Post
by OmegaRockman » Sun May 16, 2021 11:40 pm
Please note that as an American I'm going to have an English-speaking bias. Also, as a monolingual the stuff I know about these dubs' scripts I learned through the grapevine from years reading people's posts on this forum and any other critiques come from what I could gather from clips.
(Dis)honorable mentions:
Westwood Z
Rushed performances and reused Funi scripts hold this one back severely, but the cast is a notable improvement over the era's in-house Funi regardless. I just wish it had a Kikuchi option like Funi Z.
Harmony Gold DB
While the movie dubs are strangely accurate aside from the name changes, the TV series is filled with punching up that is somehow worse than Funi's Canadian and in-house efforts. The name changes alone make both the TV and movie dubs automatically bad IMO, which is sad because the cast is fantastic. Guess we could extend this entry to Zero y El Drago Magico, especially with the missing M&E elements early on, but I haven't watched enough not do I know enough Spanish to give it a fair shake.
BLT/Funi English DB
Good cast, so-so script, music changes kill it in the end.
Funi In-house DB
Points for keeping the music, but they're immediately lost for the script changes and incredibly hit-or-miss cast. The good castings can get really good at points, but the repeats from the low talent pool at the time definitely get distracting and Stephanie Nadolny as the lead makes watching this comfortably nearly impossible.
Blue Water DB
The best of the OG DB bunch, but the holdovers from the Funi scripts make it hard to call this dub good until a certain point where they really go in on the corrections. The cast is also probably as bad as in-house Funi, but in a different way: while Funi has wildy varying deviations of surprisingly good and charismatic performances to embarrassingly bad performances, BW just kinda stays bland throughout. Nothing remarkably bad, but nothing remarkably good, either. Maybe a good restoration would get me to give this dub more of a chance, but for now I'm not as enamored as I am with BW's GT.
European Portuguese
I know that a lot of folks in Portugal love it, but I can't call this a good dub in the same way I can't call ADV Ghost Stories a good dub.
Now to the actual list:
10. French Z
More for impact than quality, but that doesn't make this dub quality. The translations from what I can gather are better than Funi's, but still not great. Consequently, they caused a lot of problems for that region with some errors (Space Warriors, Satan's Little Heart) persisting in some regions to this day even when the French version corrected them starting with Kai. The undubbed screams don't help matters.
9. Funi Z/GT (Ocean 1-53, in-house, the whole shebang)
You all know why this is here. At least the Ocean cast was good from the start, but there's no saving that script and replacement music. Obviously not counting the uncut Ocean cast films here. Then there's the in-house dub. Probably my least favorite dub on a personal level. The other dubs further down are undoubtedly worse, but I either have no personal attachment to them or I at least get a chuckle out of them. This one, though... it had such a negative impact on the English-speaking fandom as a whole that I can't abide it. I'm lumping in-house GT in here for being more of the same, though it's admittedly marginally better than the Z dub. Only marginally, though, which is why I put it on the same level. Thank God for Kai.
(Signed the self-admitted biggest Kai fanboy on the planet)
8. AB Groupe English
The performers here are competent based on their Code Lyoko dub. Sadly, they seemed to have a severe case of not giving a shit; strange and inconsistent casting, strange and inconsistent translation choices, strange and inconsistent all around. Plus a few carryovers from the French dub. Ironically, I actually unironically like their Bardock dub better than Funi's, though. It's not good, mind you, but at least the script is mostly there.
7. Greek Z
The small pool of actors that made them have to use voice filters to be less noticable, inconsistent script sources, and overall rushed production makes this one a nightmare from what I can tell. I wish they could get a decent Kai dub to make up for this mess (same goes for lots of other countries, too, honestly).
6. Albanian
This is a fandub that somehow made it on TV. 'Nuff said.
5. Filipino CPC Cooler films
This seems to be from an era of the Filipino English dub where they got actors who could mostly emote, but Piccolo is strangely miscast and the script is somehow less accurate than Funi's. Bad bad bad.
4. Arabic Z
The changes they had to make are immeasurable, and they couldn't even finish at a somewhat sensible stopping point until Kai. Then they just jump around series like madmen without finishing a damn thing. What?
3. Filipino CPC Z ('91)
Barely any lip syncing, performers that seem to try but obviously have a hard time acting in a language they're not used to, bad miscasts, the works. This thing was a wonderful discovery history-wise, but as a dub it's pretty awful.
2. Serbian (Old)
This is just a shoddily put together product. No lip syncing, lifeless performances, outside sounds are picked up. Seems like nobody gave a shit. The new Serbian dub being based on Funi scripts is a travesty on its own, but to call the old dub a bad product doesn't even begin to describe it.
1. Speedy
All the problems with the above two except with the added bonus of having performers who barely have a grasp on the language they're dubbing in, let alone act in it. Plus there seems to be some unlicensed shenanigans going on based on some movies having an incomplete M&E track.
There's probably some other dub that's really bad that I missed and I'll probably smack myself for forgetting it, so maybe I'll have to write a followup in the future. For now, this is my list.
The self-proclaimed World's Biggest Dragon Ball Kai Fan™
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