DBZ Remastered Dub

[Pol]

People really don't give it enough credit.

It sounds almost like Kai in terms of VA work, especially the Ginyu Saga.
Now, of course, there are weak links (Linda Young's Frieza and Goku, since the majority of their voice work is from the 1999 OG dub), but it holds up well.

What do ya'll think?

(This is about to be a shitstorm, get ready )

[jjgp1112]

Sabat, Nadolny, and Strait turned in good performances (though Sabat's Vegeta was in that weird period between the Ultimate Uncut and Kai where it was still overly raspy but started to show greater range) but with them not changing much of the dialogue and mixing it up with the shitty 1999 recordings, it's really just a meager bandaid.

[Pol]

I can see that, and I'd rather watch Kai mostimes, though I will say it is, to me atleast, the definitive way to watch the OG dub. I also prefer it's Burter and Jeice to Kai. I love Vic, but I can't get behind his interpretation of Burter, and Jeice is forgettable.

That's probably my biggest issue with Kai. The VA's don't feel as distinct as in the OG dub. Gohan is just plain generic to me personally. Steph really gives a distinct and mystical feel to Gohan as a character with her performance. But Kai is miles ahead of the 1999 dub, so I can't say it isn't well acted.

[JEFFMAN219]

People really don't give it enough credit.

It sounds almost like Kai in terms of VA work, especially the Ginyu Saga.
Now, of course, there are weak links (Linda Young's Frieza and Goku, since the majority of their voice work is from the 1999 OG dub), but it holds up well.

What do ya'll think?

(This is about to be a shitstorm, get ready )

The remastered dub was good from Saiyan saga until the middle of the Ginyu saga then it went into complete shit until the Cell Games saga and the rest of the Boo saga

[Pol]

People really don't give it enough credit.

It sounds almost like Kai in terms of VA work, especially the Ginyu Saga.
Now, of course, there are weak links (Linda Young's Frieza and Goku, since the majority of their voice work is from the 1999 OG dub), but it holds up well.

What do ya'll think?

(This is about to be a shitstorm, get ready )

The remastered dub was good from Saiyan saga until the middle of the Ginyu saga then it went into complete shit until the Cell Games saga and the rest of the Boo saga

I believe that's because Funi used the 1999 dub after the parts they thought were atrocious (Most of Frieza's saga).
The Boo Saga and Cell Games saga is were most fans agree the OG dub was at it's best, so they did barely any re-recordings there.
I could be wrong, so don't take it as Gospel.

[JEFFMAN219]

People really don't give it enough credit.

It sounds almost like Kai in terms of VA work, especially the Ginyu Saga.
Now, of course, there are weak links (Linda Young's Frieza and Goku, since the majority of their voice work is from the 1999 OG dub), but it holds up well.

What do ya'll think?

(This is about to be a shitstorm, get ready )

The remastered dub was good from Saiyan saga until the middle of the Ginyu saga then it went into complete shit until the Cell Games saga and the rest of the Boo saga

I believe that's because Funi used the 1999 dub after the parts they thought were atrocious (Most of Frieza's saga).
The Boo Saga and Cell Games saga is were most fans agree the OG dub was at it's best, so they did barely any re-recordings there.
I could be wrong, so don't take it as Gospel.

As someone who grew up on the original dub I agree. By the time they got to dubbing both the Cell Games saga and the Boo saga the voice actors had some more experience under their belt compared to when they first took over from ocean back in 1999

[dragonmagico]

Honestly I just wish we could get acting as good as their budokai/tenkaichi acting was for any part of the anime. even kai isnt quite as good

[MasenkoHA]

People really don't give it enough credit.

It sounds almost like Kai in terms of VA work, especially the Ginyu Saga.

Vegeta and Krillin sound good (or about as good as they possibly can) but that’s about it. Most of Sabat’s other characters aren’t redubbed so we have to deal with an absolutely unlistenable Piccolo starting with the Freeza saga. The fact he voices 3 of the 5 Ginyu members and Zarbon is hella distracting. Nadolny’s Gohan is weird. They seemed to only redub some of her early season 3 dialog so it will switch back and forth between her “Goku” voice (which I maintain is flawed but a significant improvement over the Gohan voice she been using) she’s been using for Gohan since 2002 and her early attempt to mimic Saffron Henderson’s performance and it’s noticeable and very distracting . Then they just default to the 1999 recordings right around the time she settled on that god awful chainsmoker voice. uhh I mean “Clint Eastwood”

What do ya’ll think?

If we’re counting the Ultimate Uncut episodes meant to replace the Saban era with Ocean cast those are fine (now that it no longer defaults to Nathan Johnson’s score). But the “remastered” episodes from Captain Ginyu onwards? The only significant improvements are Vegeta and Krillin’s voices (and Vegeta reverts back to the old Sabat trying to be Brian Drummonds recordings starting at the Trunks saga) and getting the Kikuchi score.


So really just the Kikuchi score is the only improvement the remastered dub has over the original in-house dub

[TheMajinRedComet]

I aways thought it was very considerate of them to come back and redub some of the material. I agree that Goku and Piccolo are rough but it does really put a exclamation point on Piccolo's "Yes! I feel great!" line. I never learned the whole story how the new lines happened. I imagined they got paid from the budget of the dvd production. Maybe they wrote it off under the extras budget. But you never know maybe it was a Sabet thing I'm pretty sure he hates his season 3 Brian Drummond impression as much as we do.

[Robo4900]

Frankly, it's shit.

The new voicework is recorded on better equipment, and the redub actors do a better job, but the scripts are still shit, they only redubbed half of the dialogue initially, less as it went on, the mixing was terrible, incorrect lines from the original recordings were used, often to the detriment of the dub (another example is one of Garlic Junior's henchmen saying "Gohan and Piccolo hate each other"), some lines were even missing in the initial release on the Orange Bricks, and sometimes it seems the redubbed dialogue was recorded from a different script than the final recording, so some conversations just don't make any sense.

The Funimation cast redoing their old work is a great idea on paper, but the only thing that actually improved in the "Remastered dub" is some of the line delivery, which ends up being a downside if you ask me, since at least in the original dub it was uniformly bad and you could appreciate it on the level of it being like an amateur fandub that replaced the Ocean dub. But the remastered dub just continually reminds you how bad it is by having a random subset of the characters actually sound pretty good (though admittedly still not good enough to make the awful scripts work; I don't think there are many actors who could achieve that, even at the top of their game, the season 3 scripts were just something else, even compared to Funi's other Dragon Ball work).

There's also the matter of the music. If you watch with the "US broadcast score" option on the DVDs (not an option on FunimationNow), several episodes use the non-final, early placements of the Faulconer music.
If you watch with the Kikuchi score (the only option on FuniNow), you have the awful mixing, the score doesn't fit Funi's version of the show at all, the insert songs are missing, and the OP/ED (which are very important, not just because they're good and iconic, but because they establish leitmotifs used in the show's score) are replaced with generic instrumentals.

The "Remastered dub" is awful, no two ways about it.

[TheGreatness25]

I feel like it's this really weird thing that has no place. It's not that the re-recorded performances were necessarily bad, but what was the point? I get why Sabat redid his Vegeta (to somewhat bridge the gap between Ultimate Uncut and the Ginyu stuff), but why did everyone else? It wasn't to make the dub better because they left in a lot of voice work from 1999 and they didn't change the dialog. So to me, it was strange.

I always looked at the redub like this: it didn't cater to those who had nostalgia for the old dub because they already had what they wanted, and it doesn't cater to the Japanese fans because it's still not an accurate dub, and it doesn't cater to new fans because it's still so rough. So what was the point?

It was kinda cool to hear the dub with the original music, but it wasn't all that interesting for me. Again, I have nostalgia for the dub, which includes the Faulconer score (and actually fits better with the wacky, goofy voice work from Funimation).

I think that they could've used that opportunity to do a full, accurate redub, but I can understand why they didn't want to shell out the dough for that. But if ever there was an opportunity, that was it. And it might have been worth getting the horrendous orange bricks just for that. But, instead, it was just an all around bad release with a quirky little gimmick of a "remastered dub" that didn't really fix any of the issues that it had in the first place other than some voice actors not liking their old work, I guess.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

The Funimation cast redoing their old work is a great idea on paper, but the only thing that actually improved in the "Remastered dub" is some of the line delivery, which ends up being a downside if you ask me, since at least in the original dub it was uniformly bad and you could appreciate it on the level of it being like an amateur fandub that replaced the Ocean dub. But the remastered dub just continually reminds you how bad it is by having a random subset of the characters actually sound pretty good (though admittedly still not good enough to make the awful scripts work; I don't think there are many actors who could achieve that, even at the top of their game, the season 3 scripts were just something else, even compared to Funi's other Dragon Ball work).

Yeah. The remastered dub just fails fundamentally because of its inconsistency. At least with the original dub it has no pretentions about itself (other than thinking it's funny, but it's at least aware of its own inaccuracy), and as a viewer you know what your getting with 2 seasons of great acting and poor scripts (seasons 1-2) and amateur acting and scripts for the remainder.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Eh, depending on what arc it is really so so to mediocre overall. The redubbed Saiyan and early Namek arcs are ok, but largely recycling the old scripts that were used when the Ocean cast was still around dragged it down as the dialogue is largely the same although a lot of the more infamous things were removed (Bardock was a brilliant scientist, Vegeta killed Grandpa Gohan.etc) quite a bit was left the same.

However, it's when you get to the Freeza arc and onward where the redubbing fails to really show any meaningful point to me. The stuff they did do was scattershot and inconsistent at best because you had Chris Sabat largely replacing his awful Brian Drummond impression as Vegeta from 1999 (up to around Trunks' arrival) with the updated lower take he was doing then, but at the same time didn't bother redubbing that horrid ogre sounding/wannabe Scott McNeil voice for Piccolo which continued until the OG DB dub or Yamcha's unfitting surfer dude accent. Even further, it really is a shame that they couldn't get Sean Schemmel on board to redo his earliest stuff as Goku. The transition from his refined Goku to that god awful phoned in performance in the old dub in ep 54/68 is so jarring because he suddenly regresses back to sounding like when he was poorly trying to imitate Peter Kelamis until about episode 90 something. There was some other redubbing like Sonny Strait redoing Krillin (because that rough nasal voice he used at first was bad) but overall the rest of the performances stayed the same, and then by the time the Androids arrive the redubbing stops almost completely so it didn't really amount to much in the long run. Kai OTOH is really what the remastered dub should've been, a much more faithfully dubbed version of the show that isn't largely retreading the same screw ups as the old Z dub.

[Robo4900]

Yeah. The remastered dub just fails fundamentally because of its inconsistency. At least with the original dub it has no pretentions about itself (other than thinking it's funny, but it's at least aware of its own inaccuracy), and as a viewer you know what your getting with 2 seasons of great acting and poor scripts (seasons 1-2) and amateur acting and scripts for the remainder.

Unless you make the correct choice of switching to the Westwood dub at episode 108/123.

[90sDBZ]

I don't have a problem with the remastered dub in and of itself. It's just a shame that its essentially replaced the original 1999 dub to the point were the only way to watch that is the old singles. I'm sure many fans of the old Toonami broadcast would appreciate it being included as an extra audio track.

In defense of the remastered dub, the handful of redubbed characters in Season 3 did sound considerably better. You could argue that Vegeta needed redubbing more than Goku, as while Sean's acting had improved a ton, the actual voice itself wasn't all that different. Sabat's Vegeta voice sounded completely different, so it was arguably more necessary to redub him. It at least provided some consistency with the 1-67 redub.

It also made some supporting characters more consistent. Tien went through 3 actors in the OG Funi dub (4 if you count Ted Cole from Ocean). In the remastered dub it's John Burgmeier all the way. I believe Kyle Hebert also redubbed Mark Britten's early Ox King performance.

Although there were other instances were it was less consistent, like Sabat's early Recoome being left intact in Season 3 filler, and sounding completely different to his Season 2 redub performance. Ultimately it's a tradeoff. In some ways it's better, in others worse.

I ultimately prefer the OG Funi dub because you get the gradual evolution of the cast i.e. Sabat gradually phasing out his Drummond impression and making it his own. In the remastered dub you get one cast from start to finish, which is nice, but you have stuff like Sabat's performance going back and forth.

[MyVisionity]

About the only reason I can see that the Remastered exists was to sell the Orange Bricks.

You're better off tracking down the Saban/Ocean releases and then switching to the original broadcast Season 3 and onwards. If you're gonna watch dubbed.

[ZeroIsOurHero]

You're better off tracking down the Saban/Ocean releases and then switching to the original broadcast Season 3 and onwards. If you're gonna watch dubbed.

Lol no. I have my gripes with the Ultimate Uncut and revised dubs, but they’re much better than those piles of garbage. I can’t recommend the Saban and Toonami dubs to anyone other than as a way to see what kids in the late 90s had to put up with while watching the show.

[KingVegetto]

Still holding out hope that original Ultimate Uncut airings of episodes 28-67 surface one of these days. The remastered dub feels like it has no reason to exist, yeah they cut out some of the lines that people running DBZ fansites loved to mock, but for me that's half of the fun and they gave us shittier sounding music and had newer voice-recordings sitting alongside old ones and it all just sounded like a mess.

Seriously who was even asking for a partially remastered half-assed dub like this?

[WittyUsername]

They could’ve afforded to change more of the bad dialogue from the old season 3 dub. Why were “mondo cool” and Freeza’s backscratcher joke kept in tact?

[MyVisionity]

You're better off tracking down the Saban/Ocean releases and then switching to the original broadcast Season 3 and onwards. If you're gonna watch dubbed.

Lol no. I have my gripes with the Ultimate Uncut and revised dubs, but they’re much better than those piles of garbage. I can’t recommend the Saban and Toonami dubs to anyone other than as a way to see what kids in the late 90s had to put up with while watching the show.

For all of their flaws, those original dubs are still the best way to view pre-Kai DBZ if you're gonna watch dubbed. The remastered stuff is a total mess and the Ultimate Uncut still has the old dialogue but with worse acting. The uncut footage doesn't make up for any of that.

At least with Ocean + Original Broadcast you get clear and genuine intent driving the show, as well as greater consistency.