About Frieza's gender change in episode 78 from the Greek dub of Dragon Ball Z

[TheRed259]

In the Greek dub of Dragon Ball Z, Frieza is a woman and has a female voice. In episodes 78-87, however, he is a man and has a male voice. I guess this is probably due to the long break between episodes 77 and 78, as episode 77 aired on January 31, 1999 and episode 78 on February 27, 2000, so we are talking about over 1 year without new episodes on TV. It is possible that they forgot who the character was as in episode 78 we also hear Zarbon with a male voice, while previously he was a woman and Vegeta without the usual filter on his voice (up until episode 92).

Episode 77
Commercial for new episodes after 13 months
Episode 78

Frieza becomes a woman again in episode 88. I guess they somehow realized their mistake and made him a woman again. But the scripts for the next episodes must have still had him as a man and whatever corrections they managed to make must have been made at the last minute or at worst during recording because they were still calling Frieza "him" in a few places in the following episodes. Even in episode 92 for example, during Goku's vision on Namek, Vegeta tells Goku that he must kill him.

So yeah, that's how the gender change in episode 78 must have happened...

Also, for the record, before Frieza appeared in the anime, up until episode 43, he was referred to as a man, but when he appeared for the first time in episode 44 that's where they starting referring to him as a woman.

Later, for some strange reason, Frieza has a male voice again during episodes 146, 284 & 286. He was also referred to as a man during episode 219 by Shin.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I wonder if the reason for the inconsistency about Freeza's gender in the Greek dub is because the dubbing studio were given very vague guidelines for the characters?

Brian Drummond has spoken in interviews about how he was told Vegeta was an alien, but for all he knew he may have not been human-like.

I could imagine the name ending with an "a" and the character looking androgynous being confusing for people unfamiliar with the series.

[TheRed259]

I wonder if the reason for the inconsistency about Freeza's gender in the Greek dub is because the dubbing studio were given very vague guidelines for the characters?

I don't know but both the long time gap between the two episodes and Frieza's 2nd form must have played a role.

I could imagine the name ending with an "a" and the character looking androgynous being confusing for people unfamiliar with the series.

Hmm, in the Greek dub, Frieza is called Freezer, so I don't think that was the reason (although these episodes were based on the original JPN version) but oddly enough, even though both Zarbon and Dodoria are women in the Greek dub, in episode 44 before they actually talk in the anime, only DodoriA was referred to as a woman in that episode.

But yes, generally speaking, you might be right and that's why Coola is called Cooler in many dubs for example.