Are There Any Updates On The Harmony Gold Dub Of Dragon Ball?

[VDenter]

As much as I hate FUNimation, HG still having the license would probably mean no uncut Japanese version on home release in North America, ever, and even further changed dub names would be prevalent today.

"Who's Son Goku?

"The Japanese name for Zero!"

"You call him Goku? You're such a weeb. Zero is American and Badass sounding!".

I certainly don't want to live in that timeline.

Same. Sucks because my first impressions of HG is that the voices for the characters are better overall than FUNI.

[eledoremassis02]

As much as I hate FUNimation, HG still having the license would probably mean no uncut Japanese version on home release in North America, ever, and even further changed dub names would be prevalent today.

"Who's Son Goku?

"The Japanese name for Zero!"

"You call him Goku? You're such a weeb. Zero is American and Badass sounding!".

I certainly don't want to live in that timeline.

Same. Sucks because my first impressions of HG is that the voices for the characters are better overall than FUNI.

I'm not sure. I dont think itd be that much different from falconer vs kikuchi or hurcule vs satan and the stigma with the japanese voices has died a lot due to streaming super.

Whats intesting is if Viz would have used the all the dub names and if popo would of ended up getting censored in the dub? Plus I'm sure people would still be importing/downloading foreign releases as many would agree FUNi's releasea lack regardless.

But imagine in NA the only way to get mostly uncensored DBZ would be thru the manga (as is kinda was for early Z and Dragon Ball) and how would Kai of been handled?

[CuppaKofe]

I'm really liking Wendie Lee's Bulma! Goku's voice is great too, but I really dislike how the script turned him into a brat with a big ego. Still this is very historic, I'm looking forward to seeing if the rest of the HG episodes surface as well!

Also, I know Dragon Ball would have had enough episodes to meet American syndication requirements, but remembering the Robotech debacle got me thinking of what other Shonen anime HG could have been theoretically mashed into Dragon Ball. Saint Seiya would have been a hilarious mashup.

"Zero, you are actually a Greek space warrior!"

[Planetnamek]

I think if Harmony Gold's dub did kick off and became popular, I feel like today's fandom would be very different. The dub vs. sub wars would be like "Stop calling him Goku. His name is Zero!!!". It's also possible that Harmony Gold would never allow the series to get any subtitle release and would probably be sitting on the IP like they are with Marcoss.

Yeah I just saw that Youtube video about the situation with HG and Macross, really unfortunate and sad stuff.

Part of me wonders how different Sailor Moon fandom would be if that Toonmakers show had actually come out and been succesful.

If that Toonmakers Americanized version of Sailor Moon from '93/'94 had been released on TV and somehow caught on, i don't know if the original SM anime would've eventually come out over here of if the franchise would have nearly as much presence had it failed in ratings or something. Of course, it ultimately ended up being passed on so the anime proper subsequently got picked up and dubbed by DiC for distribution in mid 1995 (also around the same time FUNi did the syndicated run of DB episodes 1-13) and the rest is history from there. Still though, one has to wonder how different Dragon Ball would be if HG's dub had actually panned out back in '89. In a way, the BS crap that has happened regarding their continuous sitting on and copyright trolling of the Macross/Robotech license and endless extensions to continue on with said squandering makes me glad that FUNimation were the ones to ultimately get a hold of it in spite of the questionable things they've done over the years in terms of localizing the series.

Speaking of which, i have no clue how Harmony Gold is even still an operational entity at this point because i had thought they went under years ago but it seems apparently to not be the case.

I too thought HG had gone under years ago, I was especially surprised to hear that Toonmakers were still alive, learned that from this article:https://kotaku.com/we-tried-to-uncover- ... 1827695456

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Yeah I just saw that Youtube video about the situation with HG and Macross, really unfortunate and sad stuff.

Part of me wonders how different Sailor Moon fandom would be if that Toonmakers show had actually come out and been succesful.

If that Toonmakers Americanized version of Sailor Moon from '93/'94 had been released on TV and somehow caught on, i don't know if the original SM anime would've eventually come out over here of if the franchise would have nearly as much presence had it failed in ratings or something. Of course, it ultimately ended up being passed on so the anime proper subsequently got picked up and dubbed by DiC for distribution in mid 1995 (also around the same time FUNi did the syndicated run of DB episodes 1-13) and the rest is history from there. Still though, one has to wonder how different Dragon Ball would be if HG's dub had actually panned out back in '89. In a way, the BS crap that has happened regarding their continuous sitting on and copyright trolling of the Macross/Robotech license and endless extensions to continue on with said squandering makes me glad that FUNimation were the ones to ultimately get a hold of it in spite of the questionable things they've done over the years in terms of localizing the series.

Speaking of which, i have no clue how Harmony Gold is even still an operational entity at this point because i had thought they went under years ago but it seems apparently to not be the case.

I too thought HG had gone under years ago, I was especially surprised to hear that Toonmakers were still alive, learned that from this article:https://kotaku.com/we-tried-to-uncover- ... 1827695456

The bits i have seen from the pilot especially the animated segments were just...wow. The cel of Serena/Usagi from the article in particular reminded me more of the type of design you would see on one of the Filmation or Sunbow produced weekday cartoons in the '80s (He-Man/She-Ra, Jem and the Holograms.etc) and really looks the part of a low budget production. Interesting to hear the guy who had a hand in trying to shop around the Toonmakers pilot mention about how even when others like Fox and Saban were on board with it Toei had basically voted no by way of having already licensed the original anime to be dubbed for weekday TV syndication by DiC and his disappointment over said events. It's also very interesting to hear about them trying to resurrect it several years later as an all live action under a completely different name

[Planetnamek]

I'm really liking Wendie Lee's Bulma! Goku's voice is great too, but I really dislike how the script turned him into a brat with a big ego. Still this is very historic, I'm looking forward to seeing if the rest of the HG episodes surface as well!

Also, I know Dragon Ball would have had enough episodes to meet American syndication requirements, but remembering the Robotech debacle got me thinking of what other Shonen anime HG could have been theoretically mashed into Dragon Ball. Saint Seiya would have been a hilarious mashup.

"Zero, you are actually a Greek space warrior!"

Speaking of Seiya, DiC's English dub of that show-Knights of the Zodiac(BTW France actually used that title before DiC did, on a sidenote I always liked KOTZ better as a title than SS, as the latter kind of unfairly sidelines the rest of the Bronze Knights who do just as much as Seiya does) is starting to fall into obscurity also, while it was fortunate enough to get DVD releases by ADV Kids, only 32 out of 40 dubbed episodes(For some reason DiC only licensed 40 out of 114 episodes for them to dub and ADV only licensed 60 episodes for their own uncut in-house straight-to-video dub) ever aired in the U.S. and got DVD releases(and volumes 7 and 8 are so incredibly rare that i've never seen one for sale on Ebay or Amazon since i've started looking for them about a year ago, and some volumes like 3 command ridiculous prices in the range of hundreds of dollars, I was insanely lucky to find a reasonably priced one for 20 bucks on Amazon), the remaining eight episodes only ever aired on YTV in Canada(with the last four only ever airing once, though I did hear that DiC's version may have also aired in Australia and given that the dub got it's own DVD releases over there that's entirely possible).

So with Toei not wanting anything to do with that dub and with ADV basically dead, i've been making my own efforts to preserve that dub by uploading episodes onto Archive.org(since I hear Toei quickly takes them down from Youtube)from the DVDs. So far i've done volumes 1-4(and 5 and 6 are both on the way) I won't directly link them here for obvious reasons, but if you are curious my account on there is Darkrage6, just google the name along with Internet Archive and you'll find em (I also uploaded a couple of super-rare films that only ever came out on VHS if anyone cares about that)

It really is a damn shame that SS never made it big here in the U.S. and you can blame Cartoon Network for that for a number of reasons(and also Toei for taking so long to find someone to dub the show in the first place as it was showing it's age in 2003, plus by that point shows that were heavily inspired by SS like Ronin had been dubbed for nearly a decade by that point with it getting big ratings on Toonami, causing some to unfairly assume SS was a rip-off of Ronin) first off instead of putting the show on Toonami they put it on their very short-lived SVES(Saturday Video Entertainment System, it was a video-game themed block as the NES like acronym suggests and it was every bit as ill-conceived as it sounds, no wonder it only lasted slightly over a year) block which was nowhere near as popular as Toonami, despite KOTZ getting a nice prime-time slot at 7 PM it's ratings weren't nearly as good compared to Sailor Moon(SS often being called a male version of SM is no doubt why DiC was interested in dubbing it, cause they were hoping for lightning to strike twice) because of SVES's aforementioned lack of viewers, so then CN made things worse by banishing KOTZ to the graveyard slot of 12:30 AM after only nine episodes had aired, ensuring the rest wouldn't see the light of day in the U.S.

As for the quality of the DiC dub itself, it's actually surprisingly good, the way I heard some people talk about that dub you'd think it was as bad as 4Kids One Piece dub when in reality it's far from that bad, it's more comparable to the Ocean dub of DBZ as while it does have some censorship(though less then I was expecting as there is still quite a bit of fighting left intact) it's has FAR better voice-acting then ADV's uncut dub and compared to DiC's dub of Sailor Moon it makes more of an effort to stay true to the original by keeping characters original names, characterizations and not trying to hide the fact that the show takes place in Japan. How bad was ADV's uncut dub? Well if you thought Funimation's in-house VAs sounded stiff and awkward when they first started out, then hoo boy you ain't seen nothing yet Seriously most of the VAs for ADV's dub sounded like they were hired right off the street. It was so bad it was painful for me to watch, honestly i'm glad they only did 60 episodes because I couldn't take any more of those awful wooden voices.

Sorry for the tangent but i've been aching for an excuse to talk about KOTZ

P.S. if any Canadian(or Aussie) members on here have episodes of KOTZ recorded, that would be really super!

[Valerius Dover]

^You probably know, but I've heard Saint Seiya has a THIRD dub now, which has already gone up to 73 episodes so far.

Anyways, pretty awesome that these HG episodes are turning up. I wonder something, though. How do know how many episodes were dubbed and aired? Everyone seems to throw around 5 as the most common number but are there any credible sources for this?

[Planetnamek]

^You probably know, but I've heard Saint Seiya has a THIRD dub now, which has already gone up to 73 episodes so far.

Anyways, pretty awesome that these HG episodes are turning up. I wonder something, though. How do know how many episodes were dubbed and aired? Everyone seems to throw around 5 as the most common number but are there any credible sources for this?

Is that the one that's on Netflix? I'll have to check that out, hopefully the voice-acting has improved since last time.

According to that big thread I linked, it's possible there may be as many as 60 dubbed HG episodes that were made(if that interview with one of the folks that did the Spanish dub is any indication) 5 is just the most commonly cited number by those that watched the show when it aired and those that worked on it so it's pretty safe to say that's how many episodes aired.

[CuppaKofe]

^You probably know, but I've heard Saint Seiya has a THIRD dub now, which has already gone up to 73 episodes so far.

Anyways, pretty awesome that these HG episodes are turning up. I wonder something, though. How do know how many episodes were dubbed and aired? Everyone seems to throw around 5 as the most common number but are there any credible sources for this?

Is that the one that's on Netflix? I'll have to check that out, hopefully the voice-acting has improved since last time.

According to that big thread I linked, it's possible there may be as many as 60 dubbed HG episodes that were made(if that interview with one of the folks that did the Spanish dub is any indication) 5 is just the most commonly cited number by those that watched the show when it aired and those that worked on it so it's pretty safe to say that's how many episodes aired.

(Thanks for your service on the KotZ front, I have fond memories of watching that on YTV!)

Hmm, I think it's commonly known that there was at least 60 translated scripts made, but I'm not sure if there is a source on the amount of episodes with finished dubs. Just the 5 that were aired, like you said. It'd be very interesting if there were dubbed episodes that went unaired, but assuming HG gave funimation the masters, Funimation likely wants to bury that shit.

[Danfun64]

Somehow I doubt HG dubbed more than the double feature and the five episodes. The Latino Spanish "Zero y El Dragon Magico" dub lacked M/E (Music and sound Effects) masters for the episodes HG dubbed. Instead, it would mute the English audio and either play stock music or loop audio where characters aren't talking. So the Latino Spanish dialogue was spoken over the stock music/looping audio while shouts/yells etc were from the HG actors. So basically what Speedy Video did with DBZ movies 9-10 and (ironically) DB Movie 3 with either the Japanese audio or the Cantonese dub(?)... and to a lesser extent that obscure French dub that covered Funi's World of Dragon Ball Z special and DBZ ep 124-125 (uncut numbering), which took the English audio and just muted it whenever someone needed to talk.

After the first few episodes of Zero's 60 episode run passed, the remaining episodes were able to use proper M/E masters and were AFAIK uncut.

[CuppaKofe]

Somehow I doubt HG dubbed more than the double feature and the five episodes. The Latino Spanish "Zero y El Dragon Magico" dub lacked M/E (Music and sound Effects) masters for the episodes HG dubbed. Instead, it would mute the English audio and either play stock music or loop audio where characters aren't talking. So the Latino Spanish dialogue was spoken over the stock music/looping audio while shouts/yells etc were from the HG actors. So basically what Speedy Video did with DBZ movies 9-10 and (ironically) DB Movie 3 with either the Japanese audio or the Cantonese dub(?)... and to a lesser extent that obscure French dub that covered Funi's World of Dragon Ball Z special and DBZ ep 124-125 (uncut numbering), which took the English audio and just muted it whenever someone needed to talk.

After the first few episodes of Zero's 60 episode run passed, the remaining episodes were able to use proper M/E masters and were AFAIK uncut.

I didn't know that at all! That's some really good info.
I think the person interviewed in that article might have just been talking about the translation scripts, and not fully dubbed episodes. That would line up.

[Planetnamek]

Somehow I doubt HG dubbed more than the double feature and the five episodes. The Latino Spanish "Zero y El Dragon Magico" dub lacked M/E (Music and sound Effects) masters for the episodes HG dubbed. Instead, it would mute the English audio and either play stock music or loop audio where characters aren't talking. So the Latino Spanish dialogue was spoken over the stock music/looping audio while shouts/yells etc were from the HG actors. So basically what Speedy Video did with DBZ movies 9-10 and (ironically) DB Movie 3 with either the Japanese audio or the Cantonese dub(?)... and to a lesser extent that obscure French dub that covered Funi's World of Dragon Ball Z special and DBZ ep 124-125 (uncut numbering), which took the English audio and just muted it whenever someone needed to talk.

After the first few episodes of Zero's 60 episode run passed, the remaining episodes were able to use proper M/E masters and were AFAIK uncut.

I didn't know that at all! That's some really good info.
I think the person interviewed in that article might have just been talking about the translation scripts, and not fully dubbed episodes. That would line up.

Yeah that does make the most sense. Anyways here's hoping the other four HG episodes turn up.

[KBABZ]

So are we gonna discuss that the eyecatch for Episode 1 uses a screengrab from DB Movie 2, the movie Harmony Gold DIDN'T dub?

[Robo4900]

So are we gonna discuss that the eyecatch for Episode 1 uses a screengrab from DB Movie 2, the movie Harmony Gold DIDN'T dub?

Well, the OP footage also uses footage from that movie, as well as footage from episodes as late as the Piccolo saga. (Yajirobe doesn't show up until Goku's chasing after Tambourine)

[MasenkoHA]

So are we gonna discuss that the eyecatch for Episode 1 uses a screengrab from DB Movie 2, the movie Harmony Gold DIDN'T dub?

Well, the OP footage also uses footage from that movie, as well as footage from episodes as late as the Piccolo saga. (Yajirobe doesn't show up until Goku's chasing after Tambourine)

Pretty sure the OP was the second OP for Japan that started at episode 102 which include Yajirobe with Harmony Gold throwing in some movie 2 footage for some reason. Maybe I’m mistaken but the Harmony Gold opening is like 99 percent the second OP and then a little movie 2

Which is interesting that it appears Toei gave Harmony an instrumental version of the second OP where as Funimation got the first OP and only the first OP even for the subtitle release.


It was weird they skipped movie 2 anyways since as is Bongo and Marilyn just suddenly exist.

[10gigtriforce]

well its a pretty neat watch, not feeling goku's va at all though. sounds too 80's brat for me. but everything else was neat to see.

kinda woulda liked to see HG do all 60 db episodes they translated just to see how it turned out. But given how they did robotech and are just sitting on it I'm glad they didnt keep db, for all of funis being shite at least we got japanese audio from em.

gotta wonder what all footage they got from toei though, since they are using some of DB opening 2, the 2nd movie(though we know they got 1 and 3 so it makes sense for them to have 2), and showing Yajirobe. And how much if any got turned over to funi for their 95 dub, which has a surprising amount of grain on the dvd.

EDIT: re-watching it, it looks like this recording was likely done on a hifi vhs tape in lp or more likely slp mode. Given the lack of quality in the video but non distorted audio. Which makes sense for a newer vhs recorder in 89 when this supposed to have come out.

[MasenkoHA]

well its a pretty neat watch, not feeling goku's va at all though. sounds too 80's brat for me. but everything else was neat to see.

kinda woulda liked to see HG do all 60 db episodes they translated just to see how it turned out. But given how they did robotech and are just sitting on it I'm glad they didnt keep db, for all of funis being shite at least we got japanese audio from em.

gotta wonder what all footage they got from toei though, since they are using some of DB opening 2, the 2nd movie(though we know they got 1 and 3 so it makes sense for them to have 2), and showing Yajirobe. And how much if any got turned over to funi for their 95 dub, which has a surprising amount of grain on the dvd.

Likely all 153 episodes of Dragon Ball, the second OP, and the three movies. They probably got some version of the ED but who knows if they used it.

[10gigtriforce]

Huh so they may have gotten even more than funi did then, 2nd opening, thats honestly kind of surprising. Gotta wonder if it was film or just (s)vhs tapes or non digi-beta tapes.

If they really did get all of that it may be safe to assume that funi didnt get all of it(if any) since they only seem to have opening 1. and if it was film then for sure funi likely didnt get any since they dont seem to have film of DB or GT, just z that they keep butchering.

[MasenkoHA]

Huh so they may have gotten even more than funi did then, 2nd opening, thats honestly kind of surprising. Gotta wonder if it was film or just (s)vhs tapes or non digi-beta tapes.

Well, it doesn’t look like Toei gave Harmony Gold the first OP. It looks like they only gave them the second OP and we know Funi only got the first OP and second ED.

It also looks like they gave them movie 3 with an instrumental version of Dragon Ball Densetsu where Funimation got one with vocals.

It’s like when Pioneer did the three Z movies they had the songs included but Funimation and AB Groupe where given instrumental versions of Gohan’s insert songs.

If they really did get all of that it may be safe to assume that funi didnt get all of it(if any) since they only seem to have opening 1. and if it was film then for sure funi likely didnt get any since they dont seem to have film of DB or GT, just z that they keep butchering.

Whatever Funi inherited from Harmony Gold also might have been unusable.

[jjgp1112]

The weird thing with Zero is isn't it actually a somewhat acceptable if strange English adaptation of "Goku"?