The actors have been quoted as saying the producers told them it was expected to be sold to the European and Canadian markets, where Ocean's work on Dragon Ball had always been seen. It wasn't cancon, it was "Oh, new Dragon Ball? I guess they'll want us again." Ocean bought a license from Toei and set to work doing their version, and sadly for them, it turned out that most of their target markets were no longer interested in anime, and Funimation pulled some strings to get their version on in the UK instead.
Granted, we don't have this from the horse's mouth, and it's possible someone who's really in the know would say different (in which case, believe them, not me), but until such a time as we have a more definitive word on it, I'll assume what the actors were told is the truth. Typically actors aren't lied to, they're just not told stuff, so if they were told something here, it's probably right.
MasenkoHA wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:33 pm
Cancon was actually one of the reasons Funimation had elected to have the series dubbed in Canada in the first place.
[...]
I assume Z was a big enough after the first two seasons Funimation figured YTV wouldn’t drop it just for no longer being considered Canadian Content.
Chris Sabat and the guys who worked on the Canadian side have all said the reason Funi chose to do it in Canada was because it was the cheapest way to do it professionally, and at the time it was fairly fashionable to do it the way Funi did it. I imagine cancon may have been seen as a neat bonus, but as far as we know, it was never a deciding factor. The exchange rate was very favourable, and studios like Viz were working with Ocean to crank out high-quality anime dubs cheaper than anyone else in the game, so naturally Funi went that route. It's no coincidence that when the union rules changed to force the studios to pay the actors better, Funi moved out of Canada. (The actors frequently talk about not being paid for screams in the Saban dub; in the Westwood dub, I'm fairly sure they were paid for screams. I'm fairly sure Ian Corlett and Scott McNeil have both implied this was one of the reasons for Funi moving things in-house)
Besides, Canada was airing a lot of non-Canadian-recorded anime at that time. DBZ wouldn't be particularly worse off for not being Canadian from the beginning if it meant Funi was able to spend less money on it. But it was cheaper to record in Canada, so they recorded in Canada.
wjbraden wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:09 pm
But isn't is possible they could've purchased the Funi episodes up through 167 before or even during the early stages of the Westwood recording? If they already had money invested towards those, I can see why they didn't, contractually and financially. Who knows, maybe they were planning to swap out the Funi versions of 108-166 at some point, but either didn't or couldn't for various reasons, financial or otherwise.
At any rate, I just can't see cancon not being part of the equation somewhere along the line. Though not Canadian myself, I used to follow the anime happenings on the channel vicariously on Toonzone forums in the mid-2000's (because they often got new episodes of shows before we did), and I distinctly remember how many people up there complained about YTV frantically removing and replacing non-Canadian anime with stuff like Reboot and Shadow Hunters as a means to make their Cancon quota. With a primetime hit like DBZ that took up lots of airspace, it stands to reason they'd want to have it count towards the quota by any means possible.
All conjecture I will admit though, and you are probably right in that there's actually a more absurd reason for why things went down the way they did. It wouldn't be Dragon Ball if some crazy, mixed up shenanigans weren't going on behind the scenes!
Nothing you are suggesting (or, more accurately, speculating) is backed up with any evidence. "This is what some people on a forum said was the reason for some shows changing over" is anecdotal at best.
And in addition to this, what you're suggesting simply goes against the evidence.
You're remembering speculation from 15 years ago and trying to suggest a reality that requires minimal bending of established truth to assert your understanding, but the reality is, people on the Toonzone forums 15 years ago probably just didn't know how these things were working behind the scenes. Hell, people on this forum just a few years ago didn't really know, for the most part. This information is not well known. It keeps getting lost admidst misinformation generated by people assuming things without doing their research.
What you're suggesting just doesn't make sense, with the situation as we understand it.
The point of Dragon Ball is to enjoy it. Never lose sight of that.
) crackpot theories on the situation with Funimation and Canada here a few years ago, and though my outlook has changed dramatically, the one thing I wouldn't rule out is cancon being a prime driver of some of the weirdness. Corus themselves wanted to try to get partial points for different parts of the production process for third-language programs, so between the script writing, new intro and eventually doing these little punch-ups, all in Canada, maybe they thought they'd have a case that a lot of supplemental, home-grown work can go into things (though we all know when their arguments on that matter were finally heard years later, they were dealt a firm "no"). But guess we'll never really know for sure what happened... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
