Can we talk about the Funimation Movie Soundtracks?

[WittyUsername]

and also ska is considerably better then nu metal.

A lesser of two evils, to be sure.

I love that kind of Nu Metal/Alternative sound, so it was pure heaven for me. No it may not have been what Toriyama had in mind, but I thought they still fit pretty well. I think years of watching fans create their own music videos for DBZ convinced Funi that they might as well do it for them.

I mean, if you're not interested creative works being preserved to respect the intent of the people who... ya know, actually created the thing, there isn't much to talk about here. I'm sure if Toei wanted to slap a heavy guitar song over Coola's power-up scene, that would have featured in the original airing. But it wasn't, so why add it? Shunsuke Kikuchi already wrote a number of servicable tracks that supplemented the feature over a decade prior. That "nu metal/alternative sound" didn't exist for another decade, and is heavily steeped in early 00's tuffguy American culture. Do you not see how bizarre it is to pair that with a Japanese cartoon from the early 1990's? Some things you just don't do. This is one of them. But they did it.

I disagree heavily on that, there's a lot of films and TV shows that wouldn't have been half as effective without the placement of certain songs. There's lots of scenes in shows like Breaking Bad that would've had nowhere near as much impact if they didn't have a certain specific song playing.

Right... but Breaking Bad wasn't dubbed twenty years after the fact with anachronistic music from another country. You know those scenes were shot and directed to have those songs played over them, right?

Yeah it's bizarre but for me it works and I wasn't comparing BB to DBZ at all, I was just responding to the guy who claimed he didn't like music with vocals in ANY film or TV series period as I thought that was a bit of an extreme line of thinking.

I disagree that this is one of those things you just don't do, I think it's fine for what it is.

Besides later movies did lean heavily into this type of music even in their original versions with songs like this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trT-QaYV4NM So looks like Toei took influence from the English dubs in some way which is rather interesting.

I’m actually not too crazy about when Breaking Bad uses background music where singing is involved either. Still, in that case, it is much less egregious than using early 2000s Nu-metal for some Japanese cartoons that came out in the early 90s. To be clear, on their own, I actually do kind of like a lot of the music they used, but they definitely don’t fit with the DBZ movies.

In terms of the replacement scores that were used for the movies, I prefer something like Mark Menza’s score for Movie 6.

[Thanos]

I disagree that this is one of those things you just don't do, I think it's fine for what it is.

Besides later movies did lean heavily into this type of music even in their original versions with songs like this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trT-QaYV4NM So looks like Toei took influence from the English dubs in some way which is rather interesting.

You seem rather insistant upon your opinion being established as fact moving forward, but this has not been demonstrated. I, and many others, consider the neglect of preservation of artistic integrity to be kind of disgusting. They basically were entrusted to present a foreign entity's product to a domestic audience, and essentially implied that it wasn't good enough, that they, a borderline amateur Texas production company at the time, knew better. The "music" is anachronistic. This is a fact. It was neither part of the original product nor contemporaneous to its release (at least a decade in some cases, as I've said); you're welcome to have your toys and play with them in your home but I'm not sure what you're trying to gain by arguing with purists that impurity is "A-OK".

I'm not sure what one example of a heavy metal song (that I'm aware of) being used in official material over the span of 34+ years proves, beyond Toriyama enjoying and appreciating that a band dedicated a song to one of his characters. Claiming Toei was influenced by someone messing with their own work is... well, strange.

[MyVisionity]

Great decision by Funimation to use that music. Gives the movies an extra special touch that wouldn't be there had it been the usual Faulconer tracks. It separates the films from the tv show. I like how they were willing to try something different. I have fond memories of that music and thought the selections were inspired.

Personally I think that using the Kikuchi tracks would have been laughable.

[Planetnamek]

I disagree that this is one of those things you just don't do, I think it's fine for what it is.

Besides later movies did lean heavily into this type of music even in their original versions with songs like this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trT-QaYV4NM So looks like Toei took influence from the English dubs in some way which is rather interesting.

You seem rather insistant upon your opinion being established as fact moving forward, but this has not been demonstrated. I, and many others, consider the neglect of preservation of artistic integrity to be kind of disgusting. They basically were entrusted to present a foreign entity's product to a domestic audience, and essentially implied that it wasn't good enough, that they, a borderline amateur Texas production company at the time, knew better. The "music" is anachronistic. This is a fact. It was neither part of the original product nor contemporaneous to its release (at least a decade in some cases, as I've said); you're welcome to have your toys and play with them in your home but I'm not sure what you're trying to gain by arguing with purists that impurity is "A-OK".

I'm not sure what one example of a heavy metal song (that I'm aware of) being used in official material over the span of 34+ years proves, beyond Toriyama enjoying and appreciating that a band dedicated a song to one of his characters. Claiming Toei was influenced by someone messing with their own work is... well, strange.

I don't think using bands automatically implies that they think they "know better" just that western audiences have different expectations then Japanese audiences do that's all. I look at it the same way as Disney adding music to films like Kiki's Delivery Service in sections where it was originally silent, Disney execs explained to Miyazaki that western audiences simply weren't used to extended periods of silence in animated films and he was understanding, he didn't see the added music as an "impurity", just as something to appeal more to western audiences.

I don't see it as impurity in the least and I don't think it's strange at all as it's been proven that Funimation carries a lot of sway with Toei, so it's not shocking that they would start appealing to the west in the original versions to begin with rather then wait for Funimation to do it.

Great decision by Funimation to use that music. Gives the movies an extra special touch that wouldn't be there had it been the usual Faulconer tracks. It separates the films from the tv show. I like how they were willing to try something different. I have fond memories of that music and thought the selections were inspired.

Personally I think that using the Kikuchi tracks would have been laughable.

Agreed, the music really makes the films feel epic, I don't give a toss if it's "contemporaneous" or whatever, I just care if it fits well with the visuals and in most cases it does.

[GhostEmperorX]

They basically were entrusted to present a foreign entity's product to a domestic audience, and essentially implied that it wasn't good enough, that they, a borderline amateur Texas production company at the time, knew better.

This is precisely the issue that I've come to realize with this and other American dubbing/adaptation companies at the time. In this case in particular, they strayed from the show as intended by Toriyama himself as well as all those who worked on it but it wasn't an outright adaptation. It was just about the closest a dub could get to an adaptation while keeping most of the names intact, which is why their stuff is disrespectful. So their BGM choice in the show as well as their AMV precursors in the movies were both inherently bad calls that don't stand the test of time.

[Majin Buu]

Never liked it.

Just like the Falconer score, it makes the music come off as trying to be cool in a way that feels obnoxious, abrasive, and dated. It feels like I'm being assaulted whenever I try watching the film with that music.

[NitroEX]

The idea of putting licensed music in an anime movie isn't new or necessarily bad by itself but the biggest problem with Funi's use of music in these movies is that the placement is clumsy and amateur 90% of the time and just feels slapped on with very little thought or creative intent behind it. A lot of the times you'll have lyrics or screaming placed awkwardly during scenes with dialogue between characters or you'll have the crescendo of the song coincide with an utterly dull moment in the fight leading you to wonder why they even bothered with it in the first place. And other times, specifically with the Bardock film, you have evidence of a sloppy Youtube-tier edit job where you can even hear a cut in the song intro. It's just so poorly executed most of the time and I can only think of a handful of moments that still hold up, but the ones that do just feel like more of a happy accident rather than the result of any forethought or genius on the part of the editors.

The US versions of the first Pokemon movie as well as the Digimon movie (for all their faults) actually did licensed music placement correctly, and it has nothing to do with favouring any particular genre of music. All you have to do is pay attention to where the editors placed the songs and the tone behind them, usually, it will match the scene far better than what you see from the DBZ movies where music is treated as window dressing to cover up silence or to give some vague notion of a cool moment (when really, nothing cool has even happened yet).

I'll also add that licensed songs go better with a film when it's interwoven with actual movie score. If it's just a constant stream of unrelated songs it starts to cheapen the experience or feel incredibly lazy, and I can think of a few Funi movie dubs that came close to or basically did just that.

[Jackdaslayer]

There are a few bands, Haji's Kitchen and Dust For Life in particular who ended up being some of my favourite bands after listening them on DBZ. Chris Gavin, creator of Dust Foe life has had many albums both with and without the band ans is still going strong today.
I understand people not thinking they go with DBZ but I personally love them and got in to a lot of them through the show.

I've gotten permission from both Haji's Kitchen and Dust For Life to use them in my Dragon Ball Z : Invasion Of Tradick movie!

Here is the Trailer if people are interested
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPlervFVVCI

[RemixerDBZ]

I do not know if they will respond, I have opened 2 topics providing ideas and material for unreleased soundtracks and this forum has been weeks that nobody responds, nor speaks, nor contributes anything ...

[MasenkoHA]

The idea of putting licensed music in an anime movie isn't new or necessarily bad by itself but the biggest problem with Funi's use of music in these movies is that the placement is clumsy and amateur 90% of the time and just feels slapped on with very little thought or creative intent behind it. A lot of the times you'll have lyrics or screaming placed awkwardly during scenes with dialogue between characters or you'll have the crescendo of the song coincide with an utterly dull moment in the fight leading you to wonder why they even bothered with it in the first place. And other times, specifically with the Bardock film, you have evidence of a sloppy Youtube-tier edit job where you can even hear a cut in the song intro. It's just so poorly executed most of the time and I can only think of a handful of moments that still hold up, but the ones that do just feel like more of a happy accident rather than the result of any forethought or genius on the part of the editors.

The US versions of the first Pokemon movie as well as the Digimon movie (for all their faults) actually did licensed music placement correctly, and it has nothing to do with favouring any particular genre of music. All you have to do is pay attention to where the editors placed the songs and the tone behind them, usually, it will match the scene far better than what you see from the DBZ movies where music is treated as window dressing to cover up silence or to give some vague notion of a cool moment (when really, nothing cool has even happened yet).

I'll also add that licensed songs go better with a film when it's interwoven with actual movie score. If it's just a constant stream of unrelated songs it starts to cheapen the experience or feel incredibly lazy, and I can think of a few Funi movie dubs that came close to or basically did just that.

QFT. It wouldn’t be so bad if the licensed songs weren’t just randomly slapped into the movies with no rhyme or reason.

I do think the use of Slaughter’s Prelude for Trunks finding Gohan’s corpse and turning Super Saiyan was done effectively but that was the exception

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The thing with putting all these metal/rock songs as part of the replacement scores into the DBZ movies is much the same as the awful GT rap, it was FUNimation's effort to brand the series with this kind of faux "ZOMG HARDCORE EDGINESS!!!!!" image and cash in on whatever the cool and the new hotness at the time around 2000 or 2001 to appeal to young kids. Bands like Disturbed, Panthera and others were pretty big at the time so it's easy to see why they decided on this. Nowadays these much like the Faulconer Productions music are artifacts of a time back in the late '90s/early 2000's when fully replacing the musical scores of anime shows and films therein were effectively per the norm in localization, a practice which barring a few companies here and there most don't even really partake in doing with dubs anymore.

[PurestEvil]

The thing with putting all these metal/rock songs as part of the replacement scores into the DBZ movies is much the same as the awful GT rap, it was FUNimation's effort to brand the series with this kind of faux "ZOMG HARDCORE EDGINESS!!!!!" image and cash in on whatever the cool and the new hotness at the time around 2000 or 2001 to appeal to young kids. Bands like Disturbed, Panthera and others were pretty big at the time so it's easy to see why they decided on this. Nowadays these much like the Faulconer Productions music are artifacts of a time back in the late '90s/early 2000's when fully replacing the musical scores of anime shows and films therein were effectively per the norm in localization, a practice which barring a few companies here and there most don't even really partake in doing with dubs anymore.

Unremarkable music>obnoxiously unfitting music, anyday anytime.

[Planetnamek]

The thing with putting all these metal/rock songs as part of the replacement scores into the DBZ movies is much the same as the awful GT rap, it was FUNimation's effort to brand the series with this kind of faux "ZOMG HARDCORE EDGINESS!!!!!" image and cash in on whatever the cool and the new hotness at the time around 2000 or 2001 to appeal to young kids. Bands like Disturbed, Panthera and others were pretty big at the time so it's easy to see why they decided on this. Nowadays these much like the Faulconer Productions music are artifacts of a time back in the late '90s/early 2000's when fully replacing the musical scores of anime shows and films therein were effectively per the norm in localization, a practice which barring a few companies here and there most don't even really partake in doing with dubs anymore.

Yeah it is very indicative of the time period when these DVDs came out, but I kind of like that time-capsule feel of the soundtracks. Now the only company that really still does replacement soundtracks is The Pokemon Company(and ironically they replace WAY more of the background music then 4Kids ever did, sometimes over half the music in an episode is completely changed).

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The thing with putting all these metal/rock songs as part of the replacement scores into the DBZ movies is much the same as the awful GT rap, it was FUNimation's effort to brand the series with this kind of faux "ZOMG HARDCORE EDGINESS!!!!!" image and cash in on whatever the cool and the new hotness at the time around 2000 or 2001 to appeal to young kids. Bands like Disturbed, Panthera and others were pretty big at the time so it's easy to see why they decided on this. Nowadays these much like the Faulconer Productions music are artifacts of a time back in the late '90s/early 2000's when fully replacing the musical scores of anime shows and films therein were effectively per the norm in localization, a practice which barring a few companies here and there most don't even really partake in doing with dubs anymore.

Yeah it is very indicative of the time period when these DVDs came out, but I kind of like that time-capsule feel of the soundtracks. Now the only company that really still does replacement soundtracks is The Pokemon Company(and ironically they replace WAY more of the background music then 4Kids ever did, sometimes over half the music in an episode is completely changed).

I can see that, and yes when 4Kids had the dubbing license to Pokemon especially from Indigo to somewhere around in Johto they left much more of the original score intact while mostly adding original tracks to fill the silent moments in scenes rather than wholesale score replacement. TPCI in the meantime seems for whatever reason to keep the latter practice going despite most dub companies having long since stopped as part of the localization process.

[OmegaRockman]

It's a practice I disagree with on principle since I think dubs should always keep the original score except in cases where the score is unavailable for reasons outside the licensor's control (like with the Yamamoto scandal for Kai or Dominion Tank Police where IIRC the M&E tapes were lost in a fire), but I'd be lying if I said I weren't at least a bit nostalgic for the Movie 5 replacement score. It's bad, yes, but Deftones's Change on the SSJ transformation is definitely a guilty pleasure. Still, despite my nostalgia, at the end of the day I greatly prefer the Kikuchi score for that film.

[Yuli Ban]

I unironically like some of the music, and it does give the movies an "AMV" feel.

But by that same token, these songs give the movies a strong AMV feel. If that's really what you want out of them, more power to you. But at least back up and think about it this way:

Imagine when they're localized in some other country, the localizers used AC/DC, ABBA, Cheap Trick, Fleetwood Mac, Judas Priest, and KISS for the the original Star Wars trilogy's official soundtrack. Even if you like all of those bands.... GOD, that sounds jarring. I would not be able to take any of that seriously except as some tryhard's attempt to make the movies seem cool.
When you're a kid and don't know better, that's one thing. When you're grown up and DO know better, it REALLY comes down to personal preference, and at the same time knowing what they were doing and why they were doing it doesn't exactly endear me to their efforts.

If you REALLY want David Draiman edge-rapping over False Super Saiyan Goku, then more power to you. But at least separate that shit from the official release!

The only movie that really did licensed music decently was Broly movie 1. The tracklist was extremely varied (they REALLY dug underground for some of those choices rather than scrape the "modern radio rock/post-grunge/nü metal" playlist like they did for movies 4 and 5), they usually fit the scene well, and even the groove/nü metal tracks didn't feel extraordinarily out of place. It wasn't necessary and a better studio wouldn't have done it, but it could've been a lot worse.


That's not to say licensed music can't work in these movies at all. The issue isn't that they used Pantera in a Dragon Ball Z movie. I mean, fuck, one of my favorite '70s kung fu films literally used KRAUTROCK for its soundtrack. No, the issue is that none of this was intended and they used a lot of this music much the same way they used Faulconer's score: denying any and all silence to just soak in the ambiance and the scene playing out so that we can hear Drowning Pool, out of that sense that American kids can't handle even ten seconds of no music playing.

And like I said, it resulted in the movies feeling like overlong AMVs. Nü metal and post-grunge are weird in that they, along with post-hardcore and J-rock, just FEEL like they were made for angsty anime music videos (to the point I used to call this collection of genres "AMV rock" before I learned "butt rock" exists). I'm not a musician so I can't explain why that is, but there's a reason you're more far likely to hear Breaking Point, Linkin Park, and Disturbed in an AMV than AC/DC, Nirvana, or Motley Crue. Not that there are no AMVs with the latter, but all those inner-demons/personal-struggles, wangst, "gotta rise above" lyrical subject matter and easily-editable mechanical anti-riffs of AMV butt rock fits loads of sappy shonen fight scenes far more than the party-rock of glam metal, bikes-bitches-booze-blues of classic rock, or Sabbathy disaffected ennui of grunge.

But at the same time, this is Dragon Ball Z we're talking about. It rarely if ever delved into that sort of thing in the first place; it's always been more of an outrageous kung fu fantasy. So even if it was built from the ground up to use AMV rock, it probably wouldn't have worked.

It's hard to do licensed soundtracks right in the first place, especially because in a lot of cases it can come off as "the director's favorite music badly jammed into unfitting scenes." And I think it goes triply so for kung fu and fantasy movies. Because using nü metal over superhuman martial arts wasn't unique to Dragon Ball.

A movie I distinctly remember really liking in my childhood but feeling vast amounts of secondhand embarrassment towards nowadays is 2001's The One. Sci-fi martial arts fantasy movie, led by Jet Li, with a soundtrack INFESTED by nü metal (no pun intended, especially considering two appearances by Papa Roach). A cowardly movie that was basically an overlong nü metal music video set to decent martial artistry (because it's fuckin' Jet Li). It's not like the music was added in years later in an attempt to make it seem cool. It's how it came prepackaged, in a movie all but designed around that sort of aesthetic and attitude, and it still felt out of place and tryhard.

Seriously, I'm not being a curmudgeon who hates replacement soundtracks or contemporary music choices in martial arts or anime movies, especially if the original score is unavailable, was badly composed itself, or if a new song just "fits" better with actual justification. It just happens that the music they replaced it with for DBZ was part of one of the shittiest trends in rock music. The literal only reason any of it was used beyond appealing to 19-2000s youths was "it sounds punchy, heavy, and actiony." And if that's your operating principle, there are so many better genres to use than fucking nü metal, even sticking to heavy music. I mean Christ, they used Dream Theatre in the Trunks special, didn't they? If you HAVE to do this, why not prog metal? Thrash metal? Sludge metal? SOMETHING other than motherfucking nü metal! Just about anything that used nü metal from that era suffered with age. Nü metal and second-generation post-grunge are the weakest part of the soundtracks of some of my favorite games and movies from the era. It's not even like hair metal or disco where it at least retained the charm of its era; it was always ugly and a guilty pleasure for everyone except douches, hence why I call that era "the Douche Age." And yet that's the music that people associate with DBZ movies, at least in America.

That whole era of music felt tryhardy, it's just how it was. In an attempt to update DBZ movies to be contemporary, Funimation severely dated them to everyone except DBZ fans who grew up with them... and even then...

[Zephyr]

You could say that Funimation's handling of Dragon Ball overall has been to treat it like a "Douche Age"-style work. The "Douche Age" being 90's coolness-chasing taken too far, the "DEEBEEZEE" vibe is just the "Douche Age" aesthetic by way of religious fundamentalist sensibilities. And, so, putting nu metal in the films feels like a logical progression from where they started with Saban.

[nato25]

Yeah it's not very respectful to the original work but I like that we have the new option on the DVD's for original audio.

Convince me the Japanese track on Trunks finding Future Gohan dead in the rain is better than the track that played on the dub version though.

It's nice to have options and both versions are fun and work well. I guess back then if you just wanted a faithful dub you would be pretty annoyed though.

[MasenkoHA]

Convince me the Japanese track on Trunks finding Future Gohan dead in the rain is better than the track that played on the dub version though.

Prelude by Slaughter is one of like two times I thought the American music was more efficiently than the Japanese score

[nato25]

Convince me the Japanese track on Trunks finding Future Gohan dead in the rain is better than the track that played on the dub version though.

Prelude by Slaughter is one of like two times I thought the American music was more efficiently than the Japanese score

What was the other?