Aspects of Dragonball Fandom that Piss You Off

[xzero]

I hate two things about DBZ fandom:

1) Dubbies who hate the Japanese version and make ridiculous claims about the inherent superiority of the dub
2) Subbies who are unwilling to acknowledge any positive aspects of the dub

I think we've all heard the claims of group number 1, so I'll jump to group number 2. The Season 2 boxset AUDIO was excellent for the dub. The Japanese music fits well with the voices for the most part, the translation is substantially improved over all previous and subsequent seasons, and as an aspect of the script, a reasonable amount of swearing is present. Again, video notwithstanding, the audio of that boxset was really remarkable, thereby being something the dub did well. Subbies who refuse to acknowledge that the dub did do some things right are just as bad as obsessive dubbies in my opinion.

[MajinVejitaXV]

Let's remember that this is not a Dragon Box thread, a FUNimation season set thread, etc. Thanks!

No, but it's a thread about what people don't like about the fandom. The one topic is bound to raise some mention of the other.

-Corey

[TheGreatness25]

Well is that what the big problem is? That some people prefer the Dragon Box and some are fine with the Season Sets (I haven't seen anyone who would prefer the Sets over the Dragon Box). That's not what it should be all about. DB/Z/GT has not been producing any new episodes in a little over 10 years. TV stations play it very rarely. DBZ fans should get together and who cares which fan prefers what? It should be about respecting each other, respecting each others opinions, and realizing that no matter what aspect we like of it, Dragon Box, Season sets, dub, Japanese, that we are all fans of the same thing. But I guess that's too much to ask.

[Super Sonic]

I'm talking about things like 'Mystic' Gohan, 'Ultra' Super Saiyan, and GT occurring ten years after Z (it's five years, OK? The damn informational book about GT says so).

I don't see the problem with Mystic Gohan or Ultra Super Saiyan. The last point is just outright wrong and should be corrected, but what's the beef with the fan names?

The beef is some people flaunt them like they're big and bad. Though I'm not sure whether it was a fan-name first, but there's one Street Fighter move that sounded like one that Capcom accepted and most folk I know refer to it as such.

[Adamant]

Though I'm not sure whether it was a fan-name first, but there's one Street Fighter move that sounded like one that Capcom accepted and most folk I know refer to it as such.

...this is where you mention the name of said move.

[Super Sonic]

I don't know its Japanese name other than translated into English it means "Instant Hell Murder". Everyone I know, a couple of strategy guides, guys who work at game stores, and even the American Street Fighter cartoon refer to it however as The Raging Demon.

[caejones]

I don't know its Japanese name other than translated into English it means "Instant Hell Murder". Everyone I know, a couple of strategy guides, guys who work at game stores, and even the American Street Fighter cartoon refer to it however as The Raging Demon.

Crap, I know what you're talking about... but don't remember the exact name. But I know where to find out!

... umm.... .. .. .. .. ..

[edit] ... I suppose this is ridiculously off topic... but I dug it up, so I guess I'll post it.

Goutetsu, who invented the arts of Hado, Shoryu, Tatsumaki, and
Shungokusatsu, taught the Shun Goku Satsu (Instant Hell Murder) to both
Akuma and Gouken. Gouken, however, disliked killing and didn't teach it to
Ken or Ryu, instead teaching them a toned down version of Ansatsuken.
Capcom of USA changed the storyline and stated that Goutetsu hid away the
secrets of the Shun Goku Satsu, but that's not true.

What happens during the shungokusatsu is that they go to hell. The
demons in hell will attack the person even if they're sin free or not.
They're demons, they'll go at anything. But with evil characters, their
past sins will also haunt on top of the demons attacking them for that
split second. Gen survives this because he empties his spirit, heart and
mind. "Onore wo mu ni suru". "Mu" means emptiness, nothingness. One of the
reasons why Gouken has the kanji "Mu" on his back. It's really not about
how strong the person is but how tuned and focused they are with their mind
and soul.

The user is in danger during the Shun Goku Satsu, too, if he isn't
prepared. Both the user and the target go to hell. Canonwise, Ryu and
Sakura have never done the Shun Goku Satsu.

... I feel like that was useless. -.-.[/edit]

[Acid_Reign]

I concur.

I concur as well.

Thanks. I'm going to be counting on people's support in the "better treatment" movement.

tl;dr

If you didn't read it, how can you comment on it?

The fans might have some say in how a title is released in the United States, but the final decisions rest with the Japanese licensors. They can mandate changes to the product before it's released in R1.

But the licensors had absolutely nothing to do with all of the changes made here. The only thing they won't do, apparently, is part with the Dragon Box masters. But all of this other stuff: cropping, colors, encoding, etc. were entirely FUNi's decision.

I'm not trying to minimize the Herculean effort (oh, excuse me -- Mr. Satanic effort ) you've done in your quest to get Dragonball released properly in the States. It's just that once again we have some fans that can't see the forest for the trees. You can ask for the most perfect way to have whatever anime series you want in the States. However, you will practically always be at the mercy of the Japanese licensors of the series.

Well, you may not be minimizing it, but you're certainly maximizing the effort when you refer to it as "Herculean." It's tough, yeah, but it'd be a lot easier if people would merely stand up for proper treatment rather than accept improper treatment.

That being said, I'm glad that most stateside anime companies nowadays do take into account fan input for their upcoming anime releases, and that the Japanese are slowly warming up to the fact that maybe, just maybe the fans might be on to something in how anime should be released in R1.

One would think that FUNi would've caught onto this paradigm by now, but unfortunately in their eyes we're all still "nine-year-olds."

Stuck-up original fans. For example, the guy who did the DBZ Uncensored site. Damn funny stuff a lot of the time, and he had good points. Until he went on a rant about Freeza's "no-one's hit me like that since my parents" (or however that line went) because it was ANOTHER CASE OF DA EEVIL FUNI CHANGING CHARACTERS ARGHARGARGHA oh wait that was in the original .

So I take it you've never made a mistake before, right? Or cared enough about anything to vocalize your opinion with passion?

Or when he complained about the editing of the first episode because it began with Raditz crashing to Earth instead of spending half an hour with Gohan in a forest. Huh, I wonder what else starts with Raditz crashing to Earth and does not include Gohan's Forest "Adventures". Oh right, the manga.

Oh please, how audacious can you get, comparing the plethora of senseless edits in the show to the original manga, as if they served to be truer to the source or something. That's just bullshit.

Or when some people think I should drop a couple thousand bucks to get fucking DVDs in a language I don't know and never intend to learn because... uh... it'll allow me to pole-vault with my dick or something.

I don't know who you've been talking to, but I've never witnessed anyone on here tell you directly how to spend your money. Some people are decidedly more dedicated collectors than others. Why take that so personally? It really doesn't affect you at all.

This can be said of DragonBall and a number of other things. People have a certain sense of apathy these days about everything. Healthcare, polotics, the economy, all the way down to entertainment like this show. If people raised hell, or in this case even protested via something as simple as not buying, things might change.

I completely agree. I think in this age it takes a lot more to inspire people to want to do something about legitimate issues, even when these issues already pertain to them. America's attention span has been waning in recent years. You now have to show people exactly what's happening, and tell them what they can do about it for them to actually want to get involved, the same way Al Gore did for the Global Warming issue in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

And, in all honesty, I was happy to do it. I too had wanted to see DragonBall Z finally get the treatment it deserved, and to see FUNimation act like a completely amateur company and drop the ball in such a massive way (as well as lie blatantly about it, my main gripe) pissed me off. I thought that, by giving the facts and representing them in an easy to digest manner, the problem would remedy itself.

I think it would have too, had more people (i.e., outside of DaizEX) actually been aware of the changes.

The end result, being the complete opposite, was nothing short of amazing to me. Maybe I set my standards too high, who knows?

Well, for the people who actually knew the difference, and still went the route of supporting the Season Sets, I think their actions can be ascribed to two cognitive biases, those being hyperbolic discounting (favoring smaller benefits that pay off immediately to larger benefits that pay off eventually), and choice-supportive bias (ascribing positive attributes to the selected option and negative attributes to the unselected option, even if that option is actually preferable).

In this manner, the Season Sets, although flawed, contain more immediate payoffs for most people than the Dragon Boxes or a Dragon Box-esque release, which would only pay off after saving money/finding them and whenever FUNi decides to put out another DVD line, respectively. Afterwards, these people ascribed positive attributes to their choice, even though they would actually prefer the other one.

The sad part? This whole debacle has turning fans against eachother. We all like the same show, but people so desperate to both defend and attack these sets has caused a massive rift. I'm as guilty as anyone (though I do like to think that I remained somewhat on-base with facts to back up my opinions), but seriously...the bullshit people came up with is amazing to me. All born of pure ignorance.

It needn't be this way… which is part of what I'm advocating. We can come together on this, surely. People just need to stop in-fighting and recognize the common goal.

Yeah, I own the DragonBoxes. Big deal. I didn't come into every thread going, "Woo, look what I bought." I came to say, "Here's what I think, and here's something to support that theory." Still, this was almost always taken as offensive by someone which boggles the hell out of me (I'm reminded about the Eddie Izzard joke where the guy is being beaten to death for knowing the word "transvestite" and winning with it in Scrabble).

Yeah, honestly, I've never seen anybody say "I own the Dragon Boxes and you don't! Ha ha!" and yet that's exactly what mention of them is taken to mean by some of those without them. I think the D.Box owners have been very helpful to the community, because they allow others to see and compare the differences between the original and other versions without having to own each and every single one.

I like the series. I like talking about the series. I like knowing things about the series, the same way I know things about cars, firearms, video games, movies and music. It's called a hobby, it's allowed. However, knowledge seems to be the devil these days in the community.

I don't think it's knowledge per se, just maintaining ideas that other people don't want to accept, those being that yes, we can have better releases, and yes, they will take some effort to attain.

In any case, like I said in the beginning, it's nothing new. This is a different chapter with the same overarching theme. In 2000, it was poor QC, erratic schedules and price. Today, it's...everything else.

Agreed, which is what's so tiring about this little dance. In 2008, and after so much trial and error, we shouldn't have to worry about things like this. Even something that wasn't perfect in every single way, but that also didn't have any of the Season Set blunders, would be an acceptable product.

P.S. - CRY FULL ZA MOON!!!!

Oh God… I guess my experience watching that would be akin to a Japanese fan seeing Head Cha La dubbed over with a completely different score: "weird."

You should defiantly start a page or a petition for the Dragon Box footage exposing the crappy quality of the season sets, I’ll be happy to participate. I’ll pawn in every funimation season box and singles that I begrudgingly bought for them. But no their cheap and realistically funimation is never going to do a proper release so we should all just give up and lower our heads. Come on you guys a little cropping here and their, bright colors that rivals the solor flare, some disappearing lines, and a few sperm stains, it's not that bad.

That's exactly what I plan to do, but I have to come up with some webspace first.

Well is that what the big problem is? That some people prefer the Dragon Box and some are fine with the Season Sets (I haven't seen anyone who would prefer the Sets over the Dragon Box). That's not what it should be all about. DB/Z/GT has not been producing any new episodes in a little over 10 years. TV stations play it very rarely. DBZ fans should get together and who cares which fan prefers what? It should be about respecting each other, respecting each others opinions, and realizing that no matter what aspect we like of it, Dragon Box, Season sets, dub, Japanese, that we are all fans of the same thing. But I guess that's too much to ask.

I never much understood the concept of blindly respecting "other's opinions." Which isn't to say I necessarily have a problem with anyone personally just because they like the Season Sets, but I don't respect the opinion itself because I feel it is, as Corey puts it, ignorant. That said, I do think we should be civilized when it comes to these things, and not resort to petty bickering, because our similarities far outweigh our differences, and that's worthy of acknowledgment. But these kinds of arguments are common in any fandom.

[Rocketman]

So I take it you've never made a mistake before, right? Or cared enough about anything to vocalize your opinion with passion?

I generally try to check my facts before I go off on a rant, because one just look silly otherwise.

Oh please, how audacious can you get, comparing the plethora of senseless edits in the show to the original manga, as if they served to be truer to the source or something. That's just bullshit.

He had some blahblah on the site (which seems to have vanished) about how starting with wandering Gohan had some symbolic something or other, because you saw Gohan before anything bad happened and it was thus a better entrance than FUNIMATION :argh: and their jumping to the action and making the series seem like it's from Raditz' point of view.

I don't know who you've been talking to, but I've never witnessed anyone on here tell you directly how to spend your money. Some people are decidedly more dedicated collectors than others. Why take that so personally? It really doesn't affect you at all.

Indeed, which reinforces my first point.

[DemonKingPiccolo]

I'm beginning to think at the very least, you were beaten up by a cosplayer, possibly with weapons that he or she imported from Japan...

I could bearly read this because it's so small, but no, I haven't been beaten up by any cosplayers or (mentioned by some one else earlier that I have since forgotten who it was) am not pissed about not being invited to my neighbor's halloween parties. I just don't see the good in indulging in childish fantasies of impersonating you're favorite characters from any show, cartoon or live-action. It seems to me that cosplay is one of the many reasons that a psychiatrist should be employed to stand by at some of these conventions, but of course, that's just me.

Some one else mentioned a while ago that they're cosplaying doesn't interfere with their ability to pay rent, but then they mentioned that they actually have no job. I'm assuming that if that person is a young teen or kid, then their parents are willing to pay for everything they need in order to become their favorite character, since they'd most likely have no other means of cosplaying then. But if they aren't a young teen or a kid, then what does that say about spending money and time on an obsession? Maybe you should spend the time that you do cosplaying searching for a job. Even though I'm actually not religious, If you're 24 with no job and taking up valuable job-searching time to do this stuff, then god have mercy on your soul.

[Jerseymilk]

Stuff

You obviously didn't read my last post in response to you properly because I for one clearly pointed out that I've never encountered any cosplayers that put it ahead of paying rent. That includes myself by the way, who has been with the same employer for almost 4 years now and they've always given me top marks on my yearly assessments. Please go back and read my post, I believe it's on page 5, before responding with your "oh-so-witty" comments(the sense I get from them is that you really have the "anime fan" version of homophobia). Then I'll take the time to further debate with you on why your views are such a double standard.

[shannarafan]

-I hate the weasels who hang around forums just to talk shit about the series and how they used to like it, before being enlightened by the glory of 'real' anime. Fu-fu-fu-fu fuck off.

-Manga/Anime purists who either ignore or constantly criticize the other and point out how much they prefer certain version and think it's better

-Those who can't mention the Freeza fight and Mr. Satan without expressing mockery and how much they dislike them (OH YES! SO ORIGINAL!)

-Versus/Who's Better threads

-The constant glorification of the Cell saga

And pretty much everything else already said.

[Vekurotto]

-The constant glorification of the Cell saga

I've heard that one actually. I've heard people even calling it the height of the 'Z' series too, which is just bullshit.

[Kendamu]

I hate how dramatic arguments tend to break out in EVERY THREAD EVAR.

[NeptuneKai]

I hate how dramatic arguments tend to break out in EVERY THREAD EVAR.

Who can blame us? Dragonball is serious business.

[Rocketman]

I hate how dramatic arguments tend to break out in EVERY THREAD EVAR.

Better than every thread being a circlejerk.

[Super Sonic]

Stuff

You obviously didn't read my last post in response to you properly because I for one clearly pointed out that I've never encountered any cosplayers that put it ahead of paying rent. That includes myself by the way, who has been with the same employer for almost 4 years now and they've always given me top marks on my yearly assessments. Please go back and read my post, I believe it's on page 5, before responding with your "oh-so-witty" comments(the sense I get from them is that you really have the "anime fan" version of homophobia). Then I'll take the time to further debate with you on why your views are such a double standard.

I agree with you Jersey.

[jjgp1112]

I hate annoying Dragon Box elitists (AKA 85% of this board) that thinks that anyone who buys the Season Set instead of the Dragon Box is an idiot. Can some of you guys pull your heads out of your ass and realize that some of us can't afford the Dragon Boxes, some of us don't feel like learning Japanese, and some of us don't even have multi-regional DVD players. A lot of us who buy the set just want the episodes at an affordable price and don't care about 25% meaningless footage at the top and bottom gone, or how accurate the color looks, or how many lines are present during a shaking scene. So don't get pissy about people "playing into Funi's hands" or "keeping you from getting a proper release by giving them money." You guys have to realize that you Dragon Box buying fans make up only about 25% of the US fanbase, and the other 60 or 70% aren't anal about the picture quality.

[Raki]

I really hate how some fans strawman other users with out of context arguments and quotes.

[MajinVejitaXV]

You guys have to realize that you Dragon Box buying fans make up only about 25% of the US fanbase, and the other 60 or 70% aren't anal about the picture quality.

DaizEX: Where 25% plus "60 or 70%" equals 100%.

-Corey