Question To People Who Prefer The Original Japanese Version

[B]

I haven't seen but one person really go out of their way to attack the dub. People start topics with the dub in mind, such as this one, and we respond as to how we feel about it.

Honestly, if I may go into bitch-mode, I just don't think it's fair we got what we got. I honestly can't think of a single anime fanbase that has the issues this one does. Even other shows dubbed by FUNi that have established "clout," like One Piece, or YuYu Hakusho, or FMA, don't have to debate about friggin' AUDIO TRACKS. It's ridiculous.

[Bussani]

Frankly, I don't 'care' about the dub at all. It could be absent from the season sets and English Dragon Boxes all together and I wouldn't even blink. But it's not that I hate it, I just have absolutely no feelings for it either way.

It's often a misconception that fans of the Japanese version go out of their way to bash the dub. Usually it's in response to a serious question. Like, someone might take my comments here as hateful, but they're not supposed to be, I'm just honestly responding to an honest question. Usually the dub gets bashed because someone asks for people's opinions on it, and they answer honestly.

As Mike pointed out, others analyze the product as a whole for various reasons. It's what you'd expect from a review, so of course someone reviewing it will point out flaws.

Also, it goes both ways. There are plenty of dub fans who bash the Japanese version. "Goku sounds like a girl, the music sucks," etc. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. The point is it's not like everyone's lurking around waiting to go on a rant about how much they dislike <insert choice here>.

[Herms]

I only care about the dub to the extent that it contains countless pieces of false information that then spread among the fandom. Stuff like Freeza talking in his native language, future No.17 and No.18 referring to their "home", Piccolo calling his attack against Cell the "Makosen", etc. If the dub were more faithful in its translations then I wouldn't mind people watching it if they liked the voices and music, but having to always point out that such and such is only said in the dub is kind of a pain.

Honestly, if I may go into bitch-mode, I just don't think it's fair we got what we got. I honestly can't think of a single anime fanbase that has the issues this one does. Even other shows dubbed by FUNi that have established "clout," like One Piece, or YuYu Hakusho, or FMA, don't have to debate about friggin' AUDIO TRACKS. It's ridiculous.

Well, the original 4Kids dub of One Piece is even worse than the Funi dub ever was, from what I hear.

[B]

I am fairly certain that One Piece's fanbase doesn't have too many people throwing a fit that FUNi isn't including 4Kids' score on their releases.

[Raki]

I am fairly certain that One Piece's fanbase doesn't have too many people throwing a fit that FUNi isn't including 4Kids' score on their releases.

It's because it wasn't really anything to get behind. That and 4Kids owns the rights to that.

[Super Sonic]

My question has been more of why the guys from non-English speaking countries care about the dub. I figured they'd be more like how Americans tend to not care about foreign versions of American cartoons or what or whose names were changed in Batman's French and Spanish tracks.

[DemonRin]

Yeah... Herms is right, I'd rather watch the entire series of DBZ dubbed, WITHOUT The original Japanese Music than sit through one second of 4Kids One Piece...

They just did such a bad job it's not even funny...

But the reason I dislike the English dub is, besides a plethora of smaller reasons I could name (Poor Acting in the earlier seasons, the Music....)
The Major reason was Fidelity to the Japanese script. That's what really kills it for me. They deviate way too much for my liking.

And when I say Deviate, I mean that quite often they will change the meaning of a Line or a scene COMPLETELY.

The scene I use to demonstrate this point is the Scene between Son and Vegeta during their first Fight.

Here's the Scene in Both Versions (I took the Japanese one from the Kanzenban because it's exactly the same in both and that was easier.)

べジータ：なるほどここをきさまの墓場にえらんだわけか。。。
くっくっく...喜ぶがいいきさまのような下級戦士が長エリートに遊んでもらえるんだからな.......
サイヤ人は生まれてすぐ戦士の素質検査される...　そのときの数値が低いクズ野郎がきさまのようにたいした敵のいない星へ送り込まれるのだ...
ようするにきさまは落ちこぼれだ.......
孫悟空：そのおかげでオラはこの地球来れたんだ感謝しなきゃな
それによ...　落ちこぼれだって必死で努力すりゃエリートを超えることがあるかもよ
べジータ：くっくっく...　おもしろいじょうだんだ...　では努力だけではどうやっても超えられぬ壁をみせてやろう...

Vegeta: I see... So you've decided to make this place your grave then?
He He He, You should be excited, Since A Low Class fighter like you is about to get to be played with by a Super Elite. Saiyans' Fighter-ratings are checked just after birth... After this, the Lowly Trash that were rated lower like you... Are sent down to planets without any enemies that could hold their own...
What I'm saying is... You're just a failure!

Son: So that's why I was sent to Earth? Then I'm thankful, Besides Even a Failure might beat an Elite if he works hard enough!

Vegeta: He He He, an amusing little Joke... Now then, Let me show you the Wall you will not possibly be able to top!

See here, Vegeta's shown to be a COMPLETE JERK who killed Nappa because he lost to a Low-Class little worm such as Son, and now he doesn't want anything but to Kill Son.

Vegeta: Kakarott, I have a Proposition for you... I'm only going to say this once so Listen Carefully
I, Vegeta, the Prince of all Saiyans would like to Offer you, Kakarott, The opportunity to stand beside me in this conquest...
With Nappa gone, I could use a Good Man. Think about it! We would rule the Planets! You could have anything you desired, There's noone in the UNIVERSE who could touch us!! Nothing would be out of your Grasp!!
Well? What do you say, Kakarott?

Goku: I have everything I could ever want RIGHT here on Earth! So I'll have to say, "No thanks!" Besides, I've seen how you treat YOUR partners... Not much Job security!

Vegeta: Alright then, So be it! You had your chance!!

What?... SUDDENLY Vegeta's Character is ENTIRELY Changed.
Instead of telling Son that he's an Elite and Son is not, he's asking the Low-Class worm to JOIN HIM?!?!?! WHAT?!?! Then Why the Hell did he kill Nappa?! The reason was Clear in the Japanese version, now it's not. If he just wanted more strong people by his side, why not LEAVE NAPPA ALIVE and the THREE of them could go off together?!

Vegeta's character was fundamentally changed from an Elitist Jerk, to a.. well, a Normal Comic Book Super villain...

[Super Sonic]

Yeah, they were lazy about some of those lines from the first dub. Though kinda funny it followed a few eps earlier with him being a calm collected jerk intent on punishing the traitor.

[dagame10k]

Once upon a time, there were these 3 Movie dubs. They had excellent voice acting, scripts while not the best, they were close to the Japanese scripts, and they contained the Original score.

They were Co-produced by Pioneer(Now Geneon) and FUNimation, and they featured the Ocean Cast, but lets not get into that Ocean vs FUNimation debate.

So 10-12 years since said 3 Uncut dubs were made,they've managed to add the original score to their dub, and though that may sound great, but that's the only really drastic thing that they have really changed in their dub since the first 3 Uncut Pioneer movies. The re-recording of lines for some characters from, and I mean especially the original Season 3 dub, Chris Sabat's deteriorating Take on Vegeta since Season 4 to hit it's horrible current state not withstanding, the mixing of old Season 3 lines and new Season 3 lines are nothing more than band aids for a dub in such a pitiful state(If you like watching it, and you enjoy it, by all means I have no problems with that), but the newly recorded lines which some do seem to be modified, they don't change enough of original line, that dubbing just some new lines don't change the fact that the show would need to be entirely re-dubbed from ground up for it to be better than it is at the moment.

Dragon Ball Z being the first anime I've watched, because of the many English casting problems, 2 casts, 2 split North American dubs, though these types of behind scenes problems are interesting to research, it did no good for the show which created a split in the English fan base, but due to these problems, I was somewhat forced into looking at the Japanese version to see how it was originally intended, how Toei when they animated it, originally intended the show be viewed, and seen.

There is not a dub that suffers from the intended Japanese mouth flaps, fast sounding line syndrome which is an understandable flaw, there are are many dubs that I like just as much, if not consider an equal compared to the original version, sometimes I do find it hard to choose which version to watch, but in the case of Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball Z is without an equal. Pioneer Movies 1-3 to a certain extent could be considered as an equal, but those are just 3 throw away filler movies, they aren't dubs of the canon story.

So thus remains, Japanese version of Dragon Ball Z is without an English equal, and the only way it will ever have an English equal is if FUNimation does in fact ever decide sometime in the distant future to step away from the nostalgia of their current band aid dub, learn from their mistakes, and finally understand that they'll need to start from scratch, new cast, modified Simmons scripts to fit with mouth flaps, and original score, only then will there be an equal.

Until then, I'm stuck with the Japanese version, subtitles don't hurt me, in fact I find them more useful than their original intent, and with FUNimation releasing Subbed Dragon Box versions, I'm grateful just for that alone. I'm not one to blast the dub, more of headache with FUNimation, the way they handled it, I do care about the dub, but that dub has been out of reach since FUNimation took over Home video control from Pioneer, Pioneer showed they a nice template which was very early on, but FUNimation just didn't follow.

This an opinion from a fan who originally was a dub fan.

[Tekkaman-James]

You can't be fans of the original if you don't know about the one shown in your country.

That is grossly incorrect. Take myself as an example: There was a magazine (now an e-zine) called Protoculture Addicts that was sparingly available in certain book stores throughout the 90's. Once they started covering general anime (rather than just Robotech), they started to print a section on DragonBall Z that would give you episode synopses for the episodes that had aired in Japan during the previous month's issue (this was during the Cell Saga, BTW). It was thanks to these synopses and their B&W, grainy screencaps that I was first introduced to (and, subsequently, became a fan of) the series. They even published articles to review the Super Battle Collection figures as they were released. So, without seeing a single episode of this show in motion (televised in the US, Japan or elsewhere), I became a fan of DBZ.

If you didn't like DBZ in the US, would you really go and look up the Japanese version?

Taking myself as an example again: Yes. First of all, I had already had around 10 raw episodes of the series on VHS tape thanks to tape-trading (the 80's/early 90's version of BitTorrent) before a single episode of DragonBall aired in the US. Obviously, once they had announced that DragonBall was going to be available on US television, I jumped for joy and taped every episode as it aired at the ungodly hour of 5:30am. Did I enjoy it despite its short-comings and edits? Yes, because, in comparison to my grainy, patchwork fan-tapes, this was my chance to watch the show in amazing SD! I continued to (progressively more begrudgingly) watch the show as they migrated to DBZ and then finally to Toonami, but I never stopped buying/trading for fan-tapes of the Japanese show and movies (which, thanks to its American exposure, were now available with questionable-but-better-than-nothing subtitles).

So, in closing, at least for me, had DragonBall / DragonBall Z never aired in North America, I would still have been a fan. I might have had to wait until the internet became a viable tool for acquiring episodes to see the entire series, but I still would have been a fan nonetheless.

[linkdude20002001]

My question is for people who prefer the original Japanese version: why do you care about the English dub?

I don't prefer the Japanese version "because it's Japanese" or "because it's the original". If the English dub was done correctly, then I'd watch that. That is why I care.

I have a feeling that even if the original music was used from the get-go, and a loyal script was put in place a la the three uncut movies done by Geneon...that you guys would still say the dub is terrible and just watch the Japanese version.

I own the Pioneer box-set for the first three movies and almost EVERY TIME, I watch the English dub. If the whole series was done like those first three movies, I'd probably never watch it in Japanese again.

And just so you know, it has NOTHING to do with it being more faithful or like the original (I hadn't even watched DBZ in Japanese at this point in time). It's just simply BETTER (in my opinion at least). When the first three movies aired edited on Toonami back in 1999 (or maybe 1998), the first two used Shunsuke Kikuchi's music and a scrip that followed the original, while the third movie, The Tree of Might, used Shuki Levy's music and an inaccurate script (and different voice actors for Gokuh, the Kame-Sen'nin, and Oolong). I LOVED the first two movies, but the third one... there was just something not right about it (or the any of the later movies). At this point I had never seen DBZ in Japanese and never even thought that the music might've been replaced or the script altered. Years later, I bought the box-set and for some odd reason, the third movie was now just as good as the first two. So I re-watched my VHS recording and realized it was a different, and messed up, version of the dub.

[eienmic]

You can't be fans of the original if you don't know about the one shown in your country. If you didn't like DBZ in the US, would you really go and look up the Japanese version?

I also am an exception to your statement. I was a fan of the Japanese version, years before it arrived in the states. I watched TV recorded tapes that my friend would receive from his family in Japan, I had access to the manga from Mitsuwa (which was Yaohan back then) and I had access to the SFC games from the mail order company, Gamecave.

The Japanese version was all I knew so I had no need for an English dub. When one was eventually released, I still wasn't a fan. I thought the voices didn't fit the characters and found the jokes to be stupid and not funny. That's right, as a middle schooler, I thought the jokes were not funny. And this was the good dub company (Pioneer?), the one most people like.

When the cast was eventually switched, I was horrified. How could they possibly do a worse job? The first Freeza sounded like a granny but the 2nd Freeza sounded like a freakin' tranny. Yeah I get it that the dub doesn't need to imitate the Japanese seiyuu in any way but Jebus, that first "season" of the Funi dub was god-awful.

And seriously, what IS with the line/story changes? I mean there's so many things that were needlessly added/changed throughout the series, for example: implying Dr. Gero was some big shot in the RR Army when he wasn't; Goku being 9,000 instead of 8,000; Tenshinhan is Tien and Recoom is Recoome and Freeza is Fri-eza but Boo is Buu? You're gonna start using an accurately translated spelling of a name now?, Tenshinhan is a one-eyed cowboy going for one last ride, and the one that I hate the most - Bardock calling the legion of Freeza's henchmen, whose asses he just kicked to get close to Freeza's ship, his own men. I freakin' cried bullshit when I saw that. Why the hell did they have to do that?

So yeah, in short I guess I go out of my way to hate on the dub because they change it too much to the point that I can't begin to enjoy it. Though I always watch anime in Japanese, there are some dubs that I don't hate. Like so many others have pointed out, Cowboy Bebop is pretty good, as is FLCL, I think Big-O is decent and I hate to admit that I really like the dub for Fatal Fury. Honestly, I was incredibly excited that DB was coming stateside but all that excitement was flushed down the gutter with the shoddy product we were given.

[Thanos]

I don't care about the dub. What gives you the idea we do?


And you're most likely right about even if the dub were done perfectly, I at least wouldn't watch it and probably say it sucks (or not just like it as much as the original), because you can't compete with the Japanese voices. You just can't.

[Kendamu]

My question is for people who prefer the original Japanese version: why do you care about the English dub?

I care because I still hold some semblance of hope somewhere that eventually an accurate English dub is possible. If it never happens, oh well. I still have the Japanese version. However, Ocean DBZ Movies 1-3 showed me that a good English dub is possible and I'd like to see it happen one day.

Also, I care about what BGM is on the English dub of the Dragon Box because of the image DBZ has in America. Accurate Japanese BGM is one step closer to making DBZ something to be taken seriously as a classic action Shounen anime as opposed to some random "psuedo-anime" that anime nerds make fun of.

I have a feeling that even if the original music was used from the get-go, and a loyal script was put in place a la the three uncut movies done by Geneon...that you guys would still say the dub is terrible and just watch the Japanese version.

In my case it isn't true. I really like those dubs. If the whole series was done that way I wouldn't care which version I watch. I'd just go with whatever default audio they gave me and would enjoy both equally.

[Captain Awesome]

As a fan of the original Japanese version, I care about the English dub because first and foremost, it's (in my opinion) a gross misrepresentation of the original, from the script inaccuracies, bad casting, poor acting and generally awful writing, it isn't Dragonball to me.

And secondly I care because I want a good English dub, I would love to be able to listen to Dragonball in my native tongue without wanting to tear my ears off, I'm a huge fan of One Piece and I find myself really enjoying the FUNimation dub, to the point where it's actually a selling point for me.

Why the hell can't I have that for Dragonball.

[Sn4tcH]

I would say I am equally a fan of both versions, both for different reasons. The Japanese version of course is correct, and the way it's meant to be seen. The English dub now has a strong sense of nostalgia about it like many things from my childhood.

I've heard some people say it's like two different shows, and I also feel this way. I like the dub and... I like the Japanese version. I have nothing to complain about. It's kinda nice.

[cRookie_Monster]

I'm guessing Japanese fans would like something they can appreciate in their own language....and to them the English dub didn't fill that need.

[JulieYBM]

I'm guessing Japanese fans would like something they can appreciate in their own language....and to them the English dub didn't fill that need.

You hardly need to understand the language of a show to be entertained. Great acting and music is universal.

[bkev]

...But that doesn't mean it wouldn't help.

[russ869]

My question is for people who prefer the original Japanese version: why do you care about the English dub?

I don't. At least not anymore.

The dub used to piss me off because practically every other Funimation dub is at least tolerable, tries to be serious, and doesn't insult the viewers intelligence. Why couldn't Dragonball be like that. And the answer of course it that even with all of the additional hate and ridicule DB gets because of the dub, lot's of people view the series that way. They view it as something that only exists to be made fun of. I know a friend who doesn't watch anime but he bought the first three DBZ season sets just so he could laugh at the English dub and what he perceived as Freeza's "hilarious homosexual innuendo."

This is the reason why I'm not thrilled about the recent popularity of "abridged series" and things like that. Because it completely sways people's minds and gathers even more people to the side that never wants a show to be seen seriously as what it was really supposed to be, or what it originally became popular for. Anyone can dub over some video with a bunch of funny voices and repeat jokes, but shows like Dragonball or Yuugiou that are made fun of these days primarily because of their dubs originally became popular because they were actually interesting and fun to watch before they became nothing by a complete joke.

I bash on the English dub (though I don't do it all that often) because people bashing on the dub is what made me give the Japanese version a try. I enjoy it much more then I ever enjoyed the English version, so I try to get other people to try the Japanese version out as well.

This is a super good point. What you described is probably the case for me too. I would have given up Dragonball a while ago if all we had was the dub. Even back when all I could find to watch were dub episodes my enjoyment of DB was always rather lackluster; like I really wanted to like it but something about how the show was executed kept ruining it for me.

I am fairly certain that One Piece's fanbase doesn't have too many people throwing a fit that FUNi isn't including 4Kids' score on their releases.

Oh my god!! You have no idea how big this made me crack up!

I wouldn't be "Mike" if my parents didn't get married.

HAa ha! Mike, isn't this true though?