The Harmony Gold Dub & Broadcast Audio Discussion Thread

[atm5508]

The VHS copy of Zero Y El Dragon Magico came in today!

Although I was a little nervous about what was on the tape, I can finally relax. It is the Spanish dub of Zero Y El Dragon Magico for DB movie 1, and the Harmony Gold theme song is on there (although there are a few differences in the video).

I'm not sure what else everyone wants to know about the tape, so if you have any questions just ask and I'll do my best to answer.

UPDATE: Movie 3 is also on the tape.

[Pokewhiz7]

A few questions: what ending theme is used? Is it textless? What intro does it use, and does it use clips from movie two?
If movie three is on it, that gives some hope at an official English release.

[atm5508]

A few questions: what ending theme is used? Is it textless? What intro does it use, and does it use clips from movie two?
If movie three is on it, that gives some hope at an official English release.

Both the opening and the ending use Harmony Gold's dub of Makafushigi Adventure. Also, at the end of Movie 3 Dragon Ball Densetsu is only instrumental, just as in the English Harmony Gold dub. The entire feature has text in Spanish, which means that this company also received the textless opening theme and the ending for Movie 3 (more on the closing in a minute).

The intro is still Dragon Ball opening 2, but there are slight changes. I still have to do a side-by-side comparison, but one big difference stood out: the footage of Lucifer from DB Movie 2 is no longer there, and is replaced with a shot of what I believe is the spy camera used in the Emperor Pilaf Saga. There's still footage from DB Movie 2, but not Lucifer. If you've seen the Zero Y El Dragon intro on Youtube, that is absolutely correct.

The closing theme used a still picture. I'll try to post a screenshot soon.

[superrayman3]

So the zero y el dragon magico tape is the spanish dub of DB, thats good to hear (I was worried for a while because of what Kei17 said earlier) I have just one question right now does movie 1 have the same censorsip when compared to the english HG dub or is it more uncut?

[Pokewhiz7]

I'm pretty sure Densetsu is textless, correct? That means you have something not even the Dragon Boxes have.

[atm5508]

So the zero y el dragon magico tape is the spanish dub of DB, thats good to hear (I was worried for a while because of what Kei17 said earlier) I have just one question right now does movie 1 have the same censorsip when compared to the english HG dub or is it more uncut?

I'm about to go back and check to see how it matches up with the edits provided in an older thread (Ashura deserves credit for this if I remember correctly). I'll let you know as soon as I can.

I'm pretty sure Densetsu is textless, correct? That means you have something not even the Dragon Boxes have.

Yup, Dragon Ball Densetsu is textless

[atm5508]

Wow, I did not realize how many edits there were. I didn't edit them all, but I spot-checked 5 or 6 and they were dead-on (other than the times, but that was expected). Looks like the same edits are present in this as were in the English Harmony Gold dub.

[Ashura]

So, some interesting rumors from back in 2003 on the 'net...

These come from a Toonzone thread:

http://www.toonzone.net/forums/showthre ... 3a35d6013d

I've heard about this dub. A Detroit station aired it back in 1989 and pulled it after two episodes due to controversy over Bulma's bathing scene.
I know someone who has the Dr. Slump dub on tape.

The Detorit TV Station was WDWB 20 (Originally WXON 20 Ind, before WB bought it) Later in the mid 1990s, they ran the Saban-Funimation Syndicated Dubs of DB & DBZ. Still, it's interesting to see that the early distribution rights of Dragonball were in many different hands.

I rented Project A-Ko from our local neighborhood Blockbuster, and during the previews part, it had an advertisement for Dragonball.

Did Manga Corps distribute Dragonball also?

I don't remember the Harmony Gold "Dragonball" ever being on Channel 20. I know all five HG episodes ran on WGPR-TV Channel 62. They never appeared again, but the station did run the Dragonball movie a short time after that (I wasn't aware it was in more than one version).

Little side history: WXON was actually was originally Channel 62 out of Walled Lake. Then it moved to Channel 20, and 62 was left vacant for a few years before it was taken over by a local black-owned media company (they still own WGPR-FM, as far as I know), and they aired some fringe cartoons, such as the HG "Dragonball", "Macron I" and "Dragon Warrior". A few years ago, there was a big shakeup in regional groups of broadcasting stations, and WJBK-TV Channel 2 suddenly found itself a Fox station instead of CBS, while WKBD-TV Channel 50 (originally a Kaiser Broadcasting System affiliate that later joined the infant Fox network) found itself adrift. CBS scrambled about desperately for a station, but Channel 50 elected to go with UPN (Paramount owned the station) instead and became WUPN-TV, while Channel 20 elected to go with WB and became WDWB-TV. With no other option left, CBS eventually bought out the black ownership of Channel 62. Ironically Channel 50 and 62 are virtually sister stations today, because the networks that own them are both owned by Viacom. And Channel 62 is now WWJ-TV, the former call letters of WDIV-TV Channel 4, before the Detroit News was forced by federal regulators to trade TV stations with the Washington Post.... (broadcasting, what a business!)

Again, pretty much all rumors so take it with a grain of salt.

[Pokewhiz7]

If A-Ko had an ad for it, I'm almost certain it would be for the 1995 dub.

[Ashura]

If A-Ko had an ad for it, I'm almost certain it would be for the 1995 dub.

That's one of those ones which should be taken more with a whole salt shaker of salt, I 'spec.

[atm5508]

I remember checking into this rumor awhile back, and I don't think I ever found an A-Ko tape with any type of DB advertisement. This might just be a case of mixed-up memory.

I'm not sure about the airings, but info on those is extremely unreliable. As a general rule, I consider all of them to be rumored unless I've seen footage that confirms it. Of course, that doesn't mean that it's untrue either, just unconfirmed.

[dario03]

So, some interesting rumors from back in 2003 on the 'net...

These come from a Toonzone thread:

http://www.toonzone.net/forums/showthre ... 3a35d6013d

I don't remember the Harmony Gold "Dragonball" ever being on Channel 20. I know all five HG episodes ran on WGPR-TV Channel 62. They never appeared again, but the station did run the Dragonball movie a short time after that (I wasn't aware it was in more than one version).

Little side history: WXON was actually was originally Channel 62 out of Walled Lake. Then it moved to Channel 20, and 62 was left vacant for a few years before it was taken over by a local black-owned media company (they still own WGPR-FM, as far as I know), and they aired some fringe cartoons, such as the HG "Dragonball", "Macron I" and "Dragon Warrior". A few years ago, there was a big shakeup in regional groups of broadcasting stations, and WJBK-TV Channel 2 suddenly found itself a Fox station instead of CBS, while WKBD-TV Channel 50 (originally a Kaiser Broadcasting System affiliate that later joined the infant Fox network) found itself adrift. CBS scrambled about desperately for a station, but Channel 50 elected to go with UPN (Paramount owned the station) instead and became WUPN-TV, while Channel 20 elected to go with WB and became WDWB-TV. With no other option left, CBS eventually bought out the black ownership of Channel 62. Ironically Channel 50 and 62 are virtually sister stations today, because the networks that own them are both owned by Viacom. And Channel 62 is now WWJ-TV, the former call letters of WDIV-TV Channel 4, before the Detroit News was forced by federal regulators to trade TV stations with the Washington Post.... (broadcasting, what a business!)

Again, pretty much all rumors so take it with a grain of salt.

Thats a little interesting, I wonder if thats the station that I saw it on. I'm not to far from Detroit and Walled Lake but differences in cable companies always made it so a lot of channels were different numbers for me than what they advertised (WB20 was channel 10, Fox 50 was channel 2 and later UPN 50 was channel 5). I usually watched Saturday morning cartoons on a bunch of channels but I don't think 62 was one of them (though I could of found it while flicking).

[Ashura]

Since we're talking about this, I'm going to repost my edit list for the first movie with a couple updates:

As I did my edit, I wrote down notes to help me keep track of everything I did. It turned out to be a good edit list, so I thought it would be a good thing to share with the community (and it was actually the whole reason I signed up here!) Nothing here is too surprising, and, really, I wonder how close things match up to Funimation's Blood Rubies dub? If I were tasked with having to edit this for TV and time, I probably would've made (most) of these same edits. Even still, some of them are a tiny bit bizarre. So let's get started!

The first edit, and I'm not sure if this is an actual edit, but the opening narration is completely gone. I think it's likely that this is cut, since right after Mysterious Adventure plays, they have narration in the dub. So for timing sake, all of the timecodes for these edits begin right at the beginning of Mysterious Adventure.

Mysterious Adventure is some odd conglomeration of scenes. Some scenes are from Devil's Castle, I think? It's also textless, and HG has overlayed a Robotechesque font with the production credits over it. If someone can help me identify exactly what they did here, that would be awesome. As it stands, my cut just uses the actual Japanese intro.

The first confirmed cut in the is 8 minutes, 8 seconds in. Bulma pulls a gun and starts firing on Goku. Goku's shot in the head a bunch of times (and he shakes it off like the little tank he is), and it's quite easy to see why this was edited out of the broadcast. A young teenage girl using a gun? Yeah right.

The weird thing about this is when Goku charges her motorcycle, though, the scene where she actually throws the gun away is still there. This is not in Funimation's edited version.



The second cut is 19 minutes and 59 seconds in. Yamucha encroaches on Goku's personal space and kicks him in the face. 2 or 3 frames of a goofy looking spit-take are cut out (I wonder why? Is this cut from Funimation's first Blood Rubies dub?), followed by slow-mo of Goku's face flying through the air, and then Yamucha clawing at Goku's face. This goes on quite a bit -- somewhat gratuitously in fact -- before he Hadouken-shoves Goku so hard he flies through the air and into a wall. The Harmony Gold edit cuts back in when Goku smashes into a wall, so it looks like Yamucha just swiftly kicks Goku and he goes flying through the air. It's actually pretty seamless, frankly.

The third edit is mere moments later at 20 minutes 10 seconds. Goku gets back up from being smashed into a wall, and uses the Rock Paper Scissor technique on Yamucha, quite brutally poking him in the eyes and dispensing with him. The Harmony Gold edit picks back up where Bulma comes in and uses her even more impressive cootie technique to scare off Yamucha.

The next edit is 28 minutes and 48 seconds in, and it's easy to see this one coming. Bulma has Oolong adopt a Bulma disguise so that she doesn't have to show Roshi her bazongas. This backfires in so much that Oolong gets a little too into it. In the Harmony Gold cut, it cuts to Gurumez's men scoping out the situation from afar. In case you were wondering, before Gurumez's goons intervene, in the Harmony Gold dialogue all Roshi asks for is a kiss and not a boobie show.

At 31:50 minutes in, some slow and thoughtful scenes are deleted; scenes such as Goku flying around on the Kintoun and Oolong complaining to Bulma while they fly off from Roshi's island on the cutting room floor. While there's obviously some pausing on the VHS at this point, I'm pretty sure this was just a commercial break, mainly because it fades up during a scene where a seagull is flying in whereas in the original it fades through Master Roshi talking into the same scene with the seagull. (Some frames of the seagull sequence are cut-out due to this.) My only guess as to why this was cut was mainly timing or them figuring kids wouldn't dig the slow scenes since there's really nothing offensive there.

At 32:34 more of Oolong's complaining inside of Bulma's aircraft is cut out; this time he's insulting Bulma's motives for getting the Dragonballs and she's not very amused by him claiming she's only in it for herself and that she'll run off as soon as she gets them. He then asks why she's searching for the Dragonballs, and when she says it's for a boy-toy we cut to a long shot of the plane shaking with Oolong angrily calling Bulma a lamester mcstupidface. Instead of Oolong's eloquence, we cut directly to Gurumez berating his soldiers. I really have no idea why this was cut out; If it wasn't for time, it must've been too-slow a scene for kids.

At 33:56, just after Goku is attacked by Main Baddy #1, scenes of Gurumez's men firing gratuitously at Bulma's airship and they narrowly evade getting shot down are snipped away. They had no problems showing the bullets before, so my guess is this is either a timing thing, or they just weren't comfortable showing this /amount/ of bullets. I'd say timing, if only because at this time in American cartoons (in HG's Robotech, natch), they weren't too worried about showing bullets hitting and destroying inanimate objects, and in fact the scene where the plane is shot down does remain! It just looks like Bulma's plane goes down really easily in the Harmony Gold version, making Capsule Corp.'s equipment seem less reliable to 1980s America's Test Audiences! Such misrepresentation... I wonder if Dr. Briefs would have a good lawsuit against HG due to damaging the image of his fine Capsule Corp. products somewhere in this edit?

At 34:22 there's a rather severe edit to Goku's battle with Henchman #1, though it's easy to see why; The Henchman -- specifically an adult henchman -- takes Goku's face and runs it through a the outside of Gurumez's castle while flying through the air... with the remains of bricks flying through the air in their wake. It's quite obvious why they cut this out, especially since they don't establish that Goku's a tough cookie and bullets don't even harm him in this version. You can just imagine the Harmony Gold lawyers thinking 'Kids might try to imitate this and we're reasonably sure their faces won't break the siding off of really old castles.'

A few seconds later, it's way okay for kids to throw adults through the sides of really old castles though, as we see Henchman #1 fall off his hover-thing due to Goku's due diligence!

35 minutes in; Not an edit. Yamucha storming the castle and smashing one of Gurumez's soldiers in the face so hard that it does visible damage the guy's teeth. Wow.

35:57; There's a small cut where bullets richochet repeatedly off of Yamucha's stomache and do absolutely no harm to him while he sort of freaks out comically. It actually makes the whole scene seem more brutal with the edit; the since the scene plays out with the main henchwoman running up, pulling out a sub machinegun, the gun firing gratuitously, Yamucha getting shot as we cut to a profile shot of him getting blown back into a wall as Bulma and crew run away in terror as Yamucha's body unceremoniously slides down the wall and slumps to the ground is all intact. Maybe that was the point of the edit? To make bullets seem more dangerous? To be honest, speaking from strictly an editor's standpoint, the Harmony Gold cut flows better in this instance.

36:15 Showing Yamucha's shirt with bulletholes through it is a-okay, but during his battle with Henchwoman #1 it's not okay to show him accidentally grabbing her boob and her becoming startled. In the Harmony Gold version, Yamucha is, instead, a hair fetishist we find out. It's not accidentally grabbing mammaries that makes him go numb, oh no no no no, but merely seeing Henchwoman #1's luxurious flowing hair.

It's either cutely naive, or in a sort of weird and creepy 'I've got a folder on my hard drive named hair, and in it, there are subfolders labeled by color and length' kind of way. I guess we're lucky it wasn't feet?

The funnier thing about this is that in the Harmony Gold version, this scene is immediately followed by Henchwoman #1 going ballistic and throwing grenades at Yamucha repeatedly because he.. GASP ... saw her hair!

Jumping to 39:54, a scene of the Pre-Z-Fighters and Penny looking up at Shen-Long in amazement is cut, as-is some footage of the dragon. Likely for time!

And then at 40:03, a slow panning shot of Penny remembering the hardships the blood rubies have caused her and her village is cut out. Either likely for time or for it being too-slow paced for children.

40:54, a short scene of Penny thanking Shen-Long for his help is cut out. Ungrateful little demonspawn!

The capture we have cuts off at about 42:08... I wouldn't doubt that it actually ends here and cuts to credits, since that's similar to what Funimation did. What follows is a scene of people waving to Goku as he flies off, and we segue into I'll Give You Romance. (I'll romance you!!!) The HG ending -- if it's the same as the second movie -- is a still card of Goku in his orange gi on Kintoun over clouds with Mysterious Adventure playing.

And there you have it.

[superrayman3]

Nice updates Ashura its actually pretty interesting to see just how HG handled censoring certain scenes in movie 1 at the time.

[atm5508]

Agreed. In all honesty, I was shocked to see how good Harmony Gold's dub was. I know there were name changes, it wasn't perfect, and it was edited, but I was pleasantly surprised when I finally got to see the two movies.

[superrayman3]

Agreed. In all honesty, I was shocked to see how good Harmony Gold's dub was. I know there were name changes, it wasn't perfect, and it was edited, but I was pleasantly surprised when I finally got to see the two movies.

Thats true, if you actually disregard the name changes and the censorship that was done and watch the dub with an open mind, then you'll find that the HG dub of movies 1&3 can be an enjoyable experience in their own way. To be completly honest when I sat down to watch the HG dub for the first time I was kinda nervous and didnt really have high hopes for it because I didn't really know what to expect, well by the end of it all I actually enjoyed the dub a lot more than I thought I would and am still surprised that something that was pretty good for the time it was released didn't catch on.

[DerekPadula]

I have some possibly unknown information on the Harmony Gold dub, because of the research I've done for The Dao of Dragon Ball book. On July 5, 2011, I had a phone conversation with Tommy Yune at Harmony Gold about the HG dub. A couple days earlier I also spoke briefly with Barbara Goodson, the voice of Goku (Zero), at the 2011 Anime Expo.

In the book I mention the full history of the Harmony Gold dub that Tommy told me about. But from my perspective it's nothing ground breaking. Just interesting bits of historical trivia.

Nevertheless, I'd be happy to tell the short version if anybody is interested.

[Pokewhiz7]

I have some possibly unknown information on the Harmony Gold dub, because of the research I've done for The Dao of Dragon Ball book. On July 5, 2011, I had a phone conversation with Tommy Yune at Harmony Gold about the HG dub. A couple days earlier I also spoke briefly with Barbara Goodson, the voice of Goku (Zero), at the 2011 Anime Expo.

In the book I mention the full history of the Harmony Gold dub that Tommy told me about. But from my perspective it's nothing ground breaking. Just interesting bits of historical trivia.

Nevertheless, I'd be happy to tell the short version if anybody is interested.

We would be very interested to hear.

[DerekPadula]

Okay, here's the short version.

First, Barbara Goodson.

On July 2, 2011 I attended the Anime Expo in Los Angeles. There were a lot of celebrity signings and meet & greets there, including The Power Rangers. Barbara Goodson was sitting next to the original cast of Rangers, so I went to speak with her about her role as Goku.

Here are the relevant parts of the conversation. My questions are in bold.

Hi, you were the original Goku, with Harmony Gold, right?

Yep!

What happened to the original Harmony Gold Dub?

You mean why did it get cancelled? I wish I knew why it got cancelled. Tommy Yune would know. He knew Carl Macek, before he passed away. Tommy worked on Robotech back when they were called Streamline Pictures.

What did you think of the show?

I don’t know much about it. Really, I don’t know any of the back story to the production. We dubbed it back in 82, 83?

How did you get the role?

When I met them, I was one of the only females in the voice acting business. So I was able to voice a lot of young male leads. The character was named Zero, back then. I remember he was really bratty. Yeah, and I think we even did one movie, or something.

Yeah. Why do you think they named him Zero? I find that really fascinating.

I really don’t know.

...

Not bad for a random meeting. I had only a few minutes to speak with her, because of the line.

What’s interesting here is that she says that she dubbed it in 1982 or 1983. This cannot be correct since neither the manga nor the show had been created yet. The Harmony Gold dub is usually credited as being done in 1989. I chalk this up to a random memory lapse or oversight on her part.

But our conversation got me thinking more about the dub, and Tommy Yune, so I did some detective work and then finally called the Harmony Gold office a few days later.

[DerekPadula]

Now for the Tommy Yune and Harmony Gold info. Sorry if it appears scattered, but I have to add bits and pieces here.

On July 5, 2011, at 3:30 pm, I called Tommy Yune at Harmony Gold for an impromptu interview. Tommy was extremely open and forthright about everything he knew. We spoke for about a half hour. The following contains the relevant parts that he told me about.

Tommy Yune is an artist, writer and Creative Director of the Robotech franchise, at Harmony Gold. He came on board the team in 2001 to create robotech.com, and now oversees the franchise.

He told me about his late friend Carl Macek. Carl was a pioneer in the American anime industry, and the producer of Robotech, which helped open the door for mainstream anime in the US. But Carl left HG in '87 or '88, and in 1988 he founded Streamline Pictures, which brought Akira and other films to the US. Carl continued to work as a consultant with HG during the following years. Much later, Streamline was merged back with Harmony Gold to work on the new Robotech projects. Hence the confusion between a Harmony Gold AND a Streamline dub of Dragon Ball. They were two separate companies, but are now one. However, there was no Streamline dub of the series.

The above info is relevant because Dragon Ball had the same voice actors as Robotech, as they had established themselves with prior work. This includes Barbara Goodson. The dub was done at Intersound Recording Studios in Los Angeles, with SAG actors.

The Harmony Gold dub predates the SAG changes that occurred years later because of the Simpsons voice actors, who fought for more money and benefits. The Dragon Ball dub was done in the late 80’s, and at the time, licensing to the US was sketchy. Bandai couldn’t find a partner they trusted and so they set up shop in LA and did the dubs themselves. Toei dealt with Harmony Gold and Voltron through another studio. The HG dub was done right after Carl Macek left.

Tommy believes that Harmony Gold no longer has any archives of the original videos. If I remember correctly, because it was no longer their license to care about and their was some kind of accident (fire, or water, can't remember). So he recommended I call their archivist, which I did, but I didn't hear back. I'll have to call again, I suppose. Or you guys can feel free. Their phone number is on their website.

He also recommended the following: "Swallow your pride, ask the fans for the Harmony Gold dub tapes. Tell them that you want to digitally restore the tapes and create digital archives. Tapes are time bombs, they only last about 25 years. If they exist, then fans will send them to you. We did this with Robotech and were really surprised by the positive results. Some of the home videos were of episodes taped from TV that we were missing. FUNimation isn’t looking for the Harmony Gold dub because they already have their own dub."

And also: "If you want more info about the Harmony Gold dub, then watch an episode, if you can find it, and look at the end credits. Check the copyright info for the exact date of production. Also check for the Dialogue director. Find out who they are and contact them directly, asking them questions about the show, how they went about their casting decisions."

Furthermore, he mentioned something interesting about FUNimation, and why Toei decided to work with them instead of Harmony Gold.

He said that Toei licensed DB to FUNimation because they wanted to keep it in the family. Gen Fukunaga had family members in executive positions at Toei, and they wanted to work with people they could trust.

Apparently there were a lot of Japanese rights holders with marketable products, and at this time in the 80’s and early 90’s, some Japanese companies had bad luck with licensors in America. Such was the case with Evangelion and ADV films, which filed for bankruptcy. Then the so-called Evangelion 2.0 came out under a different licensor, with different voice actors and so on. As a result, Toei and other companies were more inclined to work with companies they could trust and felt would be around for a long time. Apparently Toei were convinced that FUNimation was one of those.

Also, FUNimation actors were not SAG, they were work for hire, which meant that while they had less experience, they were also much cheaper and less fussy to deal with (non-union).

There's a bit more, but it's not entirely relevant.

While I realize this may have made things more confusing and raised more questions, I sincerely hope that helps solve some of the mystery! If anybody finds anything else out, please let me know!