Funimation and swearing

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MasenkoHA
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Funimation and swearing

Post by MasenkoHA » Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:22 pm

Just something I was thinking about. At least in the early days Funimation seemed to be pretty damn wussy about even the most mild of swears in their uncut products back in the day. It was mostly a bunch of darns and bite me and friggin. Then oddly enough you had Dende’s infamous “Don’t piss off the God of love!” which somehow made it past Toonami’s censorship back in 1999 but when Funimation rerecorded a bunch of dialog for season 3 in 2007 for vocal consistency with their in-house redub of the first 67 episodes Laura Bailey!Dende says something a lot milder (please don’t anger the dragon or something like that) so the orange bricks which was presumably marketed to young adults had a line of dialog much tamer than when the show was aimed at the 2-11 demo!

And then there was their *snicker* Ultimate Uncut redub of Dead Zone. In the Pioneer/Ocean dub hell is used twice. But for Funimation’s redub both cases of the word hell were omitted. Gohan can piss in Krillin’s mouth but god forbid Kami or Chi Chi say hell

But fianally by Kai the dub has the characters swearing lef and right. A lot of bastards and hell and damns.


Does anyone know what happen? Was there someone in Funimation who was big on the not swearing who either left or lightned up?

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Kamiccolo9 » Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:29 pm

Saban was a big reason for that during ye olden Ocean Dub days, if I recall correctly.
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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by MasenkoHA » Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:31 pm

Kamiccolo9 wrote:Saban was a big reason for that during ye olden Ocean Dub days, if I recall correctly.
All the stuff I mentioned was well after Funimation cut ties with Saban. I’m not talking about Funimation when they writing for the Saturday Morning Syndication market.

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by ErikB » Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:25 pm

I've never in my life considered "piss" to be a swear word, and have only met 1 or 2 people who do. So with the Dende line, I'd attribute it do them just not considering it foul language. It being rewritten in the Orange Bricks could be because someone considered it vulgar, but I want to give Funimation the benefit of the doubt and presume it was rewritten because "don't piss off the god of love" is just a stupid line.

As for the rest, timeslots and broadcasting standards are almost certainly the culprit. I imagine at the time, Funimation's priority was just to get the show on TV, so it made sense to produce the dub from the ground up to be broadcaster-friendly. Then Kai came around at a time where they were in a position to comfortably go out of their way to produce a more vulgar dub aimed at the collectors of the older demographic; whilst producing an alternate version of the same dub that was, again, broadcaster-friendly (i.e. the Nicktoons and Toonzai airings of Kai, which had all of the swearing re-recorded with more mild language).

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by MasenkoHA » Fri Dec 07, 2018 2:31 pm

ErikB wrote:I, but I want to give Funimation the benefit of the doubt and presume it was rewritten because "don't piss off the god of love" is just a stupid line.
Considering lines like “That’s right boys mondo cool!” And “I’m a friggin genius!” still made it through Funimation doesn’t deserve that benefit


And I’ve never not known someone consider piss to be a swear. A very mild one but not one you would expect to hear on a kids programming block
As for the rest, timeslots and broadcasting standards are almost certainly the culprit. ).
But I’m very specifically talking about the lack of swearing (and doing away with swearing when it was there) in the home video market on their uncut release pre-Kai not broadcast

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by KBABZ » Fri Dec 07, 2018 4:23 pm

I think with Kai it was part of their overall movement to have the writing be closer to the original script. Remember that Kai also had a censored Nicktoons dub for that broadcast.

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by WittyUsername » Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:30 pm

FUNimation seemed awfully wish washy about their use of swear words back in the day. They mostly steered clear of them in the early years of their in house dub, but their dub of movie 7 (which predates the Ultimate Uncut dub) had #13 saying things like “I’m here to kill your ass”. Even when the Ultimate Uncut dub first began, it steered clear of swear words to the point where He’ll as a location wasn’t even referred to by name. But then, all of a sudden, they had Vegeta yelling “Damn you” after Goku blasted him in the eye, and from that point on, we started getting lines like “See you in hell, Cui” and “The crazy bastard actually killed Guldo!”

What’s interesting to note is that despite FUNimation’s hesitance about using swear words in Dragon Ball related dubs back in the day, they had absolutely no problem having characters say everything short of an f-bomb or the c-word for their dub of Yu Yu Hakusho, despite the fact that an edited version of that dub also aired on children’s television. Some of the things they had characters say in that dub would also be more controversial nowadays, such as the r-word, which was used at least three times.

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Super Sonic » Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:59 pm

WittyUsername wrote:FUNimation seemed awfully wish washy about their use of swear words back in the day. They mostly steered clear of them in the early years of their in house dub, but their dub of movie 7 (which predates the Ultimate Uncut dub) had #13 saying things like “I’m here to kill your ass”. Even when the Ultimate Uncut dub first began, it steered clear of swear words to the point where He’ll as a location wasn’t even referred to by name. But then, all of a sudden, they had Vegeta yelling “Damn you” after Goku blasted him in the eye, and from that point on, we started getting lines like “See you in hell, Cui” and “The crazy bastard actually killed Guldo!”

What’s interesting to note is that despite FUNimation’s hesitance about using swear words in Dragon Ball related dubs back in the day, they had absolutely no problem having characters say everything short of an f-bomb or the c-word for their dub of Yu Yu Hakusho, despite the fact that an edited version of that dub also aired on children’s television. Some of the things they had characters say in that dub would also be more controversial nowadays, such as the r-word, which was used at least three times.
R-word? What's that? But yeah, Yusuke was more of a foul-mouthed punk in English.

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Danfun64 » Sat Dec 08, 2018 1:06 am

Super Sonic wrote:R-word? What's that?
Retard(ed) most likely.

Anyways, it almost seems like Funi went from one extreme (usage of darn, friggin, gosh etc) to the other (lines like "a destroyer's ass" and "invulnerable son of a bitch"). At least with Kai 1.0 and Super one could look for the censored versions to swap out dumb "adult" likes, but with TFC you're stuck with nonsense like Gohan and Boo's conversation about who's kicking whose ass.
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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by WittyUsername » Sat Dec 08, 2018 2:39 am

Danfun64 wrote:
Super Sonic wrote:R-word? What's that?
Retard(ed) most likely.

Anyways, it almost seems like Funi went from one extreme (usage of darn, friggin, gosh etc) to the other (lines like "a destroyer's ass" and "invulnerable son of a bitch"). At least with Kai 1.0 and Super one could look for the censored versions to swap out dumb "adult" likes, but with TFC you're stuck with nonsense like Gohan and Boo's conversation about who's kicking whose ass.
The Yu Yu Hakusho dub did indeed have characters using the word “retarded” at least three separate times. FUNimation seemed like they wanted to go out of their way to be edgier than the Japanese version. I guess they figured that since YYH isn’t quite as whimsical as the Dragon Ball franchise, they didn’t need to try and market the series towards Elementary school kids.

As far as the Dragon Ball is concerned, I personally don’t like the idea of having the characters use phrases like “son of a bitch” in English, since it’s a little jarring to have that in what is supposed to be a franchise for children. I’m fine with “damn”, “hell” and even “bastard”, but I think there should be a line drawn somewhere. Then again, this is the same franchise that has played things like attempted rape for laughs, so what do I know?

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Attitudefan » Sat Dec 08, 2018 4:58 am

WittyUsername wrote:FUNimation seemed awfully wish washy about their use of swear words back in the day. They mostly steered clear of them in the early years of their in house dub, but their dub of movie 7 (which predates the Ultimate Uncut dub) had #13 saying things like “I’m here to kill your ass”. Even when the Ultimate Uncut dub first began, it steered clear of swear words to the point where He’ll as a location wasn’t even referred to by name. But then, all of a sudden, they had Vegeta yelling “Damn you” after Goku blasted him in the eye, and from that point on, we started getting lines like “See you in hell, Cui” and “The crazy bastard actually killed Guldo!”

What’s interesting to note is that despite FUNimation’s hesitance about using swear words in Dragon Ball related dubs back in the day, they had absolutely no problem having characters say everything short of an f-bomb or the c-word for their dub of Yu Yu Hakusho, despite the fact that an edited version of that dub also aired on children’s television. Some of the things they had characters say in that dub would also be more controversial nowadays, such as the r-word, which was used at least three times.
Just FYI, Android 13 also says, to Goku, "..I can't believe the great Goku is catching an ass whipping..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBnvw-6fSmQ
Fair amount of swearing by 13 in Funimation's 2000s dub.
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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Robo4900 » Sat Dec 08, 2018 6:53 am

I don't mind a little swearing, but I don't like how Funi seem to be throwing vulgarity into every sentence they can conceivably fit it into these days. :lol:
Almost feels like some 12-year-old who's just learned what swear words are, and is just throwing them around.

Though, Freeza's exclamations of "Simian bastard!!" are always welcome.
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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by MasenkoHA » Sat Dec 08, 2018 9:10 am

WittyUsername wrote:. Then again, this is the same franchise that has played things like attempted rape for laughs, so what do I know?
This is the children’s franchise where one of the good guys drugged another character in an attempt to feel her up and the wise old mentor is constantly sexually harassing women and trying to grope them and touch them inappropriately. Swearing seems almost quaint in comparison.

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by DrBriefsCat » Sat Dec 08, 2018 1:47 pm

Back in the early days of Funimation's "uncut" releases, they were still going through growing pains and hadn't really become a regular player in anime video market. Like others have noted, Yu Yu Hakusho was their first dub to use swears. That seemed to be their first foray into competing against the likes of ADV, Viz, Bandai, and Pioneer (later Geneon). However, for a long time they were still treating Dragon Ball/Z/GT as more of a mass-market product for TV, judging by the fact they were still replacing the music. By the time they got to Kai, their approach to dubbing the franchise was more line with other anime shows they were distributing.

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Yuli Ban » Sun Dec 09, 2018 12:27 am

Robo4900 wrote:I don't mind a little swearing, but I don't like how Funi seem to be throwing vulgarity into every sentence they can conceivably fit it into these days. :lol:
Almost feels like some 12-year-old who's just learned what swear words are, and is just throwing them around.

Though, Freeza's exclamations of "Simian bastard!!" are always welcome.
I've noticed that as well and I find it hilarious considering Super's reputation as a lighthearted, much more toddler-friendly Dragon Ball series in Japan. Here in the States, Funi's gone out of their way to make it hardcore.
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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by TheBlackPaladin » Sun Dec 09, 2018 1:35 am

Yuli Ban wrote:
Robo4900 wrote:I don't mind a little swearing, but I don't like how Funi seem to be throwing vulgarity into every sentence they can conceivably fit it into these days. :lol:
Almost feels like some 12-year-old who's just learned what swear words are, and is just throwing them around.

Though, Freeza's exclamations of "Simian bastard!!" are always welcome.
I've noticed that as well and I find it hilarious considering Super's reputation as a lighthearted, much more toddler-friendly Dragon Ball series in Japan. Here in the States, Funi's gone out of their way to make it hardcore.
I'm not saying this makes it right, but my guess as to why that is...is because FUNimation has come to understand that there's a bit of a disconnect between Japan's intended demographic and the demographic that actually watches the show over in North America. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have actual statistics and data on this, but anecdotally, the impression that I'm getting is that most North American fans of Dragon Ball today are adults who grew up with it as kids. That's not to say that there aren't any kid fans today, but they seem to be the minority. I mean...look no further than the fact that FUNimation's dub of Dragon Ball Super airs on a time block called "Adult Swim."

Really, I think that works as an explanation towards FUNimation's stance on swearing in Dragon Ball in general. The reason they've started using swear words more often is two-fold:

1) As time has gone on, they've realized that Dragon Ball is a kids show, but not a kiddies show. Barry Watson is quoted in interviews as saying that, even back in FUNimation's earliest days, they were trying to be faithful to the original Japanese version. While many fans nowadays would find that statement laughable, I believe that Barry Watson believes what he said. I think he honestly thought that the dub FUNimation was producing, even back then, was a faithful dub considering what American TV broadcast standards would allow for at the time. Back then, FUNimation was dealing with slooooowwwww communications with Toei, lousy translations, and strict American TV broadcast standards (which is important to note, because at the time, TV was really the main way of releasing a show...this is before "uncut, bilingual DVDs" were even a thing). So, considering all those dilemmas, I have no doubt that he honestly believed he was producing a faithful dub given what he had to work with (and against). Much time has passed since then, and time has afforded FUNimation several benefits that they didn't have before: experience, a deeper understanding of the show, phenomenal translations, near-instant communication with Toei, and the blessing of bilingual, uncut home video releases. All of this allowed them to get more loose with profanity.

2) They seem to be aware that most of the people who still watch Dragon Ball on a regular basis and put money into buying the home video releases--at least in North America--are adults, who grew up with the show as kids. So, it could very well be that they're trying to make their dub with that demographic in mind.

The discrepancy between what's acceptable for children's television in Japan VS what's acceptable for children's television in North America, along with the fact that most loyal fans of Dragon Ball over on this side of the ocean are adults...has created something of a demographic dilemma for FUNimation, and it could very well be that one of their ways of trying to solve that dilemma is to up the swearing in their dub.
A "rather haggard" translation of a line from Future Gohan in DBZ, provided to FUNimation by Toei:
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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Sun Dec 09, 2018 4:25 am

I think the whole "The Show airs on Adult Swim" isnt because the show or its dub are too mature for Kids TV. Sure it may have INNAPROPIATE words which is different from being genuinely mature. This had more to do with Adult Swim being the only channel willing to air anime. But there are millions of kids who watch and enjoy Dragon Ball. For example the Kai airings on The CW did awesome and does fit the bill of what you are saying: A genuinely faithful dubthat's made with The CW's BS&P in mind. I think Super could have thrived as well. I think the swearing was put there on the DVD's to reassure adult fans that they werent going to go the 4Kids way of doing thingsand have a more adult friendly version for them instead. And the swearing is to reassure adults that they arent watching a kids show... even though they are.

With this I'm saying that if A kids channel had gotten DBS it could have been just fine, and be just as successful as it is on Adult Swim.
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90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by TheBlackPaladin » Sun Dec 09, 2018 4:45 am

Cure Dragon 255 wrote:With this I'm saying that if A kids channel had gotten DBS it could have been just fine, and be just as successful as it is on Adult Swim.
Oh, definitely! I'm sure it would have. I didn't mean to suggest that the dub airs on Adult Swim because it was inappropriate for children, I meant that it airs on Adult Swim because...that's the demographic that's interested in Dragon Ball over on this side of the ocean. At least it seems that way. I'm not denying that there are younger, kid fans out there, I simply think they're the minority. Pending the willingness of the TV networks, Super certainly could have aired on any number of networks that cater to a younger audience (Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network, etc.). But where did it end up? Adult Swim.

What I was saying is, I get the impression that FUNimation wanted Super on Adult Swim because they knew that's where the show's primary demographic--adults who watched it as kids--would be most likely to watch it.
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: Funimation and swearing

Post by Cure Dragon 255 » Sun Dec 09, 2018 5:01 am

TheBlackPaladin wrote:
Cure Dragon 255 wrote:With this I'm saying that if A kids channel had gotten DBS it could have been just fine, and be just as successful as it is on Adult Swim.
Oh, definitely! I'm sure it would have. I didn't mean to suggest that the dub airs on Adult Swim because it was inappropriate for children, I meant that it airs on Adult Swim because...that's the demographic that's interested in Dragon Ball over on this side of the ocean. At least it seems that way. I'm not denying that there are younger, kid fans out there, I simply think they're the minority. Pending the willingness of the TV networks, Super certainly could have aired on any number of networks that cater to a younger audience (Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network, etc.). But where did it end up? Adult Swim.

What I was saying is, I get the impression that FUNimation wanted Super on Adult Swim because they knew that's where the show's primary demographic--adults who watched it as kids--would be most likely to watch it.

I think Adult Swim ended with the show becase they are the only ones willing to give it a chance . Other Networks are quite reluctant to even touch anime. But I still mantain that kids are a major Demorgraphic for Dragon Ball, especially in the USA. Its not KIDS that dont watch its EXECUTIVES on kidvid who dont want to give Dragon Ball a chance. Adult Swim is for better or worse the only place they can air it. NO! That wants to air it.
Marz wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:27 pm "Well, the chapter was good, the story was good and so were the fights. But a new transformation, in Dragon Ball? And one that's ugly? This is where we draw the line!!! Jump the Shark moment!!"

This forum is so over-dramatic that it's not even funny.
90sDBZ wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 2:44 pm19 years ago I was rushing home from school to watch DBZ on Cartoon Network, and today I've rushed home from work to watch DBS on Pop. I guess it's true the more things change the more they stay the same. :lol:

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Re: Funimation and swearing

Post by Robo4900 » Sun Dec 09, 2018 10:52 am

Yuli Ban wrote:I've noticed that as well and I find it hilarious considering Super's reputation as a lighthearted, much more toddler-friendly Dragon Ball series in Japan. Here in the States, Funi's gone out of their way to make it hardcore.
Indeed. Rather funny when "making the show hardcore" is something stereotypically associated only with the pre-Kai dubs. :lol:
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