Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" Dub Turns 14; Still Unreleased

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Kaboom » Sat Oct 20, 2018 2:50 pm

JohnnyCashKami wrote:
NitroEX wrote:I don't find that edit odd at all - toilet humour that explicit usually doesn't fly on kids TV, it's in poor taste.
Good to know you're in favor of dictatorship then.
This is an extremely exaggerated and completely bonkers thing to say...
MistaL wrote:Holy shit, you are actually mentally fucking insane.
...And THIS is completely inappropriate regardless. Take it down a notch.
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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Dark Vegeta-Sama » Sat Oct 20, 2018 7:45 pm

Robo4900 wrote:Any information you have on these dubs, any interviews you can link, any printouts or whatever you can pass along, I'd love to give a look. :)
I'm sure there will be more to come.
Robo4900 wrote:One thing I note from that interivew... Kelamis says he was directed by Karl Willems!!... Did Willems really direct the Westwood dub? I thought he only directed a few short spans of it, and the Pioneer movies!
As far as who was directing, that's not as certain as other details. Obviously, Karl had some involvement, but maybe he wasn't there the whole time. Perhaps Peter Kelamis was directed during those few short spans of Karl's involvement. Dale Wilson later said in an interview conducted in 2003 that there was a rotating roster of directors on the show, and that many were relatively inexperienced. This would explain some of the inconsistency in the overall quality of the dub, particularly during the Cell and early Buu arc. I'll see if I can dig up that interview.
Robo4900 wrote:Very interesting stuff. So it seems AB were just the European distributor... And Westwood Media actually did the production... This does bring to mind, for me, where the rights reside now. I would assume it reverted back to Toei... Which, I suppose, would be good news in terms of the likelihood of Funi doing a DVD release someday, since they'd only need to get it from Toei, not AB or Westwood or anyone...

Of course, Westwood is defunct, right? And AB were only ever a distributor... So I guess we can pretty definitively say the producers of Ocean Kai are not the same guys who did the Westwood/BW dubs.
Yes, which falls perfectly in line with Kirby Morrow saying that a new company was behind Kai back in 2010.

Additionally, if it had been the same company as before, it stands to reason that they wouldn't have gone through making previous actors re-audition for their roles or turn down Kirby Morrow for being "too cool" for the role of Goku.

The rights would've certainly reverted to Toei. It's unfortunate that Westwood is no longer around. However, given the use of their video track and scripts, I've always been of the opinion that FUNimation had more involvement (or at least consent in the situation) than they were ever willing to admit, and could probably do a home release of the Westwood dub if they really wanted to.

For obvious reasons, however, they don't want to.
Robo4900 wrote:If you're based in Canada, I have a friend who has a rather excellent VHS capturing setup that I'm sure he'd be willing to cap your tapes with sometime. I can direct you to him if you like. :)
We'll talk over PM.
Kakacarrottop wrote:
NitroEX wrote:
Robo4900 wrote:
Can you point me to some sources on this?
It's not strong evidence but last year I noticed a credit on Azur Vancouver's website that read:
DRAGON BALL Z (animation)
1999-2001: ADR Recordist

I did email Hendrik J. Britton at the time (who owns the studio) and he explained to me that he recorded the voices during that time on DragonBall Z, and that the studio he recorded it at (which was presumably Airwaves - as Azur's studio didn't exist at the time) was subcontracted. So basically Airwaves just hired him to record the voices.

Unfortunately, the DBZ credit has since been removed from the Azur site, although it is on Hendrik's IMDB, just with the wrong year (1996 instead of 1999) and on wayback machine.

Interestingly enough, Hendrik added in the email that he couldn't talk about voice directors or cast members on that dub due to signing an NDA.
The Westwood dub started airing in January 2001 and the earliest reference I can find of it is a Brian Drummond interview from late 2000. It's pretty much a certainty that an unknown number of episodes were recorded during 2000, although It seems strange the Westwood dub would have stretched as far back as 1999, with that perhaps just being him getting dates messed up. I always just assumed 99 was the one year Ocean were inactive during that whole 1995-2002 DB dubbing stretch.
Yeah, 1999 is too early. Although news of an impending return of the original cast first appeared in the summer of 2000, they only resumed recording in the fall of 2000. The first airing of their new dub, as you mention, was in the Netherlands in January 2001 (followed shortly thereafter in the UK). Needless to say, it caught people by surprise at the time.

Regarding those early sources of the Vancouver cast's return, again, Web Archive is such a great resource.

This very website, when it was known as Daizenshuu EX, had posted the news back in the fall of 2000:

https://web.archive.org/web/20001018173 ... ndex.shtml
14 October 2000: Ocean Cast to return to the dub? Hmmm...wishful thinking, maybe.
Jon: By now I'd say that it's safe to say that everyone's seen the posts on "Planet Namek" regarding the impending return of the former cast. While there's probably no bigger fan of some of the former cast than I (Let's face it, they're a tough act to follow), keeping my somewhat skeptic distance was a good choice. Most members of the current cast had absolutley no idea about this. When informed by me though, they seemed none too pleased. To quote Sonny Strait, current voice of Krillin;

"Ok, I don't want to cast aspersions and say that someone's bullshittting the fans but I just talked to Chris and he said it was COMPLETE bullshit."

He goes on to state that FUNimation will be scheduling another set of auditions for the Buu saga, and that doing so would be a waste of money if they were to suddenly hire back the old cast. As many of you may recall, Brian Drummond pulled this kind of thing back around June-July this last summer, and absolutley nothing came from it. When I asked Chris Sabat and Gen Fukunaga what it was about (the previous incident in Jun-July), they basically told me that it was either a reunion or for a YTV promotion. Ian Corlett had also been offered for the same thing in June-July, but basically gave us the same tired speach about "Yes I was offered, but I've got a writing career now and blah blah blah." The difference in this case is that the former announcer for Dragonball Z's dub, Doc Harris, has also been quoted that he's returning to voice the show.

"Just thought you should know: the DBZ tracks are going to be done in Vancouver again, starting next week. I'll be back narrating, and most of the old cast will be reassembled for the series.

Spread the word!"


I generally don't think Brian Drummond to be the kind of guy who'd just mess with the fans like this, as I know from emailing him a couple times that he is very greatful for the continued fan support, so this leads me to wonder if perhaps all of this has somthing to do with the theatrical releases of two of the movies (either 5 and 6, or 7 and 8). There had been a rumor circulating for a while that had FUNimation ever worked out a deal for the theatrical releases, they'd bring back some of the old cast. What somewhat contradicts this is when I called FUNimation's production room a couple months back asking what future auditions would be held, I was informed first by I beleive Brian or Justin Cook that they had not casted the movies yet, while in my next call Chris Sabat had informed me that they'd had the movies covered.
So where does this leave us? Is some sort of prank being pulled? Have the powers that be been secretly talking with the Ocean Group while leaving the current cast in the dark? Has Sonny Strait taken his pills today? I have to admit that I'm at a loss for answers. I've emailed Doc Harris asking if he knows any more about this than Brian does, and I'm trying to get EX to email Ian to get his take on the whole thing, but as of now I'm still pretty much in the dark. I will say this however. I wouldn't exactly make any million dollar bets on the older cast returning to the episodes, but the movies could possibly be a different matter. However, as big a fan as I am of the Ocean Group, I think it's pretty damn messed up to spend a year getting the newer cast over, and basically giving them a slap in the face like this, much in the same way they would have done with Freddie Prinze Jr. Perhaps bringing two or three of the older voices back to record episodes concurrently with the actors in Texas might be kind of neat, but who knows. I personally think that they've improved to the point that the voices are no longer the major issue anymore, while the issue with the music continues to be a problem, and perhaps the biggest problem holding back the dub's full potential. To use a cliche, "More on this as it develops."
15 October 2000: More Info on Ocean
GokuuVegettoEX: Adding to the whole Ocean cast "thing," comes a reply from the one and only guy known as Ian James Corlett (THE MAN; for those of you that don't remember, Ian was the first voice of Son Gokuu in FUNimation's English dub of DBZ, for approx. 35 episodes). I asked Ian if he'd gotten any offers concerning recording new DBZ episodes/movies, and what's up, overall. We all know that FUNimation seems to be saying that nothing's going on with Ocean, while Ocean says there's definitely stuff going on with them and DBZ. Here's Ian's response (BTW Ian, I've gotta publicly thank you for always responding, and getting back to me so fast; you're always gonna be Gokuu to me, dude):

"I heard of this. It's a weird anomaly of distribution rights or something... I think IPP/Ocean sound has the Canadian rights to record shows, so it's independent of Funimation. But alas I won't be doing them if IPP has anything to do with the production."
This is.. weird. Obviously no company other than FUNimation Productions, Inc. is dubbing the series, so I'm completely confuzzled as to why the Ocean cast would be recording anything for DBZ.
It's amusing to see that FUNimation's cast so vehemently denied that it was happening, but I can't blame them for having been sceptical.

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Robo4900 » Sat Oct 20, 2018 8:44 pm

SX10 wrote:But still no word on an air date us killing me :cry:
Marni Shulman will tell us when there's a date, I'm sure of it.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:I'm sure there will be more to come.
Glad to hear it!! :D
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:As far as who was directing, that's not as certain as other details. Obviously, Karl had some involvement, but maybe he wasn't there the whole time. Perhaps Peter Kelamis was directed during those few short spans of Karl's involvement. Dale Wilson later said in an interview conducted in 2003 that there was a rotating roster of directors on the show, and that many were relatively inexperienced. This would explain some of the inconsistency in the overall quality of the dub, particularly during the Cell and early Buu arc. I'll see if I can dig up that interview.
Indeed, I see... Wilson's work, as I recall, was all in minor roles after Cell's demise, so he may not have really been aware of the situation past that, really...
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:Yes, which falls perfectly in line with Kirby Morrow saying that a new company was behind Kai back in 2010.

Additionally, if it had been the same company as before, it stands to reason that they wouldn't have gone through making previous actors re-audition for their roles or turn down Kirby Morrow for being "too cool" for the role of Goku.

The rights would've certainly reverted to Toei. It's unfortunate that Westwood is no longer around. However, given the use of their video track and scripts, I've always been of the opinion that FUNimation had more involvement (or at least consent in the situation) than they were ever willing to admit, and could probably do a home release of the Westwood dub if they really wanted to.

For obvious reasons, however, they don't want to.
Given that the rights reside with Toei now, and all this is effectively water under the bridge, I think Funi very well could do a release of this. They did Rock The Dragon, after all... If there's enough of a push for it to happen, I think it very well might.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:We'll talk over PM.
Cool. :)
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:This very website, when it was known as Daizenshuu EX, had posted the news back in the fall of 2000:

https://web.archive.org/web/20001018173 ... ndex.shtml
Okay, this is weird... Kanzenshuu should still have this in their archive, and they in fact do have a version of the article from the 15th, which even references the article from the 13th... But the article itself from the 13th is no-where to be seen in Kanzenshuu's archive...?! And the Kanzenshuu archive version of this appears to be altered from the original posting...
Most peculiar.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:It's amusing to see that FUNimation's cast so vehemently denied that it was happening, but I can't blame them for having been sceptical.
Well, looking at this, it appears that the Funi cast were entirely unaware, so as far as they knew, the Ocean guys were just stirring up stuff... Until it was confirmed that there was an alternate dub going on. And really... Back in '00, before the alternate dub started airing, who would have thought we'd get a second English dub produced by an entirely separate group using the cast from the first two seasons of the first group's work?
'Course, it could just have been all of them sticking to NDAs and such, but given the ferocity of their words... I dunno...
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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Dark Vegeta-Sama » Sat Oct 20, 2018 9:40 pm

Here is another interview pointing to the late 2000 start date for the Westwood dub. This one was with Saffron Henderson, and it's the interview where she revealed her reason for leaving the show (her wedding conflict). She recorded as many episodes as she could in late 2000 before having to leave. The rushed production schedule (i.e. keeping pace with FUNimation, I suppose) meant that they couldn't wait around for her to return. It's a shame the way things worked out since she only would've been needed to voice Gohan for another 29 episodes.

Ironically, this interview was originally posted on Kyle Hebert's website of all places. As stated here, it was posted in March of 2002.
Q: What was it like when you and the rest of Ocean Group had heard FUNimation was moving to Texas, and the parts would be recast?

A: We were all disappointed, but we knew they were probably trying to save money and keep their project in a more convenient location, since that's where FUNimation is based. Dragon Ball Z started recording here in Vancouver again in 2000, and I enjoyed some more Gohan that year.
Q: A lot of talk went on saying you had to stopping voicing Gohan in the Cell Saga because of "stress-related causes", this wasn't the case, was it?

A: That's funny, I've heard that comment too. No, I didn't stop voicing Gohan because of stress or exhaustion or anything like that. The only thing that was stressful was the timing of my wedding! We'd planned it for months and months, before Dragon Ball Z even came back, and in order to work around my husband's availability (he's a baseball player), some immigration business (he's American) and to get our families together....... We couldn't change our wedding date when the producers decided they'd need me for a few days in January/Feb 2001. So we recorded as many episodes as possible by the end of 2000, and then they auditioned new talent for Gohan so they could continue with someone whose schedule they wouldn't need to work around.

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Super Sayian Prime » Sat Oct 20, 2018 10:06 pm

NitroEX wrote:I did email Hendrik J. Britton at the time (who owns the studio) and he explained to me that he recorded the voices during that time on DragonBall Z, and that the studio he recorded it at (which was presumably Airwaves - as Azur's studio didn't exist at the time) was subcontracted. So basically Airwaves just hired him to record the voices.

Unfortunately, the DBZ credit has since been removed from the Azur site, although it is on Hendrik's IMDB, just with the wrong year (1996 instead of 1999) and on wayback machine.

Interestingly enough, Hendrik added in the email that he couldn't talk about voice directors or cast members on that dub due to signing an NDA.
I emailed Hennie about something else around a year ago and got the same response. I think he just drops the NDA line to keep people from bugging him, lol.
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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Kakacarrottop » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:38 am

Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:Here is another interview pointing to the late 2000 start date for the Westwood dub. This one was with Saffron Henderson, and it's the interview where she revealed her reason for leaving the show (her wedding conflict). She recorded as many episodes as she could in late 2000 before having to leave. The rushed production schedule (i.e. keeping pace with FUNimation, I suppose) meant that they couldn't wait around for her to return. It's a shame the way things worked out since she only would've been needed to voice Gohan for another 29 episodes.

Ironically, this interview was originally posted on Kyle Hebert's website of all places. As stated here, it was posted in March of 2002.
Q: What was it like when you and the rest of Ocean Group had heard FUNimation was moving to Texas, and the parts would be recast?

A: We were all disappointed, but we knew they were probably trying to save money and keep their project in a more convenient location, since that's where FUNimation is based. Dragon Ball Z started recording here in Vancouver again in 2000, and I enjoyed some more Gohan that year.
Q: A lot of talk went on saying you had to stopping voicing Gohan in the Cell Saga because of "stress-related causes", this wasn't the case, was it?

A: That's funny, I've heard that comment too. No, I didn't stop voicing Gohan because of stress or exhaustion or anything like that. The only thing that was stressful was the timing of my wedding! We'd planned it for months and months, before Dragon Ball Z even came back, and in order to work around my husband's availability (he's a baseball player), some immigration business (he's American) and to get our families together....... We couldn't change our wedding date when the producers decided they'd need me for a few days in January/Feb 2001. So we recorded as many episodes as possible by the end of 2000, and then they auditioned new talent for Gohan so they could continue with someone whose schedule they wouldn't need to work around.
Going by that interview you could use Jillian Michaels taking over as Gohan as the cutoff for the rushed episodes that were recorded in 2000. I always assumed Henderson and Kelamis might have still been around in 2001, since on an archived version of Kirby Morrow's website he announces that he's the new Goku in mid 2001.
"I will literally dress as Goku and walk around jumping up and down, pretending to fly, in public if this ever gets an official release"

- ShadowDude112 on Ocean's Kai dub

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by MasenkoHA » Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:19 am

Robo4900 wrote:


Given that the rights reside with Toei now, and all this is effectively water under the bridge, I think Funi very well could do a release of this. They did Rock The Dragon, after all... If there's enough of a push for it to happen, I think it very well might.

..
Granted Funimation produced the Rock the Dragon era so I’m not quite sure if it’s the same thing. Though I’m also not sure what would prevent Funimation from releasing the Westwood dub if they wanted to since they are the license holders.

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Dbzfan94 » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:12 pm

JohnnyCashKami wrote:
NitroEX wrote:I don't find that edit odd at all - toilet humour that explicit usually doesn't fly on kids TV, it's in poor taste.
Good to know you're in favor of dictatorship then.
Are you trolling?

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by NitroEX » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:24 pm

wjbraden wrote: Before I start, I want to note something. I recently read an article on anime news network (I can't find the particular article now link now) that mentioned that it is not uncommon for Japanese production companies to request foreign distributors to send dubbed masters back to Japan. When they are sent dub, the masters, scripts and promotional materials become property of the studio (in DBZ's case, Toei, of course). This is evidenced on how the Dragon Boxes featured foreign dubbed clips from a bunch of different dubs, including the Texas Funimation dub. Toei already had these dubs in the vaults, and likely didn't just ask Funimation randomly in 2008ish for a clip from their dub to use for this extra, they already had the Funimation dub in their vaults since day one.
This was something I took note of as well, it's the main reason I believe Toei have access to non-HD copies of Ocean's Kai dub. However, I think you' go off the rails after this.
the fact that these YTV airings had the original Faulconer placement as Azelf89 linked to also further proves that Toei supplied the tapes. Funimation had probably given Toei the first version of the tapes to Toei, and didn't send them revised masters for just for a couple of music re-scoured, so Toei just gave Ocean what they had. So while a lot of us thought that Ocean had "borrowed", sub-licensed, or had Funimation send them tapes, now I'm thinking it was Toei who supplied these tapes to Ocean.
The Toei/Ocean relation is an interesting theory but what you describe here isn't believable for Z. First off, Funimation cast members have expressed in interviews that when making DBZ, they originally got their video from Toei for the initial seasons but they then had to resort to getting footage from Mexico afterwards as it was much faster and made it easier for them to keep up with the demand from Toonami. So in other words; Toei were very slow at sending footage to America, so with this in mind, how could we believe that Toei, Funimation and Ocean were all rapidly exchanging footage to and from Japan in such a short timespan whilst preparing the episodes? It doesn't match what we know. This wasn't like the current internet age where they could just send files over cloud storage, they had to send physical tapes each time which would have taken a while.

I think it's more likely that Ocean were still being contracted by Funimation to do some post-production work for the in-house dub and thus were given access to Funi's isolated voice and music tracks (which would later come in handy once they started producing their own dub). Remember that Ocean's services don't end at voice over and dubbing, they also do post-production and editing. Funimation at the time were still clearly a new (and frankly amateur) company in need of help, they didn't have the capability or facilities that they have now, that's why they went to Saban, Ocean and Pioneer for help in the first place - those were the people who knew the business and who had the expertise to get the job done properly.

The added sound effects present in the YTV broadcasts of the in-house dub do seem puzzling at first but it basically just reaffirms the idea that Ocean and Funi were still working together after the cast change - we already knew Terry Klassen was helping with scripts from season 3 (and evidently GT) and that the Westwood dub shared the same footage source (not to mention the editing work Ocean did for them on Nicktoon's Kai) so it really shouldn't be too surprising that they also handled post-production for DBZ in Canada. With this in mind, the additional sound effects are just an added layer of polish that Ocean provided along with any additional edits or time cuts that YTV demanded.

As to why Ocean were (seemingly) tinkering with the music? I don't think it was them to be honest. They'd presumably need a library of Faulconer's individual tracks at hand to replace a missing one with and I don't find that very plausible. I think it's more believable that Faulconer productions simply made last-minute additions to the music placement (or needed more time to create a new track for one of the scenes) and Funimation failed to update Ocean with the latest version in time - thus the previous draft of music gets aired in Canada by default. I've been told that channels can actually fine production companies if they fail to deliver episodes on time so I don't think something as small as a music inconsistency would prevent them from submitting an episode for air.
wjbraden wrote:Also, just wanted to mention that I had a chance to look at all those clips Azelf posted with the added sound effects. While the added SFX in the movies were placed sparingly and rather "artisitcally" done, here they just sound really campy. It's like Ocean was just going out of it's way to say "hey look, we added tons of Canadian sound effects to this show, so it's Canadian? Right? Right CRTC, please give us Cancon points!!" :shifty:
Just thought I'd add that Funimation most likely wanted additional sound effects, they even tried adding them to their own dub, but Ocean was a company that specialised in sound so they were able to do it far better.
Here's what I think happened. Once Funimation moved production of DBZ moved from Canada to the States in '98-'99, Ocean and Funimation had a falling out because the people at Corus Entertainment (shareholders of YTV and Teletoon, both which aired DBZ at one point) had a big problem with it, since their big prime-time program was no longer going to meet Cancon requirements (not to mention Ocean was losing a lot of work from a lucrative property due to outsourcing, which is always a point of contention in many companies).
You make it sound as if Ocean had no other work aside from Funimation's DB dubs. They were working on numerous dubs from larger companies at the time such as Geneon, Viz, Bandai and TMS (nevermind the western cartoons being outsourced to them at the time from the likes of Marvel, Hasbro and Mainframe/Rainmaker). DBZ was probably just seen as another low paying anime show to them and considering that Funi had to resort to in-house dubbing at that point, they likely weren't in a position to be paying Ocean lots of money for voicework. DBZ was on the rise for sure but clearly not Ocean's bread and butter.
wjbraden wrote:That point also adds to my "Tapes from Toei" theory. When Toonami UK was airing the series, they most likely weren't receiving tapes from Funimation and Ocean, they were receiving them directly from Toei (or by extension Toei Europe which handles properties over there). And just like Funimation was required to send their dubbing materials over to Toei for their archives, Ocean/Westwood was as well. When the Funimation dub of the Buu saga progressed further than its Westwood counterpart, Toonami UK wasn't calling up Ocean or Funimation for tapes, they were just getting whatever Toei had for distribution. Ocean hadn't yet submitted their tapes to Toei for those Buu episodes, but Funimation had, so when Toonami UK was looking for new episodes, Toei said "Here you go, by the way some of these episodes have different voices for now, we'll give you updated tapes later" and Toonami UK said "Sure, whatever".
Toei Animation Europe wasn't founded until 2004, so your theory falls apart right there. AB Groupe were the only ones handling distribution of Dragon Ball in Western Europe at that time. The AB Distribution logo was even seen at the end of the occasional Westwood and Blue Water dubbed episode which proves where Turner's source was. It's only in more recent years that a UK broadcaster (CSC/Kix) had to deal directly with Toei but that seems to be because rights reverted back to them sometime after DB stopped airing here.
wjbraden wrote:This also leads me to think it wasn't audience preferences so much that led to the dub airing in the UK/Netherlands or wherever, but the fact that the Westwood dub was cheaper to air than the Funimation version. The Westwood dub was done on the cheap in comparison to the Funimation version, and thus was probably cheaper to air than the Funimation version (royalties to use the Faulconer score were probably more expensive than the recycled Megaman music was).
The Westwood dub was paying their union actors more than what Funimation paid their non-union actors, Sabat has even admitted to resorting to asking random workers from the office next door to voice extras and do walla sound effects for their DBZ dub because they were desperate for new voices, hell, they couldn't even afford a voice director! Sabat was doing that work too. It was only later on in their DBZ and movie dubs that they expanded their cast to include more actors, but for most of their run, they flat out didn't have enough actors in the cast which is why you hear Sabat so often in the broadcast dub (it wasn't because he was a Mel Blanc 2.0 - as many deluded fans would have you believe). Dale Kelly has even confirmed this himself - he revealed in an interview that Funimation intended for certain characters to be played by other actors initially but decided to recast on the fly and cast Sabat either due to the convenience of using him or, in Dale Kelly's case, because he was asking for more money. It's well known by now that a major reason they even set up shop in Texas, to begin with, was because it was so much cheaper to hire local talent there.

In regards to music, Funi clearly hired Faulconer because he was a cheap local musician. It wouldn't surprise me if they only promised him royalties with the exposure of national TV to sweeten the deal as they were too broke to even afford decent actors. The royalties were presumably being paid by whoever aired the show and would most likely be a minuscule amount compared to what Funi ended up making in the deal. The fact that Faulconer tried to sue them at the end of it all doesn't point to a very healthy relationship between the two parties either. And while I'm on the subject of Funi's music, according to Dale Kelly; Funimation didn't even want to pay royalties to the many bands that featured on the soundtracks of the movie dubs. That says a lot about how stingy a company they were back then so to say they were producing a high budget dub at that point is laughable considering all the evidence against that. Funi might have been selling it for a high price (likely the same price they charged for Ocean's eps 1-53 - which could've easily been what ruffled the feathers of broadcasters who took notice of the drop in quality once season 3 rolled around), but don't be confused into thinking the price tag of the dub made it any higher budget than Canada's dub. If Funi were charging extortionate amounts then it's their own fault that a revived Ocean dub became such an appealing option to international broadcasters and distributors.

Ocean might have been using recycled music, which could be viewed as a cheap practice on the surface level, but that was arguably more to do with time constraints and the abruptness of starting at episode 108 rather than just for the sake of being cheap. Ani-tunes were already producing music constantly for Ocean on other kids anime that was being adapted in the early 2000s, so Ocean were constantly paying for new music to be made and adding to their library of stock music. This wasn't comparable with Faulconer's situation, he only had DBZ to work on and could compose custom tracks for the show full time because he wasn't in demand from anyone else. Ani-tunes, on the other hand, would have been too busy with multiple projects to focus on an entirely new score for DBZ and come up with all the necessary tracks as soon as Ocean started dubbing Z again - in this case, stock music was the only workable option as Kikuchi's fixed score would prove problematic when it came to making edits for TV - not to mention it would be a jarring change from the rock soundtracks that kids were used to in Funi and Ocean's prior episodes.

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:44 pm

It always makes me facepalm that Funimation had the nerve to fire a bunch of veterans to only replace them with a bunch of nobodies because they were cheaper. It clearly shows that Funimation wasn't the best company to handle Dragon Ball. When you hire nobodies to dub over a show that was composed of experienced voice actors in its original language, that feels like a fucking insult. I'm not asking to hire live-action actors to dub over, but people with some acting skills instead of none.

And worst of all, Funimation only got the rights because of nepotism. Viz would have been a much better option.
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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Kakacarrottop » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:59 pm

8000 Saiyan wrote:It always makes me facepalm that Funimation had the nerve to fire a bunch of veterans to only replace them with a bunch of nobodies because they were cheaper. It clearly shows that Funimation wasn't the best company to handle Dragon Ball. When you hire nobodies to dub over a show that was composed of experienced voice actors in its original language, that feels like a fucking insult. I'm not asking to hire live-action actors to dub over, but people with some acting skills instead of none.

And worst of all, Funimation only got the rights because of nepotism. Viz would have been a much better option.
Honestly, I'm glad Funi got the rights. Without them we probably wouldn't have gotten this huge number of different English dubs, including the Westwood/Blue Water/Big Green dubs which were created as a reaction against them.
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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by MasenkoHA » Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:26 pm

8000 Saiyan wrote:It always makes me facepalm that Funimation had the nerve to fire a bunch of veterans to only replace them with a bunch of nobodies because they were cheaper. .
Did they fire the Ocean cast to save cost? I always heard they couldn’t afford them after they ended their partnership with Saban?

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by TheBlackPaladin » Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:48 pm

MasenkoHA wrote:
8000 Saiyan wrote:It always makes me facepalm that Funimation had the nerve to fire a bunch of veterans to only replace them with a bunch of nobodies because they were cheaper. .
Did they fire the Ocean cast to save cost? I always heard they couldn’t afford them after they ended their partnership with Saban?
We've never received an official confirmation as to why the Ocean cast was replaced. By "official confirmation," I mean that we've never heard from somebody actually involved in the production in an official capacity say, "We switched from the Ocean Productions cast to an in-house cast because [insert reason here]." So we'll likely never know for sure.

Having said that, it's probably a safe assumption that money was the deal-breaker. It's important to remember that, during the time period in which they switched casts, FUNimation was not even remotely close to being the 800-pound gorilla in the anime industry that they are today. There's a lot of things that happened with the production during that time period that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever unless the goal was to save money.

-Why would they abandon the established cast, especially after the re-runs of the first two "Seasons" were now phenomenally popular on Toonami?
-Why would they go non-union, after previously paying for a union dub?
-Why would they cast from Dallas, which was not even close to being a dubbing "hot spot" in the acting industry?
-Why did they hire so many actors with zero dubbing experience?
-Why, instead of renting a professional recording studio, did they just set up a portable Whisper Room booth in their office building?
-Why did they hire people to write the scripts who had never adapted anime before?

None of these moves make any sense...unless they had a low budget, in which case, all of the above makes perfect business sense.

I'd also add that Chris Sabat said he got his start with FUNimation partially because he was one of the very few actors willing to work for the rates they were paying at the time, noting that he was paid a grand total of $40 to play Yamcha in Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle.
A "rather haggard" translation of a line from Future Gohan in DBZ, provided to FUNimation by Toei:
"To think of fighting that is this fun...so, it was pleasant fight, as many as, therefore is a feeling which is good the fight where."

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Danfun64 » Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:21 am

Kakacarrottop wrote:Honestly, I'm glad Funi got the rights. Without them we probably wouldn't have gotten this huge number of different English dubs, including the Westwood/Blue Water/Big Green dubs which were created as a reaction against them.
I'll give you Westwood, Blue Water, and Big Green... but I wouldn't be surprised if the Harmony Gold, Speedy, Fillipino, Animax, and perhaps even the Bang Zoom dubs would have been made even if Funi was never part of the picture.
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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Dark Vegeta-Sama » Mon Oct 22, 2018 4:07 am

8000 Saiyan wrote:It always makes me facepalm that Funimation had the nerve to fire a bunch of veterans to only replace them with a bunch of nobodies because they were cheaper. It clearly shows that Funimation wasn't the best company to handle Dragon Ball. When you hire nobodies to dub over a show that was composed of experienced voice actors in its original language, that feels like a fucking insult. I'm not asking to hire live-action actors to dub over, but people with some acting skills instead of none.
Agreed completely.

And, as someone else recently posted, it's always been a particular sore spot that Ocean never got to dub the rest of the Freeza arc (with major events like Vegeta's death on Namek and Goku's first Super Saiyan transformation), especially after they had already done all the "heavy lifting" by setting those things up in the earlier episodes.

The Ocean cast getting to dub Dragonball Kai - even with a different actor playing Goku - is thankfully the next best thing. Here's hoping we get to see it soon.
MasenkoHA wrote:Did they fire the Ocean cast to save cost?
Absolutely.

An additional reason that has long been accepted is that - as Ian Corlett once put it - "Barry must've gotten tired of the flights."
Danfun64 wrote:
Kakacarrottop wrote:Honestly, I'm glad Funi got the rights. Without them we probably wouldn't have gotten this huge number of different English dubs, including the Westwood/Blue Water/Big Green dubs which were created as a reaction against them.
I'll give you Westwood, Blue Water, and Big Green... but I wouldn't be surprised if the Harmony Gold, Speedy, Fillipino, Animax, and perhaps even the Bang Zoom dubs would have been made even if Funi was never part of the picture.
While I can't speak to the rest of them, the Harmony Gold dub is obvious since it was done years before FUNimation even existed.

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Robo4900 » Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:56 am

Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:Here is another interview pointing to the late 2000 start date for the Westwood dub. This one was with Saffron Henderson, and it's the interview where she revealed her reason for leaving the show (her wedding conflict). She recorded as many episodes as she could in late 2000 before having to leave. The rushed production schedule (i.e. keeping pace with FUNimation, I suppose) meant that they couldn't wait around for her to return. It's a shame the way things worked out since she only would've been needed to voice Gohan for another 29 episodes.
Interesting, that.

I don't imagine everyone recorded their parts for the Androids/Cell sagas in 2000, that would've been pretty ridiculously fast and in advance of what was needed... I would speculate Henderson, and probably anyone else who would have been difficult to schedule in '01, was fast-tracked. Shame they couldn't quite squeeze those last 29 episodes in, though as much as I'm not a big fan of Michaels' portrayal in those episodes, she didn't do that bad a job at filling in for Henderson, and IMO Michaels was a perfect casting for Goten, when the time came.

Also, I've gotta say; real treasure to see a Saffron Henderson interview! Never seen one before. :)
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:
MasenkoHA wrote:Did they fire the Ocean cast to save cost?
Absolutely.
An additional reason that has long been accepted is that - as Ian Corlett once put it - "Barry must've gotten tired of the flights."
Chris Sabat also echoed this in his Geekdom interview.
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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Nia » Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:50 pm

TheBlackPaladin wrote: I'd also add that Chris Sabat said he got his start with FUNimation partially because he was one of the very few actors willing to work for the rates they were paying at the time, noting that he was paid a grand total of $40 to play Yamcha in Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle.
As someone who is definitely no fan of Sabat's Dragon Ball-related performances... holy shit, that is way below what he earned. I'm sure he's paid much better now (or at least I freakin' hope so!), but good grief. Shame on FUNImation for that kinda crap.

Also, this made me think... FUNI couldn't be bothered to pay a reasonable wage to their voice actors because "money," but wasn't the Westwood dub even more cheaply produced?
I smell shenanigans.

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by C. Smith » Mon Oct 22, 2018 2:50 pm

Nia wrote:
TheBlackPaladin wrote: I'd also add that Chris Sabat said he got his start with FUNimation partially because he was one of the very few actors willing to work for the rates they were paying at the time, noting that he was paid a grand total of $40 to play Yamcha in Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle.
As someone who is definitely no fan of Sabat's Dragon Ball-related performances... holy shit, that is way below what he earned. I'm sure he's paid much better now (or at least I freakin' hope so!), but good grief. Shame on FUNImation for that kinda crap.

Also, this made me think... FUNI couldn't be bothered to pay a reasonable wage to their voice actors because "money," but wasn't the Westwood dub even more cheaply produced?
I smell shenanigans.
Funi didn't have a lot of cash back then. Like, LA dubs paid (back then) $60 per hour per person (and an additional $20 per episode per person if union). ADV Films (based in Houston) dubs paid around $40-$50 per hour per person. Vancouver dubs, even back then, paid around $100 per hour per person (maybe $80 on a cheap day).

Concerning the Westwood dub, maybe cheaply in the sense of timing and production values but no way in terms of pay because they would get in trouble with the UBCP as Vamcouver dubs are ostensibly union

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by TheBlackPaladin » Mon Oct 22, 2018 4:09 pm

C. Smith wrote:
Nia wrote:
TheBlackPaladin wrote: I'd also add that Chris Sabat said he got his start with FUNimation partially because he was one of the very few actors willing to work for the rates they were paying at the time, noting that he was paid a grand total of $40 to play Yamcha in Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle.
As someone who is definitely no fan of Sabat's Dragon Ball-related performances... holy shit, that is way below what he earned. I'm sure he's paid much better now (or at least I freakin' hope so!), but good grief. Shame on FUNImation for that kinda crap.

Also, this made me think... FUNI couldn't be bothered to pay a reasonable wage to their voice actors because "money," but wasn't the Westwood dub even more cheaply produced?
I smell shenanigans.
Funi didn't have a lot of cash back then. Like, LA dubs paid (back then) $60 per hour per person (and an additional $20 per episode per person if union). ADV Films (based in Houston) dubs paid around $40-$50 per hour per person. Vancouver dubs, even back then, paid around $100 per hour per person (maybe $80 on a cheap day).

Concerning the Westwood dub, maybe cheaply in the sense of timing and production values but no way in terms of pay because they would get in trouble with the UBCP as Vamcouver dubs are ostensibly union
Precisely. The Westwood dub was still a union dub through ACTRA, the Canadian union, and while dubs have always been one of the lowest-paying forms of acting (if not the lowest), ACTRA rates for dubbing are--by dubbing standards--pretty good. Actually, taking inflation and currency exchange into account, ACTRA dubs actually pay better than SAG-AFTRA dubs do today. One of the recurring oddities of the English dubs of Dragon Ball is that the dubs that aren't as widely seen--the Blue Water dubs of DB and GT, the Westwood dub of DBZ, and even the Bang-Zoom dub of Super--continue to be more expensive and pay their actors more than FUNimation's in-house dub, which is considered the defacto "official" English dub. Kind of weird that the lesser-seen dubs always end up being more expensive in the case of Dragon Ball media.

Of course, as C. Smith noted, the Westwood dub was cheap in other ways. The music was one such way. For that matter, while the Westwood dub was a union dub, the recording schedule was still very rushed, so it was "cheap" in the sense that, while they paid the actors union rates, those rates are based on how many hours the actor spends in the studio...and they did their best to make sure the actors were in and out as quickly as possible so that they only paid what they absolutely had to.

As for what Sabat's getting paid now, I have no idea. I don't know if this is still the case, but last I heard, FUNimation's rate was $50/hour. For context, the SAG-AFTRA rate is $64.25/hour with a 2-hour minimum (plus contributions to the union's health insurance and pension fund, as well as time-and-a-half if the session goes over four hours, and there are also clauses in place for residuals and usage fees if certain criteria is met). While non-union rates vary depending on which company you're dealing with, the most common rate for a non-union LA dub is $75/hour (but no health and pension contributions, no overtime, no 2-hour minimum, and no usage or residual fees).
A "rather haggard" translation of a line from Future Gohan in DBZ, provided to FUNimation by Toei:
"To think of fighting that is this fun...so, it was pleasant fight, as many as, therefore is a feeling which is good the fight where."

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Re: Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" dub seems to be coming...

Post by Nia » Mon Oct 22, 2018 6:17 pm

TheBlackPaladin wrote:
C. Smith wrote:
Nia wrote:
As someone who is definitely no fan of Sabat's Dragon Ball-related performances... holy shit, that is way below what he earned. I'm sure he's paid much better now (or at least I freakin' hope so!), but good grief. Shame on FUNImation for that kinda crap.

Also, this made me think... FUNI couldn't be bothered to pay a reasonable wage to their voice actors because "money," but wasn't the Westwood dub even more cheaply produced?
I smell shenanigans.
Funi didn't have a lot of cash back then. Like, LA dubs paid (back then) $60 per hour per person (and an additional $20 per episode per person if union). ADV Films (based in Houston) dubs paid around $40-$50 per hour per person. Vancouver dubs, even back then, paid around $100 per hour per person (maybe $80 on a cheap day).

Concerning the Westwood dub, maybe cheaply in the sense of timing and production values but no way in terms of pay because they would get in trouble with the UBCP as Vamcouver dubs are ostensibly union
Precisely. The Westwood dub was still a union dub through ACTRA, the Canadian union, and while dubs have always been one of the lowest-paying forms of acting (if not the lowest), ACTRA rates for dubbing are--by dubbing standards--pretty good. Actually, taking inflation and currency exchange into account, ACTRA dubs actually pay better than SAG-AFTRA dubs do today. One of the recurring oddities of the English dubs of Dragon Ball is that the dubs that aren't as widely seen--the Blue Water dubs of DB and GT, the Westwood dub of DBZ, and even the Bang-Zoom dub of Super--continue to be more expensive and pay their actors more than FUNimation's in-house dub, which is considered the defacto "official" English dub. Kind of weird that the lesser-seen dubs always end up being more expensive in the case of Dragon Ball media.

Of course, as C. Smith noted, the Westwood dub was cheap in other ways. The music was one such way. For that matter, while the Westwood dub was a union dub, the recording schedule was still very rushed, so it was "cheap" in the sense that, while they paid the actors union rates, those rates are based on how many hours the actor spends in the studio...and they did their best to make sure the actors were in and out as quickly as possible so that they only paid what they absolutely had to.

As for what Sabat's getting paid now, I have no idea. I don't know if this is still the case, but last I heard, FUNimation's rate was $50/hour. For context, the SAG-AFTRA rate is $64.25/hour with a 2-hour minimum (plus contributions to the union's health insurance and pension fund, as well as time-and-a-half if the session goes over four hours, and there are also clauses in place for residuals and usage fees if certain criteria is met). While non-union rates vary depending on which company you're dealing with, the most common rate for a non-union LA dub is $75/hour (but no health and pension contributions, no overtime, no 2-hour minimum, and no usage or residual fees).
I knew the Westwood dub was rushed; thanks for the clarification on the pay the actors recieved along with the modern context.
The rest is just so weird. Like... my brain actually is trying to comprehend it, and it isn't working. Especially the concept that these lesser known dubs wind up spending more than FUNI even now.

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