Post
by penguintruth » Thu Sep 03, 2009 9:26 pm
I have a definite opinion about this one.
Now, of course, no Goku is as good as Masako Nozawa's. It's not just her lighthearted, energetic voice for the role, but the little nuances in the way Goku speaks that makes hers the perfect one.
As far as English voices are concerned, Peter Kelamis is by far the best one. He gives Goku lighthearted, carefree voice that he should have, while still maintaining masculinity. He may not have all the little nuances Nozawa has, but he's really the perfect Goku in English. He's what Goku should sound like in English. Well, him or MasakoX.
A perfect scene with Kelamis's Goku is when he's facing off with Recoome on Namek. He really embodies the character in that scene.
Ian Corlett, to me, comes off as a little stiff. He seems almost a little generic, like he never really got into the role that much, or understood Goku's personality that well. I'm sure that, if he continued, he would have grown into the role. But I was glad that a better voice for Goku replaced him.
Sean Schemmel is the absolute worse of the three popular English VAs. With every line it sounds like the VA is forcing himself to do a voice that's far too different than his own, and it sounds like he's in a lot of pain in his attempts. He comes off as sounding like a bad impression of either Corlett or Kelamis, probably both. He does eventually grow into it a little towards the end, but he's no Kelamis. Sometimes it irritates the ears to hear him.
It doesn't help that the script in the dubs tends to make Goku into some sort of lecturing superhero. That's not Goku. Goku is kung-fu Huck Finn. He's an unedcuated, unsophisticated, naive hillbilly who likes a good fight. He's not going to come up with something like, "Ally to good, nightmare to you", because Goku doesn't think that way. I felt that this hurt Schemmel's already poor performance.
Now, okay, there's also Kirby Morrow, later on in the UK-aired Ocean dub. I love Kirby Morrow, but he really doesn't have any business voicing Goku. I'd say he's slightly better than Schemmel, but that doesn't mean he really fits the role, he's just a great VA overall, so he sounds at least tolerable doing it.
Tied for last is the AB Groupe and Creative Product Corp's dub Gokus. The former sounds like Prince Charming and the latter needs a throat lozenge or something.
So, in order:
Nozawa > Kelamis > Corlett = Morrow > Schemmel > those other two clowns
And perhaps Jason Chatwin after those other two guys. But that's really the script's fault.
Recently, off a wave of nostalgia that came from Dragon Ball Kai, I bought the original Pioneer releases of the first three DBZ movies on DVD. On them was the Ocean dub for the three movies. While Ocean was never that great with the series, the main players were better than the ones in the Funimation dub. We're talking Peter Kelamis as Goku, Scott McNeil as Piccolo, Saffron Henderson as Gohan, and Terry Klassen as Krillin. As the movies were uncut, this made it the closest to a "good" DBZ dub there's ever been.
