled around a bit, as a whole different approach would have been taken with the casting. There would have been no Saban dub to model from after all, and that was the primary motivation for much of the dub's casting.

I also keep seeing the idea thrown around that FUNimation “didn’t know what they were doing” and had to “learn how to dub anime properly”. I think the issue is much more complicated than that.

Dubbing an anime properly isn’t exactly rocket science. To break it down to the essential basics, you hire someone (or someones) who’s a fluent expert on Japanese to do a straight translation of the script, then do a few redrafts on it on it to fix various language differences and oddities that wouldn’t make sense in an English speaking context (like noun-suffixes for example) and reword it here and there to match better with the lip movements where need be. The closest thing to “rewriting” you might be doing beyond that is occasionally rethinking certain isolated instances where there is a word pun or cultural joke that would only make sense in Japanese. You then cast you’re voices based on appropriateness to the original character concept, and you have them record the new vocal track. Maybe translate some Kanji here and there if it’s essential to the plot.

And after that… you’re done. You leave everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) else the motherfucking hell alone.

Of course once in a while you hit the occasional production fluke (like the whole lip synching issue that haunted the various stabs at an Akira dub), but by and large for 98% of what’s out there, that’s the basic, ideal mold any good self respecting dubbing studio should ascribe to.

The X factor that gets in the way of many dubbing efforts is basically just dumb cultural baggage. Idiotic pre-conceived notions that many in the Western world hold regarding what demographic animated films and programming should be intended for, as well as what defines such films and programming at a basic level. It’s taken a long, long time, many decades, and countless butchered dubs to break down that wall of ignorance. And even to this day, there are still residual bits of that left over.

To rehash the story for a moment for those who may not know it or know it fully, when FUNimation first acquired the Dragon Ball rights, aside from still being a novice production house, they were also partnered with Saban, and that second fact right there was what basically kneecapped the DBZ dub and the treatment for the whole series in general all the way through its English run. FUNimation was handling the production more or less… but Haim Saban was the man footing the bill. And as anyone who has read up enough on the guy will likely tell you, Haim Saban is a complete fucking nutcase.

Well… maybe in this particular instance, "nutcase" is too harsh a word.

More like “overly cautious”.

VERY overly cautious to the point of limpwristed obsession and…

...ah fuck it, the man was (and still is) just totally out of his gourd.

But anyhow, Saban built his whole company by pandering to the mainstream U.S. kiddie market. The same market that gobbled up the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon not long before Saban’s most notable effort to compete in this arena; Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. To play things as preposterously safe as they possibly could, to make absolutely certain they would offend no one, no matter how insane, Power Rangers was tailor made to be as insipidly wholesome and non-threatening a fluff program as humanly possible. Yet even after going so far to do so, the show was STILL attacked and criticized by numbnut parental and special interest groups for it’s depictions of violence.

Hence once DBZ came ‘round, worries about parental complaints were at a panicky high. Absolutely ANYTHING that could potentially cripple the show’s mainstream success was considered fair game, no matter how inane. And I’m not even just referring to the well known edits and censorship; this applies even to storyline, translation, and characters, in an effort to make it as decidedly un-Asian and Americanized as possible, so as to make it “fit in” with every other brain dead U.S. children’s “action cartoon”; thus for its initial dub, Saban pressured FUNimation to make many of the idiotic creative decisions that would be carried over and continued throughout the company’s subsequent handling of the series, even long after Saban was history.

Because once Saban eventually pulled out and more or less folded as a company (with DBZ doing modestly well, but still more or less bombing under their watch due to the idiotic decision to air the show at timeslot where almost no one was sure to see it), FUNimation was basically left up shit’s creak, with little more to their name but CyBoars and a localized to shit, piss poor dub of DBZ. It was thus out of desperation to stay alive as well as good fortune on their part that they were able to get the episodes they had already finished under Saban to be aired on Cartoon Network. And no matter how shoddy the dub, no matter how edited to hell it is, DBZ is still DBZ, and retains the same Toriyama magic that allows it to endure as the classic it is the world over. Thus with the show now airing in a timeslot and format that would ensure it would be actually seen by a real audience, a hit was born.

And because this bastardized version of the show was in fact the version that was the hit, FUNimation thus modeled the remainder of the series BASED on their Saban enforced foul-ups rather than work to IMROVE the show up to its original standard quality. After all, why rock the boat if it’s already raking in the cash needed to build what was once a tiny little nobody studio into a full fledged professional corporation? Thus in an effort to remain “in continuity” with what their newly acquired fanbase was familiar with, the DBZ dub as we know it today was born.

And here’s my own take on the whole thing; all the FUNimation dub of Dragon Ball amounts to is a sloppily stitched together Frankenstein patchwork built from questionable decision after questionable decision, but most of them based out of desperation and necessity on their part to stay alive and grow into a real company. Their solo handling of the dub started out as a poor shadow of what was already a poor shadow of DBZ. A bad copy of a bad copy. With that horrendous foundation in place the only place left for the show to go quality-wise was down. All of their “fixes” since then have been shallow attempts to appease the outspoken fans of the original Japanese version while simultaneously playing to their base audience, the ones who faithfully gobbled up the shitty mangled aspects they had added to the series. No matter how much air freshener you spray on a turd, its still gonna remain just a turd.

Gen Fukanaga, from what little bits here and there I’ve seen and read of him seems like a genuine anime fan for the most part. No matter how Americanized his upbringing, anime is still a piece of the man’s cultural heritage. Chris Sabat even strikes me as a great admirer of the art form in his own way. As I heard it, he himself was the one who lobbied so hard for Yu Yu Hakusho to be handled with the kind of love and respect it had been, because he was already a big fan of the series in its original form.

But DBZ is different. FUNimation’s DBZ, I’m convinced is meant for a COMPLETELY different audience than just about all the other anime they now handle as a professional studio. Shows like Full Metal Alchemist and Gunslinger Girl… those are intended for the “real” anime crowd. The admirer’s and aficionados of the medium as a genuine art form. The one’s who will shell out insane prices at specialty stores for an overpriced DVD boxset out of sheer love and devotion.

FUNimation’s DBZ dub isn’t primarily targeted at this demographic. It’s not intended for the “anime community” at all. It’s meant for a whole different, and much less discriminating audience. A far more “mainstream, Joe Six-pack” crowd. Guys who for the most part don’t give a damn one way or the other about artistic merit and are just in it to see some shit go boom all pretty. This is DBZ’s North American bread and butter. This is why the original music until the recent season sets, was constantly left out and replaced with generic, droning garbage. This is why there is that incessant “ridiculously over the top macho” tone that defines the dub but otherwise simply did not exist in the original version. This is why it’s marketed in a far different style than you’re average 26 some-odd episode anime series that will be sought after by the hardcore collectors.

This is also why I feel that there is such a divide among anime fans with regards to DBZ. This is why the current day “mainstream anime community” generally thumb their noses at the series and looks down upon it with distain, while a whole other audience divorced from that crowd continues to embrace it. Daizex IMO represents “the crossover fans”. Some of you guys (like me) are just straight up fans of the original Japanese version, nothing more. Most others though are fans of the dub, but are also the kinds of people whom I would classify as belonging to the “anime community”. People who appreciate it as an art form and watch other stuff like Death Note, FMA, Lupin, or whatever, while simultaneously liking DBZ in it’s…. decidedly un-Japanese form.

But you guys, we, all of us insofar as DBZ’s major North American audience is concerned, are the minority. Again the large majority of the series’ North American fanbase and the audience FUNimation caters the dub towards are totally divorced from the anime scene overall, and appreciate the series as a decidedly American, brain-in-neutral action bonanza. And on the flip side, most people who consider themselves “serious anime fans” hold a considerably low opinion of DBZ, and from my experience, this attitude is based largely on the North American dub, because the dub is so highly visible here and sells the series as something far more “Western”, far more on the order of something like He-Man or G.I. Joe; something which the average diehard anime fan is not gonna go for. And in a way it’s a hypocritical stance to take on their part, as these kinds of people should know better overall than to judge an anime based solely on its dub.

But I also think that there is a generation gap at play here; again I come from a much older generation of U.S. anime fans. Unlike most of today’s major anime buffs, I remember DBZ from well before its dub hit U.S. television with a vengeance. And within the (far more underground than it is today) U.S. anime scene of those days, Dragon Ball was overall very well respected as a Shonen classic, with none of the “snobbery” that you see today. None at all. And apart from that, anime fans from my generation (and even more so from earlier) were much more wary of dubs than todays anime fans need to be.

This was before DVD, and before Cartoon Netowrk, and before changing attitudes towards animation and comic books. Before a lot of things.

In todays world, apart from 4Kids, dubs overall have gotten much, much better, and even in the rare instance that you have a sub-par one, you have duel language DVDs to fall back on. And FUNimation themselves have (post-Dragon Ball) earned a well deserved rep as a reliable and quality dubbing studio. I think that many of todays anime fans, many of whom are without that knowledge of history from before their time, just don’t see a reason to be mistrustful towards the DBZ dub, and are thus willing to trust it and take it at face value for representing what the show is all about.

Which brings me full circle back to my original point; FUNimation’s (or rather Gen Fukanaga’s at least, based on his love for the art form in general) overarching goal from the getgo I think was to import and promote anime over here on Western shores in a respectable format. But at the time of their beginnings they didn’t have the money nor the clout to promote and help fill what was considered at the time to be a non-existent market. Dragon Ball Z was made the Westernized product it is not due to incompetence, but out of necessity to survive and grow.

It was made for a pre-existing mainstream market in order to line FUNimation’s pockets so that they could go on to help bolster a fledging underground market. Looked at from this perspective, FUNimation’s company history eerily mirrors the story of Eastman and Laird and their Mirage comics label during their early days, and how they commercialized their original creation (TMNT) to shit in order to fund and build up their little underground comics’ label where they now have all the artistic freedom they want.

The catch is that rather than doubling back and redoing their first series over in a more legitimate and proper manner, FUNimation continues to treat DBZ as a separate entity and continues to market and cater it towards their original mainstream audience, which for the most part remains outside the anime community which they ironically played a significant role in bolstering.

Again there have been crossovers; for many younger people who never even heard of anime, DBZ was a “gateway drug”. And once they went on to discover other anime, some (like many on the Daizex boards) remained DBZ fans and continue to appreciate it for introducing them to their current beloved hobby. Most others though tend to “outgrow” the series. This is why you often hear so many anime fans say something along the lines of “I started out with just DBZ, but as I got into other shows, I realized how stupid it was and left it behind”. Most of those “other shows” were tellingly dubbed in a far more respectful fashion than DBZ ever was.

In my opinion, DBZ in its original, unblemished form, stands perfectly fine next to any number of classic and highly regarded anime from it’s era; it remains in the long and storied history of Toei (one of the most significant anime studios in the history of the art form) as one of their most signature, beloved, and enduring programs, and this is proved time and again, generation after generation, especially by the fact that we’re all here yapping about it to this very day. The manga all the more so (a little less so it seems in the U.S. though, sadly enough).

But in the form it’s peddled in within this particular neck of the world, it remains divisive in a way that it’s not in almost any other corner of the globe. Which is a great shame really, all the more so because it seems that the sacrifice was necessary for the birth of one of the best U.S. anime studios to come around in a very long time.

And I don’t want to give the impression that I just blame ignorant U.S. attitudes or Haim Saban. No in the end the original responsibility all goes back to Toei themselves for whoring out one of their most important and beloved licenses to whatever random shitkicker asked for it (as evidenced by the fact that their first choice before Saban and FUNi was Harmony fucking Gold), rather than maintaining some standards and integrity and holding it off for a real production company who would agree to handle it properly. For all their virtues and for all their historical importance to the history of anime, they remain very much isolationist in their creative standards by putting a great deal of love and care into what circulates within their homeland of Japan, while caring little for what becomes of it everywhere else. This is proven all the more so by the “Toei curse” (nearly every major Toei license has been horribly mangled and mistreated on most foreign shores at some point or another).

For DBZ, it all more or less works out in the end because FUNimation’s DVDs (for all their faults in the manner of release, and the whole “remastering” issue) are still duel language, and thus contain the show’s original version for the posterity of its fans (and to hopefully be discovered by new fans). So in the end, the shitty dub remains merely long spilled milk. Unfortunate, but again the original’s there as well, so everyone’s happy in that regard. This is a great deal more than can be said for a shit-ton of other Toei programs.

The only thing that really continues to bother me is FUNimation’s attitude towards the whole thing. Most of us here are speaking of the dub largely in terms of a major missed opportunity, a sad waste, or just overall a major blemish on an otherwise excellent record. But FUNimation continues to arrogantly maintain the attitude in their public statements that their version is inherently “definitive” and even “superior” to the original version. It is many things, but it is neither one of those lofty descriptions, as many long standing debates on the matter continue to prove. You don’t hear this many dissatisfied voices bitching about FMA or Yu Yu now, do you?

For awhile I was never really sure why this was the case; was it because they truly inherently believed that their creative decisions enhanced the show, or was this all merely the party line intended for their “mainstream DBZ” fanbase, divorced from the fans of their “hardcore” titles who either already know better or just don’t give a rat’s ass. More and more I get the feeling it’s the latter, especially as time goes on and they continue to do such excellent work with their other licenses time and again.

It all goes back toward the original question put forth by the original poster; if it was some other anime that served as the sacrificial lamb to the slaughter that FUNimation cannibalized to stay alive, would Dragon Ball have thus been treated as a normal anime dub without all the special mainstream exceptions made to it? More than likely yes. FUNimation has had such a consistently excellent track record to date, that it’s difficult to imagine otherwise. Again, considering their attitudes towards their other licenses, and their vast range of diverse titles and experience, it’s difficult to believe that they don’t realize exactly how artistically inferior their treatment of Dragon Ball is to it’s original version. It’d be one helluva glaring exception to make with regards to overall taste in aesthetics. Why else would Chris Sabat get all twisted out of shape making sure that Yu Yu was handled with perfection, whilst helping to ensure with happy abandon that DBZ's dialogue is more like a bad spoof of the series rather than something resembling an actual translation?

I thus have come to think personally that their “enthusiasm” for their garish and tacky creative decisions is just manufactured propaganda for their DBZ centric fanbase rather than genuine pride.

Surely Sean Schemmel can’t in good conscience listen to his own Kaio voice and not think to himself “Man do I sound like an idiot!”

Nor can anyone with standards and a working set of eardrums.

I didn't even bother reading half of that. :p I also think that it would be better in DBZ had just been brought over. But, then again, there wouldn't be near as many awesome fourms members, who first got introduced to the dub and moved on to the Japanese version. (Take me, as an example!!)

[Kunzait_83]

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[SaiyamanMS]

And then there's the fact that when Goku would first be cast, he would still be a 12 year old kid. Which means that he would probably be voiced by a woman first up until at least episode 133...

Heck, FUNi might've kept him voiced by a woman for Z, too.

Yeah, hence why I said "up until at least episode 133".

And DBZGirl, did you really have to quote Kunzait_83's WHOLE post again, just to say that you didn't bother reading half of it? >_>

[xzero]

Kunzait_83, I actually read the whole post, and I agree with everything you said. I'll be honest: I, like many others, was introduced to anime by DBZ (and RPGs to a lesser extent). I have seen a lot of excellent anime over the years, but I admit that I still enjoy popping in those old Freeza discs or (gasp!) those edited season 1&2 DVDs for the nostalgia factor.

When it comes to Funimation, I see them having three categories of shows. DBZ is pretty much an island unto itself, with a bastardized dub, and marketing specifically to a generally non-anime audience.

The second category is shows that are generally accurate, but with some changes; not necessarily bad changes, but changes all the same. Here, I place Yu Yu Hakusho, which received an excellent dub. The voices were pretty much perfect (Kuwabara was an acquired taste), and the only changes made were the English openings and endings and the inclusion of more swearing than the original version had. I've watched Yu Yu all the way through on DVD with both language tracks, and I honestly feel that the dub is in fact superior. Other examples in this category are the DB and DBGT dubs. DB was reasonably accurate, compared to its cousin, and it retained the original music, though the opening and ending were dubbed. GT was accurate script-wise (generally speaking), and I think it would have been perfect if the original music was left in place and a different narrator was used. A final example is Desert Punk. I felt it was an 'alright' type of show (not my favorite, but not bad either). They had to change quite a bit around because of the nature of the show, but I think it worked well enough for it. The dub did not detract from my enjoyment of the show.

Finally, what many anime fans would consider Funimation's perfect tier, the uber-accurate dubs. Fullmetal Alchemist, Samurai 7, Black Cat, Basilisk, Trinity Blood, etc. Pretty much anything they've touched recently falls into this category. Any show that can warrant a dub without alterations, meaning that most of the original didn't need explaning to an American audience, would be in this group. These are the titles that make Funimation a respectable anime dubbing company, and they deserve credit for that.

And by the way,

Sean Schemmel can't in good conscience listen to his own Kaio voice and not think to himself "Man do I sound like an idiot!"

I couldn't have said it better myself. His Goku may not sound like the original, but at least he does a respectable job of it in my opinion. His Kaio, on the other hand, is simply offensive to listen to, especially in the Freeza Arc. Yes, he improved as time went on -Kaio is at least tolerable in later arcs- but literally anything is an improvement over what he started with.

[SaiyamanMS]

And by the way,

Sean Schemmel can't in good conscience listen to his own Kaio voice and not think to himself "Man do I sound like an idiot!"

I couldn't have said it better myself. His Goku may not sound like the original, but at least he does a respectable job of it in my opinion. His Kaio, on the other hand, is simply offensive to listen to, especially in the Freeza Arc. Yes, he improved as time went on -Kaio is at least tolerable in later arcs- but literally anything is an improvement over what he started with.

Personally, I've never seen any problem with King Kai's voice.

Although it's probably because I actually knew a history teacher when I was in high school who was almost identical, right down to being short and telling bad jokes. The only real difference is that he wasn't the colour blue.

[Saiyan]

Well, about Schemmel's King Kai..it sort of just began as an imitation of whoever dubbed King Kai's voice when Funimation started out using the Ocean voices?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P6HlzwNflvY&watch_response

[Kunzait_83]

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[Hironobu Timex]

DUDE! Kunzait, your post like totally reaked of awesomeness, man. Right on all the way especially about Haim Saban. I followed a lot of his stuff back in the day and that's why I was so braindead as a kid.

King Kai's voice didn't bother me in the season 1 and 2 redub, but when the Ginyu episodes came back about... aw, man, that was hideous. Although, the voice doesn't bother me as much as the jokes did. Kaio-sama was much funnier in Japanese because he was laughing at puns and more intelligent grammar spins and such. This added character. In America, he just laughed at whatever retarded Kindergarten jokes thrown around. Pure Dragon Ball Z has a much higher IQ than its American adaptation.

[Lobster_Rage155]

Ahem. For those of you who aren't cantankerous old bastards like me, Manga UK was infamous for inserting a lot of added swearing into some of their anime. Kinda almost the dubbing equivalent to Anime Labs. Well maybe not THAT bad, but still.

Fixed for accuracy.

'Cause Streamline wasn't so much into throwing in swearing as they were pretty much throwing out the original Japanese script and working from scratch, basically(with a couple of very notable exceptions, namely the "Lupin III: Mystery of Mamo" dub which is fantastic).

[TheGreatness25]

If FUNimation didn't have DBZ, most people wouldn't know of DBZ's existence. 99% of the US fans found out about DBZ when FUNimation and Pioneer brought DBZ to the United States. There's a good chance neither of us would know about it. How many Animes are completely unknown?

[ssorcd]

Again there have been crossovers; for many younger people who never even heard of anime, DBZ was a “gateway drug”. And once they went on to discover other anime, some (like many on the Daizex boards) remained DBZ fans and continue to appreciate it for introducing them to their current beloved hobby. Most others though tend to “outgrow” the series. This is why you often hear so many anime fans say something along the lines of “I started out with just DBZ, but as I got into other shows, I realized how stupid it was and left it behind”. Most of those “other shows” were tellingly dubbed in a far more respectful fashion than DBZ ever was.

Thats what happened with me. I started off watching DBZ on Toonami but then discovered so many more Animes as a result of that. FUNI not only opened me up to DBZ but the entire genre as well.

[Rocketman]

Heck, FUNi might've kept him voiced by a woman for Z, too.

I'm not sure how to phrase "I hope not" to apply to an impossible hypothetical.

[Super Sonic]

Mmmmm... replace "acquired taste" with "sucks so bad it proves conclusively what a lousy actor Sabat is, and that the man needs to STOP voice acting and stop ego casting himself as all the fan favorite characters" and our opinions are basically the same.

Actually he didn't cast that series. Justin Cook was the Voice Director and responsible for casting. In fact he went on record and said it was hard to cast Yusuke before someone else (Not Sabat) suggested he audition.

Will say I liked how Mr. Sabat made the character his own though. That's always a plus.

let's not even get into Muten Roshi.

And I loved Mr. McFarland's Master Roshi. He sounds like a great dirty old coot. Or were you expecting him to channel English Happosai or something?

[Chuquita]

McFarland's Roshi is awesome. X3


Well, in Parallel-Funi-gets-DB-nowadays Land, I probably wouldn't even be here because even though it wasn't my "gateway" show (that'd go to pkmn or Sailor Moon; I forget which came first for me) at the time I was losing interest in the genre in general so Parallel-me wouldn't have batted an eye. Dbz is what got me back into anime/manga.


Also I never would've gotten into Vic Mignogna as Goku. Dub Goku is the character that really got me hooked as a newbie in the first place. (Though I do now recognize how inexperienced his VA sounded back then; and why I still wish he'd have just come back and redubbed his Season 3 lines on those boxes even though its never gonna happen cuz he's with 4Kids now even though I'm happy for him because I've heard he loves his current freelancing abilities and it's better to be in a job you like than one you dislike. >_< ) [/rant]


Mignogna's voice is too bishounen-esque for Goku I think.

Yeah he did Brolli but Brolli was mostly angry screaming. I associate Vic too much with his voices for Ed and Fai.

[SaiyamanMS]

Another vote on the awesomeness of McFarland's Roshi here.

(Though I do now recognize how inexperienced his VA sounded back then; and why I still wish he'd have just come back and redubbed his Season 3 lines on those boxes even though its never gonna happen cuz he's with 4Kids now even though I'm happy for him because I've heard he loves his current freelancing abilities and it's better to be in a job you like than one you dislike. >_< ) [/rant]

Totally agree, I love Schemmel's Goku and really would have liked to see him redo his older lines like Sabat and Strait did. Schemmel's Goku voice as the lead character in the dub of the Pocket Monsters Crystal special is really the ONLY redeeming feature of 4Kids treatment of that special (Well, other than several Pokemon keeping their Japanese voices). What were 4Kids thinking when they changed Junichi and Minaki's dub names to Vincent and Eugene? (They were previously called Jackson and Eusine in earlier appearances and the video games)
And changing Bashou into a woman was just terrible... And uh... I'm going off topic. XD;;

If he sounded anything at all like Schemmel's voice for the character, then you have my deepest sympathies. Go with God child.

Yep, he actually sounded like King Kai too. XD;;

And I also like Sabat's Kuwabara, although it is definately an acquired taste and I can clearly see why there are people who wouldn't like it.

[TripleRach]

I'm not sure how to phrase "I hope not" to apply to an impossible hypothetical.

Why? Is there absolutely no possible way you could ever accept a female playing an adult male, even if she had already done a decent and enjoyable job playing him all through his childhood?

[Kunzait_83]

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[SonEric84]

Well, about Schemmel's King Kai..it sort of just began as an imitation of whoever dubbed King Kai's voice when Funimation started out using the Ocean voices?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P6HlzwNflvY&watch_response

I actually really liked that King Kai voice (not to mention Goku's). Sean Schemmel's (King Kai) is an obnoxious imitation, if that.

[xzero]

Sabat makes every character "his own" because they all sound alike. They vary in pitch and so forth, but they all more or less amount to the same basic concept; a grunting doofus trying desperately to sound macho.

As an actor, he's a one trick pony and always has been. And he's the worst kind of one trick pony, where the one trick itself completely sucks to begin with.

Kunzait_83, I agree in a sense, but I think with certain characters it works. For any fans of Samurai 7, for instance, take Kikuchiyo, voiced by Sabat in the dub. The character was essentially a grunting doofus trying desperately to sound macho, and as such, his voice worked well for the character. Major Armstrong in Fullmetal Alchemist was another example of a similar nature. I do agree with you overall, though. Personally, I think he worked out alright for Vegeta (sorry, I know many will disagree) and Piccolo (from Cell onward). The rest of his characters in Z and GT should have been given to someone else. Since DBZ, when I watch a new Funimation anime, it's always fun to play "Spot the Sabat" and pick out which and how many characters he voices.

Now his acting skills aside, I do notice that as an anime fan, he does a good job on the production side of things. I think he is very talented at voice directing and ADR work, but he shouldn't do as many characters.

As an aside, for fans of Metroid Prime 3, did you know that the bounty hunter Rundas was voiced by Sabat?