"Happy" 20th Anniversary of FUNimation's DBZ Season 3 Dub!

[Fionordequester]

I see. If it helps give some perspective, I wasn't actually allowed to watch DBZ as a kid. My folks just happened to have had THIS...



Be their first exposure to DBZ, and decide "nope. Li'l Baby Quester isn't gonna be watching this. Not on our watch".

By the time I was finally old enough, it was already off the air. My exposure to it was actually through video games instead. DBZ Budokai, DZB Legacy of Goku, DBZ Tenkaichi... I fell in love with the series that way. I ate up any new games I could find, since I was still trying to piece together the story.

Of those video games, with their many different soundtracks, I thought Legacy of Goku II & Buu's Fury had the best ones. I never even knew those tracks were the actual, official English dub score till later, so for me, it was a "HOLY S**T" moment, realizing I could listen to high-quality versions of those same tunes !

So for me, DBZ's music was always changing. By the time I finally got to hearing the Japanese OST, it was... Just another OST. Never clicked as the "correct" one, know what I mean?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I see. If it helps give some perspective, I wasn't actually allowed to watch DBZ as a kid. My folks just happened to have had THIS...



Be their first exposure to DBZ, and decide "nope. Li'l Baby Quester isn't gonna be watching this. Not on our watch".

By the time I was finally old enough, it was already off the air. My exposure to it was actually through video games instead. DBZ Budokai, DZB Legacy of Goku, DBZ Tenkaichi... I fell in love with the series that way. I ate up any new games I could find, since I was still trying to piece together the story.

Of those video games, with their many different soundtracks, I thought Legacy of Goku II & Buu's Fury had the best ones. I never even knew those tracks were the actual, official English dub score till later, so for me, it was a "HOLY S**T" moment, realizing I could listen to high-quality versions of those same tunes !

So for me, DBZ's music was always changing. By the time I finally got to hearing the Japanese OST, it was... Just another OST. Never clicked as the "correct" one, know what I mean?

Wow, so your parents thought DBZ was this ultra violent inappropriate show and banned you from seeing it based on that one bit alone. I'm glad mine weren't like that because they didn't really raise a fuss very often about the cartoons i watched on TV and approved of basically most of it...Dragon Ball included.

[MyVisionity]

Yeah I always liked the Faulconer scores. I would play the MP3s regularly and I think I considered buying the official CDs back then. For me the music is the most memorable thing about the in-house dub.

It's not Dragon Ball music, but I thought Faulconer had a great imagination. I appreciated how each character and plot point had its own theme tracks. And they did work the title music into the score from time to time.

I agree though that the Saban era score was overall a superior product.

[coola]

I really like Faulconer music as well, only problem was music placement, there was almost no moments of silence, still, even with that, i will gladly take it over Yamamoto Kai music

And sorry, I'm not that much familiar with anime dubs from that era, instead of passable i should said it was expected, looking at 4Kids/Saban dubs from around that same time, heck, even today when you look at Glitter Force series, Netflix adaptation of Precure, its 4Kids all over again

[TheBlackPaladin]

To lighten up this thread, here are the promos/bumpers that were leading up to and featured the big premiere on Cartoon Network (Toonami):

The "coming soon" promos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnqQo7HhcSA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8LlX155X6I

The "Z-Day" event promo which was when the new episodes actually aired:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YN55vpxm2w

And the actual "Z-Day" event itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9CyXn6NFGE

I am really curious to know how a lot of you here who grew up with the OG Funi dub felt when these new episodes premiered. Was it thrilling because y'all could finally get out of the Saban/Ocean Dub-limbo of those nonstop repeated Saiyan/Namek episodes? Or were you just plain disappointed to hear and see how the in-house dub played out?

I'll answer that question, but before I do, I just have to say...man...I still think that, to this day, OG Toonami had the best promos. I legitimately wish I knew who the creative team was behind the Toonami promo department, because whoever they were, they were simply masters of their craft.

Anyway, to answer your question: was it disappointing to hear new new voices, or thrilling to finally start seeing new episodes?

Both.

I don't mean to answer for everybody, but I'll answer for myself and my other friends of school, all of whom were major DBZ fans. For context, me and my friends were in sixth grade at the time. None of us knew about the fact that it was originally a Japanese show, nor did we know about the controversies surrounding the edits. We didn't even know edits were being made, and assumed that the version we saw on TV was just...how the show originally was. So with that in mind, here were the impressions we walked away with...

• We liked the new music better. This remains true, by the way. I massively prefer the original Kikuchi score above all the other scores, but I still think the Faulconer score was a step up from the Shuki Levy score, which I considered generic and repetitive.

• We thought it was odd that they suddenly felt the need to have blood in the show (again, we didn't know it was being edited), but we thought it was cool.

• We were through-the-roof happy that new episodes were being aired, and the new content was pretty much all we talked about the next day.

• We thought a lot of the lines were corny, but it was the same league of corny as other shows we were watching at the time, so we didn't think much of it.

• We were surprised to hear the voices changed, but didn't do any digging as to why. We judged the new voices according to how similar they sounded to their Ocean counterparts. The more different they were, the more we didn't approve. But it was certainly never gonna stop us from watching more episodes.

• For all the flack FUNimation got/still gets to a degree for having Chris Sabat play so many roles...to be totally honest, neither me nor any of my friends could tell.

Between this and Gundam Wing, which was the first animated show we encountered that didn't talk down to its audience, this was a great era to be a 12/13-year-old!

[DragonBallFoodie]

Happy 20 years to the Funimation dub.

[MasenkoHA]

You know, I get most of the sentiments expressed in this thread. I only have one question...

What's everyone's deal with the music? I thought that, aside from the instruments themselves, it was an improvement in virtually every way! It's my favorite anime soundtrack to date; It's even inspired me to learn how to make music one day!

I just don't get the dislike for the Team Faulconer score ...

It sounds like Optimus Prime is being Mignogna’d by Megatron against a washing machine going on the fritz.


Musical taste is subjective of course but it is remarkable how much tolerable season 3 sounds with the Kikuchi music back in place even with the god awful voice acting and horrendous dialog trying to be funny (because Barry Watson snorted copious amounts of cocaine when he told Chris Neal and/or Terry Klassen that they were funny)

[Dbzfan94]

You know, I get most of the sentiments expressed in this thread. I only have one question...

What's everyone's deal with the music? I thought that, aside from the instruments themselves, it was an improvement in virtually every way! It's my favorite anime soundtrack to date; It's even inspired me to learn how to make music one day!

I just don't get the dislike for the Team Faulconer score ...

Agree 100%. The score is far from perfect, but besides generally always playing I loved it. And still do.