Piccolo Daimaoh wrote:
Really? Isn't Kai sold in England?
Nope. Only the Euro dubs of the DBZ movies got VHS and DVD releases in England.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:The production values just weren't really that great until the Kid Buu episodes, hence the recycled music and incredibly minimal use of post-production audio effects like reverb to enhance screams and so on (reverb wasn't used until the later Buu saga episodes when production values noticeably increased
The production values were great before the Kid Buu saga; I'd say they were great when the Buu saga started (And good before that). New voice talent, even better use of audio effects and seemingly more time to given to the actors to get better takes.
I wouldn't call the post-production effects "minimal" even when Ocean started their dub in the Android saga. Ocean added a lot of modern sound effects to their dub which are not in the Funi or Japanese versions. Ocean has the technological advantage their professional studio built up over the years which Funimation simply couldn't compete with. Ocean had to get trained post production staff working on those sfx.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:That said, given how cheaply the dub was made, it could naturally be sold for less. It had to be; FUNimation was still the chief competitor and their dub was the most well-known, so there needed to be some sort of incentive for networks to buy the alternate Canadian-made dub.
The incentive is the fact that it contained the voice cast that people really liked from the first 2 DBZ sagas, the cast people demanded to return after hearing how terrible Funimation's cast is. The money lies in the ratings, Funimation simply could not compete with the Ocean dub when it came to ratings.
That feeds back to why Ocean's Buu saga apparently had better production values. By then Ocean's dub was firmly established and attracting very high ratings, which probably allowed Ocean to charge more than before.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:In 2001, FUNimation sold season 5 of its Dragonball Z dub to Cartoon Network for $10,000,000. Even if they were paying their actors less, as they likely were, the popularity of the show in the United States had still skyrocketed since 1999, so they could sell their product for more and more every year. There is simply no way that Ocean's dub cost more than that.
I remember hearing Funi may have charged 6,000,000 but someone else mentioned 10,000,000 but IIRC they were not confirmed. Given DBZ's success it's possible but CN USA didn't have much of a choice due to Funi's US rights to DBZ. However, I'm not saying that Funi's sale price was Ocean's cost price. After taking costs into account, both companies can set a margin and charge that amount to broadcasters. If they see it as feasible, they can increase their price. The increase in price won't necessarily mean their costs have increased.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:If Ocean's Kai were to receive any sort of release, it would probably be exclusive to Europe because of the Canadian rights issues.
Which is fine. Anyone who wants Ocean's Kai dub can easily import it from the UK or mainland Europe.
Dark Vegeta-Sama wrote:Which actually brings up another topic: while the rights issues surrounding the Canadian dub have never been truly clarified, the general consensus is that if AB Groupe wanted to, they could have licensed and sold Ocean's Dragonball Z in the English-speaking European countries, even though they played a very limited hand in the production of the dub. But for them, overseeing the distribution rights for all of Europe, licensing the dub for DVD release would've been pretty easy (at least in theory). Unfortunately, the France-based AB Groupe has only ever catered to the French market and basically ignores most of the rest of Europe, which is why England, for example, has never gotten any DVD releases of the show.
Unfortunately that would appear to be the case. AB Groupe could, in theory, set up divisions to distribute DBZ on DVDs in other European countries, but they didn't.
dagame10k wrote:Do you really think a sound recording company would have more money to spend on their dub than a company like FUNimation who had a broadcaster like Cartoon Network spend a huge sum of money on the US broadcasting rights for the show?
They may do, after all Ocean sold their dub to more networks/broadcasters than Funimation did. But that's not the point. Even if Funi has the money to spend on their dub, they are probably reluctant to because they want to maximise their profit and they wanted to acquire new Anime licenses, they needed the money for that. Funimation was built on the success of DBZ.
dagame10k wrote:If you want to talk about cheap, do intentionally ignore the fact that Ken Morrison dumped the better Ocean cast for Blue Water,
I'm not ignoring that. We're not talking about the Blue Water cast. But if you want my view, I'd rather have the Ocean cast dub DBGT instead of Blue Water. Years ago, when I found out that the Ocean cast were going to dub DBGT and had actually started pre-production on it but then the project suddenly moved to Blue Water because of one man, it pained me. Even today I still have some regrets and feel the Ocean cast would've done better even if they didn't use the original music. That doesn't mean I dislike the Blue Water dub, I like it, but not as much as the Ocean dub.
dagame10k wrote:a cast even worse than FUNimation's Season 3?
Funimation's season 3 was terribly dubbed, Blue Water were much better by comparison.
The Time Traveller wrote:What I'd like is dub only, edited, rated U or PG, Ocean dub DVDs with about 6 episodes on per volume, because I don't give a damn, and I don't expect much from the AB Group,
That sounds fine for DBZ but for DB Kai they ideally should be uncut with the Ocean dub and Japanese subtitled version. Since Ocean can dub it uncut for the DVD/Blu ray release. But even if it's Ocean dub only, that would be more than acceptable.
BluezaBladeNZ wrote:Did they ever release these episodes in the United Kingdom?
Some of the Saiyan saga episodes were released in the Netherlands, but not by Pioneer or Funimation, though they were the Ocean dub with Dutch subtitles. As far as I know, they were not released in the UK.
