nathantheguitarist wrote:I make this point because I know people like this. People who don't give two shits about anime, and some even hate it with a passion, but they view Dragonball Z as a separate entity from anime.
I can understand that opinion, but in a roundabout sense that doesn’t make it any less sorta misguided. Dragon Ball IS and always will be a piece of Japanese anime, regardless of how many other people might choose not to acknowledge this fact or view it in that light. All the fans in America collectively believing with all their heart that Dragon Ball is a “separate entity from other anime” won’t somehow make this belief into reality. “Reality doesn’t care if you believe it” and all that.
I personally don’t give a crap about the vast majority of contemporary American children’s cartoons, never have never will, but I do admit that I LOVE Batman: The Animated series, and Animaniacs as a few notable exceptions. But does this mean that I refuse to acknowledge that they’re more or less cut from the same cultural and creative cloth as a whole ton of other shows in their vein that I honestly couldn’t be bothered to ever give a damn about? No, absolutely not. They’re American children’s cartoons. That’s just what they are, regardless of what my opinions on American children’s cartoons may be, and regardless of how different a standard I hold those two shows to compared to the rest of their kind. And that’s what I accept them as.
Dragon Ball Z, by that same logic, is very much decidedly a Japanese anime. This will not change, no matter how many Westerners who otherwise don’t give a damn about anime hold Dragon Ball as their one lone exception. It may be the one anime they like, but it’s still an anime. No changing this fact, no matter how different a spin the English dub has put on it, and no matter how differently it was marketed in the U.S. compared to almost every other anime out there.
Dragon Ball Z is still an anime, it was just an anime that FUNimation in a roundabout sense, “tricked” a lot of people into seeing it as something otherwise, by way of a relentless marketing machine and a very different dub that were both hell bent determined to drill into millions of people’s heads “ACTION!!! EXTREME!!! AMERICAN!!!! PUNCHES TO THE HEAD!!! FUCK YEAH!!!” It may have mostly worked, and there may well be a whole bunch of people out there now who, due to this marketing and this specific image that FUNi has very carefully crafted over the years, believe wholeheartedly that there’s Japanese anime over here in one corner, and then there’s DBZ over there in the other corner far away from it… but no matter what, that still will never make it any less a flat out incorrect assumption and viewpoint.
This view of Dragon Ball as something that’s “not quite really anime” is SO ingrained into Western anime fandom, that I often see many die hard subtitled anime fans who damn well KNOW that a bad or drastically altered dub is never something to judge a series on (and will go into tirades against other dubs they perceive to be terrible and misrepresenting their favorite shows), who still write off Dragon Ball as something Western and mindlessly stupid based solely on the dub, without giving almost ANY thought to the inherent hypocritical distinction they’re making. The marketing and PR FUNi has pured into this series to give it that image has just been THAT relentless and constant since the series’ U.S. debut.
I think what others have been trying to say in this thread is that some of us are just incredibly tired and long since sick to the soul of FUNimation continuing to market and treat Dragon Ball as something separate and far apart from their other anime titles. Regardless of you opinions on the dub (love it or hate it), it’s incredibly hard to argue that there’s something inherently deceptive and flat out dishonest about the way this series has been marketed and handled by FUNimation over the years.
All of their other anime titles are marketed and handled as if they’re intended for fans of Japanese animation, nothing more or less than that. Dragon Ball Z, on the direct opposite end of the spectrum, is not and almost never has been treated this way by them. This is the very first release (though arguably the original Dragon Ball two disc saga sets were as well) that appears to be being handled like it’s just another of FUNi’s anime releases, no different from Tsubasa or Black Cat or Yu Yu Hakusho or Lupin or One Piece.
Yes there are (as Daizex has clearly shown) “intelligent dub fans” that are out there, but I sometimes can’t help but think that FUNi hasn’t been targeting their marketing of this series towards even people like
them. Their past marketing tells me, in its tone and level of intelligence, that FUNi has been targeting this series clearly at either uninformed small children, or mountain dew guzzling frat boy types who hold Bum Fights as their high standard in artistic film making. The former of which the intelligent dub fans may not have been at one point or another (uninformed that is
), and the latter of which they don't in any way particularly strike me as.
If you’re an intelligent individual that’s capable of critical thought who also happens to be a fan of the FUNimation dub, then congratulations, you may well be in an even SMALLER minority than the Japanese version fanbase. Or at the very least it seems that way from my perspective. I certainly have NEVER met a particularly great deal of fans like this until I came to Daizex, and I’ve been around the internet and Dragon Ball circles since before a lot of users here were even born yet.
Are some sub fans here acting a bit harshly even towards disheartened Daizex dub fans that hoped to have a Dragon Box quality release with the full dub experience on it? Even I have to concede that yes, some people (myself included at a few intervals) may have been rubbing it in more than a bit too harshly. For that, for my part at least, I do sincerely apologize.
But… by the same token, from the perspective of a lot of Japanese version fans, it’s VERY hard to not find yourself thinking “You know what? Let someone ELSE have to make a bee-line for the audio setup for once.” Some of us have been doing this since the very first Pioneer movie singles after all. Some of us feel like we’ve done more than our fair share of time being ignored by the U.S. Dragon Ball marketing machine (to one degree or another). Does it suck that this mass sense of relief and happiness at that streak seeming to be at an end here also translate into some immature “Nya nya!”s at some dub fans who probably don’t deserve it? Yes. Yes of course it does. Am I ashamed of some of the behavior (including my own) as a sub fan (and a
long time sub fan at that)? Yes, of course I am.
I actually
do feel pretty bad for users like jjgp, VenomSymbiote, and Inagaddadavida. I sincerely do. I may disagree with a LOT of their opinions and views on the series, but they’re still Dragon Ball fans, and moreover they’re fans of that “other” version of Dragon Ball who (unlike seemingly 90% of the rest of the dub fanbase on the internet) are NOT moronic, jackassed, snotty little shit stains towards others who have a different view from them. Quite the direct opposite in fact. Do they deserve some of derisive and dismissive attitude being thrown their way regarding their wishes for this release? I have to honestly say that no, they really don’t in the least bit.
They’ve been largely nothing but excellent, well written and mannered, and fun users who have done a lot to help make Daizex as diverse as it (generally) has been. They don’t deserve to have metaphorical dirt kicked in their face over this. We all should probably be checking our past experiences with other, more stereotypically shitheaded dub fans at the door when we come to Daizex and talk to folks like them (and the vice versa of this should go too regarding more stereotypically snooty sub fans, sadly in spite of how jackass-ish many sub fans have been kinda acting over this, again myself included at times).
But at the same time… a point is reached where I can only sympathize with dub fans (even the really awesome ones that I like a lot) only so far and up to a certain point about a release like this. Because at the end of the day I’m
not a dub fan. It’s because I’m a sub fan who also has long missed and pined for the Dragon Ball fanbase to be kinda like it was before 1996 (when none of this crap was a concern at all), that a part of me still can’t help but be incredibly GLAD to see the Faulconer score gone all the same.
I’d be lying if I said that a part of me isn’t hoping that this marks the beginning of both that score and moreover the WWE-ish attitude and marketing that has gone into DBZ’s U.S. image since FUNimation took the reigns of the series, gradually beginning to be phased out, and the series allowed to finally grow the fuck up in the U.S. and just be treated as another piece of anime the way it used to be. Nothing more, and nothing less. And I think that a lot of other sub fans on here simply feel the same way, to one degree or another.
Is that wishful on my (and our) end? Maybe it is.
Probably it is. But at the same time, we ARE getting the Dragon Boxes. With default Japanese audio, and most (if not possibly all) of the original trimmings no less. Those “pigs flying” images were posted earlier in this thread for a
reason. At this stage in the game, ANYTHING is possible, and FUNimation has now hit a point I never thought I’d ever see them hit with this franchise: where it genuinely wouldn’t surprise me if the whole “U.S. kids cartoon, WWE, extreme” schtick was at long last (and 13 years belatedly) being retired from this point onward in it’s U.S. marketing, and Dragon Ball can go back to just being a really odd little anime series again, and actually feel like it belongs alongside their other various licenses, rather than as the perennial odd man out.
Yes, again this could all just be wishful thinking, and it’s entirely possible (
more than likely rather) that both the Faulconer score and the douchebag marketing style won’t be going anywhere in the foreseeable future, and that this release is but a single isolated one-off “hiccup” in FUNimation’s future plans for future DBZ related marketing. I have no illusions about any of that whatsoever.
But still, from the perspective of people like me that are not in the dub fan’s position, it does feel nice to have something like this occur (if only once) just the same.
