A question to those who saw the Saban dub long after the fact

[Kakacarrottop]

What was your reaction? Most people who disparage that dub on YouTube seem to be the types who were first exposed to the Orange Brick redub of the first two seasons.

I only saw a few episodes of it prior to 2005, when they were the only game in town, so I would barely count as someone who grew up on it, although its still my favorite dub of the series for various reasons.

I get the feeling that these days most new fans would just lump it in with silly 4kids type dubs, whereas people who were kids in the pre-late 2000s era viewed it as an authentic version of the early episodes.

[omegacwa]

I can't comment on this exactly, as the first Dragon Ball anything I was exposed to was a fan sub of movie 9 I believe.

The first dub I saw was the ocean dub of movie 2. To this day I still think Peter Kelamis is the best english Goku voice. Ian Corlett was pretty good as well. I honestly don't like Sean Schemmel. It's not horrible but not great either. I liked it at first but overtime I've grown to dislike it.

Brian Drummond as Vegeta is great, but his voice does not work after the namek stuff. Either he lost it, or age was not kind to his voice because it just didn't sound right. Plus the maniacal edge doesn't seem appropriate after Namek.

The rest of the ocean cast was solid in my opinion.

Overall I just prefer the Japanese version. The voices sound much more natural to my ears.

[MasenkoHA]

Brian Drummond as Vegeta is great, but his voice does not work after the namek stuff. Either he lost it, or age was not kind to his voice because it just didn't sound right. Plus the maniacal edge doesn't seem appropriate after Namek.

Vegeta was hardly a good person after the Namek arc. The problem is the Saturday Morning cartoon direction doesn’t allow for a whole lot of nuance. Drummond’s Vegeta can do sinister and enraged and cocky but it doesn’t allow him to be pitiful.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The first i saw of the Ocean dub was some time in around 2001 or so when repeats were airing alongside first run broadcasts of FUNi's Z in house dub in the Majin Buu arc on Toonami. Overall i thought it was decent at such a young age and though my introduction to the series was after FUNi started dubbing themselves i did see an ample amount of the 1996 dub while at the same time watching both new broadcasts of the Buu stuff and the original Dragon Ball series when they started dubbing that as well.

I also saw the Ocean/FUNi versions of DBZ movies 1-3 during one of the many times they were broadcast somewhere in that span of time, and that was the first time i'd ever heard the original Kikuchi score after only hearing the Faulconer replacement music prior to seeing those movies' dubs,

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Brian Drummond as Vegeta is great, but his voice does not work after the namek stuff. Either he lost it, or age was not kind to his voice because it just didn't sound right. Plus the maniacal edge doesn't seem appropriate after Namek.

Vegeta was hardly a good person after the Namek arc. The problem is the Saturday Morning cartoon direction doesn’t allow for a whole lot of nuance. Drummond’s Vegeta can do sinister and enraged and cocky but it doesn’t allow him to be pitiful.

I thought Drummond's voice worked good as Vegeta especially during the Saiyan arc when he was an out and out antagonist, though the few bits of clips that i have seen of the Westwood dub when he returned for the later arcs definitely didn't sound nearly as effective. I'd have to go with Sabat's Kai and onward performances because he's gotten the pitiful part when Vegeta is in that position given that he's come a long way with the character as of late especially the former.

Though yes, given the way that the Ocean dub was directed he got the initial villianous character of Vegeta down but it definitely lost that once you get to the much later arcs after he's gradually changed his ways by the time Majin Buu comes along.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I don't know if you'd really count it as 'long after the fact' for me, as I grew up in the era where we still only had that dub for the first chunk of episodes and first three movies for a long time, but I did still come to that dub after having already grown used to the FUNi in-house cast from the late-Freeza arc onwards.

That said, I'm kinda ambivalent towards it nowadays. For the most part, I generally prefer the FUNi voices if we're talking the English dub, because those are the voices that I'm not only the most used to, they're the only cast that, by and large, have gotten to do the entirety of the franchise in English at this point. That said though, I still have a special place in my heart for the original three movies with those casts, since I re-watched those many a time back in the day before we had the re-dubs. For the episodes of the show though, I only ever saw those on occasion during re-runs, so I have almost no nostalgia for the voice cast of characters that were exclusive to that.

There are still a few voices that I greatly prefer to this day in the old dub though, even despite my only passing familiarity with it. I think R. Bruce Elliott is an amazing actor, and probably is the best choice out of FUNi's pool to play Dr. Wheelo, but for whatever reason, he didn't knock it out of the park nearly as well as Ward Perry did. I also greatly prefer their actor for Oolong (whose name I can never remember sadly) because he was the only voice not to do the kind of 'chain-smoking 40-year-old' voice that both of FUNi's in-house takes go for, instead giving us something much closer to Tatsuta's original Japanese performance (a performance that I feel is greatly unappreciated by a lot of fans).

On the other hand, there's a few voices that a ton of people love in the Saban dub that I've just never been a fan of, and I don't think it's even because I'm used to other people in the roles - I just don't really enjoy these takes. The most offending one is Klassen's Krillin, I just...I'm not a fan. In a similar boat with post-villain Vegeta from Drummond.

[Robo4900]

I still consider the Saban dub superior to Funi's redub; both are inaccurate and censored, so in my view, you might as well go for the version with the better performances, that wasn't hastily thrown-together years after the fact in an utterly failed attempt to add extra consistency... Which ends up making things even less consistent, once you get past the redub era...

I saw the Saban dub all the way through when the OBs were out and everything, hell I think Kai had already started airing in Japan by that point even, but the Ocean dubs had always been what was aired on TV here in the UK, so to me, that's always been the definitive Dragon Ball cast.
Ocean had missteps (Ken Morrison's decision to move DB and GT to Blue Water was stupid, even if those actors did pretty well under the circumstances), and Funi did do a couple of castings better (IMO, Funi have always had the best Roshi), but on the whole, the Ocean cast was excellent, and the Saban stuff was done when the production was still given experienced directors, and the time to get the best out of the actors -- I'll always defend the Westwood dub, but the inexperience of many of the directors working on it (not all, of course; it's known Karl Willems did direct some of the Westwood dub), as well as the rushed timescale does show; it's certainly better than what Funi was churning out, but it's also certainly a step down from the Saban and Pionner work Ocean had done.

But...

Putting aside comparison...

The Saban dub is a rather charming piece of work, and a fun little dumb '90s thing that was a lot better than it really had any right to be. And I still look fondly on it.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I still consider the Saban dub superior to Funi's redub; both are inaccurate and censored, so in my view, you might as well go for the version with the better performances, that wasn't hastily thrown-together years after the fact in an utterly failed attempt to add extra consistency... Which ends up making things even less consistent, once you get past the redub era...

I saw the Saban dub all the way through when the OBs were out and everything, hell I think Kai had already started airing in Japan by that point even, but the Ocean dubs had always been what was aired on TV here in the UK, so to me, that's always been the definitive Dragon Ball cast.
Ocean had missteps (Ken Morrison's decision to move DB and GT to Blue Water was stupid, even if those actors did pretty well under the circumstances), and Funi did do a couple of castings better (IMO, Funi have always had the best Roshi), but on the whole, the Ocean cast was excellent, and the Saban stuff was done when the production was still given experienced directors, and the time to get the best out of the actors -- I'll always defend the Westwood dub, but the inexperience of many of the directors working on it (not all, of course; it's known Karl Willems did direct some of the Westwood dub), as well as the rushed timescale does show; it's certainly better than what Funi was churning out, but it's also certainly a step down from the Saban and Pionner work Ocean had done.

But...

Putting aside comparison...

The Saban dub is a rather charming piece of work, and a fun little dumb '90s thing that was a lot better than it really had any right to be. And I still look fondly on it.

Yeah, the FUNi re dub was an inconsistent half baked mess especially with the Orange Bricks because they only part way addressed the problems of their first stab with being their earliest work on dubbing the series in house. They undid all of the visual censorship and splicing/merging together and omission of episodes, but the scripts were the exact same ones used by Ocean and were recycled bad jokes and all. That said, some of the most grevously wrong lines (Your father was a brilliant scientist.etc) were indeed corrected though most were left as is. The 1996 FUNi/Saban/Ocean dub may be an inaccurate, heavily watered down and edited production from that era but at least it can be enjoyed for what it is while the same can't be said for the 2005 Ultimate Uncut versions of the Saiyan and Namek episodes. If i'm going to be watching those particular arcs with FUNi's cast then Kai is my preferred go to form of the series as far as that goes given how far superior it is script and voice wise. That also applies to pretty much most of the rest of the series because i just simply cannot bring myself to watch OG DBZ with the old in house dub, and that's why i exclusively watch it subbed.

[Soppa Saia People]

I also greatly prefer their actor for Oolong (whose name I can never remember sadly) because he was the only voice not to do the kind of 'chain-smoking 40-year-old' voice that both of FUNi's in-house takes go for, instead giving us something much closer to Tatsuta's original Japanese performance (a performance that I feel is greatly unappreciated by a lot of fans).

yeah funi's oolong and yajirobe voices have always felt so weird too me. like, why are they so deep, especially oolong. like yajirobe i sorta get because they were pretty far away from dubbing dragon ball when he was introduced, but still it just feels odd. i really have no idea what's going on with oolong though, lmao.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I also greatly prefer their actor for Oolong (whose name I can never remember sadly) because he was the only voice not to do the kind of 'chain-smoking 40-year-old' voice that both of FUNi's in-house takes go for, instead giving us something much closer to Tatsuta's original Japanese performance (a performance that I feel is greatly unappreciated by a lot of fans).

yeah funi's oolong and yajirobe voices have always felt so weird too me. like, why are they so deep, especially oolong. like yajirobe i sorta get because they were pretty far away from dubbing dragon ball when he was introduced, but still it just feels odd. i really have no idea what's going on with oolong though, lmao.

Yeah, FUNi dub Oolong has a very pronounced Brooklyn accent and it just sounds and always has sounded very weird with both Brad Jackson and Brian Massey's respective takes. I definitely prefer Naoki Tatsuta's performance because it just seems to fit his character way more than the former two.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I don't know if you'd really count it as 'long after the fact' for me, as I grew up in the era where we still only had that dub for the first chunk of episodes and first three movies for a long time, but I did still come to that dub after having already grown used to the FUNi in-house cast from the late-Freeza arc onwards.

That said, I'm kinda ambivalent towards it nowadays. For the most part, I generally prefer the FUNi voices if we're talking the English dub, because those are the voices that I'm not only the most used to, they're the only cast that, by and large, have gotten to do the entirety of the franchise in English at this point. That said though, I still have a special place in my heart for the original three movies with those casts, since I re-watched those many a time back in the day before we had the re-dubs. For the episodes of the show though, I only ever saw those on occasion during re-runs, so I have almost no nostalgia for the voice cast of characters that were exclusive to that.

There are still a few voices that I greatly prefer to this day in the old dub though, even despite my only passing familiarity with it. I think R. Bruce Elliott is an amazing actor, and probably is the best choice out of FUNi's pool to play Dr. Wheelo, but for whatever reason, he didn't knock it out of the park nearly as well as Ward Perry did. I also greatly prefer their actor for Oolong (whose name I can never remember sadly) because he was the only voice not to do the kind of 'chain-smoking 40-year-old' voice that both of FUNi's in-house takes go for, instead giving us something much closer to Tatsuta's original Japanese performance (a performance that I feel is greatly unappreciated by a lot of fans).

On the other hand, there's a few voices that a ton of people love in the Saban dub that I've just never been a fan of, and I don't think it's even because I'm used to other people in the roles - I just don't really enjoy these takes. The most offending one is Klassen's Krillin, I just...I'm not a fan. In a similar boat with post-villain Vegeta from Drummond.

I definitely prefer Sonny Strait's Krillin especially his Kai and onward performance over Klassen, something about the latter's always sounded weird to me even as a little kid and i just never bought his take in the Ocean dub.

[Soppa Saia People]

yeah funi's oolong and yajirobe voices have always felt so weird too me. like, why are they so deep, especially oolong. like yajirobe i sorta get because they were pretty far away from dubbing dragon ball when he was introduced, but still it just feels odd. i really have no idea what's going on with oolong though, lmao.

Yeah, FUNi dub Oolong has a very pronounced Brooklyn accent and it just sounds and always has sounded very weird with both Brad Jackson and Brian Massey's respective takes. I definitely prefer Naoki Tatsuta's performance because it just seems to fit his character way more than the former two.

he sounds like a parody of a sitcom dad or something lmao, it's a really weird direction.

[omegacwa]

I love how because of the Ocean Dub script errors they had to leave stuff like KAO-Ken for the rest of the dub.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I love how because of the Ocean Dub script errors they had to leave stuff like KAO-Ken for the rest of the dub.

There's also Saiyan as it's almost always been pronounced here with the -ay sound rather than -ai like in the Japanese version, it seems that was pretty much ingrained from the beginning of the dub and it has remained to this day. Funny enough, they actually had the correct Kaio-ken pronunciation in Z movie 2 with the Ocean cast then much later on with Kai they finally fixed it in terms of the series.

[MasenkoHA]

I love how because of the Ocean Dub script errors they had to leave stuff like KAO-Ken for the rest of the dub.

Funimation writers. It was always Funimation. Barry Watson was heavily involved in the dub’s direction since day one.

[omegacwa]

I love how because of the Ocean Dub script errors they had to leave stuff like KAO-Ken for the rest of the dub.

Funimation writers. It was always Funimation. Barry Watson was heavily involved in the dub’s direction since day one.

I was speaking specifically of that era, not necessarily putting it on that cast. It happened during the ocean dub era.

And yes, Say-yan as opposed to SAI-YAN. It's funny how KAIO-Ken also got changed to KAYO-ken. Did one of the writers think Sai and Kai were pronounced Say and Kay?

[ABED]

I don't know if that was something from the writers or the directors. There's some overlap.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I love how because of the Ocean Dub script errors they had to leave stuff like KAO-Ken for the rest of the dub.

Funimation writers. It was always Funimation. Barry Watson was heavily involved in the dub’s direction since day one.

I was speaking specifically of that era, not necessarily putting it on that cast. It happened during the ocean dub era.

And yes, Say-yan as opposed to SAI-YAN. It's funny how KAIO-Ken also got changed to KAYO-ken. Did one of the writers think Sai and Kai were pronounced Say and Kay?

The Kaio-ken thing with being pronounced wrong with "-ay" was something i'm really glad that they corrected for Kai, because it seemed so inconsistent why they got it right in those earlier movie dubs then at the same time said it wrong with the series.

[omegacwa]

Funimation writers. It was always Funimation. Barry Watson was heavily involved in the dub’s direction since day one.

I was speaking specifically of that era, not necessarily putting it on that cast. It happened during the ocean dub era.

And yes, Say-yan as opposed to SAI-YAN. It's funny how KAIO-Ken also got changed to KAYO-ken. Did one of the writers think Sai and Kai were pronounced Say and Kay?

The Kaio-ken thing with being pronounced wrong with "-ay" was something i'm really glad that they corrected for Kai, because it seemed so inconsistent why they got it right in those earlier movie dubs then at the same time said it wrong with the series.

I could be wrong here, but I think I remember reading/hearing that those movie dubs were done after the show was dubbed, and with a slightly different group of people in charge. Hence why they are uncut, contain the original score, have accurate scripts, and Peter Kelamis is Goku and not Corlett.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I was speaking specifically of that era, not necessarily putting it on that cast. It happened during the ocean dub era.

And yes, Say-yan as opposed to SAI-YAN. It's funny how KAIO-Ken also got changed to KAYO-ken. Did one of the writers think Sai and Kai were pronounced Say and Kay?

The Kaio-ken thing with being pronounced wrong with "-ay" was something i'm really glad that they corrected for Kai, because it seemed so inconsistent why they got it right in those earlier movie dubs then at the same time said it wrong with the series.

I could be wrong here, but I think I remember reading/hearing that those movie dubs were done after the show was dubbed, and with a slightly different group of people in charge. Hence why they are uncut, contain the original score, have accurate scripts, and Peter Kelamis is Goku and not Corlett.

Yes, FUNi partnered with Pioneer (later Geneon) on the movie 1-3 dubs while Saban had no involvement there at all and thus the scripts were much more accurate to the Japanese versions compared to the series dub combined with those other things. The only exception was when they inserted Tree of Might into the series run as episodes during the Namek arc's run prior to that and said dub had all the usual stuff from the series broadcast including the replacement Shuki Levy/Wasserman score and Corlett as Goku rather than Kelamis like in the uncut home video version as the tv edit of the movie was done prior to Corlett's leaving the role and the latter taking over as Goku.