What is the story behind the Westwood Dub?

[TheBlackPaladin]

It’s almost like they had no business dubbing the show.

Oh don't get me wrong, there are plenty of solid arguments to be made that they weren't a good candidate. However, dealing with the reality that they were the ones dubbing the show, I think they made a bad artistic decision, but great business decision, by skipping ahead.

Bilingual, uncut anime being sold in the US back in the early-mid 90's when Dragon Ball was first acquired wasn't much of a thing. Sure, you had a movie here and there that was released subtitled and uncut on VHS, but it was pretty rare. Heck, home video releases of entire TV series of any kind hardly existed until the DVD format came about (such as FUNimation's early uncut DVD releases, and through them we actually got the original Japanese version of the TV series out on home video before Japan did). Back then, shows of DB's length needed to get on TV if they wanted to be seen. Getting on TV meant necessary edits. FUNimation could certainly have adapted the scripts more faithfully, but the visual censorship and the toning down of some subjects like death and hell was inevitable and necessary for a TV airing back then...and in that case, not only do you have to worry about attracting eyeballs, you also have to convince TV networks that your show will get said eyeballs, so FUNimation was in no position to tell TV networks who didn't want DB, "Well too bad, air it anyway or else the story will be out of order." They had to just roll with it.

As for DBZ's out-of-order airing harming DB's reputation, that's what I meant when I said I didn't like it as a fan, but understood it on a business level. Again, there are plenty of good arguments that FUNimation wasn't the ideal candidate, but if we look at the reality of the situation that they were, in fact, in charge of dubbing the show, it made total business sense. It's a similar deal to changing the music. Did it make sense on an artistic level? None. Did it make sense on a business level? Tons.

[Super Sonic]

personally i cant trust viz after how they did sailor moon's re-dubbing. easily among the worst voice acting I've ever heard. But ida loved for pioneer to get it. theyd have put out everything on laserdisc so we woulda had dual languages and subbed from day 1 and better than vhs quality.

Wasn't Sailor Moon's redub in 2013/2014 an in house thing? I know most of their 90's dubs were done better, again because they mainly outsourced voice work to the Ocean cast.

In California yeah. The problem with that dub seemed to be the directing more than anything.

Ironically, I feel like Funimation (who had been eyeing the license since like...2010?) would have been better suited to dub Sailor Moon. I mean modern Funimation not 90s/early 2000s Funimation

At first for a while I wanted that to happen with Colleen Clinkenbeard as Jupiter and either Monica Rial or Caitlin Glass as Mars, but I'm used to the Viz dub now. Though when it was announced Viz was doing it, saw their Luna as Mars, but am okay with Ms. Vee's third Magical girl being her. (For those not familiar, Cristina Vee also voices on Madoka and Miraculous: the Adventures of Ladybug and Cat Noir).

[Planetnamek]

It’s almost like they had no business dubbing the show.

Oh don't get me wrong, there are plenty of solid arguments to be made that they weren't a good candidate. However, dealing with the reality that they were the ones dubbing the show, I think they made a bad artistic decision, but great business decision, by skipping ahead.

Bilingual, uncut anime being sold in the US back in the early-mid 90's when Dragon Ball was first acquired wasn't much of a thing. Sure, you had a movie here and there that was released subtitled and uncut on VHS, but it was pretty rare. Heck, home video releases of entire TV series of any kind hardly existed until the DVD format came about (such as FUNimation's early uncut DVD releases, and through them we actually got the original Japanese version of the TV series out on home video before Japan did). Back then, shows of DB's length needed to get on TV if they wanted to be seen. Getting on TV meant necessary edits. FUNimation could certainly have adapted the scripts more faithfully, but the visual censorship and the toning down of some subjects like death and hell was inevitable and necessary for a TV airing back then...and in that case, not only do you have to worry about attracting eyeballs, you also have to convince TV networks that your show will get said eyeballs, so FUNimation was in no position to tell TV networks who didn't want DB, "Well too bad, air it anyway or else the story will be out of order." They had to just roll with it.

As for DBZ's out-of-order airing harming DB's reputation, that's what I meant when I said I didn't like it as a fan, but understood it on a business level. Again, there are plenty of good arguments that FUNimation wasn't the ideal candidate, but if we look at the reality of the situation that they were, in fact, in charge of dubbing the show, it made total business sense. It's a similar deal to changing the music. Did it make sense on an artistic level? None. Did it make sense on a business level? Tons.

Same here, that's what i've been saying on other threads on here, on a personal level I don't agree with their decision to skip DB until much later, but on a business level I can at least understand why it was done. Same deal with skipping the first 16 episodes of GT, complain all you want, but it did result in GT actually getting better ratings in the U.S. then it got almost everywhere else in the world, interesting how the USA ended up being one of the few places where GT actually succeeded.

[ABED]

Even if they went with DB first, there's no reason to think it still wouldn't have been a big success. The issue isn't that it wasn't DBZ, it's issue was that it was put on at a time when the target audience wasn't awake on channels few watched.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Even if they went with DB first, there's no reason to think it still wouldn't have been a big success. The issue isn't that it wasn't DBZ, it's issue was that it was put on at a time when the target audience wasn't awake on channels few watched.

No question that the timeslots didn't help. However--and this is what I meant in my earlier post about admitting that this is a cynnical view--DBZ had way more action, and it was fast-paced, flying kung-fu action with giant ki beams thrown in for good measure...which is something that admittedly would have caught a kid's interest far more quickly than the comparatively slower-paced adventures of DB.

[MasenkoHA]

Drago Ball had plenty of action it just takes about 19 or so episodes to get there. The problem is people, including Funimation, seem to think the entire series is basically the first 13 episodes in tone. Ironically that’s easily the worst section of the original series as Toriyama didn’t get into the groove of things with Dragon Ball until Kuririn shows up.

If Dragon Ball had been given a proper chance and not forced in Z’s shadow (as that is basically what Funimation and Toonami did) it probably would have still been less successful than Z but it probably wouldn’t have people treating it like a boring unnecessary prequel.

[Planetnamek]

Drago Ball had plenty of action it just takes about 19 or so episodes to get there. The problem is people, including Funimation, seem to think the entire series is basically the first 13 episodes in tone. Ironically that’s easily the worst section of the original series as Toriyama didn’t get into the groove of things with Dragon Ball until Kuririn shows up.

If Dragon Ball had been given a proper chance and not forced in Z’s shadow (as that is basically what Funimation and Toonami did) it probably would have still been less successful than Z but it probably wouldn’t have people treating it like a boring unnecessary prequel.

I haven't really seen that many people treating DB that way though.

[Cure Dragon 255]

You are very much right that EVERYONE regardless of where they live remember Goku as a man... but you forgot that France, Italy and Latin America all started with Chibi Goku and grew to love the runt ALL THE FUCKING WAY TO ADULTHOOD. If a lesser desperate company had marketed DB OG properly I think DB would be what it is in the rest of the world. Almost religion like.

And Latin America LOVED GT.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Drago Ball had plenty of action it just takes about 19 or so episodes to get there. The problem is people, including Funimation, seem to think the entire series is basically the first 13 episodes in tone. Ironically that’s easily the worst section of the original series as Toriyama didn’t get into the groove of things with Dragon Ball until Kuririn shows up.

If Dragon Ball had been given a proper chance and not forced in Z’s shadow (as that is basically what Funimation and Toonami did) it probably would have still been less successful than Z but it probably wouldn’t have people treating it like a boring unnecessary prequel.

Which makes me think, did they even bother watching past episode 13 back then? Because it most certainly shifts very quickly from a more gag based Dr. Slump-esque tone to action-y after the Pilaf arc.

[ABED]

The show doesn't have to be a smash hit right off the bat. Like a lot of things, it would pick up an audience along the way, much like DB did in Japan.

[Planetnamek]

Wasn't Sailor Moon's redub in 2013/2014 an in house thing? I know most of their 90's dubs were done better, again because they mainly outsourced voice work to the Ocean cast.

In California yeah. The problem with that dub seemed to be the directing more than anything.

Ironically, I feel like Funimation (who had been eyeing the license since like...2010?) would have been better suited to dub Sailor Moon. I mean modern Funimation not 90s/early 2000s Funimation

At first for a while I wanted that to happen with Colleen Clinkenbeard as Jupiter and either Monica Rial or Caitlin Glass as Mars, but I'm used to the Viz dub now. Though when it was announced Viz was doing it, saw their Luna as Mars, but am okay with Ms. Vee's third Magical girl being her. (For those not familiar, Cristina Vee also voices on Madoka and Miraculous: the Adventures of Ladybug and Cat Noir).

Yeah I never really got on with Viz's dub either, i grew up with DiC and Cloverway and i'm much too used to their voices now, don't get me wrong the VAs Viz assembled are certainly talented but the voice-direction just sounded off to me, whereas with DiC and Cloverway it had a more natural feeling. I think Viz was so overly focused on being faithful to the original that they didn't put a lot of effort into the voice-direction. I had similar issues with Kai, the new VAs they got were certainly talented, but there was so much focus on being "faithful" the original that it sounded a bit hollow to me personally. So I can't say i'm too broken up about Viz not being the ones to dub DB.

I am very curious at how Funimation would've handled Sailor Moon(Along with Yugioh and Pokemon for that matter).

[ABED]

I had similar issues with Kai, the new VAs they got were certainly talented, but there was so much focus on being "faithful" the original that it sounded a bit hollow to me personally.

I completely disagree. They came to play. It's clear to me that being faithful to the original story energized them.

[MasenkoHA]

The show doesn't have to be a smash hit right off the bat. Like a lot of things, it would pick up an audience along the way, much like DB did in Japan.

Even DBZ took a while to find its audience. It was successful enough by the end of the first season but having better time slots and being shown in more markets thanks to Saban helped. Also having a full 26 episode season

[Super Sayian Prime]

It's funny people are bringing up Viz and Sailor Moon. In the early part of the 2010s, a handful of Funimation employees moved to Viz's anime department. This coincided with Sailor Moon. It also marked the point when Viz began cutting back on their budgets for dubs. Outside of Boruto (which is grandfathered because Naruto was), none of their stuff uses unionized casts anymore. This meant they've stopped working with Ocean entirely, despite the two having a pretty successful relationship that dated back to the early '90s. Sounds like a company we know very well.

Well, first off I don't think anyone has the facts or sources to definitively claim one way or the other about what Westwood Media/Westwood Studios were, I merely said "appears to have been" and left it at that. All that I've dug up on them has lead me to believe that they produced nothing independent of Ocean, much like how Blue Water operates. They essentially appear to have been a Vancouver based anime arm of Ocean/IPP that was there to handle most of the dubbing work that Ocean's main studio either couldn't handle due to scheduling conflicts or simply because the projects were too low budget to warrant recording time at the main studio. It seems pretty evident to me why all of these listed Westwood projects were all given to Blue Water, and that's because all these companies were most likely connected by a single overseer - which I still believe to have been Ocean. For what it's worth, this article also names them as a sister studio, and that will remain my position on it unless you have proof pointing otherwise.

The companies involved don't have much of a public face, so I understand people getting confused about things. I'm bound to make mistakes about this.

That Labour board document implies Westwood Media and Ocean were independent companies. That email is from Westwood and they're complaining that they've lost work because of the union's behaviour. If Westwood was part of Ocean, that money would just be going to a different arm. It would be really strange for them to complain in the first place. The decision to move production to Calgary would've been theirs to make. Also telling is the contact info on that note. Ocean and Blue Water's shell companies are usually registered to the same building. Westwood was in a different part of Vancouver.

Most of Anime News Network's writers are not knowledgeable when it comes to Canadian anime dubs. The original draft of that article suggested Blue Water and Ocean had gone defunct. That was only corrected after readers pointed out both were working on current shows. The amended article still claims Westwood Media (later "The Factory") was active as of 2016. In actuality, that company was the one that shuttered.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I REALLY dont get why everyone is shitting on the new Sailor Moon dub. Its nowhere near as bad as everyone is saying it is!

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I REALLY dont get why everyone is shitting on the new Sailor Moon dub. Its nowhere near as bad as everyone is saying it is!

I mean, true some of the voices may not be perfect but it's not what i would really call bad per se and not to mention being more faithful to the original version compared to the DiC/Cloverway dubs which aside from being edited down visually had considerable script rewrites and episodes either heavily cut or skipped entirely that were standard for many contemporary anime series' dubs broadcast on TV at the time.

[Planetnamek]

I REALLY dont get why everyone is shitting on the new Sailor Moon dub. Its nowhere near as bad as everyone is saying it is!

I mean, true some of the voices may not be perfect but it's not what i would really call bad per se and not to mention being more faithful to the original version compared to the DiC/Cloverway dubs which aside from being edited down visually had considerable script rewrites and episodes either heavily cut or skipped entirely that were standard for many contemporary anime series' dubs broadcast on TV at the time.

I wouldn't call it bad myself, I just think it's a little too focused on being faithful to the original to the point that the voice-acting ends up sounding a bit stilted and hollow(especially noticeable in the episode "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" during one moment that's supposed to be emotional, but Molly's Va just sounds like she's reading lines straight from a cue card) as a result. This reminds me of one film Funimation dubbed(Forgot which one, think it was an Evangelion one) and after a screening at an anime convention in which the audience was enthusiastically laughing at the film, Toei freaked the fuck out and demanded the film get redubbed to be more "serious" despite Funi trying to tell them that anime audiences are known for being enthusiastic and that the dub was perfectly fine and not disrespectful in the least, but Toei refused to listen to reason and so Funi was basically forced to do another dub, and as a result the final dub ended up being played a lot more seriously and many fans found it less interesting as a result. That's kind of where i'm at with the Viz dub.

I didn't mind some episodes being skipped(especially not the beach episode, which was just plain dumb and horribly pointless filler that's easily worse then any of DBZ's filler episodes and wasn't even on the first sub DVD release as Naoko apparently hated it with a passion and it's easy to see why) and I was totally fine with some of the rewrites(i'm not exactly bemoaning the loss of Rei's grandpa being a creepy pervert, sorry but I just never found that kind of humor funny in anime, certainly not in the MeToo era IMO)I also didn't mind Fish-Eye and Zoicite being changed to female as their VAs did a pretty good job. I will grant you the cousins thing with Amara and Michelle was weird as even as a kid I could tell there was more going on between them, it is funny how otherwise their scenes were hardly changed at all, making them come off as incestuous at times.

For me being more faithful does not always equal better, one anime that perfectly illustrates this is Saint Seiya. The ADV-dub is so much worse then the DiC dub, sure the latter has some edits and script changes along with new music, but it's voice-acting is leagues better then ADV's which makes Knights of the Zodiac far more watchable for me, like if you thought DBZ season 3's voice-acting was flat you ain't seen nothing yet ADV somehow got even cheaper VAs then Funi did and boy did it show, I didn't even care that the episodes were uncut and faithful to the original, the dreadful voice-acting just completely took me out of the show.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I REALLY dont get why everyone is shitting on the new Sailor Moon dub. Its nowhere near as bad as everyone is saying it is!

I mean, true some of the voices may not be perfect but it's not what i would really call bad per se and not to mention being more faithful to the original version compared to the DiC/Cloverway dubs which aside from being edited down visually had considerable script rewrites and episodes either heavily cut or skipped entirely that were standard for many contemporary anime series' dubs broadcast on TV at the time.

I wouldn't call it bad myself, I just think it's a little too focused on being faithful to the original to the point that the voice-acting ends up sounding a bit stilted and hollow(especially noticeable in the episode "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" during one moment that's supposed to be emotional, but Molly's Va just sounds like she's reading lines straight from a cue card) as a result. This reminds me of one film Funimation dubbed(Forgot which one, think it was an Evangelion one) and after a screening at an anime convention in which the audience was enthusiastically laughing at the film, Toei freaked the fuck out and demanded the film get redubbed to be more "serious" despite Funi trying to tell them that anime audiences are known for being enthusiastic and that the dub was perfectly fine and not disrespectful in the least, but Toei refused to listen to reason and so Funi was basically forced to do another dub, and as a result the final dub ended up being played a lot more seriously and many fans found it less interesting as a result. That's kind of where i'm at with the Viz dub.

I didn't mind some episodes being skipped(especially not the beach episode, which was just plain dumb and horribly pointless filler that's easily worse then any of DBZ's filler episodes and wasn't even on the first sub DVD release as Naoko apparently hated it with a passion and it's easy to see why) and I was totally fine with some of the rewrites(i'm not exactly bemoaning the loss of Rei's grandpa being a creepy pervert, sorry but I just never found that kind of humor funny in anime, certainly not in the MeToo era IMO)I also didn't mind Fish-Eye and Zoicite being changed to female as their VAs did a pretty good job. I will grant you the cousins thing with Amara and Michelle was weird as even as a kid I could tell there was more going on between them, it is funny how otherwise their scenes were hardly changed at all, making them come off as incestuous at times.

For me being more faithful does not always equal better, one anime that perfectly illustrates this is Saint Seiya. The ADV-dub is so much worse then the DiC dub, sure the latter has some edits and script changes along with new music, but it's voice-acting is leagues better then ADV's which makes Knights of the Zodiac far more watchable for me, like if you thought DBZ season 3's voice-acting was flat you ain't seen nothing yet ADV somehow got even cheaper VAs then Funi did and boy did it show, I didn't even care that the episodes were uncut and faithful to the original, the dreadful voice-acting just completely took me out of the show.

There is a new Saint Seiya dub you might want to check out on Netflix. I'm not saying you will love it but it seems pretty decent.

[Planetnamek]

Yeah i've heard about that one, i'll see if it's any good sometime.

[10gigtriforce]

I REALLY dont get why everyone is shitting on the new Sailor Moon dub. Its nowhere near as bad as everyone is saying it is!

Its at least that bad if not worse. the 'talent' is below that of the 90s dic dub for one thing, like if you're gonna re dub any thing at least get actors that arent worse than the originals. for two the directing was bad No emotion, trying to pronounce japanese words and flailing horridly. like sure if it had come out in the 90s it woulda been ok, but 90s level of quality in the 2010s? Yeah.... cant support that.