Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" Dub Turns 15; Still Unreleased

[SX10]

True enough. Well I guess we gotta wait for it to actual get here first, I'm just so excited at all the possibilities

[8000 Saiyan]

A good example of this is "Hey, let's change Urameshi to Yurameshi in the dub so his name's "YuYu" so people know he's the main character!".

Actually, that's just becuz they didn't know how Japanese works. Just like how people pronounce 'Uranus' as "Yuranus" becuz they don't know how Greek works. It's cuz in English we call the letter U the "Yu" unlike the rest of the world which use the original Latin names. In any case, the dub of YuYu Hakusho is terrible. Might be worse than their dub of DB, might be the same. I haven't seen much. I just know the acting is kinda...C-Rank since the non-actors that were hired for DBZ only had been acting for two years at this point. And they mispronounced basically every name.

Sabat's Kuwabara drags everything down for me.

Oh, and Robo, if you're curious to how the dub sounds, here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4ZTZDDFtYY

[MistaL]

A good example of this is "Hey, let's change Urameshi to Yurameshi in the dub so his name's "YuYu" so people know he's the main character!".

Actually, that's just becuz they didn't know how Japanese works. Just like how people pronounce 'Uranus' as "Yuranus" becuz they don't know how Greek works. It's cuz in English we call the letter U the "Yu" unlike the rest of the world which use the original Latin names. In any case, the dub of YuYu Hakusho is terrible. Might be worse than their dub of DB, might be the same. I haven't seen much. I just know the acting is kinda...C-Rank since the non-actors that were hired for DBZ only had been acting for two years at this point. And they mispronounced basically every name.

Sabat's Kuwabara drags everything down for me.

Oh, and Robo, if you're curious to how the dub sounds, here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4ZTZDDFtYY

Fuck, that's awful.

[8000 Saiyan]

Although Sabat's Kuwabara is awful, I think Huber's Hiei and Burgmeier's Kurama are decent there, although they're certainly no Nobuyuki Hiyama or Megumi Ogata.

It baffles me that people criticize Funimation's DBZ dub, but they don't do that to Yu Yu Hakusho's dub.

[linkdude20002001]

No, I'm sure it was a conscious change. You don't figure out how to say Yusuke and somehow not know how to say Urameshi.

You're saying that about the people who know how to pronounce 'Kai' correctly, but not his signature attack, the 'Kaio-ken'...

Exactly. If FUNimation was that dim then they would be pronouncing Freeza as they spell it Frieza to be "Fry-za" (even the guys at DBZ Abridged pointed it out) but they don't really do that, though.

I'm glad that FUNimation eventually (took them a good bunch of years to get it right) to pronounce Kaio-ken correctly, know the proper amount of power that Son had (Over 8000), Mankankosappo, Taiyo-ken (do recall hearing it on the FUNi Kai dub), Goku actually says Son Goku for once but something that never changed... How they say Saiyan (Say-un).

The narrator of Dragon Ball Z For Kinect got shit for saying it "wrong" and so did IGN's Daemon Hatfield for it.

Putting that aside, we then have the discussion of how to pronounce correctly NES and SNES which turns out it's how most around the world have always done it — That being, Ness and Sness than saying it out as if it were an acronym (there are certain exceptions depending on the word itself). Nintendo even confirmed it themselves.

Funimation does pronounce it as they spell it. IE is pronounced German-style in English. Look at words like 'believe'. And we didn't have the IE digraph (a pair of letters used to make a singel sound) before German introduced it, as far as I'm aware, so that's why IE is only known in English to make an [ee] sound. If you're thinking about the word 'fries', well, then you're not remembering a very import rule: the letter I (and the letters O and V, and the SH and ZH sounds) all get an ES when pluralized instead of the usual S. Also, another rule: Y becomes I when the word is extended and Y becomes no longer at the end. That said, in the case of a word like 'fries', IE is not a digraph.

Nintendo of America, the company that named the Nintendo Entertainment System, and came up with the acronym NES, have always pronounced it N.E.S.. Nintendo (in Japan) either have always misunderstood it to be pronounced as a word (like how the Japanese pronounce 'UFO' as [yoo-fo]...tho, they're technically saying it right according to the man who made the word...but that's beside the point], or the alternate possibility is that Shigesato Itoi (the creator of the Mother/EarthBound series) is the one who misinterpreted 'NES' when he named his character that (who is just 'Nes' in Japan, not 'Ness'), after which, that could have influenced Nintendo (in Japan) to think of 'NES' as being pronounced 'Nes'.

[JohnnyCashKami]

Well, Sega is stylized as SEGA yet people don't go out of their way to say S-E-G-A, or UEFA as U-E-F-A, NATO as N-A-T-O, or NASA as N-A-S-A, and so on. It varies between countries and continents how words are said. In Spanish and Portuguese-spoken countries D.E.A. is said as 'Dea', for example.

Speaking of UEFA, a YouTuber (Top Trending) did say on a top 10 video "U-E-F-A" and he got called out for that.

[linkdude20002001]

It had nothing to do with how countries read acronyms...but if it did, perhaps you’d be proving my point by saying “in Japan they read it out like a word, but in the U.S., they pronounce it letter by letter”. However as you also pointed out, it varies by word, which is the better point to make. In addition to this, it varies from person to person. But of course, if it’s a company name or product, then there’s a set correct way to say it, which has always been officially [en ee es]. Of course, I’m sure some NoA employees pronounced it however they preferred despite the company’s official pronunciation.

[Fionordequester]

Although Sabat's Kuwabara is awful, I think Huber's Hiei and Burgmeier's Kurama are decent there, although they're certainly no Nobuyuki Hiyama or Megumi Ogata.

It baffles me that people criticize Funimation's DBZ dub, but they don't do that to Yu Yu Hakusho's dub.

Eh, the "flaws" of the Yu Yu Hakusho dub, as I understand them, are...

-----------------------------------------------------
1) A lot of the actors were still fairly green

2) FUNi's acting pool was still pretty small; meaning a lot of voices were reused for multiple characters, and/or lifted from the DBZ dub.

3) Kuwabara's voice was terrible (which I disagree with; I thought he was great)

4) The script was, arguably, a little liberal in places (which I didn't think was a bad thing; but others clearly did)
-----------------------------------------------------

That's not NEARLY as bad as the Dragon Ball Z dub was at the time; and a lot of these are pretty subjective anyway. I don't think script changes are a bad thing when they improve the story; and comparing the English dub script to the subs I found, I found the English dub to be far more colorful and punchy. I liked how it was written.

As for Kuwabara, I loved his voice. Perhaps it could get a little annoying on it's own, but it totally fit his character; and it set him apart in a good way. So really, the only unquestionably "bad" thing, in my mind, was No. 1 & 2...but it wasn't bad enough to actually hurt the show that much.

And then of course, there are the standout performances! For example, Dameon Clarke as Younger Toguro !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CTqkjAUJJc

[MistaL]

so that's why IE is only known in English to make an [ee] sound.

You're wrong there. English is known to be incredibly inconsistent with it comes to that. "Die", "lie", "tie", "pie"... the list goes on. Same with "ei", which in German is said like the English word/letter "I". In English it uses two different pronunciations — "ay" and "ee". "Vein", "rein", "beige"; "caffeine", "conceive", "conceit". So comparing English pronunciations of letter combinations to that of German is silly considering German is actually a consistent language in terms of pronunciation while English is notoriously not. And either way that doesn't change the fact that Funimation and Ocean have pronounced Saiyan incorrectly considering its root word "saiya" is not English or German, but originates from the Japanese word "yasai" and thus should be pronounced like "Sigh-yan".

[linkdude20002001]

You're wrong there. English is known to be incredibly inconsistent with it comes to that. "Die", "lie", "tie", "pie"... the list goes on. Same with "ei", which in German is said like the English word/letter "I". In English it uses two different pronunciations — "ay" and "ee". "Vein", "rein", "beige"; "caffeine", "conceive", "conceit". So comparing English pronunciations of letter combinations to that of German is silly considering German is actually a consistent language in terms of pronunciation while English is notoriously not. And either way that doesn't change the fact that Funimation and Ocean have pronounced Saiyan incorrectly considering its root word "saiya" is not English or German, but originates from the Japanese word "yasai" and thus should be pronounced like "Sigh-yan".

Oh! Right! I forgot about those IE words. However, the EI/EY words that are not pronounced in the German fashion are not (or not from) German words; they’re English words which are meant to be pronounced [ehy] like ‘eight’ or ‘grey’, but most became shortend to just [ee].

And from what I’ve seen, German isn’t completely consistent. It’s probably too close to France for that.

As for ‘Saiyan’, most English words now use French rules for AI/AY, but not all... I can think of two words that stick to their original(?) pronunciation: aisle and ay/aye. But we also have more recently borrowd words with AI in them that are likely what caused people to pronounce ‘Saiyan’ correctly in ads and in that Kinect game. And especially for a company that now seems to mostly understand how Japanese works, I’m thinking a correct pronunciation in this new dub is a possibility. Has no one askt an actor about this yet?

[Robo4900]

Not that I'm not enjoying the pronunciation and Yu Yu Hakusho talk, but perhaps it'd be best if you guys open up another thread for this...

[Arian]

Not that I'm not enjoying the pronunciation and Yu Yu Hakusho talk, but perhaps it'd be best if you guys open up another thread for this...

Where is it gonna go? Not like YYH talk is gonna really fit anywhere on this site.

[Scsigs]

so that's why IE is only known in English to make an [ee] sound.

You're wrong there. English is known to be incredibly inconsistent with it comes to that. "Die", "lie", "tie", "pie"... the list goes on. Same with "ei", which in German is said like the English word/letter "I". In English it uses two different pronunciations — "ay" and "ee". "Vein", "rein", "beige"; "caffeine", "conceive", "conceit". So comparing English pronunciations of letter combinations to that of German is silly considering German is actually a consistent language in terms of pronunciation while English is notoriously not. And either way that doesn't change the fact that Funimation and Ocean have pronounced Saiyan incorrectly considering its root word "saiya" is not English or German, but originates from the Japanese word "yasai" and thus should be pronounced like "Sigh-yan".

Well, there's a LOT more to it than that. English is a Germanic language, but HEAVILY influenced by French, 52-54%, to be precise, where over half our words come from, or are influenced by, French. Then there's a smaller percentage of words that are also either loanwords, or influenced many new words in English over the last 1000 years or so, since the earliest English speakers came into contact with French speakers a long time ago. Then you have all of the different regions & the different accents, mainly the rhotic & non-rhotic ones, that are in native English-speaking countries, so there are a LOT of inconsistent rules & examples in English on how to pronounce & spell words, plus grammar & slang can differ a LOT between regions.
When it comes to the "Frieza/Freeza" spelling, they, I think, based the spelling on a more Germanic kind of spelling. I could be wrong here, but then they had the Canadian actors say it as it is in the Japanese. I don't know why. Then we have "Vegetto" spelled as "Vegito," which makes some sense in English, but is inaccurate tot he official spellings elsewhere.
"Saiyan" makes some more sense, however, on a pronunciation level. Think of words like "traitor," "trail", & the like. It makes sense why they went with this pronunciation, just going with their scripts.

[SX10]

[Robo4900]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

...

Perhaps we should kill it with the dumb meme images, I feel like we're skating on thin ice already with how wildly rambly and incoherent this thread is...

Not that I'm not enjoying the pronunciation and Yu Yu Hakusho talk, but perhaps it'd be best if you guys open up another thread for this...

Where is it gonna go? Not like YYH talk is gonna really fit anywhere on this site.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A lot of this conversation is about how YYH compares to Funi's other earlier work(Particularly Dragon Ball), and how pronunciations worked in these early dubs, so you might just be able to move it all into a thread in Dragon Ball General as something like "How Funimation's Other Early Dubbing Work Compares To Dragon Ball"

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I agree, we should try stick to talking about Ocean Kai. I know it sucks waiting, but Michael Hirsh did say they would be announcing programming plans shortly so we may still hear news about the channel's launch and whether or not they will air this dub any day now.

[Ajay]

Yu Yu Hakusho dub sucks and is pedestalled more than Dragon Ball's somehow.

Yeah, best to stay on-topic! This is a Dragon Ball forum, after all. Thanks~

[SX10]

I agree, we should try stick to talking about Ocean Kai. I know it sucks waiting, but Michael Hirsh did say they would be announcing programming plans shortly so we may still hear news about the channel's launch and whether or not they will air this dub any day now.

I was looking (probably not very well) for previous examples of channel acquisitions approved by CRTC around this time of year. Mainly to get an idea of how long it takes for a channel to appear after being cleared. If didn't get much of a clear answer, I'm guessing more news will come this autumn.

[Scsigs]

You're welcome!

[jochs]

Assuming that there is no home release, does anyone think the dub will be presented in 5.1 surround sound? Don't get me wrong.. I'm excited for the new Ocean score, but I think it'd be neat to see people do their own soundtrack edits that we see with the uncut FUNi audio all the time.