Gekiretsukodan

[TripleRach]

I clearly said there that I recall it being called "Tri-Beam" in DBZ.

Wow, I totally missed that Z, and thought you said "DB." Whoops.

I guess that means I'm not the only person in the world that remembers it, then!

[Herms]

Nowhere. Just pointing it all out .

Oh, alright then.

Now that you’ve mentioned them, I should say that I think Viz did an exceptional job with how they handled the introduction of Kami in their translation. They made it perfectly clear throughout that he was a deity, but not necessarily the kind of deity the audience might be used to. A good way to handle one of the more awkward culture differences in DragonBall.

[sailorspazz]

Just putting it out there, but "Kamayamaya" is an incorrect pronunciation of both the attack name and the Hawaiian king. Like Japanese, Hawaiian words are actually *gasp* consistent with how the sounds are pronounced, so the 'h' sound changing to a 'y' is all lazy English speaking conventions.

[Onikage725]

I totally agree with what Kunzait said on attack names. I'm sorry, but I grew up on Street Fighter and the like. As a fighting game fan, you'd notice many of them tend to keep Japanese attack names. And the games sound pretty cool. And for some reason, the Japanese manage to keep things in perspective with this sort of deal. Street Fighter as the hardcore martial artist lead character yelling "Hadoken" and "Shoryuken," whereas the US soldier guy is yelling things like "Sonic Boom." In DB/Z the guy who was trained in very eastern philosophies on combat has his "Kamehameha" and "kaioken" and such, whereas the guy who lived a more soldier-ish life and has more direct approaches to combat has moves like "Final Flash" and "Big Bang Attack." It worked pretty well there. The dub started off trying to rename or ignore names entirely, and when they tried to fix it they still fucked most of them up.

Kamehameha is named after the guy who created it, the Kame Sennin (i.e. Turtle Hermit or Turtle Immortal). The initial dub pronunciation of "Kameyameya" isn't even how the word would sound if said with an american accent. The current out-of-battle pronunciation is, since they pronounce the H's as such and not as y's.

Kaioken is wrong because it again is named after its maker. And the dub pronounces Kai with a long I sound, not like "Kay." The closest english Dragon Ball has gotten to this is in Pioneer's dub of the 2nd movie, where they said it right, and in Budokai 1 where they call it "King Kai's Fist."