Weird Old Dub Stuff

[WittyUsername]

As I believe I said a while back, it’s pretty obvious that the reason FUNimation never bothered doing a redub of the second Dragon Ball movie was because they didn’t think it was worth it. They probably figured that hardly anyone cares about OG Dragon Ball and even fewer people cared about the movies, so it would’ve been a waste of time and resources.

They redubbed Curse of the Blood Rubies because that movie never had an uncut or in-house dub and even then, much of the script was recycled from the 1995 dub.

[MasenkoHA]

As I believe I said a while back, it’s pretty obvious that the reason FUNimation never bothered doing a redub of the second Dragon Ball movie was because they didn’t think it was worth it. They probably figured that hardly anyone cares about OG Dragon Ball and even fewer people cared about the movies, so it would’ve been a waste of time and resources.

They redubbed Curse of the Blood Rubies because that movie never had an uncut or in-house dub and even then, much of the script was recycled from the 1995 dub.

The problem I have with that is they cared enough to release a 4 movie boxset that was readily available for years. Like I think I got mine at Wal-Mart in 2019 when it was released in 2011? It wasn’t like they had one DVD release of it in the early 2000s and doomed it to be only accessible through bargain bins and public library donations. “ We don’t think people will care about or buy the movies of the og but we’re going to sell them anyways” Like? If they’re going to make the movie easily available in the era of Kai and One Piece and whatever other dubs they were being praised for in the 2010s maybe don’t continue to use a dub that wasn’t acceptable by late 90s standards and has the audio quality of a homemade fandub?

And there’s something to say about Funimation’s apathy to original Dragon Ball they used the Makafushigi Adventure/Great Demon King Piccolo medley from Z movie 1 on the DVD menu instead of just using one of the 100 different remixes of Makafushigi Adventure from the actual Dragon Ball soundtrack or its movies but I don’t really count them sticking so close to the 1995 script as “who cares? It’s just original Dragon Ball” reusing old scripts for redubs has been their MO forever. They did it with Z as well for the first 3 Z movies redubs and as much as they could for the Saiyan and Namek sagas that had a corresponding scene in the syndication dub. Even Kai’s dub couldn’t resist outright copying their Z dub dialog at times even when it wasn’t necessarily a faithful translation.

[WittyUsername]

As I believe I said a while back, it’s pretty obvious that the reason FUNimation never bothered doing a redub of the second Dragon Ball movie was because they didn’t think it was worth it. They probably figured that hardly anyone cares about OG Dragon Ball and even fewer people cared about the movies, so it would’ve been a waste of time and resources.

They redubbed Curse of the Blood Rubies because that movie never had an uncut or in-house dub and even then, much of the script was recycled from the 1995 dub.

The problem I have with that is they cared enough to release a 4 movie boxset that was readily available for years. Like I think I got mine at Wal-Mart in 2019 when it was released in 2011? It wasn’t like they had one DVD release of it in the early 2000s and doomed it to be only accessible through bargain bins and public library donations. “ We don’t think people will care about or buy the movies of the og but we’re going to sell them anyways” Like? If they’re going to make the movie easily available in the era of Kai and One Piece and whatever other dubs they were being praised for in the 2010s maybe don’t continue to use a dub that wasn’t acceptable by late 90s standards and has the audio quality of a homemade fandub?

And there’s something to say about Funimation’s apathy to original Dragon Ball they used the Makafushigi Adventure/Great Demon King Piccolo medley from Z movie 1 on the DVD menu instead of just using one of the 100 different remixes of Makafushigi Adventure from the actual Dragon Ball soundtrack or its movies but I don’t really count them sticking so close to the 1995 script as “who cares? It’s just original Dragon Ball” reusing old scripts for redubs has been their MO forever. They did it with Z as well for the first 3 Z movies redubs and as much as they could for the Saiyan and Namek sagas that had a corresponding scene in the syndication dub. Even Kai’s dub couldn’t resist outright copying their Z dub dialog at times even when it wasn’t necessarily a faithful translation.

I don’t think releasing a boxset of the movies is quite the same thing as recording a brand new dub. The latter requires more work than the former and as I said, I imagine FUNimation didn’t think it was worth the effort.

[Scsigs]

Tiffanny Vollmer, I don't think she was a bad pick for Bulma, tbh. Her problems were that: She didn't have much of a range for acting where she couldn't sound much like a real human (I don't know if this was because of a lack of acting ability or the voice direction, but either way) & always sounded like she was yelling (at least from my memory). I know some people have problems with Monica Rial, but you have to admit she actually sounds like a person & has more nuance to her performance than Vollmer ever did.

As for the DB movie dubs, they're all inconsistent. I think there's only...a few VAs who're consistent between them. I'm honestly surprised they never redubbed the second & third movies at the same time as they did movie 1 (movie 4 was fine since it was done after OG DB & at least features that cast, most of which were still part of the English dub cast afterwards) to just at least have a consistent presentation & dub cast for them. Even if they reused the original dub scripts, I'd accept them better than just leaving the movie 2 & 3 dubs as-is.

[KingVegetto]

Tiffanny Vollmer, I don't think she was a bad pick for Bulma, tbh. Her problems were that: She didn't have much of a range for acting where she couldn't sound much like a real human (I don't know if this was because of a lack of acting ability or the voice direction, but either way) & always sounded like she was yelling (at least from my memory). I know some people have problems with Monica Rial, but you have to admit she actually sounds like a person & has more nuance to her performance than Vollmer ever did.

As for the DB movie dubs, they're all inconsistent. I think there's only...a few VAs who're consistent between them. I'm honestly surprised they never redubbed the second & third movies at the same time as they did movie 1 (movie 4 was fine since it was done after OG DB & at least features that cast, most of which were still part of the English dub cast afterwards) to just at least have a consistent presentation & dub cast for them. Even if they reused the original dub scripts, I'd accept them better than just leaving the movie 2 & 3 dubs as-is.

I thought Vollmer sounded fine, but I never thought Yajirobe's voice sounded quite right.

[MasenkoHA]

Tiffanny Vollmer, I don't think she was a bad pick for Bulma, tbh. Her problems were that: She didn't have much of a range for acting where she couldn't sound much like a real human (I don't know if this was because of a lack of acting ability or the voice direction, but either way) & always sounded like she was yelling (at least from my memory). I know some people have problems with Monica Rial, but you have to admit she actually sounds like a person & has more nuance to her performance than Vollmer ever did.

As for the DB movie dubs, they're all inconsistent. I think there's only...a few VAs who're consistent between them. I'm honestly surprised they never redubbed the second & third movies at the same time as they did movie 1 (movie 4 was fine since it was done after OG DB & at least features that cast, most of which were still part of the English dub cast afterwards) to just at least have a consistent presentation & dub cast for them. Even if they reused the original dub scripts, I'd accept them better than just leaving the movie 2 & 3 dubs as-is.

I thought Vollmer sounded fine, but I never thought Yajirobe's voice sounded quite right.

Vollmer’s early performance was weird because for all of the Texas cast imitating the Vancouver cast early on Vollmer goes for a ditzy valley girl performance completely unlike Lalaina Lindbjerg and it translate to Bulma losing IQ points in the middle of Namek “this is turning into more than just a bad hair day”

She drops it by the Trunks special and her performance in the original Dragon Ball dub is much better but she also just seems bitchy 24/7 even when the scene requires the character to be softer.


Mike McFarland at least seems to be trying to emulate Brian Drummond’s performance for Yajirobe so at least there’s the consistency mentality at play. They really should have had Laurie Steele play him in the King Piccolo saga though. Goku saying Yajirobe sounds like Krillin doesn’t make sense in the Funi dub like it does in the Japanese version with Mayumi Tanaka voicing both

[WittyUsername]

I don’t know if I ever got much of a valley girl vibe from Tiffany Vollmer’s Bulma, but her performance did place a lot of emphasis on Bulma being shrill and angry.

I never had a problem with Mike McFarland’s Yaijrobe, but obviously, it misses the fact that the character was written with the intention of being voiced by the same actor as Kuririn. In fairness though, it seems like the only reason Toriyama wrote that “you sound like Kuririn” line was because he wanted to throw a bone to Mayumi Tanaka.

[Metalwario64]

I don’t know if I ever got much of a valley girl vibe from Tiffany Vollmer’s Bulma, but her performance did place a lot of emphasis on Bulma being shrill and angry.

I never had a problem with Mike McFarland’s Yaijrobe, but obviously, it misses the fact that the character was written with the intention of being voiced by the same actor as Kuririn. In fairness though, it seems like the only reason Toriyama wrote that “you sound like Kuririn” line was because he wanted to throw a bone to Mayumi Tanaka.

It was hugely there in the Season 3 era at least.

[Scsigs]

I thought Vollmer sounded fine, but I never thought Yajirobe's voice sounded quite right.

Like I said, she's not bad, but I think Rial's better at playing a more well-rounded Bulma. Although, the irony that Vollmer would more than likely still be playing Bulma if she didn't quit voice acting to be a make-up artist in New Orleans after 2009.

Mike McFarland, I thought did a great job as Yajirobe. The voice for him as an adult at least fits him, imo.

Mike McFarland at least seems to be trying to emulate Brian Drummond’s performance for Yajirobe so at least there’s the consistency mentality at play. They really should have had Laurie Steele play him in the King Piccolo saga though. Goku saying Yajirobe sounds like Krillin doesn’t make sense in the Funi dub like it does in the Japanese version with Mayumi Tanaka voicing both.

Did they really keep the line that he sounds like Krillin in the FUNi dub? I haven't watched it in years, so I forgot about that. Yeah, they really should've. I have a feeling they'd either have his adult VAs doing a similar voice to the Krillin VAs if they dubbed the original series all the way first (or, you know, actually did research before producing anything).

I don’t know if I ever got much of a valley girl vibe from Tiffany Vollmer’s Bulma, but her performance did place a lot of emphasis on Bulma being shrill and angry.

I never had a problem with Mike McFarland’s Yaijrobe, but obviously, it misses the fact that the character was written with the intention of being voiced by the same actor as Kuririn. In fairness though, it seems like the only reason Toriyama wrote that “you sound like Kuririn” line was because he wanted to throw a bone to Mayumi Tanaka.

Yeah, I'm certain that that's the main reason why Yajirobe canonically is supposed to sound like Krillin in the manga. Toriyama seemed to have a close enough relationship with the Japanese cast of the animes. Like, I get that the manga authors usually are either heavily involved in or have final say in who gets cast in anime adaptations of their works, but I didn't know it was to that level.
Whoever voices Yajirobe, just like Roshi, in the English dubs going forward is gonna have some big shoes to fill now that Mike McFarland's dead.

Also, unrelated because I just remembered it. Remember when people actually thought that FUNi was gonna get Peter Kelamis back to voice Goku Black in Super? HOW did ANYONE believe that was true? Even to this day, I see people who hate Sean Schemmel say that they were going to, but Sean threw a fit over it & they changed their decision. Which, y'know, isn't true, but also mangles 2 different things where Kelamis was a fan casting because they got Brian Drummond back to play Copy Vegeta, but also the drama involving Sean getting Peter uninvited from Kamehacon 2018 (which they later came to an understanding on after Peter made it known it was Sean who did it & he got re-invited, then Sean said in his interview with Geekdom101 that it was because he didn't want people confusing Peter with him, which is fucking stupid, but at least there's a stated reason you can actually judge Sean for fairly) & the fact that Kelamis in Super was a fan casting first & foremost. Like, Sean played Goku Black in Xenoverse 2 beforehand &, canonically, he has the same voice as Goku because it's literally just Zamasu in Goku's body. Unlike the Ginyu body swap, which somehow changed the voices of the people getting swapped (which I assume is an anime-only thing because in the manga it'd make more sense if the voices weren't switched given how dumb Krillin acts towards Ginyu in Goku's body), the Dragon Balls didn't do that. Zamasu being in Goku's body wouldn't make him sound different. That's just dumb. He speaks differently, but that's about it & makes much more sense than his voice sounding different.

[TheBigBoy]

Also, unrelated because I just remembered it. Remember when people actually thought that FUNi was gonna get Peter Kelamis back to voice Goku Black in Super? HOW did ANYONE believe that was true?

DB fans like to wishcast and attempt to manifest things into reality. I remember some extremely delusional posters on the old Planetnamek.com forums who SWORE that Funi was going to keep in Umnei No Hi because it was just THAT iconic of a song.

As for myself I thought the in-house Funi dub was going to be a massive correction to the Saban dub - on top of it being uncensored there would also be well-recast voices, OG music, much more mature and accurate dialogue...lol

[Scsigs]

DB fans like to wishcast and attempt to manifest things into reality. I remember some extremely delusional posters on the old Planetnamek.com forums who SWORE that Funi was going to keep in Umnei No Hi because it was just THAT iconic of a song.

As for myself I thought the in-house Funi dub was going to be a massive correction to the Saban dub - on top of it being uncensored there would also be well-recast voices, OG music, much more mature and accurate dialogue...lol

Yeah, anyone who thought that FUNi was gonna keep ANY of the Kikuchi score back then was either stupid, foolish, or living in another reality. I doubt anyone handling the dub back then even listened to the music.

Well, eventually the actors became good at their jobs, the OG DB dub & Pioneer-produced dubs of the first 3 Z films were accurately translated & had the OG music, & Kai eventually had all 3 of those at once, so...silver lining...?