Robo4900 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 1:54 pm
Ian Corlett once said that "Test dubs" and such were very rare in those days because of how expensive it was to produce these kinds of things. And, as we know, DB movie 1 was commercially exploited after its production, so I doubt they produced Z movie 1's 1996 dub with the idea that it wouldn't see the light of day.
Not really a “test dub” or saying necessarily that Funimation never intended for it to see the light of day but it seemed more of a Pilot to sell to networks “Yeah Dragon Ball didn’t work out but Z is so much cooler!!!!” Maybe they intended to run a partially reworked Dead Zone dub as a pre-series tv movie ala Curse of the Blood Rubies and changed their minds? We know they dubbed Curse of the Blood Rubies with the Harmony Gold names and then redubbed the movie with the final Funimation names (or at least redubbed the dialog where necessary)
time=1597253445 user_id=12005
That footage comes from the second Z OP, which Funi was given along with their movie and TV episode footage to use as they pleased.
Did Toei give them the second Z OP and not the first? I guess this is on brand for Toei. They appeared to give Harmony Gold the second Dragon Ball OP and not the first one.
Granted, it’s still weird that the only footage from the Japanese OP they used was Vegeta turning Super Saiyan in space, Trunks about to slice cyborg Freeza, and the final group shot.
And I’m pretty sure the only episode footage they used was Nappa tearing through a plane. The rest is just the the first 3 Z movies?
Funny thing is, you're actually burying the lede on a good point in your dismisal there: It's kinda weird that Funi got ahold of the first three Z movies, even using footage from each one in the Rock The Dragon opening, when the rest of their footage acquisition at that time was only footage that they were planning to imminently use (DB movie 1 and episodes 1-26 along with some OP/ED footage, DBZ episodes 1-26 then later 27-67 along with some OP/ED footage)... Why did they get all three of the first three Z movies when they were just starting out doing Z?
They did end up releasing the first 3 Z movies during its second season via Pioneer so it’s not like dubbing the movies wasn’t probably on Funimation’s minds. I just don’t know if I can buy they dubbed 2 or 3 movies before working on the series. But it’s not impossible.
Funny enough, there was a 3 year gap between the Pioneer movies and Funi’s first in house dub Lord Slug wasn’t done until after the Cell saga in 2001. Don’t know if Funimation initially only licensed the first 3 Z movies at first or if they just weren’t interested in doing more movies for a while .
But using almost nothing but footage from the first 3 Z movies for Rock the Dragon could be as simple as “eventually we’re gonna get to these”