Dragon Ball Rewatch, Week 54 - DBZ 75-79

[ABED]

Pauline Newstone and Linda Young were both definitely miscast, they gave Freeza "chain smoker grandma" type voices that just didn't fit the character at all. Recasting the role with Chris Ayres in Kai was a great decision because he definitely captures the essence of Nakao's take of Freeza as a sadistic yet regal tyrant in a way that neither Newstone or Young did with their takes in the old dubs.

I wouldn't say Newstone sounded like a smoker at all. Newstone was an infinitely better actress than young so I wouldn't lump them together. The only thing they have in common is they weren't right for Freeza.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Pauline Newstone and Linda Young were both definitely miscast, they gave Freeza "chain smoker grandma" type voices that just didn't fit the character at all. Recasting the role with Chris Ayres in Kai was a great decision because he definitely captures the essence of Nakao's take of Freeza as a sadistic yet regal tyrant in a way that neither Newstone or Young did with their takes in the old dubs.

I wouldn't say Newstone sounded like a smoker at all. Newstone was an infinitely better actress than young so I wouldn't lump them together. The only thing they have in common is they weren't right for Freeza.

Yeah, and listening to Newstone's Freeza again it doesn't really sound sound like that. Young OTOH most definitely did and i'm really glad as i said above that they cast Ayres for Kai because he has definitely proved to be a better fit for Freeza voice wise in pretty much every way that the former two weren't.

[Robo4900]

Pauline Newstone and Linda Young were both definitely miscast, they gave Freeza "chain smoker grandma" type voices that just didn't fit the character at all. Recasting the role with Chris Ayres in Kai was a great decision because he definitely captures the essence of Nakao's take of Freeza as a sadistic yet regal tyrant in a way that neither Newstone or Young did with their takes in the old dubs.

I wouldn't say Newstone sounded like a smoker at all. Newstone was an infinitely better actress than young so I wouldn't lump them together. The only thing they have in common is they weren't right for Freeza.

Yeah, and listening to Newstone's Freeza again it doesn't really sound sound like that. Young OTOH most definitely did and i'm really glad as i said above that they cast Ayres for Kai because he has definitely proved to be a better fit for Freeza voice wise in pretty much every way that the former two weren't.

Yet another reason I want to see Ocean Kai; Funi clearly got it right with their second swing at Freeza, I really want to see how Ocean did with their choice of Lee Tockar.

No doubt he's pretty awesome.

And also no doubt people will compare him and Ayres, even though both will likely end up equally good for different reasons.

Anyway, snark aside... Pauline Newstone was miscast, but she's a good actress who was well directed, in a dub that had fairly well-written (if horrendously inaccurate) scripts. Linda Young was hired to fill Newstone's shoes under a director who had no idea what he was doing, using scripts that were hastily thrown together and often were missing pages, necessitating improvising in the booth from time to time.
Neither was a good Freeza, but it's clear Young got the shorter end of the stick. On one hand, I do wonder what she would've been like in Kai; on the other, I wouldn't give up Ayres' take for anything. He's simply brilliant.
(Yes, I can say nice things about the Funi dub... Occasionally )

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I wouldn't say Newstone sounded like a smoker at all. Newstone was an infinitely better actress than young so I wouldn't lump them together. The only thing they have in common is they weren't right for Freeza.

Yeah, and listening to Newstone's Freeza again it doesn't really sound sound like that. Young OTOH most definitely did and i'm really glad as i said above that they cast Ayres for Kai because he has definitely proved to be a better fit for Freeza voice wise in pretty much every way that the former two weren't.

Yet another reason I want to see Ocean Kai; Funi clearly got it right with their second swing at Freeza, I really want to see how Ocean did with their choice of Lee Tockar.

No doubt he's pretty awesome.

And also no doubt people will compare him and Ayres, even though both will likely end up equally good for different reasons.

Anyway, snark aside... Pauline Newstone was miscast, but she's a good actress who was well directed, in a dub that had fairly well-written (if horrendously inaccurate) scripts. Linda Young was hired to fill Newstone's shoes under a director who had no idea what he was doing, using scripts that were hastily thrown together and often were missing pages, necessitating improvising in the booth from time to time.
Neither was a good Freeza, but it's clear Young got the shorter end of the stick. On one hand, I do wonder what she would've been like in Kai; on the other, I wouldn't give up Ayres' take for anything. He's simply brilliant.
(Yes, I can say nice things about the Funi dub... Occasionally )

Really, looking at where things were at the time in 2009/2010 even with the better writing and scripts i wouldn't say that Young really would've been any better given her work in video games and the remastered dub from just before then had she remained as Freeza's voice. I think recasting was the best move among the roles they did, and given how apparently she wasn't working too well with the new scripts as it was said at the time it was thus decided that recasting Freeza was the way to go.

[ABED]

I wouldn't say Newstone sounded like a smoker at all. Newstone was an infinitely better actress than young so I wouldn't lump them together. The only thing they have in common is they weren't right for Freeza.

Yeah, and listening to Newstone's Freeza again it doesn't really sound sound like that. Young OTOH most definitely did and i'm really glad as i said above that they cast Ayres for Kai because he has definitely proved to be a better fit for Freeza voice wise in pretty much every way that the former two weren't.

Yet another reason I want to see Ocean Kai; Funi clearly got it right with their second swing at Freeza, I really want to see how Ocean did with their choice of Lee Tockar.

No doubt he's pretty awesome.

And also no doubt people will compare him and Ayres, even though both will likely end up equally good for different reasons.

Anyway, snark aside... Pauline Newstone was miscast, but she's a good actress who was well directed, in a dub that had fairly well-written (if horrendously inaccurate) scripts. Linda Young was hired to fill Newstone's shoes under a director who had no idea what he was doing, using scripts that were hastily thrown together and often were missing pages, necessitating improvising in the booth from time to time.
Neither was a good Freeza, but it's clear Young got the shorter end of the stick. On one hand, I do wonder what she would've been like in Kai; on the other, I wouldn't give up Ayres' take for anything. He's simply brilliant.
(Yes, I can say nice things about the Funi dub... Occasionally )

Fun's dub scripts were missing pages? I've never heard that. Cue "The More You Know" jingle.

[MasenkoHA]

Linda Young was hired to fill Newstone's shoes under a director who had no idea what he was doing, using scripts that were hastily thrown together and often were missing pages, necessitating improvising in the booth from time to time
Neither was a good Freeza, but it's clear Young got the shorter end of the stick.

In 1999 sure. But the 2005 redub of the first 67 episodes didn’t have most of these hangs up. The Funimation Studios cast had six years experience by that point, the scripts were mostly just recycled from th same scripts used for the Funi/Ocean dub. And Young’s Freeza still wasn’t good. Less awful perhaps but I don’t think she would have sound much better in Kai.


Pauline Newstone was fantastic for the role she was hired to play it’s just Funimation (afaik Funimation had the final say in the voice actors even during the Ocean days) had the wrong idea of how the Freeza character should be.

And really season 3 accentuated a lot of issues with the first two seasons (careless mistakes for not caring about accuracy, miscast roles, dumb out of place jokes those were there during the Ocean days they just got way worse in season 3) but now with a cast that (at least at the time) didn’t have 1/10th of the talent of the cast they were hired to replace.

[Planetnamek]

Yeah, and listening to Newstone's Freeza again it doesn't really sound sound like that. Young OTOH most definitely did and i'm really glad as i said above that they cast Ayres for Kai because he has definitely proved to be a better fit for Freeza voice wise in pretty much every way that the former two weren't.

Yet another reason I want to see Ocean Kai; Funi clearly got it right with their second swing at Freeza, I really want to see how Ocean did with their choice of Lee Tockar.

No doubt he's pretty awesome.

And also no doubt people will compare him and Ayres, even though both will likely end up equally good for different reasons.

Anyway, snark aside... Pauline Newstone was miscast, but she's a good actress who was well directed, in a dub that had fairly well-written (if horrendously inaccurate) scripts. Linda Young was hired to fill Newstone's shoes under a director who had no idea what he was doing, using scripts that were hastily thrown together and often were missing pages, necessitating improvising in the booth from time to time.
Neither was a good Freeza, but it's clear Young got the shorter end of the stick. On one hand, I do wonder what she would've been like in Kai; on the other, I wouldn't give up Ayres' take for anything. He's simply brilliant.
(Yes, I can say nice things about the Funi dub... Occasionally )

Fun's dub scripts were missing pages? I've never heard that. Cue "The More You Know" jingle.

I heard Toei was pissed at Funimation for not wanting to pay for translations, so Toei intentionally set them the shittiest most half-assed translations they could come up with in hopes of Funimation getting the point and properly paying them for real translations, but Funimation stubbornly stuck with using those butchered translations for a lot longer then Toei anticipated and it wasn't until Buu that they finally started paying them properly. So it wouldn't surprise me if Toei deliberately left out pages as a middle-finger to Funimation for being cheapskates.

[ABED]

That sounds like a BS rumor.

[Robo4900]

Spoiler:

Fun's dub scripts were missing pages? I've never heard that. Cue "The More You Know" jingle.

I heard Toei was pissed at Funimation for not wanting to pay for translations, so Toei intentionally set them the shittiest most half-assed translations they could come up with in hopes of Funimation getting the point and properly paying them for real translations, but Funimation stubbornly stuck with using those butchered translations for a lot longer then Toei anticipated and it wasn't until Buu that they finally started paying them properly. So it wouldn't surprise me if Toei deliberately left out pages as a middle-finger to Funimation for being cheapskates.

That sounds like a BS rumor.

Definitely a BS rumour. Chris Sabat in his Geekdom interview noted that Funi had their translated scripts written by translators in America. In the very early days, they couldn't get ahold of any good Japanese-to-English translators, so they had to just go with whoever they could find, and rely on their script adaptors to turn the Engrishy nonsense they often got back into a usable TV script.

Later on (presumably a few months prior to the October 2000 release of Ginyu Assault on DVD) Funi had Steve Simmons on hand for Z and GT. My assumption has always been that he joined in either during or after the Trunks saga, since "Cat loves food ye-yea-yea-yeah" allegedly was a product of a line being missing and Chris Sabat having to improvise something in the recording booth. I doubt such a thing would have happened with Simmons' translations on hand, though it's entirely possible a mistake could have been made in the script adaptation process, or otherwise that the copies sent to the recording booth mistakenly missed out a page.
In any case, even with Simmons' scripts in hand, Funi continued their awful practice of rewriting all the scripts to fit their typical style, with no respect paid to the original translated dialogue, and this also carried over to their work on DB, which had translations provided by Clyde Mandelin, I believe because Simmons was busy with DBZ among other things.

Among all this, there's no suggestion that they ever used English scripts provided by Toei as the basis for their recording scripts, though there are some accounts of some very mangled, very literal scripts being on-hand in the recording booth to reference if a line isn't working. It's possible this is a tale from the early days when they were working off of very poor-quality Texas translators, or maybe after Mandelin and Simmons were involved, they kept some awful, Engrishy scripts from Toei on-hand as a very literal reference in case any line changes were needed in the booth.

But, what we do know for sure is that the dub scripts for all of DB, Z, and GT were always written based off of the work of translators who were hired to give the dub script writers a translation to work from.

[8000 Saiyan]

One thing I always enjoyed about Ayres as Frieza is how he delivers many of his lines in this regal and theatrical way. In a way, it makes the lines sound a lot better.

And yeah, Newstone was miscast, but she did a good job IMO. Young was just miscast, much like her roles as young Genkai and Selypa. She did good as old Genkai and Baba, though.

[Planetnamek]

One thing I always enjoyed about Ayres as Frieza is how he delivers many of his lines in this regal and theatrical way. In a way, it makes the lines sound a lot better.

And yeah, Newstone was miscast, but she did a good job IMO. Young was just miscast, much like her roles as young Genkai and Selypa. She did good as old Genkai and Baba, though.

I liked how Young changed Freeza's voice for every transformation, going really deep with the second one(to the point that even Psaros thought it sounded almost decent).

I enjoyed this batch of episodes and didn't mind the added dialogue(and yes I laughed at the dragon telling the characters that they could just "wish for nothing three times", mainly because I was getting just as impatient with them standing around) and that scene of Gohan getting pissed off and laying into Freeza and shocking him is one of my favorites in this arc.