Ocean Studios' "Dragon Ball Kai" Dub Turns 16; Still Unreleased

[Yellow Flower King]

Time has really moved fast. I knew we were at sixteen years since we first learned of this project, but to think that sixteen years ago was 2010 is kind of wild to me. I don't remember more than a handful of things from that far back rofl.

Same. I was in 8th grade in middle school back in 2010 crushing on a girl in my class and talking to my best friend (in the same class) about Dragon Ball Z Kai airing on Nicktoons at the time. Life was just so different back then. Ah, my bad for getting nostalgic - BLAME THIS THREAD AND THE OCEAN DUB FOR NOT RELEASING ALREADY! Anyway, imagine how cool it'd be if Crunchyroll gives Kai a new Blu-ray release that includes Ocean Kai as a secondary audio option. I mean, that would never happen, but that would be a great way to re-release Kai, but also add something new to make it worth purchasing for older fans who grew up with the Ocean dub.

Knowing Crunchyroll, though, that's almost 100 percent not happening. Crunchyroll is terrible with their new home releases and how slow it takes them. I doubt an Ocean Kai release (let alone a Kai re-release at all) is a priority for them. I mean, the closest I could see them doing is re-releasing the Kai season sets, but slapping their Crunchyroll logo on them but using the same discs. Which is lazy, but they've done that with Z and Super and even GT.

If Discotek had the rights to Dragon Ball, I could see them going out of their way to acquire Ocean Kai, though.

They never will. Discotek has insisted they will never touch the Dragon Ball Franchise. Also I want a nostalgia thread for Nicktoons but wont make one.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

They never will. Discotek has insisted they will never touch the Dragon Ball Franchise. Also I want a nostalgia thread for Nicktoons but wont make one.

I don't know if Discotek said they will never touch Dragon Ball. They would probably love to, but Crunchyroll isn't going to give up the home video rights to any of the shows or movies, including Kai.

[Scsigs]

Discotek is a licensor of smaller time animes & more niche Japanese franchises. They also don't do dubs for much besides movies because they don't have a lot of money for anything but. I can't see them affording the DB license even if it was up for purchase. They do a lot of good work, but they're like Shout Factory, not FUNimation/Crunchyroll.

[mecha3000]

Discotek is a licensor of smaller time animes & more niche Japanese franchises. They also don't do dubs for much besides movies because they don't have a lot of money for anything but. I can't see them affording the DB license even if it was up for purchase. They do a lot of good work, but they're like Shout Factory, not FUNimation/Crunchyroll.

Damn. Well, I guess that confirms we're most likely never seeing Ocean Kai get a physical release. Off-topic, Discotek Media and Shout Factory are like the last two companies that actually give a damn about physical releases. More so than companies like Crunchyroll (Funimation) and Viz Media do. Props to Discotek and Shout Factory. I was able to get Discotek's Sonic X, Shaman King, Reborn, Hajime no Ippo and even Bobobo Blu-rays and I still need to get Shout's Super Sentai DVDs.

[M0nsoon07]

A month till HBO Max launches here in UK... let's hope the Adult Swim UK team got Ocean Kai like i suggested in my meeting

[Scsigs]

Discotek is a licensor of smaller time animes & more niche Japanese franchises. They also don't do dubs for much besides movies because they don't have a lot of money for anything but. I can't see them affording the DB license even if it was up for purchase. They do a lot of good work, but they're like Shout Factory, not FUNimation/Crunchyroll.

Damn. Well, I guess that confirms we're most likely never seeing Ocean Kai get a physical release. Off-topic, Discotek Media and Shout Factory are like the last two companies that actually give a damn about physical releases. More so than companies like Crunchyroll (Funimation) and Viz Media do. Props to Discotek and Shout Factory. I was able to get Discotek's Sonic X, Shaman King, Reborn, Hajime no Ippo and even Bobobo Blu-rays and I still need to get Shout's Super Sentai DVDs.

I mean, Viz gives more of a damn about physical media than Crunchyroll does. Crunchyroll's a streaming service first & Sony folding over FUNimation's assets into them made us lose a company that was keeping physical anime releases alive. Now we only get physical releases of the more popular shit over a year after they come out on Crunchyroll when people have lost interest in them on the service & aren't subbing to the service because it's no longer new, as is happening with Daima.
Viz, because it's not a streaming service, has to rely on multiple sources of income with releasing their stuff. So, they rely mainly on physical releases still because they're that type of company. Especially because they put money into translating & dubbing the stuff they put out. They're also a company that translates manga & other Japanese books into English, so they have multiple sources of income & they're also producing English dubs, which aren't cheap to do especially because they hire unionized actors, so they have to. Crunchyroll still produces dubs, but only for the more popular or newer stuff or stuff that was still being dubbed by FUNimation mainly because they focus on the streaming model rather than trying to maximize their revenue by putting their stuff out on as many things as possible all at once. Now, 1 of the better things to come out of the Crunchyroll merger is that they fast tracked the dub of One Piece to catch up faster with the Japanese broadcast, but we've gotten less stuff dubbed as a result.

Discotek, while they WILL produce dubs on certain things that are shorter, cheaper, & easier to do that don't already have dubs don't overly focus on it because they're still a smaller boutique company that focuses primarily on niche titles. I will say that the quality of their stuff is usually worth the price because they put a lot of actual work into them. Like, they've done a lot of good work for the Lupin the 3rd & Digimon franchises specifically, producing dubs for a lot of the Lupin movies & specials (including the Detective Conan crossovers) & remastering the Digimon shows with a good AI implementation & not only producing new uncut dubs of the first 3 Digimon movies, but also making the dubs of the movies dubbed under Disney not only uncut, but also replacing certain voice actors in the dubs produced by Disney with their original ones from the shows for vocal consistency on movies 4-6, which is certainly more than anyone would expect of them. They'll also try to port over all possible Japanese bonus materials as possible, which they have for their Kamen Rider, Kikaider, & Metal Heroes sets.

Shout will produce subtitles for Japanese media (inconsistent quality notwithstanding for the Sentai sets), but they're more focused on just doing releases with all available matertials & the most they'll do is produce new bonus materials or find as many obscure things to put into their releases as possible, which they did for Power Rangers, but won't port over bonus materials from the Japanese releases of Sentai or Kamen Rider unless they're included with the episodes or movies, sadly.

[LostTimeLord]

Now, 1 of the better things to come out of the Crunchyroll merger is that they fast tracked the dub of One Piece to catch up faster with the Japanese broadcast, but we've gotten less stuff dubbed as a result.

The One Piece catch-up started over a year before Sony purchased Crunchyroll, so the merger can't even be credited for that. Apparently Toei Animation, Inc. (which is the American branch) became more heavily involved at that point, as their staff get credited as producers and "ADR Approvals" from then on. So, I think what happened there is that Toei started commissioning the dub themselves.

This would also be the case for Daima, which credits the same Toei staff and had the same atypical release (i.e. the Netflix near simulcast, selling the dub on Microsoft Store before adding it to Crunchyroll).

[Scsigs]

Now, 1 of the better things to come out of the Crunchyroll merger is that they fast tracked the dub of One Piece to catch up faster with the Japanese broadcast, but we've gotten less stuff dubbed as a result.

The One Piece catch-up started over a year before Sony purchased Crunchyroll, so the merger can't even be credited for that. Apparently Toei Animation, Inc. (which is the American branch) became more heavily involved at that point, as their staff get credited as producers and "ADR Approvals" from then on. So, I think what happened there is that Toei started commissioning the dub themselves.

This would also be the case for Daima, which credits the same Toei staff and had the same atypical release (i.e. the Netflix near simulcast, selling the dub on Microsoft Store before adding it to Crunchyroll).

Ah, ok, didn't know that. I'm surprised that they didn't do that earlier. I hope they can dub all of the movies FUNimation never did next now that they don't have more episodes to dub then.

[M0nsoon07]

4 days till we find out if any anime is on HBO Max UK... let's hope they got Ocean Kai!

In other news, Ocean in general has been getting a lot of attention on Twitter recently, with a video which has Brad Swaile (Teen Gohan in Westwood dub) talking about how he wanted to reprise his role in the latest Ranma 1/2 anime but wasn't asked, which led to various people saying positive things about Ocean and how they miss them dubbing stuff. I chimed in about Ocean Kai, and got a fair bit of attention: a voice actor who works with Richard Ian Cox replied.

Fun fact (not really about Dragon Ball): every other cast for the Ranma 1/2 remake were the same people who did the original series... apart from the English dub.

[LostTimeLord]

4 days till we find out if any anime is on HBO Max UK... let's hope they got Ocean Kai!

I don't see why they'd have Ocean Kai at launch. They're going to be very risk-adverse seeing as the company is being sold, colossal layoffs are expected, and HBO Max will potentially be merged with Paramount+. Is HBO Max streaming anything not owned by Warner Bros. Discovery?

[Scsigs]

Again, guys, don't expect the dub to be on anything. You can hope it is, but more than likely, it'll just be the FUNi dub.

[LostTimeLord]

You can hope it is, but more than likely, it'll just be the FUNi dub.

To be clear, I don't see why Kai would be on HBO at all, never mind the Ocean dub.

[SylentEcho]

Why is this dub being buried? They know it has it's fans.

For fun, let's suppose we somehow crowd-fund this dub out of storage - do you think they'll add the Ocean audio to streaming, or are the Funi voice actors' egos too big to do that?

[JulieYBM]

Why is this dub being buried? They know it has it's fans.

For fun, let's suppose we somehow crowd-fund this dub out of storage - do you think they'll add the Ocean audio to streaming, or are the Funi voice actors' egos too big to do that?

There's comparatively no real profit and only confuse to be gained from Toei Animation acknowledging thwt this project exists.

[Scsigs]

Why is this dub being buried? They know it has it's fans.

For fun, let's suppose we somehow crowd-fund this dub out of storage - do you think they'll add the Ocean audio to streaming, or are the Funi voice actors' egos too big to do that?

Ok, first question's first.
1. It was created, seemingly, as an alternative dub for English-speaking territories outside of North America & maybe even Canada like all of the previous Ocean-produced dubs post 1999. Why was it commissioned exactly? No idea.
2. No one's interested in busting out an old dub for an, at this point, 17-year-old show that barely anyone outside of the niche fanbase of the Canadian dubs knows about. Especially when the FUNi-produced dub has been distributed everywhere. A small portion of the fanbase isn't enough to make something like this happen unless the people in charge of these things make it happen.

Second question.
Shut up. The only FUNi VA with any known ego problems is Sean Schemmel, who's way too over-protective of being known as Goku's English VA despite the fact that he's neither the first, nor the second, nor the third, nor the last English VA for Goku. He's just the one who's been serving the longest & been in the most things dubbed. Everyone else, from what I can tell, are perfectly lovely people who are humble about their positions as the current VAs. As far as anyone knows, none of them are stopping the Ocean dub from coming out. That's Ocean's doing. FUNi has no influence over that. How exactly would that even work?
Not to mention, but what would crowdfunding do exactly? The dub was all paid for well over a decade ago. Crunchyroll isn't interested in licensing the dub, nor are any other streaming services. No amount of money will change that. The higher-ups at those companies have to want it, which they clearly don't.

[Zebra]

I think Vincent Tong would've been a good fit for Gokuu. He's probably best known as Matsuda from Death Note. Something like this would've suited Gokuu, imo:
https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv ... ce/Daniel/

He has a lot of range, so he'd be able to do a good job at goofy, calm, serious, angry, etc Gokuu.

And since Gokuu is an Asian-based character despite being (retconned to be) an alien (Toriyama even said Jackie Chun would've been perfect as Gokuu), I think he should be voiced by an Asian person like Tong. You can tell he's Asian based on his accent, and I think that would suit Gokuu.

I know Richard Ian Cox ended up being cast, but I don't see him being a good fit for Gokuu.

[NitroEX]

I think Vincent Tong would've been a good fit for Gokuu. He's probably best known as Matsuda from Death Note. Something like this would've suited Gokuu, imo:
https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv ... ce/Daniel/

He has a lot of range, so he'd be able to do a good job at goofy, calm, serious, angry, etc Gokuu.

And since Gokuu is an Asian-based character despite being (retconned to be) an alien (Toriyama even said Jackie Chun would've been perfect as Gokuu), I think he should be voiced by an Asian person like Tong. You can tell he's Asian based on his accent, and I think that would suit Gokuu.

I know Richard Ian Cox ended up being cast, but I don't see him being a good fit for Gokuu.

I mentioned Vincent Tong a long time ago and thought he'd make a fantastic Tenshinhan, but with a more stern and noble performance like this. Along with being a different take on it (and helping separate him from the sea of Caucasian voices), it would have been more fitting for his Eastern monk-like appearance than either Brendan Hunter or John Burgmeier, who frankly just sound very western, generic and ill-fitting.

Vincent as Goku is within his range too (though I would have to hear his screaming ability to properly judge for sure), but I think going that direction for Goku would warrant more Asian voices across the board. It wouldn't be bad, but it would make it sound less like an Ocean/Canadian dub, I suppose.

[Zebra]

I think Vincent Tong would've been a good fit for Gokuu. He's probably best known as Matsuda from Death Note. Something like this would've suited Gokuu, imo:
https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/tv ... ce/Daniel/

He has a lot of range, so he'd be able to do a good job at goofy, calm, serious, angry, etc Gokuu.

And since Gokuu is an Asian-based character despite being (retconned to be) an alien (Toriyama even said Jackie Chun would've been perfect as Gokuu), I think he should be voiced by an Asian person like Tong. You can tell he's Asian based on his accent, and I think that would suit Gokuu.

I know Richard Ian Cox ended up being cast, but I don't see him being a good fit for Gokuu.

I mentioned Vincent Tong a long time ago and thought he'd make a fantastic Tenshinhan, but with a more stern and noble performance like this.

I heard that one earlier. Made me think of Gokuu Black.