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

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

With no disrespect meant, Lee is openly promoting himself as having played Frieza for the dub that never came out, because it's an incredibly popular character that he can make money off of selling autographs for. It's not a sign of the fans talking about the Lost Ocean Kai Dub or more openly demanding that it be released as a product. I've done enough conventions, and even shared enough characters with other actors across different media, to understand that it's literally just a marketing thing of capitalizing off of a character that you voiced at one point. This is not an indication of anything.

Yes, Ocean owns the rights to the Kai Dub. I don't know for sure who the final decision makers are on whether or not it would ever be allowed to see the light of day, but at this point, I honestly wouldn't blame Crunchy or Toei For actively not wanting it to be released. Because from a business standpoint, it's needless brand confusion over a product they're barely promoting anymore. And we, the (at best) two or three-digit number of people who want to see this dub for the sake of a novelty, are NOT enough of a money-making market to justify it being released.

I might be going to Vancouver early next year; I'll try to see if I can get in touch with the contact I had and see about maybe visiting the studio. I'm not getting my hopes up I'll even be allowed to see it.

Ask if they have a working DAR with the original DBZ sessions

Ocean confirmed to a fan 6 years ago they still had everything they ever recorded for Dragon Ball right back to the Saban days, including the original stems, recording sessions, etc. From what I understand its all on digibeta so it would be quite easy to put everything on disc, sadly Crunchyroll aren't interested.

[Scsigs]

Ocean confirmed to a fan 6 years ago they still had everything they ever recorded for Dragon Ball right back to the Saban days, including the original stems, recording sessions, etc. From what I understand its all on digibeta so it would be quite easy to put everything on disc, sadly Crunchyroll aren't interested.

And, why would they be? No offense to Ocean dub fans, but Toei & Crunchyroll view the FUNi Texas dubs as the official dubs that they focus on with that cast being the official English dub cast. Especially when the Ocean cast are either unknown or not cared about by a lot of the English-speaking fandom nowadays, they have no reason to go to Ocean, have them dig out their archives, & send them everything to use when they already have uncut English dubs that a lot of fans pay money for.

[MasenkoHA]

Ocean confirmed to a fan 6 years ago they still had everything they ever recorded for Dragon Ball right back to the Saban days, including the original stems, recording sessions, etc. From what I understand its all on digibeta so it would be quite easy to put everything on disc, sadly Crunchyroll aren't interested.

And, why would they be? No offense to Ocean dub fans, but Toei & Crunchyroll view the FUNi Texas dubs as the official dubs that they focus on with that cast being the official English dub cast. Especially when the Ocean cast are either unknown or not cared about by a lot of the English-speaking fandom nowadays, they have no reason to go to Ocean, have them dig out their archives, & send them everything to use when they already have uncut English dubs that a lot of fans pay money for.

Funimation also had gone on record that retailers like Wal-Mart hate potential brand confusion.

Even if Crunchyroll didn’t want their dub to be the only option they probably dont want to deal with having to put up with returns from consumers who were “given the wrong version”


The best possible option for the Saban Syndication era dub is putting it on free streaming service like Tubi, Freevee, PlutoTv and just labeling it [Rock the Dragon Edition) though I’d still like to see a re-release of the 3 Z movies with all 3 options (Japanese audio, original Ocean English dub, and Funimation English Redub)


For the even more niche Canadian recorded dubs , so literally everything else, I think the bootleg market is the best place for it. The old 90s Sailor Moon dub has been available on bootleg and from my limited experience it looks like it was ripped straight from the old ADV/Pioneer release (so a not so great early 200a DVD quality) but does the job.

[M16U3L2015]

Another option would be for a third party like Discotek or AnimEigo to license it, since they've released alternative dubs of other anime series.

[Scsigs]

Another option would be for a third party like Discotek or AnimEigo to license it, since they've released alternative dubs of other anime series.

Problem is that Discotek can't license Dragon Ball because Crunchyroll owns the licenses to everything DB anime that they can, nor do I think they COULD afford the licenses even if they were up for grabs considering how big the DB franchise is. At best, they could try for a sub-licensing deal with Crunchyroll, but the problem is still there of why they'd care, especially when Crunchy's mission statement is streaming being the future with physical releases taking forever & Discotek's is to keep physical media releases alive. Bit of a conflict of interest there.

Don't get me wrong, though, I genuinely think Discotek would be the ones to finally get US releases of DB right because they're usually fans of the shit they release & care as a result. If they WERE to sublicense DB from Crunchyroll, they'd be very aware of the problems with the previous releases, particularly Z, & I think they'd get the DBox masters for the first 3 series, color correct & upscale those like they have the Digimon shows (as well as use the broadcast audio), then get the Japanese HD masters for the movies & specials before BOG, then probably finally get the US an actual GOOD master of Super: Broly devoid of the green tint. Not to mention include the Ocean dubs of the first 3 Z movies.

This, however, is not ever likely to happen, so I will never hold out hope for it.