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

[Hellspawn28]

I do imagine in a timeline where HG's dub of DB kicked off, they would probably have done their own Dragon Ball animation. They did their own Robotech animated movie without any footage from the Macross series before. Imagine a Dragon Ball equivalent to Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles.

[10gigtriforce]

It seems another tape of the FUNi-Zero dub is around and has been fully digitized. This guy got it from a seller on ebay when he went to buy the Kakarot game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ZbaoB6mL4

Finally had time to watch this. Looks like its the 1995 movie 1 dub funi did but their first draft from when they still used the names harmony gold did/ toei gave harmony gold. The vhs and dvd releases I've been able to track down all were the (partial? ) redub of it that use the more familiar names goku bulma yamcha etc instead of zero or lean or zedaki.


I'm guessing its the same beyond the names since the VA are the same and dialog pretty spot on for the dvd release of it I have and the vhs my bro has. But man I'd still love to see the full movie with the older names.

[eledoremassis02]

It seems another tape of the FUNi-Zero dub is around and has been fully digitized. This guy got it from a seller on ebay when he went to buy the Kakarot game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ZbaoB6mL4

Finally had time to watch this. Looks like its the 1995 movie 1 dub funi did but their first draft from when they still used the names harmony gold did/ toei gave harmony gold. The vhs and dvd releases I've been able to track down all were the (partial? ) redub of it that use the more familiar names goku bulma yamcha etc instead of zero or lean or zedaki.


I'm guessing its the same beyond the names since the VA are the same and dialog pretty spot on for the dvd release of it I have and the vhs my bro has. But man I'd still love to see the full movie with the older names.

I wish it was an extra on the rock the dragon set or somthing. There's (i think) 3 known tapes so hopefully atleast the audio gets out. Should be a fun watch

[Tom_Servo]

Another update!



My source just sent me this pic and confirmed his tapes have at least 2 Harmony Gold dubbed episodes. He got these tapes in a trade between 1991 and 1992. He will examine them further later this week and digitize them for me.

[Planetnamek]

Woohoo! this just keeps getting better and better

[KBABZ]

Another update!



My source just sent me this pic and confirmed his tapes have at least 2 Harmony Gold dubbed episodes. He got these tapes in a trade between 1991 and 1992. He will examine them further later this week and digitize them for me.

Awesome!! I'm wanting to mix them with Dragon Box footage to give the old audio an upgraded presentation, haha.

[10gigtriforce]

It seems another tape of the FUNi-Zero dub is around and has been fully digitized. This guy got it from a seller on ebay when he went to buy the Kakarot game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ZbaoB6mL4

Finally had time to watch this. Looks like its the 1995 movie 1 dub funi did but their first draft from when they still used the names harmony gold did/ toei gave harmony gold. The vhs and dvd releases I've been able to track down all were the (partial? ) redub of it that use the more familiar names goku bulma yamcha etc instead of zero or lean or zedaki.


I'm guessing its the same beyond the names since the VA are the same and dialog pretty spot on for the dvd release of it I have and the vhs my bro has. But man I'd still love to see the full movie with the older names.

I wish it was an extra on the rock the dragon set or somthing. There's (i think) 3 known tapes so hopefully atleast the audio gets out. Should be a fun watch

Yeah I think all we should need is the audio since it seems , from what I can tell, to otherwise be the same as the trimark dvd.

[Danfun64]

Not really. I think the credits might be different. Also the final version of the BLT tub has a chunk from ep 2 for some reason, which the test run doesn't have.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Not really. I think the credits might be different. Also the final version of the BLT tub has a chunk from ep 2 for some reason, which the test run doesn't have.

Hmm very interesting, because that spliced in episode footage in the BLT dub really clashes with the surrounding movie animation.

[10gigtriforce]

Not really. I think the credits might be different. Also the final version of the BLT tub has a chunk from ep 2 for some reason, which the test run doesn't have.

Thats fair. Still though we should be able to construct a pretty much complete thing from it if we get the audio. We can cut out the ep 2 chunk and well the credits would prove a problem. Unless we get a vhs rip of them and throw them at the end.

[eledoremassis02]

Finally had time to watch this. Looks like its the 1995 movie 1 dub funi did but their first draft from when they still used the names harmony gold did/ toei gave harmony gold. The vhs and dvd releases I've been able to track down all were the (partial? ) redub of it that use the more familiar names goku bulma yamcha etc instead of zero or lean or zedaki.


I'm guessing its the same beyond the names since the VA are the same and dialog pretty spot on for the dvd release of it I have and the vhs my bro has. But man I'd still love to see the full movie with the older names.

I wish it was an extra on the rock the dragon set or somthing. There's (i think) 3 known tapes so hopefully atleast the audio gets out. Should be a fun watch

Yeah I think all we should need is the audio since it seems , from what I can tell, to otherwise be the same as the trimark dvd.

I've been working on splicing and cleaning the audio for the movie(s) from the two different sources to create clean version and then I might try and sync to the Japanese bluray of FUNi's 4:3 HD

[Robo4900]

Another update!

Spoiler:

My source just sent me this pic and confirmed his tapes have at least 2 Harmony Gold dubbed episodes. He got these tapes in a trade between 1991 and 1992. He will examine them further later this week and digitize them for me.

YAY!

Thank you!
You're awesome, man!

[Danfun64]

the Japanese bluray of FUNi's 4:3 HD

The what now? O.o

[eledoremassis02]

the Japanese bluray of FUNi's 4:3 HD

The what now? O.o

Stupid phone.. I meant the japanese bluray or FUNi's 4:3 HD copy lol

Alrready de-hissed a good amount of ep. 1. But I cant tell if it distored the vocals a little or if it's just the overall source. The movie sounds prertty good tho

[Danfun64]

Stupid phone.. I meant the japanese bluray or FUNi's 4:3 HD copy lol

Well, the Amazon JP master is considered better than the Japanese Blu-ray due to lacking the DNR. Shame we don't have the non DNR'd copy in higher bitrate, but *shrug*.

As for Funi's 4:3 HD master, I think the Ziwa Blu-ray is better than the FuniNow copy? IDK.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I am so sorry but I LOL'd at that.

[eledoremassis02]

Here is a small clip of trying to make the audio a little better
Before
https://youtu.be/hyuflERvaL0

After
https://youtu.be/gJ3EZmDJNR8

[Kunzait_83]

(and yes I know people like Kunzie would've much rather that DB had never gotten dubbed period, but I don't agree with that mentality at all as even if you don't like the dub you can't argue that it did bring the original Japanese version to a much wider audience then it would've otherwise)

I never said that I wish DB had never gotten dubbed. Obviously I'd have preferred that it had gotten a WELL DONE dub from moment one (which was eminently possible and do-able, even back in the mid 1990s). But I never once claimed that I wish it had never gotten dubbed period.

What I HAVE said though was that I wish it had never gotten dubbed by FUNimation, and certainly that it was never dubbed or handled by any company that dealt in edited TV anime (ala Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors, etc). What I've said was that I wish it had gotten the same treatment that companies like Viz had given Ranma 1/2 since the early 90s: an accurate, well done dub, bilingually released alongside the sub right from the getgo, and released straight to VHS/DVD, without in any way being intended for a U.S. kids' TV audience.

I've talked many times on here at great lengths about the actual history of anime in the U.S. pre-Cartoon Network, but to quickly summarize: in the early days, there were two very different and diametrically opposed lanes for anime in the United States. One was for anime to be heavily edited, Westernized, and censored, and aired on mainstream children's broadcast TV as Saturday morning cartoons: often with the intent of hiding the Japanese origins of the shows and passing them off as American products to a child audience that at the time had zero idea whatsoever what Japanese anime was.

This lane is literally the sole incarnation of early U.S. anime that virtually anyone who's ever posted on this site (other than myself, VegettoEX, and maybe a small handful of others) has been in any which way familiar with.

The other lane however was anime that was picked up by smaller, independent licensing studios who treated the material with a tremendous degree more faithfulness overall, and would release anime (in both dubbed and subtitled versions) straight to VHS/video, with a target audience of largely grown adults while being 100% up front with the fact that these were Japanese films & shows and that Japanese anime was a whole wing of media unto itself.

*This* is the lane of early U.S. anime that this website/community - and indeed, a depressingly and inexcusably LARGE percentage of Cartoon Network-era fans and beyond - has had virtually ZERO clue of its very existence, much less possessing any substantive knowledge about it. This was also the lane that titles ranging from Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hinter D, Bubblegum Crisis, Guyver, Fist of the North Star, Devilman, Lupin III, Gunbuster, Evangelion, Ranma 1/2, and even Tenchi Muyo (among many, many, MANY others) were all originally released within in the US: in many cases, more than a decade+ before Toonami was ever a thing that existed.

And the very fact that this significant segment of U.S. anime licensing is so often completely ignored and unacknowledged as something that existed at all is honestly a LOT of what heavily, heavily skews most of these "if FUNi didn't dub DB, then who the hell else would've?" history discussions into all manner of completely false premises and false dichotomies: this whole thread certainly being no exception.

Even at this late date, in 2020, and with literally DECADES to look this stuff up on Wikipedia, Anime News Network, and countless other online resources... there has been almost NO intellectual curiosity or care whatsoever on the part of fans from anywhere circa 1999 and onward to better inform themselves about this whole entire other wing of early, pre-Cartoon Network anime presence in North America, which was absolutely and without question of VASTLY greater importance and significance to anime's presence and growth in North America pre-1998 than whatsoever some rinky dink TV dub of GoLion or Samurai Troopers or whatnot might've contributed.

For anyone in the Toonami generation who fancies themselves some kind of a U.S. anime historian... to still NOT have any understanding or knowledge about the significant, critical importance and impact of straight to video licensing studios like AnimEigo, U.S. Renditions, Streamline Pictures, and Central Park Media and the like (as so many of them often demonstrably and self-evidently do not), is absolutely & without question 100% inexcusable and wholly invalidates any semblance of "expertise" that many of those people might claim or think that they possess on the subject.

Many of these releases were anything but obscure or ultra-ultra-niche and were incredibly visible and easily accessible literally just about almost anywhere in the fucking country that sold VHS tapes in the 80s and 90s: they just weren't in the kids/family section (which is apparently where a lot of folks were practically dog-chained to as kids).

It simply DID NOT take a whole lot of effort to find out about this thing called Japanese anime and manga circa 1991 or whatnot. The Toonami-era audience was just incredibly, INCREDIBLY media-sheltered as kids - to a frankly ludicrous, downright embarrassing degree oftentimes, in a way that simply wasn't "normal" even back then - and have spent the better part of the last 20 years of online anime discourse hyper-projecting that shelteredness out onto the whole, vast swath of U.S. anime history that came before them, and thus wildly distorting incredibly basic and easily verifiable (with like, 5 minutes on Google or Wikipedia) history of events as a result.

I say all that to stress that the lack of knowledge or discussion about this critically major segment of early, pre-Cartoon Network U.S. anime licensing isn't indicative that it somehow wasn't of importance or significance to the medium's American history, but rather that its indicative of how incredibly myopic, intellectually incurious, and obsessively self-absorbed with their own nostalgia that so much of the Toonami-era of anime fandom tends to be as they WILDLY over-inflate the level and degree to which Toonami had somehow singularly "introduced" anime to North America (when it did nothing remotely of the sort).

What I've said in the past was that I would much rather than DB had been released (with a proper, competent dub) within *that* lane of U.S. anime licensing, rather than the lane where titles were required up front to be thrown into a meat grinder of network TV censors, parental watchdogs, and focus groups before coming out the other side both unrecognizable and unwatchable.

Because contrary to what this community has long wrongly assumed, there WAS most certainly indeed another alternative route that things could've gone down, even back in the mid 90s.

Dragon Ball has paved the way for an entire genre (i.e shonen) to have reasonable levels of success with series like Naruto, Bleach and now My Hero Academia. Nothing inspired by Akira or Ghibli has seen that degree of success.

Once again, for the billionth time: Shonen is not a genre. Shonen is a demographic. All Shonen means is that the target audience for a given anime/manga are elementary school-aged boys (usually anywhere from 6 to 13 or so).

There's literally no such thing as a Shonen genre. The concept is 100% made-the-fuck-up from wholecloth by fans who largely over-focus only on Shonen anime/manga, often at the direct expense/detriment of focusing on virtually anything else within the medium.

Akira and Ghibli are certainly popular, but they are not as big as Dragon Ball. You wouldn't see merchandise for either in mainstream stores other than the odd DVD, even then Ghibli movies haven't sold more copies than the orange bricks.

Akira - along with a vast majority of the anime that was licensed and popular in home video circles pre-Cartoon Network - didn't have a ton of merchandise for the simple reason that it wasn't made for children. Akira is Seinen i.e. targeted at adult men (roughly aged 18 to 45 or so). One of the problems with this community's whole basic framing of how it looks at anime & manga is that its ALWAYS 1000% through the prism of solely children's properties (i.e. Shonen).

With some notable exceptions here or there, you're not going to see NEARLY as much in the way of merchandise for anime aimed at adults as opposed to kids because that's just the nature of how adult media largely tends to work. With kids there are craptons of toys, figures, and assorted plastic junk and the like to sell off of the back of a successful kids' IP: with more mature media, there's significantly less ways to merchandise it into oblivion. There's still SOME: Seinen anime still has plenty in the way of soundtrack CDs, posters/wall scrolls, art books, and the occasional keychain or desk model sorta thing.

But its sorta akin to adult media in the US: Goodfellas, for a completely random example, is an incredibly successful and popular classic film (to this day) that isn't in any way made for children: as such, no one's selling figurines and model kits of Henry Hill or Jimmy Conway and the like.

Granted that's not a totally 1 to 1 perfect example, as there's certainly a bit of a cultural disparity between U.S. and Japanese media: obviously in Japan there's WAY more of a market even among adults for things like gashapon knick knacks and whatnot than there is here in the US. But even that sort of cultural gulf only goes just so far with more art house, adult-focused anime like Robot Carnival or Grave of the Fireflies and the like.

While almost every anime, no matter the demographic, can usually have SOME amount of merch attached to it, there's still a MASSIVE difference between the degrees of merch you'll find associated with a children's/Shonen property like DB or Naruto or One Piece or whatever, and an adult/Seinen property like Monster or Crying Freeman.

I go into all this to make a simple point: it is not at all fair or logically sound to base a notability comparison between popular North American anime titles of the 80s and early 90s and those of the 2000s and onward primarily on merchandise visibility/sales because the very nature of what anime demographics were bigger fixtures among the broader fandom were almost NIGHT AND DAY opposed between then and now.

One of the biggest impacts that Toonami had on anime in the U.S. was how much it WILDLY dragged the overall fandom & cultural focus from Seinen/adult titles onto Shonen/children's titles. As such, merchandise would obviously become a MUCH bigger factor in the post-Cartoon Network era than before.

Golgo 13 for example was one of the bigger noteworthy titles of the Akira-era: it was also a manga/anime property largely aimed at grown men in their late 30s to mid 40s about James Bond-esque international assassins and crime syndicates, so tons and tons of action figures and toys aren't exactly the sorts of things you'd likely find associated with it, even at its most popular (though again, Japan being what it is, there are certainly still SOME things of that nature for it).

It'd be like if someone tried to make a whole line of toys and figures based around Richard Stark or Elmore Leonard books and their film adaptations: there just isn't that kind of market for stuff like that because the very audience and nature of the work doesn't really accommodate that type of thing, as the target audience is neither children nor manchildren.

And there's VERY MUCH a directly equivalent realm of works like that within anime and manga as well, and THOSE tended to be the kinds of works that were of MUCH greater popularity and focus in the 80s and early 90s U.S. market compared to the 2000s and onward. Hence why the merchandise comparison is totally useless and not at all informative of anything, other than the fact that most of the anime and manga that had the biggest U.S. following at the time (80s and early to mid 90s) often weren't the kinds of things that attracted the toy-collecting types.

For stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, DB, Naruto, and so on though? Yeah, TOTALLY different playing field there.

Again, like I keep saying over and over and over again: the whole baseline cultural/fandom context and framework surrounding U.S. anime & manga fandom in the late 80s/early 90s compared to the early 2000s and onward are just VASTLY far removed from one another: so much so that often even using the same standards and metrics to gauge "what was popular, and by how much" are just COMPLETELY incompatible and invalid on their face.

I strongly disagree that i'm "giving them too much credit" , sure there were a few somewhat succesful films, but anime was still overall seen as pretty niche, especially in the realm of TV

You're literally just parroting a bunch of tired, cliched talking points about U.S. anime pre-1999 that vast swathes of other would-be "anime experts" on the internet have been spouting since the mid-2000s or so with literally NOTHING but their own insulated, uninformed perspectives to back any of it up.

This is all literally just "I never heard about any of this stuff before the late 90s/early 2000s, so no one else must've cared about it much either: I didn't know about any of this until I first saw DBZ on Toonami, so obviously THAT'S when all this really first took off because my firsthand perspective = unadulterated reality".

I mean not to make this all too anecdotal or anything, but I've literally stood numerous times inside of mainstream malls and video stores in the mid-1990s stocked up the the eyeballs in copies of Ghost in the Shell, Guyver, Ninja Scroll, Castle of Cagliostro, Project A-Ko, Tenchi Muyo, Ranma, Gunsmith Cats, Iria, and even in some cases imported merchandise from then-yet-to-be-licensed Shonen anime like Kenshin, Evangelion, Escaflowne, Slayers, Fushigi Yugi, Yu Yu Hakusho and... *gasp*... Dragon Ball. With crowds and crowds of people buying and talking about this stuff in fairly massive droves. And I had internet access back then as well, so I also knew that it wasn't JUST my one patch of the Earth at home that this was all somehow unique to.

I'm not saying that anime back then was on the same in-your-face absurd level of mainstream visibility as stuff like Ninja Turtles and Transformers and the like... but acting like it was just 4 or 5 people in the country huddled together watching a single ragged bootlegged copy of Akira inside an underground vault in Area 51 until FUNimation came and saved the day with Dragon Ball is an utterly fictional and wholly altogether inaccurate portrayal of what the actual reality was like back then.

There's a HUGE gulf of difference between something that's semi/quasi niche (but still VERY MUCH visible and readily accessible to basically anyone), and something that's TRULY obscure. And all too often, these sorts of ridiculous takes tend to act like anime in North America was always firmly the latter right up until the moment that Tom the Robot first introduced the vocal stylings of Chris Sabat to the world.

I mean, this stuff played regularly on MTV and Sci Fi channel years and YEARS before Cartoon Network ever did: not exactly channels or outlets from back then with low viewerships or low mainstream notability.

Oh and also:

especially in the realm of TV

I've been hammering on this more in more recent years on here, but it bears repeating again: TV isn't, and never was even back then, the be-all, end-all of cultural notability. Plenty of things have attracted mass cultural followings without ever once (or rarely ever) showing their face on TV, even in the pre-internet, pre-digital era.

One of this community's biggest blind-spots in general has always been its absurd over-focus on TV (namely kids' TV) as the total and absolute barometer for whether or not something is worth paying attention to or putting any focus on (particularly TV anime and children's TV shows in general). Its LONG been beyond tiresomely narrow and myopic, and it COMPLETELY disregards vast swathes of noteworthy and important pop culture that had little to nothing to do with TV.

it's not just me saying that, it's people FAR smarter and more well-versed then you and I:https://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceroger ... b24c0966c1

Right, because we should all take as gospel that arbiter of all things anime and on all things relating to geek cultural minutia that is fucking Forbes. You know, because business/Fortune 500-style outlets are the sorts of things that have always historically cared deeply about being completely on the ball accurate about topics like the gross-roots history of modern artistic mediums and youth-centric subcultures and isn't largely written by and for out of touch old corporate executives.

Incidentally, I wrote a whole in-depth post a little over a year ago now about the guy who ACTUALLY and for real brought anime to America. More than 30 years before Fukanaga had ever entered into the picture, and decades well before most of this entire forum was even born, and whom not only first introduced the whole medium to U.S. audiences for the first time, but also helped set the ENTIRE template for how both anime and manga are adapted into English and licensed/sold within North America.

Again, all of this more than three (technically four) fucking decades before anyone here had ever laid eyes on Goku on Cartoon Network for the first time.

Anyway, there's literally nothing of any detail or substance about the broader history of anime in North America inside that article. Its just a dumb, standard corporate puffpiece about Fukanaga that presents him and the story of FUNimation's business rise inside of an insular vacuum, as if he wasn't somehow working off of a whole TON of groundwork that countless individuals, early licensing companies, and masses of fans had been laying for decades and decades before he was ever a relevant factor. Linking to something like this as a way of saying "See? This is what the REAL experts think!" is just... not particularly wise or media-savvy. I'll leave it at that.

Exactly, it never fails to amuse me when people try to rewrite history and act like anime would've still been super succesful even without DBZ becoming big. I'll grant you it wasn't just Funimation that kickstarted the anime boom(Sailor Moon was getting big ratings on Toonami months before CN picked up DBZ so DiC certainly deserves some credit too) but they undoubtedly played a huge role.

The only people who've been attempting (for the better part of 20 years now) to "rewrite history" when it comes to anime in North America are fans from the Cartoon Network/Toonami-era, as well as fans whose sole focus tends to be major Shonen properties. Claiming otherwise is literally flipping the past 20 years of online anime discourse totally on its head.

And once again, look at how the whole background of all this is framed in this post: "Sailor Moon". "Ratings". All of this is completely focused on children's television, with ZERO care or thought paid toward the roles played by any other form of media beyond or outside of that.

Once again: children's television is not now and never has been the be-all, end-all of notable media or pop culture, and this continued stubborn refusal to look at pop culture, art, and media in ANY other way except focused centrally on kids' TV - as if THAT'S the core nucleus around which everything else in culture and media revolves - is literally THE core of the problem with almost ALL of the (total lack of) broader media understanding and media discourse that has plagued this entire community from virtually day one.

Getting the fuck past framing EVERY single goddamned topic - about Dragon Ball itself, about anime, and even about broader media and art as a whole - as if kids' TV is THE centerpiece and starting point from which everything else most flow from and be connected back to, would do almost ALL of the discourse and levels of media literacy shown throughout this entire community a VAST UNIVERSE worth of good. The difference would almost literally be night and day.

[Planetnamek]

Never said that nobody else heard of it, just that I think you tend to vastly overestimate how much people knew about older anime, you seem to be under the pressure that simply because YOU yourself heard of something, a lot of other people did as well and you assume that because you saw anime everywhere that everyone else did too.

I never once claimed Akira was super-obscure.

I wasn't chained to the children's section in the least and I still didn't learn about what anime was until high school(oh i'd seen anime shows sure, but i'd never heard the term anime and was not aware that shows like Pokemon and DBZ originated from Japan until I discovered the "Uncensored" sites like DBZU in high school)

Everyone has different experiences growing up, you can't expect others to have had yours.

Never claimed that TV or childrens media was the be all and end of all of anything, you sure do like putting words in people's mouths that they never actually said I've noticed that's another habit of yours.

Also never claimed DBZ "saved the day" or anything that asinine.

I didn't get internet access until around 2000 and nobody in my class really talked about any of the anime you frequently bring up. I can't help the circumstances in which I grew up.

Not being "myopic" or "disregarding" anything here just cause you say so.

Also you really seem to like overusing emojis eh Kunz? That's not exactly bolstering your argument much.

You seem to be under the impression that if people don't talk about something that MUST mean they don't know about, it couldn't possibly be that they aren't talking about it because it's simply not relevant to the current discussion.

I'm well aware of the anime series you keep bringing up, I never mentioned them before because it simply was not relevant to the discussion at hand. Does not mean I didn't know about them, you really need to stop making baseless assumptions towards everyone that does not share your disdain for Funi.

Very few DBZ fans really think childrens TV is THE centerpiece of everything, not sure where on earth you keep getting that theory(and yes I know you've said personally talked to several DBZ fans and that's where you get these theories, but those you've talked to represent a tiny miniscule fraction of the millions that watched DBZ on CN back in the day, you can't possibly prove that every single one of those people has these "myopic" views that you keep banging on about).

Yeah i've read your Carl Macek post and he did do a lot, but you can't totally dismiss Gen either, you can hate on him all you want, but at the end of the day he did take a risk on DB and it paid off.

Also works aimed at adults in the U.S. can get plenty of merchandise too, just look at all the Scarface merchandise that's out there.

[Kunzait_83]

Yeah i've read your Carl Macek post

Also I only used the one emoji the one time in relation to one small paragraph. But if this site had a facepalm emoji, I don't think anyone could possibly fault me for making use of it here in this case.