If Funimation Started from Scratch

[Kunzait_83]

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[Rocketman]

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?

1. Yes, I might could accept it, in general. I just don't accept it for Goku.

2. What childhood? We meet Goku at age 13 (12?). The Black Suit of Puberty has already begun its work by that time.

[NeptuneKai]

Wow Kunzait even as a half dubbie I agree with everything you just typed. I kind of see it as a spin-off of the original. It has the same general point only the characters are dramatically different from there original counterparts. Should it be that way? Probably not but like the looser I am I love hearing things in my native language. I can tell who sounds like who, what their little speech quirks are so on and so fourth. I just couldn't do that with a Japanese cast due to me being completely ignorant of the Japanese language.
That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the sub though. But for things like the Sparking games the gameplay isn’t that great so I depend on the dialogue to keep me entertained and if I can’t understand any of the characters then the game looses a lot of its luster for me.

[TripleRach]

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

The first time I played through, I didn't notice. But when I finished and got to the credits, and noticed "Christopher Sabat" in there, I did a big "WTF?" And then I noticed him on the second playthrough, as both Rundas and a couple of random soldier guys.

I've already forgotten how Rundas sounded, but he was alright doing the other one-liners in his natural speaking voice, I guess.

1. Yes, I might could accept it, in general. I just don't accept it for Goku.

Why? Is he such a pinnacle of masculinity that no English speaking woman in the universe is good enough to portray him?

2. What childhood? We meet Goku at age 13 (12?). The Black Suit of Puberty has already begun its work by that time.

...Have you seen him naked? I don't claim to know much about prepubescent boys, but that looks like baby penis to me.

[Mayuri Furiza Kurotsuchi]

2. What childhood? We meet Goku at age 13 (12?). The Black Suit of Puberty has already begun its work by that time.

...Have you seen him naked? I don't claim to know much about prepubescent boys, but that looks like baby penis to me.

He's asian.

[Rocketman]

Why? Is he such a pinnacle of masculinity that no English speaking woman in the universe is good enough to portray him?

Er, yeah? I don't know how you think puberty works, but as a rule, the same thing that makes boys grow tall and get muscular also reshapes our voiceboxes to drop us down to baritone (bass in some lucky cases).

Also, the average 12-year-old boy has a larger voicebox than an adult woman even before his voice begins to change.

...Have you seen him naked? I don't claim to know much about prepubescent boys, but that looks like baby penis to me.

Well, yeah, he's 12. Penile growth occurs slowly from the onset of puberty to about age 19.

[Vekurotto]

Yeah Kunzait I read the entire post and I mostly agree. I would classify myself as one of those cross-over fans too.

I think that the analogy you used of a sacrificial Lamb is correct too. I'm going to use Sailor Moon as an example. It was done very much the same way as DBZ was, as most people know. DiC took the original, and brought it stateside, and nearly destroyed and turned basically into a shitty girls' show. However the difference here was that after DiC lost the license to dub Sailor Moon the next company, Cloverway, did try to make strides with the next two seasons by, leaving in the original BGM and generally trying to make the script accurate. But Cloverway fell in the same trap where they thought that if they changed too much, the dub fanbase would become disinterested in the series. Dubbing aside, these seasons were better dubbed than the DiC seasons because of strides taken.

Now how that relates to Dragonball is simple. I feel that if Funimation, when they started doing the in-house dubbing, would have done the same thing that Cloverway did to Sailor Moon there would not be as many, "Japanese is better"/"English is better" debates that have plagued the English speaking Dragonball franchise for nearly 8 or so years now.

Honestly though, with Sailor Moon, during the time when it was airing and popular people perferred the dub in America and English speaking nations. Now today the balance is entirely different. The English versions of all Sailor Moon incarnates are only liked by a small minority of people, and the original SM is what people base their opinions from. In my view, that will most likely happen with Dragonball's dubs as well. Once it gets out of this "mainstream high" that it on and the dub is seen as a bastard stepchild, like SM, people will move to the original. Honestly, the DB English dubs were also made with the "now" in mind rather than the "forever" like the Japanese DB.

I feel also that the Funimation dub is the least liked dub around the world, not just English speaking nations because of the stupidity that happens in it. Sooner or later, that will become more apparent.

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.

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.

These two paragraphs stuck out to me and they pretty much answered my questions on why the dub just isn't as good as it should be. The "mainstream audience" that you're referring to does NOT care about the artistic integrity, the story, or the mythology and the pathos involved in this anime. They just want to hear some funny jokes, and see people beat each other up without a point to it. This is exactly why the season sets are selling so well even though they're absolute shit and a slap in the face to everybody who worked on the TV series in Japan and long time fans of this anime. Those people simply do not care. It's cheap, it's dragonball, it has glaring flaws, it could be way better, but it still sells.

If anybody remembered the Korean movie, Volcano High. It was a live-action movie that was very anime/eastern mythology inspired. Now when the movie was brought Stateside, MTV of all people got the rights. Instead of trying to dub the movie and getting good actors to play people they decided to get Rappers, Hip Hop artists, and Comedians to play all the roles and did the DBZ approach to this movie. Pretty much a bastardization of its original form. Entire segments were cut, the story was changed, characters were altered. MTV later released the Korean version and most people did not care. All they cared about was the fact that their favorite rap/hip-hop artist was voicing a character, not the story.

Now I like to go back to when you were talking about Yu Yu Hakusho. Personally I love that dub. I like almost everything about it even Sabat as Kuwabara. Where the opposite is true for DB where I mostly have a dislike for most of the Characters he voices. Now I can see were you're coming from here too. YYH's dub was made for the anime market. Think about this if YYH or FMA or any Funimation dub specifically made for the anime market and was dubbed similar to how DBZ was dubbed and if any of their DVD releases outside of Dragonball were in the quality of the Season Sets then there would be an uproar of people wanting to hang every member at Funimation's head office. The Slayers re-release is something that many Slayers fans are a bit upset about. They promised a wonderful thing then they got an alright product. But the thing here is that the Slayers release is 4:3 and is actually remastered rather than shittyfied and cropped. And the YYH 2-Disc Releases are in amazing quality. Why? "Because anime fans want quality", seemingly says Funimation. "And Dragonball fans will buy whatever so do whatever you want with it." Personally I don't like this attitude that Funimation is taking with Dragonball and decided to only buy the DB/Z movies since they are probably the best quality product out of Funimation's Dragonball DVD library next to DBGT's releases and I don't like GT. However I do not support shit releases and the DBZ DVD releases are shitty releases compared to everything in Funimation's DVD library.

About the voices too. I bet anybody that Goku's character would have been voiced by a woman or somebody else other than Schemmel if the anime was dubbed more recently. And the entire Son family would probably sound the same like the original. Schemmel is a love/hate character for me. I liked his Goku better in DB than DBZ. He captured Goku there much better than he has ever captured Goku in his entire life. I consider this version of Schemmel's Goku what could have been for DBZ. However the DBZ version of Scehemmel's Goku is a complete yang of anything he tried. When the UUE editions came out he takes many steps back with Goku's character to the point where his voice does not fit him at all unlike in DB where it sorta-fit. So personally for DBZ if he voiced Goku the way he did in DB then I would have been somewhat fine with that.

Honestly in the end, if things didn't work out the way they did then Funimation would not be good in the areas that they are now. However, Dragonball in English speaking nations and for anime fans is throughly fucked for generations if not more because of simple mistakes that should by now have been corrected.

[Kunzait_83]

b

[caejones]

Being physically incapable of reading subtitles and having enough japanese to only understand a tiny portion of what's being said without going over every single line makes it kinda challenging to watch the japanese versions of stuff without already knowing what's going on. That said... *gets out DBGT TV special and watches with Japanese audio*

(Bleh, the mega long Kunzait post of awesomeness was glaxies better in terms of organization than any massive blocks of text I could ever put on the internet... and was pretty much dead-on for all topics. Exultation to thee!)

Re: Goku's voice... he's saiyan, too. The way he doesn't show signs of puberty at all until the 23rd tournament leads me to believe that Saiyan puberty is a lot more sudden than for humans. Whether or not thisholds for half-breeds ... Meh (Gohan seemed to do much more changing even before that point...).
I'd be interested in someone trying a more faithful dub, for sure... though somehow I don't think enough people are for it to be economically viable. Not in Funi's territory, anyway.
(I thought Stephanie Nadolney (SP?) was a fairly awesome 12-15 Goku... )

[Super Sonic]

(I thought Stephanie Nadolney (SP?) was a fairly awesome 12-15 Goku... )

I did too. I just can't picture her as grown-up Goku. Same for Laurie Steele and Krillin.

Interestingly enough, with the Sailor Moon mention, most people I know refer Season 1 and R's dubs to that of S.

[Vekurotto]

Interestingly enough, with the Sailor Moon mention, most people I know refer Season 1 and R's dubs to that of S.

Voices and acting aside, the S and SuperS dubs are better than DiC's dubs. I'm mentioning the fact that they somewhat tried by leaving in Cultural references, the all of original BGM(minus the OP song), and they got the story mostly right without too much confusion. There are things I'm not going to get into right now, but I do stand by the fact that the S and SuperS dubs are the superior dubs. The thing is I don't care for either of them so it's not my problem but if I could have DiC's dub or Cloverway's dub, I'd rather have Cloverway's dub.

[Dark Vegeta-Sama]

McFarland's Roshi is awesome. X3

No, it isn't. It sounds like a 25-30 year old trying to imitate an old man, which, well, it is. The voice itself is just ridiculous. He just comes across as sounding like an idiot.

Then again, no english Roshi has ever gotten it right, the best effort having been Ian Corlett who at least got the humour part down.

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?

I wouldn't want Nadolny portraying an adult Goku for the same reason why I dislike her portrayal of young Goku and Gohan; her voice is irritating as fuck. It's actually one of the few FUNi voices that started out decently back in season 3, only to get progressively worse as time went on. At some point in season 4, she took the raspiness into overdrive, to the point where I just can't listen to her speak anymore without wanting to mute the television.

[Vekurotto]

Since I guess the dub voice of Chibi Goku and Chibi Gohan are done by Stephanie Nadolny, I'm fine with her voice of those two characters. The voice could have been better and they aren't portrayed as well as Masako Nozawa did for the Son family's voices, but for me her voice was fine, at least for me. I feel that, since we're throwing around names, Sonny Strait's and Laurie Steele's portrayal of Kuririn is ugly. Even before I knew what he sounded like in the original it was just murderous on my ears almost as bad as Kaio-sama's dub voice.

[Dark Vegeta-Sama]

I feel that, since we're throwing around names, Sonny Strait's and Laurie Steele's portrayal of Kuririn is ugly. Even before I knew what he sounded like in the original it was just murderous on my ears almost as bad as Kaio-sama's dub voice.

Sonny Strait's Krillin isn't that great, but I'll take that voice over Nadolny's Gohan any day.

I do recall, however, that when season 3 premiered, Sonny Strait's Krillin was almost universally despised as being the worst of the new voices in terms of the main set of characters.

Nowadays that almost seems like a ridiculous notion compared to several of FUNi's other casting choices.

[VegettoEX]

Voices and acting aside, the S and SuperS dubs are better than DiC's dubs. I'm mentioning the fact that they somewhat tried by leaving in Cultural references, the all of original BGM(minus the OP song), and they got the story mostly right without too much confusion. There are things I'm not going to get into right now, but I do stand by the fact that the S and SuperS dubs are the superior dubs. The thing is I don't care for either of them so it's not my problem but if I could have DiC's dub or Cloverway's dub, I'd rather have Cloverway's dub.

I'm going to phrase it somewhat differently... maybe you'll agree, maybe you won't...

But the way *I* see it, the original DiC episodes are better dubs, where-as the later Cloverway episodes are better translations. When I hear the word "dub", the first thing that comes to mind is simply the voices and the acting... and quite frankly, the Cloverway stuff is almost as much of a joke as DBZ season three.

Are the later episodes handled "better" in terms of translations, music, etc.? Absolutely. Is there any charm what-so-ever leftover from either the original Japanese version or the original DiC dub? I'd say definitely not.

No, it isn't. It sounds like a 25-30 year old trying to imitate an old man, which, well, it is. The voice itself is just ridiculous. He just comes across as sounding like an idiot.

Then again, no english Roshi has ever gotten it right, the best effort having been Ian Corlett who at least got the humour part down.

I have only a familiarity with McFarland's Roshi from season three, however little he talks in season four, and that's about it... but I mostly agree. I think he may have a little more to him than you give him credit for, but that may be because I only know him from DBZ where any serious and noble side of the character has already been pretty much thrown away by the author. I have no idea how he handled stuff, for example, in the 22nd Tenka-ichi Budokai or Piccolo-Daimao arcs, which is really where that character gets a chance to shine with all sorts of different dynamics... but I tend to think it wasn't pulled off all that well. I have absolutely zero interest in checking it out to find out, though.

I feel that, since we're throwing around names, Sonny Strait's and Laurie Steele's portrayal of Kuririn is ugly. Even before I knew what he sounded like in the original it was just murderous on my ears almost as bad as Kaio-sama's dub voice.

I think Kuririn's the kind of character that's just extremely difficult to pull off coming from Japanese to English. I don't have a whole lot of knowledge of other "American" shows that might have a character with a similar background to him, so even I don't quite know how I would equate his voice to some other, pre-existing character with a native English voice. I think it's a combination of the height, general character design, attitude (and change of attitude over the course of the series), etc. Quite honestly, I think Sonny Strait's eventual portrayal of the character may be the best type of English voice for the character. Maybe I just don't have the right imagination, but I don't know how else you'd play him. Anyone else have any other thoughts?

I do recall, however, that when season 3 premiered, Sonny Strait's Krillin was almost universally despised as being the worst of the new voices in terms of the main set of characters.

Such was true. Sonny's voice in those first two "Ginyu" tapes was certainly a major factor in creating an ape-shit VegettoEX in 1999.

Nowadays that almost seems like a ridiculous notion compared to several of FUNi's other casting choices.

Couldn't agree more.

Note how I'm staying out of the Goku discussion . I've said it time and time again, but even after hearing Goku speak English in some capacity before hearing him speak Japanese in some capacity, I don't know how to explain it other than that it simply never occurred to me that the voice coming out of his mouth as Masako Nozawa "shouldn't" be the voice, that it was in any way "weird", was simply "wrong", etc.

[Vekurotto]

But the way *I* see it, the original DiC episodes are better dubs, where-as the later Cloverway episodes are better translations. When I hear the word "dub", the first thing that comes to mind is simply the voices and the acting... and quite frankly, the Cloverway stuff is almost as much of a joke as DBZ season three.

Okay I see where you're coming from. The using the word, "dub" can be a bit confusing. The entire season was as much of a joke as DiC's episodes dubbed but I still felt like, how I originally said, Cloverway tried to make the episodes better than they were before. Did it work? I don't know. But even with the glaringly bad voices and some of the questionable changes that were made, that dub I still think they tried to be more like the original than DiC's seasons.

About Kuririn. I just don't know who could voice him in English. His character IMO, is one of the hardest to get a voice that would fit him just right. I couldn't imagine anybody who could pull it off and do a good job of it. Yeah, I know that there are worse character voices and miscasts in Funimation's dub too, but I felt both in Dragonball and DBZ that Kuririn's dub voices were just in this limbo of weird. He's dub voices always stuck out as odd and strange to me and almost never fitting for the guy. They weren't horrible, horrible voices, but they were just so...wrong in a word.

[Super Sonic]

Will also say that in my opinion, the Dic eps were done in a way of "If you hadn't seen it in Japanese, you couldn't tell what was taken out". That and the alternative lifestyle coupe was covered up better than Cloverway did. Know a lot of guys like the original songs Sailor Moon had as well. Also Terri Hawkes made the character of Serena Tsukino her own, and has said if Sailor Stars was ever done, (not likely) she'd return to the role.