Danfun64 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2019 1:29 amIs the Funi dub shit? Absolutely! Is it worth seeing over the original Japanese or a dub of sufficiently high quality? Certainly not. Is it worth preserving? I think so.
And this right here is the crux of where we disagree. I 1000% agree with your answers to the first two questions there, and have the total diametric opposite answer to your third. Because the FUNi dub is garbage, it deserves no such respectful release and instead deserves to be thrown into the wastebasket of obscurity and be forgotten. Saying that "it deserves a respectful release" is to me almost no different than saying that something like the old G.I. Joe or Masters of the Universe cartoons deserve Criterion releases.
Counterpoint: no it doesn't
in any way deserve or warrant either a respectful release, or any shred of respect in a general sense, or to be remembered as anything other than an absolute embarrassment, a stain on the Dragon Ball name, something that never should have existed in the first place, and a product solely of corporate nepotism.
Danfun64 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2019 1:29 amEven counting the singles, there has never been a release that had all the recaps and NEPs. Not to mention some of the narration Dale Kelly did for the so-called "Cell Games" saga being redubbed by Kyle Herbert even with the singles, and *cringe* Vic Mignogna's performance as Burter in the UUC dub never seeing the light of day after the original broadcasts due to the cancellation of the UUC singles range and the Orange Bricks replacing him with Brice Armstrong.
Counterpoint: who gives a flying fuck about ANY of those people or their shitty performances? They're all just terrible actors across the board (and not even terrible in an endearing or charming way, like actors in a schlocky B movie: just abrasive and irritating), and speaking for myself on this point, I for one have frankly always resented that I had to become in any which way familiar with and know who ANY of those people are in the first place as an incidental byproduct of being a Dragon Ball fan (particularly that much more so with Vic Mignogna now, in light of his whole recent clusterfuck).
Speaking personally here as a fan of the original series since 1992: I shouldn't have EVER had to become familiar with
a single one of those fucking people, and every ounce of my knowledge about the dub actors that I've accrued by sheer fandom osmosis is brain space that I desperately wish I could wipe them completely away from and dedicate instead to something more genuinely worthwhile and productive.
And to the fans who actually DO care about these performances and view them as something worth chronicling, remembering, and examining, my only advice to them is: get a better hobby. Seek out VASTLY better and more worthwhile endeavors to spend your time and mental energy on within the realm of anime (and film & TV as a broader whole). Cause
this fucking putrid garbage? This ain't it.
You're wasting OODLES too much time and brainpower on absolute dogshit that is NOT AT ALL worth it, and could be putting all that effort and attention instead to INFINITELY better use just within the realm of anime
alone, much less broader forms of art and media.
Danfun64 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2019 1:29 amIf nothing else, the original broadcast Funi Z dub, in all its forms (uncut, edited as seen on Toonami, edited as seen on YTV, even including how that one Australian network preserved the eyecatches... including some unique ones at the very beginning of the dub) should be fully preserved as a historical artifact, showing how far Funi has changed (and, in some cases, how far Funi has stayed the same).
Counterpoint: no they DON'T need to be preserved, because they're all a gigantic waste of fucking time. Full-stop.
As far as the Dragon Ball anime goes, the ONLY version that matters in the remote slightest here is the original Japanese broadcasts. The rest of the English dubs are almost across the board embarrassing apocrypha that other than spreading basic awareness of the series in Western territories, have otherwise done nothing but damage to DB's image in those regions as well as forever irrevocably splintering and fracturing the fanbase to the point of complete dysfunction. Western Dragon Ball fandom as a whole has LONG needed to learn to let the fuck go of these versions, ALL of them, and stop giving them so much undue, underserved, and unwaranted levels of exposure, attention, focus, and general importance.
And also counterpoint: FUNi HASN'T actually come all THAT "far" in their handling of Dragon Ball within grand scheme of things. Most of their big strides in "improvement" have basically just been exercises in polishing and spit-shining what is still ultimately the same exact turd at the end of the day. Chronicling and tracing their non-trajectory from "complete shit" to "slightly, vaguely less shit, but still shit" is without question an exercise in total pointless futility. You'd literally be better spending your time doing virtually ANYTHING else instead.
And by the way, the same goes for almost ALL of those other TV-edit dubs: not just for Dragon Ball even, but for children's anime AS A WHOLE.
All of this sentiment that I'm expressing here with regards to Dragon Ball and FUNimation and the level of absurd focus on examining and comparing their dubs:
every bit of it goes just as strongly for the ENTIRE community of folks in broader Western anime fandom - which sadly has been a depressingly LARGE amount of it for WAY too long now - who put most
all of their focus and emphasis on analyzing and obsessing over dogshit dubs of anime that in the vast majority of cases usually tend to be garbage anime themselves (like virtually ANYTHING handled by companies like 4Kids): you guys are simply pissing away FAR too much time, energy, and mental real estate on a subject that is in NO WAY deserving or warranting of them in the absolute slightest.
Anime fandom as a whole in fact would benefit
TREMENDOUSLY from fans as a broader swath spending VASTLY less time and brainpower hyper-analyzing and comparing crappy TV-edit dubs of largely crappy children's anime, and instead diverting all that focus and attention onto actual quality titles that DON'T have any of this dumbfuck baggage associated with them, that aren't artistically and creatively bankrupt to their core, and are genuinely historically, creatively, and artistically important or significant to anime as a medium.
Basically there needs to be FAR less obsessing over the minutia of what kind of dubbing mishaps befell awful merchandising junk like Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon and the like, and INFINITELY MORE actual interest and effort spent analyzing and promoting works of genuine artistic craft and historical significance to the medium of Japanese animation, like the works of Rintaro or Isao Takahata or Satoshi Kon, or
countless other examples.
This whole fandom culture fixation on fans palpably drowning virtually
ALL of their time, energy, and mental real estate in almost
solely the comparing and analysis of which sub-Z level voice actor voiced which dumbass character in which dub of some shit like Bakugan or Beyblade or Sonic X and how THIS shitty performance was MILDLY LESS shitty than this OTHER shitty performance within THIS shitty anime who's sole existence is to sell plastic junk to kids...
...this is the EXACT kind of mind and soul-deadening crap that has long been the sputtering death rattle of worthwhile anime discourse within broader Western anime fandom, and functions as a
large chunk of the reason for why legitimately worthwhile and creatively/historically significant anime titles (which tend to be aimed at actual
adults more times than not in the overwhelming majority of cases) tend to get absolutely buried in obscurity compared to some of the most trite and corporate merch-shilling nonsense trash which have been functioning as the "banner, marquee titles" for anime fandom as a whole for like, most of the past 15+ years now.
Not only is all this "dub comparisons" for all these shitty anime such a gigantic waste of time and energy in and of themselves, its also a gigantic waste of some of the most brightest and thoughtful minds out there in fandom, folks with some
incredible capacity for critical insight for whom we'd
all be MUCH better served seeing them examining and analyzing the rich subtext and craft in genuinely dense works like Kanashimi no Belladonna or Robot Carnival, as opposed to seeing them constantly whiling away years/decades worth of their critical-thinking & writing talents hyper-nitpicking the "merits" (or lack thereof) in whichever terrible dub of whichever vapid sludge that once aired on Kids WB 10 or 20 years ago.
I'm not saying that there's NO such critical writing/analysis of such genuinely important and worthwhile works going on within anime fandom: there absolutely is and has been of course, but they've all unquestionably taken a MASSIVE backseat in visibility and importance compared to the throngs and throngs more foregrounding attention and focus given to all this other meaningless swill. And it really should be the EXACT reverse.
Its been to the point for YEARS, more than a decade and a half now, where there are still SO many anime fans today for whom shit like "which hatchet-job dub of which X or Y 4Kids-esque anime TV series was better or worse and how they compared to X or Y hatchet job dub of X or Y 4Kids-esque anime TV series" has been literally the ENTIRETY of their conception of what anime is as a medium, and what critical discourse about anime encompasses as a whole, and have absolutely NO CLUE
whatsoever that there exists ANY more to anime beyond that type of stuff.
If you've been an anime fan for longer than a decade, and 90% or more of your time and focus within the fanbase has
all been spent grinding away at categorizing and archiving vapid, godawful TV-edit dubs of vapid, godawful children's merchandising anime & manga, and you have literally NEVER heard of who guys like Mamoru Oshii or Kazuo Koike are or have never heard of titles like Barefoot Gen, Labyrinth Tales, or Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths... then you are EXACTLY within the problem that I'm talking about here, and this is EXACTLY the fucking core problem with base-level fandom discourse on anime at a baseline level of creative and historical comprehension within the broader Western/English-speaking fanbase today, and really for the large majority of the 2000s and 2010s.
Its gotten a BIT better in this past decade thanks to more exposure for some of this stuff on certain social media platforms and streaming services: but its still WAY too lopsided and still a significant problem with broader critical engagement and understanding of the medium. The priorities of much of the broader fanbase are still EXACTLY backwards in a great majority of cases and are not to mention
horribly stunted in and stuck on their Toonami/kids' TV-level focus on anime, as if that kind of material functions as the sum total entirety of all that there is to it.
