Dragonball Kai (FUNimation English) Dub: General Discussion

[Innagadadavida]

A thousand angry dub nerds raging at the internet about how dub Kai isn't an exact copy of whatever particular dub of Z they grew up on doesn't change the fact that there's hundreds of thousands of people out there who couldn't tell you who Falconer is if their life depended on it who are just watching the series and liking what they see.

Quote for the mu'fuckin troof.

[Attitudefan]

From what I've heard a lot of the dub fans were pretty mad at the cast changes and new script.

A thousand angry dub nerds raging at the internet about how dub Kai isn't an exact copy of whatever particular dub of Z they grew up on doesn't change the fact that there's hundreds of thousands of people out there who couldn't tell you who Falconer is if their life depended on it who are just watching the series and liking what they see.

People don't like change I guess.
If I were to rage about anything it would be Gohan, but not about the change, about how he never got a decent voice in English period. Too Raspy or just plain girly. He never sounded like a boy. I'd rather have the new one over the old in most cases though.
By the way, can't we all just move along anyways. It's a new series and knowing that means change whether you like it or not.

[Tsukento]

-Complaining about casts they don't like.
-Saying they don't match the characters.
-Doesn't understand why the music is different from what they're used to.

Gee, this sounds oddly familiar, doesn't it? Congratulations to those dub-only folk; you now know what we've been dealing with for 14 years.

[Innagadadavida]

Gee, this sounds oddly familiar, doesn't it? Congratulations to those dub-only folk; you now know what we've been dealing with for 14 years.

And after 14 years, its still as annoying as ever.

[penguintruth]

Fans are complaining about the more accurate script, too? Huh? Do they want a more jokey one?

[Piccolo Daimaoh]

What's so bad about dub fans wanting Faulconer Productions' score in Kai? It's obviously not going to happen, but it's the score they associate the show with. It just feels weird to them watching DBZ without it.

[Puto]

What's so bad about dub fans wanting Faulconer Productions' score in Kai? It's obviously not going to happen, but it's the score they associate the show with. It just feels weird to them watching DBZ without it.

And we sub fans want Kikuchi's score in Kai, yet we're not getting that either. So yeah. Though personally I'd take the Kai score over anything Faulconer Productions ever did, any day.
Albeit repetitive, Yamamoto's Kai score is actually enjoyable, even if it doesn't give me the same nostalgic feeling I get from Kikuchi's score. I can't bear to listen to Faulconer's BGM at all.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Fans are complaining about the more accurate script, too? Huh? Do they want a more jokey one?

Well actually, I was going to comment, I've seen almost nobody talk about the script changes. It's almost entirely the voice changes. Everybody here has to understand, the casual Dragon Ball fan is not nearly as well informed as the usual Daizex poster. They don't live, eat, and breathe Dragon Ball like we do. A lot of people simply assume that DBZ was translated loyally from the beginning, and regard Kai as kind of a cheap re-packaging without the voices they love. The best thing we can do is explain to them why the Dragon Ball Kai dub is such a big deal. It's also important that we explain that there is an uncut version of Kai on DVD and Blu-Ray. FUNimation must really not be doing a good job of explaining that there's an uncut version, because I've talked to A TON of people who had no clue that the TV version wasn't the only version. A lot of them also assumed that the version they saw on Toonami was uncut as well just because it had more blood.

That's a long way of saying that if we informed people of why the Kai dub is such a big deal, they would like it. Literally everyone that I've talked into watching the uncut dub of Kai LOVES it. I even had one friend who said he would never watch Kai because the idea behind it was "totally gay and stupid." Then I showed him the first few uncut episodes and he's hooked on the show, always bugging me about when the next uncut box set is coming out, and even DVRing the show on Nicktoons. We just need to tell people why it's a big deal...because FUNimation is doing a terrible job at it. Rather tragic considering how good their dub is this time around. They did a splendid marketing job when their dub was terrible, and now they're doing a terrible marketing job when their dub is splendid.

[Ashy-kun]

Putting my two pennies in, on this subject (not that they'd be wanted), but I think this is where someone from the UK has the best of worlds for once, despite having the worst of worlds in regards to DragonBall. No legal releases of any real quality here, except the Big Green dub of the movies (ahem, I said quality), and having constant dubs to get to used to one after the other.

After all, we had the Ocean cast for the first 53 episodes, the Funimation cast for the episodes following, until the kick-start of the Artificial Humans episodes (starting from Gokuu showing off his new technique), when we got the Ocean cast again, all the way up until the Magical Being Boo episodes, just up to when Bee is shot. At this point, we got a brief return by the Funimation cast, for an odd amount, 22 episodes. Then we received the final few episodes from the Ocean voices again.

But I'm starting to go off point. What I mean to say is that because we constantly had to change from one dub to the other, I'd say that I, personally, have no deep attachment to any of the dubs over one another. Similarly, I didn't have access to the Japanese in any form until most recently, and so I'm not deeply attached to the Japanese version of Z. That makes it all the easier for me to enjoy the music of another release, i.e. Kai that much more, as I'm not constantly going "Oh, I hate this score, because it's not MY score". It makes it easier for me to be a fan of Kai.

[Tsukento]

What's so bad about dub fans wanting Faulconer Productions' score in Kai? It's obviously not going to happen, but it's the score they associate the show with. It just feels weird to them watching DBZ without it.

I'm just saying that it's quite funny how the immature ones were usually the ones to go on about how the Japanese score in Z sucked and that the dub score was much better. Cue FUNi making the Japanese BGM the first audio choice in the remastered sets, having only the Japanese BGM in the Dragon Boxes and Kai remaining as faithful to the original as possible, and we have people seeing changes to the Dragon Ball Z they grew up with.

They're just now learning what we had to go through when the series was being dubbed and never being in the way we wanted the series (save for the original uncut releases of the first three movies).

[jjgp1112]

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I'm not mad because of change - I love the new Ginyu Force voices. I'm just mad because some of the other changes suck balls.

[batistabus]

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I'm not mad because of change - I love the new Ginyu Force voices. I'm just mad because some of the other changes suck balls.

Name one that "sucks balls". And by that, I don't mean a case where you simply prefer the older voice actor.

[MetalMadness]

Honestly, sometimes I feel ashamed to call myself a dub fan, not because of the dub itself, but because of the majority its fans.

It blows my mind how anybody could possibly think that Young's Freeza even comes close to Ayres. Some of the shit I've read on youtube like "I dont like Freeza's new voice, he's not creepy anymore."

Well yeah I guess Young's voice was creepy in the sense that it did not suit Freeza whatsoever, but you guys get what I mean.

[Savage68]

Name one that "sucks balls". And by that, I don't mean a case where you simply prefer the older voice actor.

Right or wrong, his preferences would have to be the basis for any opinion on quality.

[Suupaa Gohan 2]

-Complaining about casts they don't like.
-Saying they don't match the characters.
-Doesn't understand why the music is different from what they're used to.

Gee, this sounds oddly familiar, doesn't it? Congratulations to those dub-only folk; you now know what we've been dealing with for 14 years.

...I hadn't even thought of that until reading your post. Excellent point. Only, we had it worse back then for a few reasons. Relating through my own experiences...

-Most internet was dial-up. Streaming Flash video? YouTube? Don't exist. Only way to watch DBZ in Japanese was to find a site that hosted fansubs...these were A) hard to find B) even when you found them, the collections usually were not complete (3 consecutive episodes, 2 missing in between, the next 5 episodes, missing the next 10, missing this entire story arc, no original DB at all, etc...), C) the fansubs were terrible translations that convinced us the original was riddled with swearing and gave us such infamous lines as, "you came all the way to Earth, halfway dead in a tin can, just to die"... D) the video quality was usually so bad that you could barely even read those terrible subs in the first place.

-Not everyone got the International Channel, which apparently showed the original series. Even if I had that channel, I didn't know a lick of Japanese at the time, and wouldn't really be able to understand what the Hell I was watching. So the only way to watch DBZ on TV was to watch the English dub. Pouring salt into the wounds, by this point, many of us had discovered through such sites as DBZ Uncensored what we were missing...and had little to no way to actually access it. It really, really sucks to find out what you're missing, and have no way to see it.

-Even if you had the money, and thought 'well, I guess I can see why they can't show this on TV, but the videos should be uncut, right?', you'd be shit out of luck. The VHS tapes were the exact same edited TV broadcast version. It wasn't worth the money when you could record the episodes yourself on your own VHS tapes. There was no uncut dub, and no subtitled Japanese release. You got what you got, and had to struggle and do illegal things (that people do much more casually nowadays but back then were kinda scary when the internet felt new) to access the series in Japanese, and terrible quality. I believe some people even paid for fansubbed videos. I myself only ever downloaded them, but I probably would have bought them had I known I could - since I could only even download and watch videos after school, where the internet didn't suck as terribly as it did at my house.

We sub fans had to fight hard to get what we wanted, because we knew the English version would never even attempt to be accurate. It became more and more of a farce as time went by (season 3, oh, season 3...), even when the censoring seemed to get more lax - okay, so I could see a little blood on Cartoon Network, and there were no more Next Dimensions, but at the expense of far worse voices, music, and even more of a lame joke-filled script...I preferred the more heavily-edited Ocean dub to what came then. The only way we could enjoy Dragonball was in Japanese, and for a long time, that was a very difficult thing to do, legally or otherwise. As far as I see it, Z dub fans have absolutely no right to be complaining. Their version of the series is still there. If that's what they want, they've got it. Kai isn't meant for them, because they're already satisfied customers. Kai is meant as a huge 'we're so sorry' to the rest of us, who were not satisfied. If you want the original Z dub, go out and buy the original Z DVD's. If you want to do it the illegal way, pirating is as easy as using Google these days, and you don't even have to struggle to find - let alone download - episodes like we did back in the day. The internet is fast and efficient, and you can find full episodes streamed in Flash of the Z dub if you search hard enough, or torrents of entire seasons of the original.

I don't give a shit if you don't like Gohan's new voice, or want Falconer's music back, or miss your tranny granny Freeza. You got all of those things already, and there are plenty of ways for you to continue watching that version. This version is for us, who have been waiting patiently for all these years to see if FUNimation would ever get it right. And while a lot of us can still find room for improvement, nobody's perfect, and this is such a huge step up that most of us can say we're finally getting what we've been after all along. Sure, it took so long that many of us are so settled into the Japanese version, that it doesn't matter as much as it may have 10 years ago...but I'll tell you something. I wandered over and reread all the old episode comparisons on Chris Psaros' DBZ Uncensored a few days ago...and they made me smile for more than just nostalgia or that oddball wit he had at picking apart some of the hilarious censors. Why? Because I've been watching Dragonball in English for months now, on my television, and enjoying it. It's censored, but when you read through those comparisons, it's hard to call the Nicktoons version 'censored'. If I didn't know what was supposed to happen in a gruesome scene, I wouldn't know what I was watching was being censored at all. And even though they might dance around overusing the words 'die' and 'kill', they do still say them, or synonyms, instead of avoiding the crucial concept entirely with something as absurd as The Next Dimension (even if the proper noun Otherworld makes me cringe). I've got an accurate script, passable (and in some cases fantastic - Bulma, Zarbon, and of course Freeza are all, IMO, giving their A-game and doing a dynamite job) voice acting, the 'original' music (sadly not the true original, but the feel is truly 'Dragonball').

So what if I miss a bit of blood, some mild cursing, or some dodging of the word 'die' on Nicktoons? I am freaking watching Dragonball on television, in English, and it is actually Dragonball!! I don't feel embarrassed like I used to when I watched the dub out of necessity, knowing what I was missing, and having to have my parents and brother hear some of the lame-ass lines and terrible voices and wonder why I was so in love with this show...now my mom will see me watch it and be like 'oh hey, I remember that', and I can be like 'oh yeah, they're showing it again, nostalgia, hehe' and not feel like 'oh God, I'm watching a kid show'. Because it doesn't feel like a kid show anymore. God, I remember VHS taping Inu Yasha and Yuu Yuu Hakusho from Adult Swim (anyone else even remember when YYH was still on AS?), and intentionally watch them when my parents were in the room as if to say 'see, they're not kiddie shows, listen to them swear, it's so cool'. That's how embarrassed I felt watching the Dragonball dub...I needed an Anime benchmark to hold it against and justify that 'these shows aren't for kids'. Now, I can watch Dragonball and Avatar back-to-back and feel like I'm getting the same type of experience (though it amuses me when some of the play-it-safe edits of Kai aren't necessary, because 'uh, they can do that on Avatar'). What's happening on my TV truly is Dragonball, and not just something that uses its footage and character names. And the best part? If I wanted to, I could buy the episodes completely uncut on DVD, with the uncut version of this dub, as well as the original Japanese. The whole experience is there. For everyone.

So yeah, there's some hilarious irony in the riots of Z dub fans on YouTube and lesser forums raging over the changes in Kai. But they don't have to struggle to access the version they prefer, like we did. What should matter the most to everyone is that for the first time ever, almost all types of fans now have access to the version of the series they want. Whether you want all of Z, or the trimmed-down Kai, whether you want it in English in Japanese, whether you want the butchered dub you grew up with because it's what you know, or have been waiting and welcoming an accurate English version for years...it's all out there, and you can obtain it, legally or otherwise. Welcome to the future, kiddies. Your version still exists, so if you don't like Kai, don't watch it. Let those of us who waited for the past 10 years to see Dragonball receive a respectable English production enjoy our long-deserved reward.

[MetalMadness]

What's so bad about dub fans wanting Faulconer Productions' score in Kai? It's obviously not going to happen, but it's the score they associate the show with. It just feels weird to them watching DBZ without it.

I can certainly agree with you there. Haha I actually go through the process of ripping my Blu Rays, isolating the dialogue, and inserting my personal choice of Faulconer music wherever I want. Really time consuming, but the end result is great.

[jjgp1112]

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I'm not mad because of change - I love the new Ginyu Force voices. I'm just mad because some of the other changes suck balls.

Name one that "sucks balls". And by that, I don't mean a case where you simply prefer the older voice actor.

lolwut? As Savage pointed out, my preference obviously plays a part in my opinion. I prefer Stephanie Nadolny because Colleen Clinkebeard sucks, yes.

[Suupaa Gohan 2]

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I'm not mad because of change - I love the new Ginyu Force voices. I'm just mad because some of the other changes suck balls.

Name one that "sucks balls". And by that, I don't mean a case where you simply prefer the older voice actor.

lolwut? As Savage pointed out, my preference obviously plays a part in my opinion. I prefer Stephanie Nadolny because Colleen Clinkebeard sucks, yes.

Saying something 'sucks' is not the same as saying 'I don't like [x]' or 'I prefer [y] to [x]'. Saying something 'sucks balls' is insulting and childish. Clinkenbeard certainly does not 'suck', she is very talented. Have you heard her in enough other roles to designate that she does indeed 'suck'? Do you have any inherent way to point out that her acting is bad? Because it's not. She's very good, which is the opposite of 'suck'. You obviously mean, here, 'I don't like her as Gohan', which could mean her acting, her voice in general, or you just preferred Nadolny in that role. That's fine, because it's your opinion. But it doesn't give you the right to shit on Clinkenbeard as an actress by saying she 'sucks balls', and that applies to any of the other actors, recast or otherwise, you may dislike.

I personally dislike Schemmel's Gokou and Sabat's Vegeta. Schemmel, well, I kinda have various reasons for not liking the man, and have never really liked him in any role I've heard him in, personally, but I've said more than once on this board that I can recognize his acting has improved astonishingly through Kai. I don't like Schemmel. I don't like his voice, and I don't think he's appropriate for Gokou. I certainly would prefer another voice coming out of Gokou's mouth than his. But that does not mean Schemmel 'sucks balls'. I just admitted that his acting has gotten so above and beyond better than the season 3 stuff that if I were to say 'Schemmel sucks, Nozawa is the sh1tz0rz', that would be insulting, childish, and just plain untrue. There is a line between fact and opinion. I think most of us can agree that whether or not we like, dislike, or are neutral to his Gokou, Schemmel as an actor doesn't 'suck'. As for Sabat, he's matured greatly as well, and though I still very much dislike his Vegeta, I've warmed up so much to his Piccolo that I'm surprised (I've always been a McNeil fan), and I've enjoyed him in many roles in many series'. He also has talent as an actor and clearly other areas as well, since it was apparently his choice in recasting Young and making Ayers Freeza. Would it be fair for me to say 'Chris Sabat sucks balls' simply because I don't like his acting or portrayal as Vegeta, a mere one character in one series he's done out of more than I can count? No. That's not fair, and it's not true.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but it's when you express yours with words like 'sucks balls' that you come off as trying to be objective, and that's why people disagree. No one is going to strap you down in a chair, tape your eyelids open, and force you to watch hours and hours of Clinkenbeard's Gohan without food and water until you eventually crack and say 'fine, I admit it, she's a good Gohan, she's the best Gohan I've ever heard!!'. You don't have to like her, and you don't have to approve of the choice to recast the role. But saying she and others 'suck balls' really does go overboard, don't you think? That's the point here. Be a little less objective with your words when you're expressing an opinion.

[penguintruth]

To be fair, jjgp1112 has expressed at great length why he dislikes Clinkenbeard's Gohan. His comment is no more or less inflammatory than my usual comments. He doesn't have to write an essay with every response.

I happen to really like the geniune kid feel Clinkenbeard provides for Gohan, and the lack of that really unnatural husky sound Naldony gave him. Plus I think Clinkenbeard is just generally a better actress, so she adds a bit more humanity to him. But that's me.

[MetalMadness]

New episode is up on Nicktoons site.

http://nicktoons.nick.com/videos/clip/d ... -full.html


Just to help you guys out, the new episodes are always on the site half an hour - 1 hour earlier than on TV. You just need to type in the link yourself because it doesn't show it on the actual site itself. It's not hard; you just type in the name of the episode excluding "a," "the," "of," etc, and then type in "full," and there you go.