Weird Old Dub Stuff

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

The Funi Z Boo saga is watchable, but The Final Chapters dub is still a major step up like the rest of Kai. Its not terrible, but it was the point everyone involved had some idea what they were doing, not like everything that came before where they were figuring it out as they went along.

[Yellow Flower King]

Oh. God. OH. GOD. I forgot about Killa.

[Scsigs]

This isn't "weird", but I was watching the Buu arc Funimation dub and I really like Rick Robertson's Dabura and Duncan Brannon's Babidi. I think they are one of the few voices in the dub that aren't obnoxiously annoying (along with Dameon Clarke's Cell which I think is very good). Not only that but to my surprise there were plenty of scenes where the dub script matched the JP subs for minutes at a time when they were both on screen. I was quite impressed by it.

The Buu Arc of Z had the best dubbing of the series at that point, but it's still not great. The scripts still often come off tryhard & like they were trying to be clever with some of the ways they were doing it. Rather than trying to tell the story their own way like the previous arcs, that one's dub often feels like they were trying to tell the story in mostly the same way, but thought they were more clever than they were. There ARE some minor choices of dialogue that I don't mind, but it feels more like a teenager trying to write fanfiction than professional dub scriptwriters localizing a script for the dub.

I honestly love a lot of the later castings in the Z dub, tbh. Babidi's voice fits his character, Dabura sounds just awesome, & I like Super Buu's voice as well. Some voices got better over time, like Kara Edwards' Goten smoothing out over time so he actually sounds closer to a 7-year-old than how she voiced him in Z & the early video games. One I often see people hate is fat Buu's & it's often in comparison to his Japanese voice, I think. I don't think either is the better casting. One's low-pitched while the other one's higher-pitched. I don't find the dub voice annoying & I also don't get why people like the JP voice. Maybe I'm alone in that feeling.

I think that as unpopular as the buu saga is, it was the point the Funimation dub REALLY started to gel. They had hired Steve Simmons as translator, tried to be closer to the original a bit more, and the few changes werent cringe like they used to. It took until Kai for the dubbing quality to take to be genuinely great but Buu Saga was good.

I thought they hired him earlier than that, no? Like, I remember hearing they released subtitled VHS tapes of the Japanese version of the show uncut & I assumed they got him for those.

The big misstep when it came to how FUNimation handled the Boo saga was what they did with Killa. Even in 2001, I don’t know why anyone thought that was a good idea.

Oh yeah. I didn't even remember the character in the Z dub until I saw someone post a clip of him on Twitter a while ago. What the fuck were they thinking in the Z dub? The way they scripted him was like they were aping Boomhauer from King of the Hill where he speaks really low & inserts an extra word into his speech so you can barely understand what he's saying unless you're paying very close attention & can cut through the bullshit. They fixed that in Kai, thank fuck.

The Funi Z Boo saga is watchable, but The Final Chapters dub is still a major step up like the rest of Kai. Its not terrible, but it was the point everyone involved had some idea what they were doing, not like everything that came before where they were figuring it out as they went along.

I've read that some people think the Kai TFC dub was a step down from the first 98 episodes. I never got that. It's still of the quality of the previous episodes, but some translations they had 100% correct in the Z dub were changed in Kai for no other reason I can fathom besides just to be different. Like Mr. Satan not saying he'd turn Bee into a hot dog, or why they had Goku say, "Thanks, Vegeta. Here we go!" instead of the simple "Thank you, Vegeta" that Masako Nozawa said in the Japanese dub IN FULL ENGLISH! They had Goku say it right in Z, it's just that Schemmel's delivery of it sucked. It can't even be the lipflaps, as they were done for the English version of the line. "Thank you" in Japanese is "Arigato" or "Arigato gozaimasu," which is 2 to several syllables more. I never understood that choice whatsoever.

[TheBigBoy]

I remember being pretty legitimately impressed at the time by Sabat's acting during his rematch with Goku in the Buu arc. The scripting and voices are decent during this time but I just can't get past the music.

Killa is such an inconsequential character that it doesn't really bother me. I mean at least people actually talk about him now.

[Scsigs]

I remember being pretty legitimately impressed at the time by Sabat's acting during his rematch with Goku in the Buu arc. The scripting and voices are decent during this time but I just can't get past the music.

Killa is such an inconsequential character that it doesn't really bother me. I mean at least people actually talk about him now.

I assume that's why some people like the lines in Z more than Kai because he can still act his ass off in Kai & his Vegeta sounds much more princely with the more uppercrust accent he's been giving him since 2010 & the voice sounds like less of a strain on his throat. His Piccolo too sounds less tryhard. However, 1 thing I can't get passed when people talk about the Z Buu Arc dub is when they tout the added motivations or subtext for why Vegeta did the things he did. Like, Vegeta's a very simple character & with a properly translated script, pretty morally consistent. He doesn't really give much of a shit about his people outside of maybe his father, the fact that they're all gone, & they all died by Freeza's hands, as he wanted Goku to avenge them on Namek when he was dying. He has a pretty simple-minded motivation to get better than Goku for the next few arcs, then has a midlife crisis, loses everything he built up for 7 years with Trunks & Bulma, makes his redeeming sacrifice, then admits Goku's better than him when it comes to strength to himself. It's a simple character arc, but it works for him. No extra bullshit.
Now, would he be a better-built character if his motivations were deeper than that? Maybe, but that's not the character Toriyama wrote & I don't think he NEEDS this big level of complicated motivation to work as well as he does.

[jjgp1112]

Yeah I'd say aside from the Barry Watson-isms and toning certain things down, the Buu saga dub is about on par with Yu Yu Hakusho and such. The only real egregous thing that comes to mind besides the aforementioned Killa is Goku's speech to Vegea to convince him to pt on the Potara - and even then, it's actually a REALLY good speech and adds extra weight to the situation, it's just not the type of thing Goku would ever say lol

And I guess they did have a little too much fun with the Insde Buu stuff but...most of it was fller anyway and again, some of it was actually funny ("Son of a Namek," "OPEN SESAME," "People popcorn")

[MasenkoHA]

Killa is such an inconsequential character that it doesn't really bother me. I mean at least people actually talk about him now.

Tbf the problem wasn’t “oh they ruined this minor character “ the problem was it was racist as shit

[WittyUsername]

The weirdest thing about Killa is that I don’t know of any other instance where FUNimation did that with a black character. They didn’t do that with Staff Officer Black or even Mr. Popo.

[MasenkoHA]

The weirdest thing about Killa is that I don’t know of any other instance where FUNimation did that with a black character. They didn’t do that with Staff Officer Black or even Mr. Popo.

Minor characters are more prone to these quirks being added to them. To Funimation it probably wasn’t any different than giving the Bear Thief a Russian accent because “Russian Bear” joke or Goku’s cabbie driver in West City a stereotypical Brooklyn accent. “Here’s a minor nothing character let’s give him some kind of caricature voice to liven things up”

They just went the racist route

[Scsigs]

Yeah I'd say aside from the Barry Watson-isms and toning certain things down, the Buu saga dub is about on par with Yu Yu Hakusho and such. The only real egregious thing that comes to mind besides the aforementioned Killa is Goku's speech to Vegeta to convince him to put on the Potara - and even then, it's actually a REALLY good speech and adds extra weight to the situation, it's just not the type of thing Goku would ever say lol

And I guess they did have a little too much fun with the Inside Buu stuff but...most of it was filler anyway and again, some of it was actually funny ("Son of a Namek," "OPEN SESAME," "People popcorn")

My biggest problem with the Z dub, & I know this probably doesn't bother anyone else but me, but the characters repeatedly saying "My gosh!" in astonishment whenever anything surprising happens. Most of the time, it's not accurate tot he Japanese dialogue, nor is it relevant to what's going on considering they see weird shit all the time, so they shouldn't react in astonishment at most of the shit they see. You can make a drinking game out of it. It's a verbal tick a lot of the characters share & it's really cringey.

The weirdest thing about Killa is that I don’t know of any other instance where FUNimation did that with a black character. They didn’t do that with Staff Officer Black or even Mr. Popo.

If anything, they made Popo more eloquent in the dub & also gave him a less dumb-sounding voice than the Japanese dub. Casting aside if you think he should have a black person voicing him, the voice & scripts for him are objectively better in the English dub. I may be missing the point depending on if what Popo's most likely based on is usually depicted as talking like he does in Japanese, but I also don't care.

The weirdest thing about Killa is that I don’t know of any other instance where FUNimation did that with a black character. They didn’t do that with Staff Officer Black or even Mr. Popo.

Minor characters are more prone to these quirks being added to them. To Funimation it probably wasn’t any different than giving the Bear Thief a Russian accent because “Russian Bear” joke or Goku’s cabbie driver in West City a stereotypical Brooklyn accent. “Here’s a minor nothing character let’s give him some kind of caricature voice to liven things up”

They just went the racist route

Doesn't help that he's voiced by white guys, no matter the dub.