Happy 30th Anniversary to Dragon Ball Z Ocean Dub (1996)!

[PowerPhantom245]

Happy 30th Anniversary to Dragon Ball Z Ocean Dub (1996)!
It's been 30 years (September 13, 1996) since Ocean Dub episode for Z, "The Arrival of Raditz" aired in United States.

An interesting and shocking beginning of the franchise, where alien from outer space arrives, who turns out to be Goku's older brother Raditz. Goku also finds out he is an alien (Saiyan), who originally sent to Earth to destroy all lives. Raditz wants Goku to join but refuse and took Goku's son, Gohan. A great setup to start off the franchise.
For the most American, this was their introduction to the franchise, where OG series aired up to 13 episodes out of 153, and lot of people didn't see that, due to poor time slot.

When the show came out back then, I've seen OG and Z in Japanese (uncut) thanks to VHS recording I borrowed from Japanese neighbor or taped off from cable channel (NGN), so I was immediately able to tell the difference between Japanese broadcast and Ocean dub, for various reasons; the music and heavy editing, particularly censorship with violence and gore.
Interestingly, when this episode was airing, it came out during 5 weeks hiatus (...no joke) between episode 24 (September 4) and 25 (October 16) of Dragon Ball GT, which was airing Japan; an interesting timing to release Dragon Ball Z to American audience.

Even though I prefer the original, where it's uncut, I do have nostalgia and enjoyment for Ocean Dub, even if it's heavily censored.
The voice acting for it time was pretty good; Ian James Corlett (Goku) and Scott McNeil (Piccolo) was very memorable for their performance. Brian Drummond was probably the best among Ocean Dub cast, for great performance as Vegeta, where his villainous voice was extremely memorable.
...and who can forget this scene?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEN9gxZkmoM

Even though I'm not fan of censorship in general, Ocean Dub did have an interesting censorship, such as replacing HELL with HFIL (Home For Infinite Losers) or "another dimension" (a censored version of death/afterlife).
Who can forget "Over 9000!"? Drummond nailed that line; which is why I sometime calls it Over-9000 dubs. lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik

I find it interesting how 67 episodes was condensed to 53, which was pretty drastic for anime dubbing at the time; I don't think not even Robotech or Voltron (though that had more censorship) had that type of edit.
It was bizarre that show ended/cancelled after episode 53 (67), where we have to wait years to see it picks up, with new voice actor, whom has become default voice actors for English dub in America with less censorship. Interestingly, some of the Ocean Dub voice actors, did came back to dub for UK broadcast, as Westwood dub (aka Ocean Dub 2.0), which was bizarre, since that was point of time there was 2 English dub airing at same time across the world.
It's such a shame that these dubs are not available officially on physical media (DVD is long OOP) or streaming; in fact, only English dub available is Funimation dub. Despite censored, it is an important piece of history of franchise.

What is your thoughts on Ocean Dub?
Does it still hold up?
Do you like it or hate it?
Would like to get physical release (or re-release) on DVD or Blu-ray (SDBD) or streaming?

[MasenkoHA]

Back when Funimation saw themselves as a children’s media entertainment company instead of an anime licensing company. This was the Funimation behind “Cyboars” and Chuck E Cheese in the Galaxy 5000. At this point Funimation’s entire approach was to take this cartoon they heard was big in Japan that they acquired through Gen Fukanaga’s uncle and make it appealing to American children based on whatever focus groups told them and what would save them money.

Before Funimation realized they could be even cheaper by just locally hiring radio djs and community theater performers and librarians found in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas to record the dub with discount equipment found at RadioShack they had elected to outsource recording for their new Japanese cartoon to Vancouver, Canada as it was cheaper than dubbing in California where most U.S anime dubs were happening at the time and it would allow their dub to qualify as Canadian content to help ensure it would be broadcast up there.


The Vancouver hired talent was probably the only thing that ended up salvaging this dub. The writing was hackneyed and corny “I don’t accept hand outs!” “Some brother I don’t think your mom gave him enough spankings when you were kids” the new American score was largely just Ron Wasserman ripping off his Mighty Morphin Power Rangers score and the decision to team up with Saban Entertainment for syndication distribution led to the show being edited for content far more than necessary. No doubt at least partially because Saban was still playing it safe after the media backlash for the violence in Power Rangers and had less stake in the game to take risk with this Dragon Ball Z cartoon .

In keeping with Funimation’s “This is for American kids with low attention spans” mindset the Vancouver cast approached the project as a Saturday Morning Cartoon completely unlike how they would do the faithful Ranma 1/2 dub for Viz Media. And in the context of what the dub was trying to be it worked fine as the cast had the experience and talent to pull it off and almost made you forget how stupid it is for a character to claim he saw invisible parachutes after a helicopter was blown up or for a 5 year old to lament he told his mom he wanted to join the boy scouts instead of being kidnapped and abandoned in the wilderness and chased by dinosaurs.


And if you want to see what happens when you get the same shitty writing mentality but with a cast that has none of the talent or charisma of the Vancouver cast?

You get this shit:

https://youtu.be/Gn7QxjWas0w?si=3O4Cx4yq3NUgOeYO

https://youtu.be/EdGa-2BSFiI?si=m10CBeMU-7Ce9PhM


https://youtu.be/t7wyidD6mUk?si=Yjk5mVMY1rEabxOb

https://youtu.be/ZnriaELk_pw?si=xycOQ1CXUAK2g101

[90sDBZ]

I still hold the Saban dub in high regard.

The acting was solid all around, particularly Corlett's Goku, Drummond's Vegeta, and McNeil's Piccolo.

Ron Wasserman's score fits the dark tone of the Saiyan arc in particular, while also having some really uplifting tracks.

I honestly still get a kick out of the cheesy lines and jokes. It always makes for a fun rewatch. I never get tired of hearing Vegeta say "WHO'S FACE IS UGLY!!?", in response to Krillin calling him ugly. Or Piccolo saying "I thought it was your face" after blasting Nappa in the back.

[TheGreatness25]

Man, 30 years… And I still prefer that cast to the in-house. The series has brought me so much joy and it all started with this right here. It didn’t feel mine the original series, but I still loved it. To this day, I’ll pop on the Ocean episodes in the background. I know most of those lines verbatim.