DBZ Kai part's 1-4 vs.part's 5-8 dub question.

[DHM211]

The English dub for DBZ Kai for part's 1-4 seemed better then the dub for DBZ Kai parts 5-8. Part's 1-4 seemed to have more cursing and used the Japanese attack names. Basicly I just wanted to know why the dub got lazyer after part 4. Thanks.

[VegettoEX]

Someone actually familiar with the matter will have to back this up, but I believe the FUNimation English dub "script writer" for the second half of the series (literally right after Freeza where "Part 5" picks up) was a different person than it was with the first half. Combine that with a little bit of what I can only assume was Kai's hotness starting to fall by the wayside and that contributing to a possible lack of enthusiasm internally probably gave you what you ended up with.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Mike's pretty spot-on. J. Michael Tatum, the main "writer" for the series, didn't have quite the workload that he did in the first half of the series. The hotness dying down and a lack of enthusiasm probably had something to do with it too. Also, there were a couple of additional minor complications that aren't brought up as often. At one point, Chris Sabat (the director, and the voice actor behind several characters) blew his voice out during production, and was told that the only way to recover was to not speak, so he held up production as long as he possibly could before going against his doctor's orders and speaking/screaming before he should have. On top of that, his first child was born during the production of Kai's dub.

So, you've got a few things goin' on...

-The original "writer," J. Michael Tatum, wasn't working on as many Kai episodes in the second half as he was in the first.
-The newness of Kai dying down.
-Declining sales.
-A super-fast production of an uncut dub and two edited dubs.
-A super-fast production of a new mix for all three of those dubs thanks to the Music Scandal.
-Chris Sabat, the director and a main cast member, blew his voice out and had to delay production, probably necessitating a more hastily-produced dub that was already being hastily-produced.
-Sabat's first child was born while the dub was being made...and newborns have a reputation for not being easy sleepers (/understatement).

Of course, it's not like one needs to take this into account when deciding whether or not they like the second half of the dub. If you don't like it, you don't like it. I don't believe it was from a lack of effort, though. I think it was more like lack of enthusiasm considering how insane some of the production problems were. For that matter, it's not as though I think the second half is bad. I'm still happy with it, but whether or not others are happy with it will vary depending on what kind of fan you are.


PS: For clarification's sake, in this case, no lack of respect is meant by putting "writer" in quotation marks. Quite the contrary, I think Tatum did a good job. Rather, "writer" is only put in quotation marks because he didn't write the material so much as he adapted it. As such, he's more of an adapter than a writer, but the word "adapter" doesn't make much sense in casual conversation.

[El Diabeetus]

Yeah, TheBlackPaladan explained it pretty much as what it is. The main writer/adapter that when it wasn't J. Michael Tatum was Patrick Seitz.

[BlazingFiddlesticks]

Wow, I knew that having 3 dubs at once is ridiculous enough, but whew! You could argue they should be glad it's over!