Personal Thoughts on the Ocean Dub

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Anyway, I do think it’s interesting that a fair amount of people prefer Corlett, not because I think Corlett is bad, but because Kelamis is the one who voiced Goku in the Pioneer movie dubs, which have always been held in pretty high regard.

People liked the Pioneer movie dubs because of the faithful scripts and until the remastered sets in 2007 was the only time the English Z dub was paired with the Japanese soundtrack. Kelamis being the Goku for those movies isn’t going to give him in edge.

They're by far my preferred way of watching Z movies 1-3 in every way over the later dubs with FUNi's cast, and definitely the best form to view them in general.

[ABED]

As far as Ian James Corlett vs Peter Kelamis is concerned, the big thing Kelamis has over Corlett would probably be the screams. With that said, Corlett’s voice is definitely more natural sounding overall, but I guess some might argue that Goku should sound weird and wild.

Anyway, I do think it’s interesting that a fair amount of people prefer Corlett, not because I think Corlett is bad, but because Kelamis is the one who voiced Goku in the Pioneer movie dubs, which have always been held in pretty high regard.

The screams is such a shallow reason to prefer one actor over another. And while I agree in essence that Goku should have energy and a little odd (not wild), the performance still needs to be good. Kelamis is over the top, but not in a good way. The Pioneer movies are well dubbed but he stands out in stark contrast to what are otherwise three well acted movies.

I know I'm probably in the minority on this, at least here on the forum, but I'll take even early Schemmel over Kelamis. It bothers me that much.

[8000 Saiyan]

When I think of early Schemmel, I think of his "Oh no!" and "Now you will know the horror Frieza!!!". Sorry, but he was so awful and cringeworthy back then.

On the topic itself, I have a soft spot for the Ocean dub of Z, particularly the dubs of the first three movies. It's just a shame that the Westwood dub didn't have that kind of direction and hired someone like David Kaye to do Cell. I do like Dameon Clarke as Cell, but I think Kaye would have been a lot better and he's one of those few actors that can sound just as delightfully hammy as Norio Wakamoto. Kirby Morrow should have been Trunks, he's a talented actor.

[Metalwario64]

When I think of early Schemmel, I think of his "Oh no!" and "Now you will know the horror Frieza!!!". Sorry, but he was so awful and cringeworthy back then.

You mean the "OHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" When Vegeta takes off before the Ginyu fight? That always gets a laugh out of me.

[8000 Saiyan]

When I think of early Schemmel, I think of his "Oh no!" and "Now you will know the horror Frieza!!!". Sorry, but he was so awful and cringeworthy back then.

You mean the "OHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" When Vegeta takes off before the Ginyu fight? That always gets a laugh out of me.

It's when Vegeta gets shot in the heart by Frieza. His delivery there is so hilarious. Thankfully he has improved even if the scripts often make Goku a little too bright, even in Super from what I've heard.

[MyVisionity]

And while I agree in essence that Goku should have energy and a little odd (not wild), the performance still needs to be good. Kelamis is over the top, but not in a good way.

Does the performance really need to be "good" though? I mean if you have a bad performer who captures the essence of a character, is that somehow worse than a good performer who doesn't? Of course the ideal is to get both, but what if that's not an option?

[ABED]

When I think of early Schemmel, I think of his "Oh no!" and "Now you will know the horror Frieza!!!". Sorry, but he was so awful and cringeworthy back then.

On the topic itself, I have a soft spot for the Ocean dub of Z, particularly the dubs of the first three movies. It's just a shame that the Westwood dub didn't have that kind of direction and hired someone like David Kaye to do Cell. I do like Dameon Clarke as Cell, but I think Kaye would have been a lot better and he's one of those few actors that can sound just as delightfully hammy as Norio Wakamoto. Kirby Morrow should have been Trunks, he's a talented actor.

Yeah, he was, so now you know how little I think of Kelamis's performance.

I'm not an actor and while I have some idea of what a director brings, I have a hard time believing that the director could've played such an important factor in the lack of quality performances out of a seasoned cast, many of which are reprising their roles. Why is it so much worse?

Does the performance really need to be "good" though? I mean if you have a bad performer who captures the essence of a character, is that somehow worse than a good performer who doesn't? Of course the ideal is to get both, but what if that's not an option?

Yes. What does it mean to mean to capture the essence of the character if not delivering a good performance as the character? Otherwise it's just a performance that checks off a few adjectives from a list of traits. If the option is either/or, I'll take the better performance. ANd for the record, Kelamis doesn't capture the essence of Goku.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

When I think of early Schemmel, I think of his "Oh no!" and "Now you will know the horror Frieza!!!". Sorry, but he was so awful and cringeworthy back then.

You mean the "OHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" When Vegeta takes off before the Ginyu fight? That always gets a laugh out of me.

It's when Vegeta gets shot in the heart by Frieza. His delivery there is so hilarious. Thankfully he has improved even if the scripts often make Goku a little too bright, even in Super from what I've heard.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs0nYE21vlI

"What's your problem? He was no threat to you anymore, he couldn't even defend himself." XD

Yeah....it's easy to tell just how far he's come as Goku in 20+ years especially in Kai, the recent movies and video games. His earliest work especially Season 3 was so awkward and monotone sounding.

[8000 Saiyan]

If you want to capture the essence of a character, you HAVE to be a good performer.

Yeah, he was, so now you know how little I think of Kelamis's performance.

I'm not an actor and while I have some idea of what a director brings, I have a hard time believing that the director could've played such an important factor in the lack of quality performances out of a seasoned cast, many of which are reprising their roles. Why is it so much worse?

I was already aware that you think so little of the man's performance.

It was a rushed production. I recall Scott McNeil saying that they went through five or six voice directors, which is the main factor of why it was worse than the Saban dub. Even the guy who directed the dubs of the first three movies was one of the directors. I guess the rushed schedule didn't help matters. At least Drummond and McNeil were trying despite the shoddy direction.

[ABED]

I get the what, I don't understand the why. Why does the director matter so much that professional actors turn in such notably worse performances?

[Robo4900]

I get the what, I don't understand the why. Why does the director matter so much that professional actors turn in such notably worse performances?

First: They're recording alone in the room with only one or two people looking in (a director, and possibly like a producer/co-engineer of some sort. Usually just the director, though), only given their lines, probably they don't even hear the other half of their conversations. It's the director's job to help them understand their motivations, the story up to this point, the situation they're in, help the actor find how their character should feel, etc.
A great actor can still give a really good performance with poor direction (see: Ian McDiarmid hamming it up in the Star Wars prequels, across from Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Liam Neeson giving some very wooden performances in their otherwise highly illustrious careers), but particularly when you can compare their work to when they were under much better direction, for instance how we can compare the early Westwood stuff to the Pioneer stuff, you can really feel the difference, you can really feel how much more tuned into the scene they are in the Pioneer stuff.
(Though I'm fairly sure the direction problems did go away over time; I've heard some accounts saying Karl Willems, director of the Pioneer dub, some of the Saban dub, and Ocean's Kai dub, did direct some parts of the Westwood dub later on. It is known that several directors worked on the Westwood dub; Dale Wilson, voice of Kami and Cell, said he worked with about 2 or 3 different directors on Z)

Second: Dubbing is particularly difficult to get right. To quote an interview with Dale Wilson from December 2002...

Duncan: ADR work is quite stressful due to the fact that you have to bend over backwards for the animation, did you feel that "Dragonball Z" was harder to work on due to the incredible amounts of grunting, screaming, and sweating half naked green cartoon men? Brian Drummond found it very "different" in the beginning of DBZ because the animation is so different to American series, did you feel you had to push yourself for your delivery to match up with the wide open mouths a lot?

Dale: It's most disconcerting to have to do some awkward thing at the end of a sentence because the characters mouth happened to be open... but that's life.
Also, we get paid by the line now so every grunt, scream and such is paid individually. It's a heck of a lot easier to match screams than dialogue... so gimme the screams anytime... you can roar through... as opposed to hitting some line thats all broken up and not in an English style pacing and having to do take after take.
Rather than being stressful, I would call dubbing frustrating and downright annoying sometimes because you really have to sacrifice performance for the damn lip flaps and the locked in pacing thereof. I have heard, and don't quote me on this, that the mouth flaps weren't even necessarily done for the Japanese language, although they seem to fit better.

[...]

Duncan: How do you feel about ADR work compared to prelay, apart from the obvious pay differences, but for a show like DBZ where the focus is mainly on yelling, grunting, screaming, and generally being much more lively than usual? Do you feel more compelled to do your best and do it in one take as you're being paid per line?

Dale: Prelay is infinitely more fun because you're in the studio with all your mates, and we're always fooling around. Sure, we "try" to get ADR lines right the first time, but it usually doesn't happen because we haven't seen the flaps... the grunting... the screaming, and so forth. Prelay goes a lot faster for the most part.

As he notes here, it will often take at least a couple of takes to get a line to fit the flaps, and they have to work with the director and try to get a delivery that'll work with the flaps. With Funi's poor scripts, and a lot of inexperienced directors working on the show -- particularly during the Androids/Cell stuff -- that will often make for some very unnatural deliveries.

Third: Casting directors are also a key thing. Someone like Kirby Morrow is a good actor, but if he's given the wrong idea of a character, he won't give a great take of that character as we know them; and sometimes that'll end up leading to them being cast anyway, in a role they arguably don't fit all that great in.
You can, again, see how this improved over the run; early castings like Alistair Abell as Trunks, Terry Klassen as Roshi, or the really weird take they directed Scott McNeil to try with #16 (which he eventually completely changed sometime before the Cell Games, into something still quite unnatural and weird, but not quite as much as his early take), were all poor decisions. But then you have Moneca Stori as Videl, Brad Swaile as Gohan, Scott McNeil's fat Boo, Brian Dobson's evil/super/kid Boo, etc., which are all really great castings.

Fourth & ffith: The direction wasn't the only problem with the Westwood dub, but people also massively overstate the problems of the Westwood dub. 50% of its issues are just in the super-early episodes, when these actors hadn't played these characters in about 3-4 years, and due to the rushed schedule, weren't exactly in the best circumstances to sink back into the roles.
That, and... Well, really the main problem with the Westwood dub was always the schedule. The poor direction was an issue, particularly in regards to casting, and re-introducing the actors into roles they hadn't touched in a few years, but the main problem was the rush they were under; the rush was the reason why they used recycled music which was pretty repetitive until they incorporated the Monster Rancher music in the Boo arc (aided further when they started incorporating original music), and it also meant they had to record really fast, and it lead them to not have time to try to schedule Peter Kelamis when he was unavailable to record after a recording break for a little while, so they had to recast him...

I do think the Westwood dub gets an undeservedly bad rep, but it does have clear problems compared to the Pioneer dub, and other work they've done under more ideal circumstances. Particularly early on, directorial problems, the rush, and the actors not quite being back in the groove of their roles yet were all big problems that -- while I do consider it superior to Funi's effort -- renders Ocean's work on the Androids/Cell storyline somewhat gimped compared to what they could have achieved.
But honestly, I think most of the criticism is either people expecting more of what the Saban dub gave, and criticising it by comparison to that, or similarly, the nonsense of "this is different from the funi dub i like so it sucks and ocean sucks and also bang zoom sucks #schemmelIsTheOnlyGoku"

I went a lot of places there, but I think I answered your question okay somewhere in there.

[MasenkoHA]

Again, the Westwood dub wasn’t any worse that the Funi dub just different

Professional voice actors giving spotty performances due to a rushed schedule and rotating voice directors vs nobodies hired off the street and paid in cigarettes

Goofy cartoon music vs fauxcore techno rock music



If I were to compare the Westwood dub to anything it would be the latter seasons of the old Sailor Moon dub that aired on Toonami where even the veteran actors from the syndicated years turned in noticeably worse performances because of a rushed schedule and allegedly the voice director for those episodes spoke little English.

[ABED]

I know the job of a director but can actors not get motivation from the text? I guess not being able to play against another actor is a factor I didn't think of, though. The schedule makes sense, and I honestly feel like that's the biggest issue.

Side note, I don't agree that Sam Jackson and Neeson give wooden performances. I think they are two of VERY few who actually give good performances in the prequels. I think much of the problem came from the bad writing and poor dialog.

Also, Morrow may be a good actor but he was ill cast as Goku. His performance is bland and lacks energy. No amount of direction is gonna change that.

[Robo4900]

I know the job of a director but can actors not get motivation from the text? I guess not being able to play against another actor is a factor I didn't think of, though. The schedule makes sense, and I honestly feel like that's the biggest issue.

Side note, I don't agree that Sam Jackson and Neeson give wooden performances. I think they are two of VERY few who actually give good performances in the prequels.

Also, Morrow may be a good actor but he was ill cast as Goku. His performance is bland and lacks energy. No amount of direction is gonna change that.

Fair enough about those two in the prequels. I'd love to get into that with you, but as I recall, we both made fools of ourselves last time we did that, so I'll leave it at that.

You misunderstand about Morrow; yes, he was a poor casting as Goku, but my point was that the casting director probably went in with a particular idea that Morrow was a good fit for. Watch his Goku, and you'll find that, while he's not the Goku we know and love from the Japanese version or even from the other English Gokus, he does still give a somewhat distinct performance, sort of framing Goku as more of a straightman than we've ever seen him -- he's got a wisdom to him, he's very relaxed... I get the sense his take was HEAVILY influenced by the material they were covering when he started -- the pre-Cell Games calm period. He's a spiritually-balanced father/husband who's chilling out in what might be the last days of his life.
Again, he's not the Goku we know, but much like Pauline Newstone's Freeza, he's a good casting for an entirely wrong take on the character. That's my view on it.

I can build off this from what you say about motivation in the text -- think about what they read in these scripts. Abell's Trunks, for instance, reads his character musing in an almost Shakespearian manner, about the tragedies he's witnessing and trying to prevent, and without the proper context of "You're a teenager who's ansty because your dad, best friend/mentor, and all your mum's friends are dead thanks to some cyborgs who kicked your ass last time you met them", he ended up going with a take that feels like someone in his mid-late 20s whose tragic life makes him feel like a very old soul, his past weighing heavily on him...
Then his delivery was probably somewhat dragged down by the difficulty of matching the lip flaps, and the director -- in the rush -- just going "Yep, that fit the flaps, let's move on" without giving him the feedback of "Okay, we've finally fit the flaps, but you've lost your energy, put more feeling here, remember this thing going on, and try another read" or something.
So, it all adds up to a good actor giving an odd performance, and some very unnatural/bad reads.
Meanwhile, take a look at his work in the End Of Z stuff; he has a much more youthful sound, he's got a lot of energy, his delivery is much more natural, etc. There used to be a great clip of this on YouTube, but it appears to be gone. Ultimately, this better take does give the feeling that he sounds too old for the character, so he is miscast, but it's kind of too late by then. And to his credit, he does take a good swing for his brief appearance in those late episodes.

Again, the Westwood dub wasn’t any worse that the Funi dub just different
Professional voice actors giving spotty performances due to a rushed schedule and rotating voice directors vs nobodies hired off the street and paid in cigarettes
Goofy cartoon music vs fauxcore techno rock music
If I were to compare the Westwood dub to anything it would be the latter seasons of the old Sailor Moon dub that aired on Toonami where even the veteran actors from the syndicated years turned in noticeably worse performances because of a rushed schedule and allegedly the voice director for those episodes spoke little English.

I kind of agree. Though I would honestly say that the Westwood dub was consistently better than Funi's in terms of the performances. Both were marred by inconsistent direction from inexperienced directors, but Ocean had experienced actors on their side, and there's also one factor for me personally, which is that I find the Westwood score has an atmospheric quality to it most of the time, which lets the performances breathe more, and gives a tone closer to the original Japanese version. Whereas Funi's is ALL INTENSE ALL THE TIME, and... Well, I get the feeling the overbearing Faulconer score is sort of trying to make up for the wooden performances in Funi's dub.

But honestly, I do think it comes down to the simple thing that they are just different. I would always recommend Ocean's dub over Funi's, because the performances are better, and it's a generally more professional production even though it's rushed and iffily-directed... But I guess I would say that, as an Ocean fan. And ultimately, it doesn't really matter which version you prefer. Really, I think the important thing is to try to get an appreciation for the other guys if you're a fan of one.
And to their credit, much as I do criticise Funi's dubs, I do try to approach it from a constructive angle, and particularly, I find it useful and insightful to look at what Funi got wrong as a way to highlight how they got better over the years, even if I still have my gripes with their current production.
I just hope Ocean's Kai dub airs and does well enough to let them do TFC, Super, etc. so they get their second big swing at the franchise like the Funi cast did, and we can look at how they improved too, and enjoy looking at how the two casts' takes differ.

Anyway, I'm still reading through that Dale Wilson interview right now, actually, and I saw something quite fun that I think is quite prudent for this thread:

Duncan: Today I saw some of the earlier Cell episodes, the dialogue is... Not too great at points, were there any lines you felt you simply had to change, or did you enjoy being the "Pantomine Villain", so to speak?

Dale: We don't usually have the luxury of being allowed to change the lines. We're constrained by time and the fact that the damn flaps are what they are. Mostly we try and not worry too much about the dialogue as such... it is after all just a cartoon.

As Dale Wilson says here, it is just a cartoon. It's for fun. So enjoy it.

... But really, I made this post because I wanted to share this gem of a piece of trivia (read it keeping in mind that the interview subject, Dale Wilson, is the voice of Cell in Ocean's dub, and he's a long-time best buddy of Dameon Clarke, Funi's voice of Cell):

Duncan: You are linked to Dameon Clarke in a strange sort of way, do you find this as much of an incredible coincidence as I do? Or does stuff like this happen all the time and we simply don't know about it?

Dale: No, this is just a very funny coincidence! Also, since they were always a couple of eps ahead of us, Dameon would call me and give me a "heads up" on the fact that a voice/character change was coming up, so I'd have a chance to dig into my rich trove of voices and find something before I went in.

Isn't that delightful?

I just wish the fans of Ocean's and Funi's dubs were as friendly with each other and about each other's favoured versions of the show as the actors are. I guess I could be doing better at trying for this from the Ocean fan side, though.

[Metalwario64]

I've been wanting to check out the Westwood dub for years now. I've only seen a few clips, and was first made aware of it in like... 2002 on some Geocities page that had a clip of the Buu-arc tournament where Vegeta says he knows garden gnomes stronger than Mr. Satan, and was confused why it was the "old" voices, and wondered if they continued uninterrupted elsewhere in the world. Of course, I've since, years ago learned that they didn't start with the Westwood dub until the Android arc.

I still don't remember exactly what the deal was with it. Didn't some countries keep switching back and forth between FUNimation's dub and the Westwood dub, around the fusion stuff or something?

[Robo4900]

I still don't remember exactly what the deal was with it. Didn't some countries keep switching back and forth between FUNimation's dub and the Westwood dub, around the fusion stuff or something?

I'm gonna use TV numbering here; convert as necessary (episode 53 is half-way through uncut episode 67, and everything from TV #66 onwards lines up exactly with an uncut episode, you just add 15 to get uncut numbering).

All countries that aired the show in English aired the Funi/Saban/Vancouver dub of episodes 1-53, then Funimation's in-house dub of episodes 54-107.
The USA, Australia, and Canada continued on to air Funi's in-house dub of episodes 108-167.
And the USA and Australia continued on past that, and stuck with Funimation forever.

The UK, Holland, and possibly some other territories in Europe, picked up a dub produced by Westwood Media, which was done in association with the Ocean Group, and used the Vancouver cast Funi had previously used with Saban. They did this starting from episode 108 of Z.
Canada picked up Westwood Media's dub starting from episode 168.

The UK briefly switched to Funi's in-house dub for the first airing of the Fusion Saga (or possibly just the first few episodes of it), but switched back to Ocean's dub for all following episodes, and all repeats of the Fusion episodes used the Ocean version.

Naturally, everywhere that used the Westwood Media dub would experience a cast change for GT that would persist into DB, since Ocean moved the recording to Calgary for those shows. Then the UK got the Big Green dub of Z movies 1-9, the two Z TV specials, the original three OG DB movies, and the GT TV special.

Any and all reports that the Funi and Westwood dubs tended to switch around are just people conflating memories weirdly, reading online accounts of those conflated memories and realising they remember similar, and no one rectifying it all. The truth is, most likely the Fusion saga as well as reairings of episodes 54-107 throws some people off.

This information isn't exactly obscure if you look around it's just become distorted with time among the wider fandom as the more dedicated fans who watched the Ocean version in their respective countries ended up falling out of the fandom, and all the old fansites like UKDB, which used to document this stuff, disappeared. Dark-Vegeta-Sama could probably talk about this better than I can, but he's not been online for a few months (wish he'd sign on, though; I'd like to pick his brain about some of this stuff!).

[TheGreatness25]

I know the job of a director but can actors not get motivation from the text? I guess not being able to play against another actor is a factor I didn't think of, though. The schedule makes sense, and I honestly feel like that's the biggest issue.

From what I understand, the process is much different today than in the past. Today, they can hear the Japanese audio to hear the original actor's delivery and they can see the scene. From what I understand, back in the day, they just had text... mind you, without context (just a bunch of their character's lines). They also didn't record in order. Thus, it was the director's job to tell them, "You're angry, you're sad, you're happy, you're out-of-breath," etc. That's why so much fell on the director -- he or she had to paint the entire picture so that the actor would know how to properly deliver the lines. It was also their job to say, "Let's try that again," instead of just accepting a subpar line delivery.

It's also the director's job (sometimes... I don't want to blame this solely on the director) to be on top of pronunciation. So, "Kay-Oh-Ken," "Say-an," "Kame-ya-me-ya," "Dr. Jyro," etc. might've been the director's decision. They also sometimes have leeway in fixing up a line to either make it sound more natural, fit the mouth flaps, etc. Again, I don't know how much these decisions were made by the director or whether they were a Funimation or even Toei initiative, but usually, the director has those responsibilities. Basically, it's their job to make sure they don't accept something less than perfect from the actors. So if you hear terrible line delivery, just know that the director OKed it.

To really get a picture of a consistent director versus a debacle, you can compare the Ocean cast's performance in the early episodes of Z and contrast their delivery, etc. in the later parts of the series. Although, apparently Barry Watson wasn't a bed of roses either.

[Robo4900]

I know the job of a director but can actors not get motivation from the text? I guess not being able to play against another actor is a factor I didn't think of, though. The schedule makes sense, and I honestly feel like that's the biggest issue.

From what I understand, the process is much different today than in the past. Today, they can hear the Japanese audio to hear the original actor's delivery and they can see the scene. From what I understand, back in the day, they just had text... mind you, without context (just a bunch of their character's lines). They also didn't record in order. Thus, it was the director's job to tell them, "You're angry, you're sad, you're happy, you're out-of-breath," etc. That's why so much fell on the director -- he or she had to paint the entire picture so that the actor would know how to properly deliver the lines. It was also their job to say, "Let's try that again," instead of just accepting a subpar line delivery.

To really get a picture of a consistent director versus a debacle, you can compare the Ocean cast's performance in the early episodes of Z and contrast their delivery, etc. in the later parts of the series. Although, apparently Barry Watson wasn't a bed of roses either.

In the Saban days, at the very least, the actors DEFINITELY heard the original Japanese to reference for delivery, emotion, etc. Funi's in-house actors definitely didn't hear the Japanese side until they were working on Budokai 1, but the Vancouver actors heard the original. And generally, the way they tell it, they recorded their lines in order, generally they'd go through an episode or two (or three or four on a really fast-working day), do all their lines in one go (sometimes they'd make a note of any screams and go back and do those last), and then go home. But they wouldn't hear any of the other actors, they wouldn't have any context for their own lines (all they were given was their own lines), so the director still had a pretty big job on their hands.

As for early vs late Z in the Vancouver cast; better to compare their work in the late Saban run to the early Westwood run. By the time they got into the later stuff, they sorted a lot of the kinks out; their work on the Boo arc was mostly pretty great. It's just the Cell arc, particularly the early stuff, where they had trouble.

[TheGreatness25]

I could've sworn that I've heard both Brian Drummond and Peter Kelamis say that they didn't record in order and am almost 100% that at least Drummond said that he had no idea what Vegeta even looked like until the series aired, which is why his early voice was so high.

Well, in either event, the director has a lot to do with it lol

[Arteaga4K]

My only memories of that dub are the first 53 episodes. Having said that, the funimation cast is what I started with so any other english dub is going to be a little weird to me personally, but I do love Piccolo and Vegeta's voices. My biggest gripe though is the heavy censorship