Harmony Gold Dub Cancelation

[AlexSketchy04]

It is known that the Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball was cancelled due to low ratings, but was this actually the case?

Given how TV worked at the time, it seems odd that only five episodes were dubbed and aired, in very small markets, for just one week, especially when the standard was to produce 65 episodes for weekday syndication.

Could the cancellation have been due to the content of the following episodes instead?

[Hellspawn28]

I guess the networks were not impressive with the show back in 1989 to move forward. I think we dogged a bullet with Harmony Gold not dubbing the rest of Dragon Ball.

[MasenkoHA]

The “fact” that it was cancelled due to low ratings based on 5 episodes airing on television and then nothing was always just accepted but let’s look at the actual facts

It only aired in like Philadelphia and Michigan.

It aired at 330 Pm when its target demographic was in school. The first episode would have aired on a holiday (Jan 1st) but the rest would have been during school hours

Harmony Gold was clearly struggling with the content even more so than Funimation was in 1995. Bulma can’t give Oolong a diarrhea candy, it’s a paralyzing agent. Oolong can’t figure out the village girl is Goku in drag by seeing how “she’s” peeing while standing up he just has a panic attack having to choose between girls and changes into a bull because uhh reason. Goku cooking a dead wolf and eating it is omitted entirely. All these things were kept intact in the 95 Funi/BLT dub.



What probably actually happened is Harmony Gold snatched the rights to Dragon Ball without knowing anything about it other than it was a popular cartoon in Japan then saw Playboy Bunny outfit Bulma and warrior bikini armor Chi Chi and noped out and then sold the episodes they dubbed to some local stations as schedule filler to recuperate some of their loss. Also a likely reason the Kikuchi score was kept. No reason to pay for a rescoring on a show you’re not moving forward with.

[Hellspawn28]

HG dub did leave some influence for Funmation as they would still use names like Master Roshi. Funimation even use the General Tao for that one filler episode of DBZ because they haven't dubbed the Red Ribbon Army stuff yet.

[MrSatan2099]

I would think of it less as being cancelled and more as failing to sell.

We may never know the exact sequence of events so it's all conjecture but they distributed the TV movie and it did well enough or someone there was passionate enough about the series to give it another try with the five episode run? No doubt in my mind that if those episodes had done well or been profitable HG would have proceeded with more regardless of content. You're talking about a company that on two occasions stitched multiple anime series together for US release so they would have worked around it IF it had sold.

Maybe think of it as two pilots. That's not common, but not unheard of. The original Star Trek had two pilots for instance. The second swing just didn't do well enough for a third. The same thing happened with the Captain America TV movies in the late 70s.

Although, and this I'm mostly just saying to hear (read?) myself talk. If you're a fan of Robotech you may be aware that there was a TV movie called Codename Robotech which was edited together from the first 13 episodes of Macross. This was described by producer Carl Macek as not a pilot, but "a gift" to television stations who had agreed to syndicate the series. Maybe the same is true about their Dragon Ball TV movie? Maybe it was all sold at one time. Either way I don't think it's a case where they had already decided not to do more and "dumped" the five episodes on TV, if there wasn't at least some consideration at moving forward they wouldn't have gone to the trouble (or incurred the expense) of distributing them to any stations.

This just happens to be a case where the sheer passion of the Dragon Ball fanbase has shed light on very obscure media. It's interesting to think about what else has been lost to time. Always glad to talk about it though!

[Hellspawn28]

Their dub of Dragon Ball was the last anime title that they worked on, IIRC.

[Dbzfan94]

HG dub did leave some influence for Funmation as they would still use names like Master Roshi. Funimation even use the General Tao for that one filler episode of DBZ because they haven't dubbed the Red Ribbon Army stuff yet.

They dubbed Mystical Adventure before they even to Cell, saw Tao was the same character and figured he was a general in the original too I guess.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

It is known that the Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball was cancelled due to low ratings, but was this actually the case?

As MasenkoHa said, even if we assume ratings were poor the Harmony Gold dub was not aired during a timeslot that it could have been expected to do well. If it was shown during Saturday mornings like other popular cartoons it likely would have performed reasonably well.

Could the cancellation have been due to the content of the following episodes instead?

We may never know for sure. Even if someone is able to track down the writers and other staff who worked on this dub people in the industry work on so many projects that many don't remember projects from a few years back, never mind decades ago, other than basic stuffy like whether a dub was union or not. That said, it does seem likely that the content and how Harmony Gold would be able to work around it was a concern.

[MasenkoHA]

. That said, it does seem likely that the content and how Harmony Gold would be able to work around it was a concern.

Indeed even if the content wasn’t the reason they shitcanned the dub they would have a hard time adapting later material with their limited resources (cuts and script changes no digital paint). Stuff like Oolong wishing for panties and wearing them on his head, the whole Bacterian fight, and Ranfan trying to use her sexuality to win a match would probably be a lot for whatever over the top BS&P Harmony Gold was abiding by. That’s not even getting into later stuff where realistic firearms being fired and characters being murdered becomes a regular part of the story.

[Hellspawn28]

We are in a better timeline with HG dub. Do you really want dub vs. sub wars with people being made that you call Goku as "Goku" and not "Zero".

[AlexSketchy04]

I wonder how would have Gohan even been called, Tendor Jr? Uno?

I also wonder how they would have edited Z back in the early 90's without digipaint, but that's out of the topic.

I do agree that it was probably a dub they left unfinished and just dumped it to recoup the losses, it explains why they only aired few times in few markets.

[TechExpert2021]

I also wonder how they would have edited Z back in the early 90's without digipaint, but that's out of the topic.

It would be like the DB French dubs and the non-English DB European dubs from the 1980s and 1990s (which had removing and trimming scenes (and sometimes rearranging and replacing scenes) as the only form of visual censorship), but with additional scene editing (without digital paint) to comply with the FCC's broadcast standards (unless Harmony Gold is dubbing the series for broadcast on a cable or premium channel).

I don't recall any dub from the 1980s and early 1990s (or earlier in the 20th century) that utilized digital paint for censoring and/or editing scenes.

[AlexSketchy04]

I also wonder how they would have edited Z back in the early 90's without digipaint, but that's out of the topic.

It would be like the DB French dubs and the non-English DB European dubs from the 1980s and 1990s (which had removing and trimming scenes (and sometimes rearranging and replacing scenes) as the only form of visual censorship), but with additional scene editing (without digital paint) to comply with the FCC's broadcast standards (unless Harmony Gold is dubbing the series for broadcast on a cable or premium channel).

I don't recall any dub from the 1980s and early 1990s (or earlier in the 20th century) that utilized digital paint for censoring and/or editing scenes.

That would have been impossible, especially during the fight between Goku, Krillin, Gohan, and Vegeta.

Digipaint did exist during the HG days, but it was limited within high end post-houses, the only way Funimation had access to it in 1994 was because they did some weird half-assed thing with Photoshop and whatever NLE they used then to overlay/sequence the frames.