A question for Sub fans.

[Kendamu]

I hate to be a contributor to another Dub/Sub topic, but there is a question I've had for some time that keeps bugging me so I guess I'll ask it. When did most of you stop(if you ever started) watching the Dub? For those who finished the whole series in English format was there parts of the series you liked, did you think it got better over time or did it pain you to watch it the whole time?

I ask this because a lot of times when I read examples of poor writing in the Dub it seems to mostly come from season 3 and early parts of season 4(when Funimation just started to use the in house cast). Its almost like that is the metaphorical scaring on the series as a whole.

If given the chance would you like to see Funimation make a second attempt at dubbing the series?

I caught it on TV and had it on in the background muted while doing other things (like working out, drawing, reading comics, listening to music, whatever) if I had a TV in the room up until Vegeta sacrificed himself against Buu. After that, they went into repeats and I had ended up on a schedule where I hadn't seen it again until maybe October 2002 when Gotenks was fighting Buu in the RoSaT.

As for when I really stopped paying attention to it? I think it was after Season 3. I had bought some DBZ manga from VIZ and was hooked on it. I kinda dropped the anime after that.

[Herms]

I stopped watching it during the break between Vegeta's Boo arc death and the final portion of Z. During that time I got into the Viz manga, and from there I started buying DVDs to watch the Japanese version of the anime.

[Reckoner]

I pretty much didn't miss an episode of DBZ from the first time I saw it Sunday mornings on UPN. But I remember buying the tapes of Dead Zone and World's Strongest when they came out...and being absolutely blown away. What is this...music? Why the silence? This doesn't sound like Power Rangers! This is...awesome! But aside from those two tapes I was stuck with the same 53 episodes over and over again. And naturally, since it was DBZ and I was but a wee lad first hitting puberty, any time Brian Drummond screamed bloody murder and slammed ReaCoom into a mountainside I was a happy camper.

Honestly, the switch over to Japanese started around 1999. I had already gotten quite a few episodes and Movies 7 - 13 on crappy bootleg fansubs, but the switch really came about when my cable company picked up the International Channel around the same time Season 3 was premiering on Toonami. Even though it was one raw Japanese episode a week, I ended up looking forward to that more than the Toonami episodes after a while.

I'd like to pause and thank DBZ Uncensored for that.

I hated the FUNi cast from the get-go and absolutely hated the new score by Faulconer. It was just...bad. Once bilingual DVDs came around (2001?), that was when I permanently switched over. And aside from an episode here and there, either on Toonami or over at a friend's place, I haven't really looked back since.

[The Time Traveller]

When I first got the Season set DVDs, I was so happy to finally see the show again after so many years, I popped it in and played it right away in English, now I don't know what I was expecting, but the voices were horrible, Kyle Hebert's narration put me off the most, then it was the dialogue compared to what was in the subtitles, I watch almost everything with subtitles on, even anime which usually differs a tiiiiiiiny bit, and I thought there was something wrong with the subtitles at first because there were huge chunks of cheesy lines missing, so I thought I'd try watching the first episode again in Japanese, and holy hell did I love it, it felt so right, the sound matched the picture, it was like an old kung fu movie, and I've used that comparison before.

After seeing the entire series like that 3 times over I can't ever take the dub seriously ever again.

Another thing that made me want to watch it with subtitles was that I had already read the Viz version of the manga like 10 times and was used to the name's Kuririn, Tenshinhan, etc.

[Sebastian (SB)]

I originally became an avid watcher and fan during the 72 episode season (I guess that would be the 4th Season ala Cell arc). After hearing the excitement of a friend during my earlier years of school. I knew of the Ocean dub and seen an episode or two, but wasn't really all into it at that time. I remember the episode with Trunks slicing Freeza in half and was pretty much hooked since then. I would try to find as much information of the series on the internet. Reading much ahead of the future story arcs and GT. I came across Chris Parsos's DBZ Uncensored site and was intrigued by edits that were made for the dub and what was taken out. I think that's when I really would try to find any bootleg fansubs that were available for cheap purchases.

I found a local comics place at Washington Heights in NY that sold VHS DBZ Fansubs for fairly cheap. They had a special where you'd buy 2 for $10, 3 for $15, and so on. One would cost $7 separately. I took the 3 for $15 deal and got Movies 8, 10, and 12. I do believe those were the Anime Labs fansubs as well. Prior to that, I had the Anime Labs subs of Movies 11 and 13. Vegeta cursing and everything. Much later on I got fansubs from a friend for the Cooler Films, Super No.13 , and Bojack. So at one point, I had all the bootleg films from 5-13. Most of the tapes are long gone now (and some stolen), since my move from my old place. The only ones I have now are the first Broli film and Fusion Reborn.

Having much exposure to the original Japanese films and all the information available to me on the internet, I hardly ever looked to the dub. I would see a couple of episodes of the Boo arc, but I wasn't much of a faithful viewer at that point. Any opportunity I had to watch DBZ in Japanese with subtitles, I would. I never bought into all of the the FUNI singles (minus some sales in conventions here and there). They were too expensive and, at the time, Viz started circulating Shonen Jump in America. I was hooked to the manga and pretty much started purchasing the Shonen Jump line-up. It was cheaper and I was fortunate enough to get the uncensored volumes of Dragon Ball. Fast forward to now, the Dragon Boxes are being released in the US and I'm a happy camper.

[desirecampbell]

I watched the dub because, as many have said, it was simply all that was available.

My turning point was when I watched my first fansub. Once I heard Nozawa's voice I was hooked. "That's Goku" I thought.

And I've never looked back.

[VegettoEX]

When I stopped watching a dub and when I became a fan (pretty much) exclusively of the original Japanese version are two separate questions.

I became a fan of the original Japanese version the instant I saw any video clips of it online (and then via VHS fansubs) back in 1997, a year before I began my own website. I'm pretty sure I didn't see anything in Japanese between its premier in (September?) 1996 until at least the new year. The music and voices were immediate hooks; the "uncut" nature of it was secondhand to those aspects.

It's tough to answer a question about when I was no longer a "fan" of a dub (note how I use "a dub" instead of "the dub", since I classify in my head FUNimation as having two distinct dubs).

I *liked* a lot of *aspects* of the original 1996 DBZ dub. Some of the voices were amazing (Ian Corlett, Ted Cole, Scott McNeil), while others were terrible (Matt Hill, Pauline Newstone). Some motifs in the music (generally based around "Rock the Dragon") were catchy, but overall it didn't fit. The writing ranged from acceptable to facepalm.

Come 1999 and the first two "Captain Ginyu" VHS volumes (before the TV broadcast, mind you), there was no longer any single ounce of enjoyment to be had from watching a dub of DBZ from FUNimation. I somewhat regularly watched season three, less regularly watched season four, and didn't bother with anything else other than a haphazard-catching here and there to my personal dismay.

A lot of the younger fans who know nothing other than FUNimation's current cast simply have no frame-of-reference or ability to understand what was going on with the viewership and community at that time with the production shift. It was universally disliked, panned, and disregarded. To the fans online supporting the community of the time, there was very little watching of FUNimation's dub as just "a show" (unlike what many of us had been doing a couple years earlier being introduced via their dub). The honeymoon was long over.

Then you've got people like Kunzait with legitimate claims to be able to say they never had a honeymoon to begin with because their familiarity with the original version preceded any dubbed production. I love those the most, since they cannot answer the questions asked in this thread, and that blows some minds .

[SparkyPantsMcGee]

Wow guys, thanks!

[TripleRach]

I began to prefer the original audio fairly early on, but I still had a relative tolerance for the dub most of the time that it was on Cartoon Network. In my case, it was partially because I was interested in comparing the dub to the original, which was actually a written project I did for every episode of DB (since, for most of its TV run, it was not getting DVD releases).

However, my memories of the later dub seasons are not that clear, possibly because they weren't rerun nearly as much as the older dub seasons were, so they weren't beat into my brain quite as hard. But in the case of late Z, I think I'd also just lost a ton of interest in the comparison aspect, and my tolerance for the voices and music was running out, so I just didn't really care enough to pay 100% attention anymore.

For GT, I definitely didn't care enough to pay complete attention, because there are only three things I remember about its dub: 1) Pan's voice; 2) the rap, and instrumentals of it; 3) once the "Lost Episodes" were added to the mix, every time I was expecting Episode 16 to air, "A Grand Problem" aired instead.

Also, it may interest some of you to know that there are still a good 20 or so episodes of DBZ I've never seen in Japanese, and that's not even counting ones I've never seen at all. It's mostly Cell Game and Saiyaman stuff, so you can probably guess why that is.

[SparkyPantsMcGee]

Yea, the earlier seasons of DBZ have been beaten into my head so much too. With the airing on UPN, the Uncut re-release, the Orange Bricks, the Dragonbox and Kai, I think I know more about the Saiyan saga than I do the whole series.

The funny thing is, though I haven't seen it as much, the acting from the Buu Arc is the acting I think of most when referring to Funimation's performances and I actually liked how they handled that. I'm not familiar with the changes at that point but it can't be as bad as Season 3(can it?). I went back to season 3(because of the Vegeta Thread) and man is it bad. I don't think I can finish watching it. The changes you guys talked about are so obvious is scary.

[Khalid Shahin]

Yea, the earlier seasons of DBZ have been beaten into my head so much too. With the airing on UPN, the Uncut re-release, the Orange Bricks, the Dragonbox and Kai, I think I know more about the Saiyan saga than I do the whole series.

The funny thing is, though I haven't seen it as much, the acting from the Buu Arc is the acting I think of most when referring to Funimation's performances and I actually liked how they handled that. I'm not familiar with the changes at that point but it can't be as bad as Season 3(can it?). I went back to season 3(because of the Vegeta Thread) and man is it bad. I don't think I can finish watching it. The changes you guys talked about are so obvious is scary.

Goku's voice acting wasn't done over for Season 3 so it was just terrible. One of the worst acting performances I have ever seen. But interestingly enough they did change some of the script. When Krillin and Gohan are putting on the saiyan armor, Krillin asked if the gloves were made of the same material, in the original Funimation dub Vegeta said "Yes", while in the new one he said "Shut up.", not sure why they made that change but not others. It could be that they didn't redub Goku after Vegeta's death speech, and they wanted Goku's dialog to match up with Vegeta's, and any changes to what Vegeta says wouldn't make sense for Goku. Maybe it is just wishful thinking that Funimation is competent, which I actually believe. But if they got Dragon Ball Kai, and started everything from scratch and didn't even look at the DBZ English script other than for names and "Over 9000" then I believe they could do an accurate dub.

[Rory]

I used to be "EW GOKU'S VOICES BY A WOMAN?!" when I was a kid, which made Ultimate Battle 22 and Final Bout kind of hard to stomach for me, but they were the only games available to me then, so I guess I had no choice.
Budokai 3 Collectors Edition (2005) included the option of Japanese audio, it was my first real chance to experience the Japanese audio (with a more mature mindset), so I chose to go for it.
At this point I really dug it, and found myself selecting the option for Japanese voices from then on.

[SuperSaiyan3Goku]

Well, I was one that saw the Funimation dub on Cartoon Network. I got heavily into it, watched it when I could, got the Beckett magazines, figures, tapes. I think the first time I ever had an experience with the Japanese voices, (Not just the series, but the voices) was from a Goten Shrine website. I can't remember the name, it had "Angel" in it, though. Anyway, I heard clips from Movie 10 of Goten and Trunks thinking about what to ask Shenlong. I also listened to the Japense music, and I was in a faze of (OMG It's Japanese, I NEED THIS) and the first movie I saw in Japanese was (I think) my first and only fansub of Movie 2. Bought from an Acme Supermarket, of all places. Popped it in the VCR and I liked it.

So which one do I like more? Well, there's two sides to it. I like the Funimation version because when I was younger, that's all I knew. So it's the Nostalgia point of view. And when I started watching the Japanese version of the show, I was a vivid lover of that, too. So I'm gonna have to choose the Japanese version over the English. I still like watching *certain* episodes of the Funimation dub, only for Nostalgia purposes. And I so like certain episodes. And other times, I can't stand it. It's a Love/Hate Relationship.

So which would I prefer to watch? I'm not sure, because I am going to begin to watch EVERY SINGLE episode of DBZ, and *since* I have already seen pretty much every single Episode/Movie of the Funi dub, I won't be sure which is better until I watch the Japanese version all the way through.

[DBZfan29]

I have always been a fan of the original Japanese version. While I was more fond of the dub, I didn't have any problems with the original version. I began watching more of the Japanese version in 2008 and became fully attached to it (dropping those dub names and FUNimation's version completely) in March 2009. The reason why I know this is because I run a fan site (not as great as Daizenshuu EX or Kanzentai) and I have dates of posts I've made where I began using the correct Japanese terms.

I really began becoming a big Japanese fan when I first listened to the podcast back in January 2008. Because of all the negative things said about the dub, I made the switch. Thanks, guys. You ruined the dub for me!! LOL. I guess it was all for the better, anyway...

[Ultimate_DB_Fan]

The funny thing is, though I haven't seen it as much, the acting from the Buu Arc is the acting I think of most when referring to Funimation's performances and I actually liked how they handled that. I'm not familiar with the changes at that point but it can't be as bad as Season 3(can it?).

The performances by FUNimation's in-house group were actually really good in the Boo arc. It was by that point that the voice actors really got into the swing of things and sounded natural. There were, of course, script changes like before, but FUNi stayed pretty faithful to the original script in that particular saga.
One thing I'll always have against FUNi, though, is that they didn't re-dub Schemmel for season 3, which really grinds my gears. As much as I like him as Goku, he was indeed horrid when he first came up. Another thing is that when viewing the last episode that was re-dubbed, followed by the episodes that weren't, it's really noticeable.
The va's who did Grand-Kaio and Kibit were also good and I never hear sub-fans complain about them.

[Majin Buu]

I hate to be a contributor to another Dub/Sub topic, but there is a question I've had for some time that keeps bugging me so I guess I'll ask it. When did most of you stop(if you ever started) watching the Dub? For those who finished the whole series in English format was there parts of the series you liked, did you think it got better over time or did it pain you to watch it the whole time?

I was introduced to Dragonball through the dub, I enjoyed it. I watched the Ocean Dub through Season 3 in blissful ignorance of the Japanese version. Then I came across Chris Psaros' DBZ Uncensored a little after season 3 ended and found out about all of the changes that were made to the show. From what Psaros described, the Japanese version sounded like a much better show. I then checked out various clips of the Japanese version of scenes throughout the series and Psaros' statements were confirmed for me. The voices fit the characters much more than the English ones, the music was infinitely better, dramatic moments seemed more intense (especially the moments where there was complete silence), no lame punch up humor, etc. I was permanently converted.

However, until about the middle of Funi's Buu saga, I had no access to the Japanese version aside from internet clips, so I was forced to put up with the dub until we got the international channel, which was about 3/4th through the Buu saga. It was at this point that I stopped watching the dub. A few years later I got the DVDs and was finally able to officially divorce myself from the dub, now owning all of the episodes that were currently available in Japanese.

[russ869]

I stopped watching the dub basically as soon as I had the Japanese version available. (In other words soon after starting the Orange Bricks. Although, I did watch the first set most in English still on my first viewing.) In fact that was the whole reason I bought some of the Orange Brick sets even know what I was getting into and know how lousy they were: I wanted to be able to easily watch through entire arcs in Japanese. I had since gotten used to watching certain long shows subtitled (Naruto, etc...) and had gotten out of my dub-only watching phase. Dragon Ball Z isn't exactly a series that has much fansubs available (at least not until Kai) so to watch Dragon Ball Z cheap, easy, and in Japanese it was pretty much the Orange Bricks or nothing.

Before then I had seen most of the Freeza, Cell, and Buu episodes in dub only but not in the correct order and missing episodes a lot of times. As I probably mentioned once before, while I had seen parts of the first Dragon Ball anime, I had never seen the Saiyan arc of Z before the Orange Bricks appeared. For the parts of the dub that I did see, I think I can say that the scripting got somewhat better, but the acting and caricature-like voices never really changed or improved at all.

The longer I've listened to a series in one language, the less likely I am to be entirely accepting of a different dub. But there have been dubs where I ended up liking what the English and Japanese versions did with the characters (Nabari no Ou for instance). So I guess it's possible I could like a new dub.

A Kai dub is really the only route to go. A 2009 FUNimation isn't going to go out of its way to throw in as much garbage as it can, plus, it's shorter, which is usually the main complaint amongst those who cannot stand Z.

The problem is that they are almost certain to use the same main voice cast. I mean they've been doing this for so long (every single video game...). And the voices a large part of the general distaste for the dub.

But if they got Dragon Ball Kai, and started everything from scratch and didn't even look at the DBZ English script other than for names and "Over 9000" then I believe they could do an accurate dub.

Dear god, that's another thing they're practically guaranteed to carry over into a Kai dub. I should start the betting pool now.

I still like watching *certain* episodes of the Funimation dub, only for Nostalgia purposes. And I so like certain episodes. And other times, I can't stand it. It's a Love/Hate Relationship.

Back in the days when all I could watch was the English dub, I had a love/hate relationship with Dragon Ball in general. Then I suddenly came to realize that I could do away with the "hate" part of that equation if I just stopped watching all the parts I really hated (which were all because of the dub).

Some of these people are making it sound like they were forced into liking the Japanese version because DaizEx "ruined" the dub for them. Sounds more like they don't want to admit that the dub is as bad as it is because that will be admitting that they actually used to like something so incredibly bad.

[Duo]

Started watching on Toonami during the endless reruns of Seasons 1 and 2. Watched every new episode of the series until GT finished with the FUNImation dub (didn't really follow DB at all). Bought movies 4 thru 8 on DVD. Caught wind of FUNI script changes, started watching dub with JP subs on, was appalled, started watching the Japanese version a little bit with hesitation...

Then dove head first into the Viz Manga until it finished release without paying any attention at all to the Anime.

When I started buying the rest of the movies, I found myself unable to watch the Dub and haven't been able to really stand it since, except for the Pioneer DVD releases of the first three DBZ films. I haven't seen more then a few episodes in Japanese, but I have been watching the DB/Z films on a semi-frequent basis in Japanese well enough to know and love the cast. Now I'm going through the series on the FUNI Dragonbox. Much love <3

Daizenshuu EX: The Podcast definitely planted great seeds for appreciation of the original Japanese version, and for a long time now I've considered it the only way to experience anything Dragonball.

[penguintruth]

While I watched the dub until it stopped airing on CN, I always assumed everyone else stopped taking the dub seriously around the same time I did: when those third-gen copy VHS fansubs were circulating via ebay and other websites. You know, between the time that DBZ stopped airing in syndication and the third season aired on CN. Most of the fan community was talking about all those tapes they snagged like they were precious treasures, because they were finally able to watch "the real thing".

But perhaps the fan community I talk to today is a bit different than the one I talked to back then. When I came here, I was frankly surprised the dub still had so many supporters.

But I won't try to pick a fight (in this thread, anyway). I just wanted to give my perspective on this. I guess I was just shocked because I had been away from the DB fan community for so long. So few of the old timers are even around anymore.

Not that there was ever any universal consensus on the matter.

[Dr. Casey]

The first time I watched Dragon Ball Z was somewhere in 5th grade (Which for me was 1998-1999). I had just come from a Friday afternoon and a long, exhausting week of school, and figured that some cartoons would be the perfect way to unwind. The first episode I watched was the one where Vegeta turns Oozaru and chases after Goku. Naturally, I had absolutely no opposition to the dub at this point. I'm not sure my 11 year old self even realized that I was watching a Japanese cartoon. For some weird reason, though, I remember Goku jumping into a cave, eating some fruit from off a tree, gaining super strength, and then using that strength to defeat Vegeta, which... obviously never happened in the Saiyan Saga. Yeah, I must have been tired to invent memories like that...

After that I had brief periods of watching a few episodes here and there during 1999 through 2001. I didn't like the series that much, felt the fighting dragged on way too long, but I always enjoyed the faster paced episodes where they were outside of battle; for a long time I considered Fake Namek the absolute peak of Dragon Ball because of this. I remember being briefly introduced to the world of sub vs. dub debates come late 2000 or early 2001 when I looked at Sailor Moon Uncensored one afternoon, but thought they were a bunch of nerds that were taking things too seriously and moved on. Anyway, I started watching Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z regularly during 2002 and 2003, and though I found the voices grating sometimes, I was a huge fan of the dub.

My fandom of the dub went downhill somewhat after I got some Dragon Ball DVDs for Christmas 2003 and watched bits and pieces of the subtitled Japanese version out of curiosity. I came to realize how superior the original script is to the English version, and that a significant amount of nuance is lost in the dub. However, listening to Japanese voices for too long gave me a headache, so I continued to watch the dub. This period of being a somewhat disgruntled dub fan lasted throughout 2004 and early 2005 (At which point I forgot about Dragon Ball altogether for a while). I did enjoy the dub and considered myself a fan of the English version (Partially because I'd only watched bits and pieces of the Japanese, so I wasn't terribly aware of what exactly I was missing), but I had my grievances with it and considered the original to be much better. There's actually quite a few posts back at Pojo where I express frustrations with the dub, mainly around the early 2004 region. 1 2 3 (Posts 7 and 18 )

Anyway, during 2006 I upgraded to DSL at which point I started watching various anime on Youtube. Since most anime uploaded around that time was subtitled, I got over my fear of Japanese. And by the time I started up a second viewing of Dragon Ball during February 2008 after having mostly forgotten about the series for about three years, I'd grown fully accustomed to subs and had no need to settle for the English version.

As for a redub of the series... I personally wouldn't watch it. These days I take subs over dubs no matter how good the English version is. The only dub I can respect as a viable substitute for the original would be Lucky Star's, but I still prefer the original version on general principle. A redub would be too little, too late, honestly - the stupid, terrible English version of Dragon Ball is the one that's always going to exist in the American consciousness, and the music they stuck in the early DBZ movies will always be considered perfectly appropriate for the series.

I do have some sort of appreciation for the early dub, though, thanks to its featuring some of the cast from Ranma, a dub that I still have plenty of fondness for (Probably because it doesn't suck). It's just not possible for me not to have a bit of a soft spot for something that brings to mind memories of Tatewaki Kuno, Dr. Tofu, Kasumi, etc.