Best and worst recasts

[MasenkoHA]

Besides the legendary and wonderful Chris Ayres, one of the best FUNi Kai recasts was Doc Morgan as the narrator.

I'm glad that Sabat finally realized that Dragon Ball wasn't a goddamn TLC reality series and replaced Hebert.

Kyle Hebert definitely wasn’t right for the material and I wish Brice Armstrong had been hired to redub all of Z and GT’s narration but I dont think Hebert was that bad. Better than Dale Kelly who turned the series into a farce.

[Tian]

Kyle Hebert definitely wasn’t right for the material and I wish Brice Armstrong had been hired to redub all of Z and GT’s narration but I dont think Hebert was that bad. Better than Dale Kelly who turned the series into a farce.

Well, I agree that Dale's narration was really bad. His narration gives a lot of saturday morning cartoon vibes.

But I personally think Hebert's was worse. He either sounded like he was narrating one of those bad reality shows from TLC or announcing a promo on Nicktoons.

[Yellow Flower King]

Kyle Hebert definitely wasn’t right for the material and I wish Brice Armstrong had been hired to redub all of Z and GT’s narration but I dont think Hebert was that bad. Better than Dale Kelly who turned the series into a farce.

Well, I agree that Dale's narration was really bad. His narration gives a lot of saturday morning cartoon vibes.

But I personally think Hebert's was worse. He either sounded like he was narrating one of those bad reality shows from TLC or announcing a promo on Nicktoons.

Ironically Doc's narration did end up on Nicktoons lol.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Dale Kelly could have been decent as the narrator, while he's a fine actor the issue is that he was directed to sound hardcore and edgy, which is not at all how TOEI intended the Dragon Ball Z anime to be.

I agree that having Brice Armstrong redub all the narrations for Z and GT would have been neat, his delivery was more calm and adventurous. And although Kyle Herbert's Z narrations were bland I would rather have seen Armstrong redub all of Andrew Chandler's narrations for GT, as GT is, for me, Funimation's worst Dragon Ball dub.

Doc Morgan is definitely the best narrator of the bunch and I'm glad Funimation/Crunchyroll kept him on for Super and Daima.

[MasenkoHA]

Dale Kelly could have been decent as the narrator, while he's a fine actor the issue is that he was directed to sound hardcore and edgy, which is not at all how TOEI intended the Dragon Ball Z anime to be.

I don’t know if hardcore and edgy is what I would use to describe whatever the fuck this is

https://youtu.be/RDM7sPN_Aas?si=mCwzeCPMnA-u9tEn

https://youtu.be/zmhbMDFSveQ?si=r5RdBRCcHbfXVCjg


Hardcore and edgy (or you know trying to be) is more along the lines of Andrew Chandler in GT. Kelly felt like that weird middle aged man trying to be hip with kids.
I dunno feels like Kelly gets some weird nostalgia pass. Is Hebert my preferred narrator? Obviously not. But, oh my gods is he a massive improvement over Kelly just by doing a straight face “action movie of the week” narrator voice similar to Doc Harris. Not coincidentally Hebert’s worst stint as narrator is when he’s just straight redubbing Kelly’s dialog around the Cell saga

[Tian]

I don’t know if hardcore and edgy is what I would use to describe whatever the fuck this is

https://youtu.be/RDM7sPN_Aas?si=mCwzeCPMnA-u9tEn

https://youtu.be/zmhbMDFSveQ?si=r5RdBRCcHbfXVCjg

These are things you can expect from a short-lived generic and mediocre saturday morning cartoon, not from Dragon Ball.

Good thing that this kind of shit-scripting is mostly gone.

Hardcore and edgy (or you know trying to be) is more along the lines of Andrew Chandler in GT.

FUNimation really tried so hard to market GT as the dramatic, edgier and darker sequel of Z that they even replaced the narrator to fit such pathetic idea.

[M16U3L2015]

FUNimation really tried so hard to market GT as the dramatic, edgier and darker sequel of Z that they even replaced the narrator to fit such pathetic idea.

I'm surprised at how they managed to take all the emotional impact out of the final recap of GT by replacing Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku with generic rock music and an edgy narrator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKkYKK8YTZo

[Tian]

I'm surprised at how they managed to take all the emotional impact out of the final recap of GT by replacing Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku with generic rock music and an edgy narrator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKkYKK8YTZo

Not to mention the corny DVD covers (mostly the titles) that look like they were pulled from some teenage drama series:


But yeah, FUNimation had a really weird tradition to change narrators between the series. I'm glad they finally realized it was absurd and stayed with Doc Morgan since Kai.

[JulieYBM]

God, being a teen drama series would be an improvement for Dragon Ball GT.

[Yellow Flower King]

I'm surprised at how they managed to take all the emotional impact out of the final recap of GT by replacing Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku with generic rock music and an edgy narrator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKkYKK8YTZo

Not to mention the corny DVD covers (mostly the titles) that look like they were pulled from some teenage drama series:


But yeah, FUNimation had a really weird tradition to change narrators between the series. I'm glad they finally realized it was absurd and stayed with Doc Morgan since Kai.

I love how much these look like shitty bootleg DVD's.

[MasenkoHA]

Less we forget the GT DVDs covers were a massive improvement over the Z singles just by virtue of being actual covers and not screengrabs from the show

[M16U3L2015]

I think it was until the Orange Bricks that there were really good covers on the Funimation releases

[JulieYBM]

Hell, I'll take the screen cap covers over the Orange Bricks. Those things were hideous, the commissioned art included.

[Tian]

As a fan of graphic design and aesthetics, I was curious about how the menus on the GT DVDs looked like and I stumbled across THIS

Man, that was disgusting. I wasn't aware that commercial was a thing. Now I know where Schemmel got that "You're not a true fan if you don't enjoy our version" mindset.

I feel sorry for all of you who grew up with FUNimation's stupid experiment of a edgy GT.

For those who respect and adore GT for its faithful original version, please don't click that link. You'll see how ridiculous and shameless FUNimation could be to promote their dubs.

[MasenkoHA]

Hell, I'll take the screen cap covers over the Orange Bricks. Those things were hideous, the commissioned art included.

Yeah I j found the one character to represent a whole season really boring and limiting. Funi pretty much peaked on cover art when they released the UUE set before they cancelled it a third of the way in.

For those who respect and adore GT for its faithful original version, please don't click that link. You'll see how ridiculous and shameless FUNimation could be to promote their dubs.

It’s even more bizarre when you realize their marketing on GT was predicated on GT having a low reception from the online fandom who had been watching the fansubs or at least were reading online synopsis. Except that was the very same fandom that hated their dub of Z and they were “trying” to placate with their dub of the original Dragon Ball. So their solution to win over fans was too take the same approach of a dub they hated turned up to 11.

[Yellow Flower King]

To their credit, by the time of Kai, Schemmel and Sabat FINALLY caught on to the fact their dub was shitty and admitted GT and Z were a mistake. I know that's probably just to promote Kai, but they did a WAY BETTER job in Kai and were sincere in being truer to the Japanese this time around.

[GhostEmperorX]

Less we forget the GT DVDs covers were a massive improvement over the Z singles just by virtue of being actual covers and not screengrabs from the show

Speaking of screengrabs from the show...

Spoiler:

[M16U3L2015]

Less we forget the GT DVDs covers were a massive improvement over the Z singles just by virtue of being actual covers and not screengrabs from the show

Speaking of screengrabs from the show...

Spoiler:

Whoever did that was terrible at cutting backgrounds, or they reused the animation cel and did a terrible job putting it together.

[Jord]

Worst: 99% replacements for Kai, it's hard to explain, but almost all of them sounded either phony or tried too hard.
Best: For Polish dub, current cast is so much improvement over DBZ Movie 12/13, where, if you watched cartoons in late 1990's/early 2000's, all you could hear are other characters they voiced

Do you mean the Japanese or English dub?

Ah, sorry, Japanese of course.

I don't think they sounded bad but they did sound worse. They lacked some of the energy. Not necessarily due to age, but they have done all these scenes before (and have done a lot of the big scenes multiple times for video games) so I feel it missed some of its spontaneity.

[GhostEmperorX]

Whoever did that was terrible at cutting backgrounds, or they reused the animation cel and did a terrible job putting it together.

And the fact that they didn't even want to put their name(s) on it for design, unlike the image collections that were being churned out prior (and at the same time), says more than words could about how ashamed they must have been.