Do people here think FUNimation's Z Dub is the worst dub?

[90sDBZ]

Yeah it was corny and the music was different and every now and then the lines were different. But it's about what they had to work with. Firstly, the truth is that the show was not altered to the point where the story changes, in fact it was just loosely translated. Also, the names weren't changed that bad. Now, they were taking a gamble with bringing over an anime, they had to listen to what partners (if any) and the network wanted.

That was the show of my childhood. Yeah the Japanese version is better, but that's not what I raced home to watch when I was in school. The dub has a place in my childhood that will never be destroyed. I have every version of the show and like to go back and listen to the original "season 3" dub and remember "Z Day" on Toonami and how awesome it was, not with disdain. Why can't others do the same? Look, most people, I'm sure, loved the dub before "discovering" the Japanese version..as evidenced by merchandise, ratings, demand for more. I found a great place of my fandom where I can enjoy both. But whatever, if people want to crap on the dub, despite the fact that without those changes, it may have never gotten off the ground in the US (the network decides what changes it wants in order to air it), that's fine. Just know that without this evil company that "defaced" the series, nobody would know what it was, as kids nobody might enjoy it in its original form, and most fans outside Japan would never have any merchandise. Say what you will, but there has been PLENTY of opportunity to own the series INCLUDING the Japanese version thanks to them. So obviously they know there's a Japanese fan base that they "neglected" and I feel they more than made up for it.

They did get the major plot points but the flavor of the show was altered. Goku is more of the typical superhero archetype than the naive battle loving hick we know and love, etc. It was VERY loosely translated. I get that they needed to take networks into consideration regarding editting, but there's always the uncut videos, which were only slightly better.

And again with the "it was part of my childhood". It's not a good argument for what was done to the show. A more accurate dub could've just as easily been a part of our childhood as well. Kai has changes made to make it suitable for broadcast to children, but those changes aren't nearly as terrible as "Mondo cool!" and "we're two wild and crazy space explorers!" I'm thankful America got the show, but I seriously doubt we never would have got the show without the changes. Go online and see the sheer volume of anime you can buy.

You make a good point about lots of anime becoming available but don't forget that one of the main reasons why anime has become so popular and successful overseas is largely thanks to the success of Funimation's Dragonball Z. In fact if it weren't for that they might never have taken off as a company.

[ABED]

Pretty much any company that took Dragon Ball was bound to be the industry leader. DBZ was popular pretty much everywhere. There's no way in hell it wasn't coming here eventually. It's likely the main reason FUNi got the show is due to Gen Fukunaga having a relative connected to the show.

[andr1y7]

I enjoy both Japanese and Funi versions. What do I win?

[matt0044]

Those dubs are so bad that they are good. You can pull off a MST3K with those dubs .

I wonder if anyone thought of that. I'd pay to see it.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Pretty much any company that took Dragon Ball was bound to be the industry leader. DBZ was popular pretty much everywhere.

Eh.......I half-agree. Yes, it's not a foolish assumption to think that whoever got "Dragon Ball" was likely sitting on a gold mine....but just because an anime is popular elsewhere doesn't mean it will be popular here. "One Piece" and "Saint Seiya" are both excellent examples of this.

And with regard to "Dragon Ball"...let's not forget that the ratings were so low that they were desperate enough to skip the entire series and head straight on into DBZ, which was also cancelled until it got picked up by Cartoon Network (whose audiences loved it). No show is failure-proof.

[Rocketman]

That's only because they weren't accurate enough. If only the first episode was 20 minutes of Gohan crying in a forest, we could have seen true success.

[Gaffer Tape]

Okay. Gotta give it to Rocketman here. The first episode of DBZ is not how you get people interested in a new series. It definitely works better as episode 154 of Dragon Ball.

[ABED]

This has nothing to do with it being an anime, and everything to do with it being Dragon Ball. The story isn't complicated, but the characters are fun and funny and the action is unlike anything else, especially in America.

You seem to forget that Dragon Ball was aired REALLY early in the morning (wasn't it like 5 or 6 AM?). It isn't failure proof, but you have to go out of your way to screw it up. Airing before your target audience is even awake is a death knell.

I keep going back to "Mondo cool!" Does anyone honestly think that's part of the reason people were drawn to the series in America? Do they think without lines like that and Piccolo's motivational "Yes, Yes, YES!" DBZ wouldn't have caught on. As has been pointed out, DBZ got popular when the ocean dub was put on Cartoon Network. Faulconer was nowhere near those episodes. When Funi started their inhouse dub, they picked up in the middle of the Freeza arc, which if I recall was a high point ratings wise even in Japan.

[Ringworm128]

Hearing Faulconer's music after the Shuki Levi score would be like hearing a Tupac song after an hour of Little Wayne. So yeah I could easily imagine Faulconer boosting the ratings.

[VegettoEX]

Absolutely no-one was saying that back in 1999.

Granted, we didn't have Lil Wayne yet, but you get the point .

[Ringworm128]

Hasn't LW been around since 97?

[DBZ Mick]

Okay. Gotta give it to Rocketman here. The first episode of DBZ is not how you get people interested in a new series. It definitely works better as episode 154 of Dragon Ball.

I think it works perfectly.

You get the basic story/plot setup and most of the main characters are introduced, you also get some setup for Gohan's hidden powers and yeah...

There's also some cool moments with Raditz catching the farmer's rifle bullet and flipping it back which I can imagine a lot of kids thought was cool.

I think the Gohan material is super adorable and cute especially in Japanese.

Pretty much any company that took Dragon Ball was bound to be the industry leader. DBZ was popular pretty much everywhere. There's no way in hell it wasn't coming here eventually. It's likely the main reason FUNi got the show is due to Gen Fukunaga having a relative connected to the show.

I agree. And Pokemon was hugely popular already like 2 or so years before DBZ took off.

[Gaffer Tape]

You get the basic story/plot setup and most of the main characters are introduced

Not really. Goku, Gohan, and Piccolo are the only major characters introduced, the latter of whom is only barely so. The major antagonist is but whose goal is only made clear at the very end. And then there's Chichi, who, let's be frank, is hardly a major player. The basic story only barely gets a chance to be touched upon. We know that there's a guy from outer space, and he's looking for someone named Kakarrotto who is very obviously Goku, but we don't know any of his motives for doing so. The majority of the episode is Gohan running around in the forest, and I agree that it's cute and a nice time out from the constant and sometimes repetitive action from the series, but it is so out of step with the tone and content of much of the rest of the series that it does a terrible job of telling you, "This is what our show is about," which is what a first episode should be doing. Again, if you're tuning in a week after you saw Goku dive down in the eightfold furnace to stop a blazing inferno from killing his father-in-law while standing up to a temperamental divine being to do so, which is how the original audience experienced it, then coming back to see his home life is not so jarring (although still very slowly paced). But look at it from the perspective of an audience that has no knowledge of Dragon Ball. Does an episode mostly dedicated to a toddler walking through the woods, chasing butterflies, and crying incessantly give you a good first impression of the series? Would it give you an impression that's at all on point with what you know the series to actually be about?

By contrast, look at the original dub of the beginning of the series. It utilizes footage mostly from episode 2, which actually does accomplish all the things you claim of episode one. It introduces the characters: we see Goku interact with his friends, and we thereby learn both their personalities and enough of their histories to get a good sense of who they are. We really get to meet Raditz, who exposits all we need to know about who he is, who Goku is, why he's here, and what he intends to do. And Gohan is kidnapped with the price of return being Goku's loyalty, thereby setting up conflict for the hero. And, coincidentally enough, because I doubt FUNimation actually researched this, the story ends up being told much more like Toriyama himself originally told it.

[ABED]

That's 1 episode, and people don't always get introduced to a show from the first episode. I agree that it's slow and works better when you've seen what came before, but not everyone who came into dragon ball saw it from the first episode. If so, would ratings ever rise?

I can't fathom why anyone would think Faulconer's music would increase the ratings. Set aside its quality, does BGM really move the needle? BTW, I think Levi's score was way better than Faulconer's.

"This is what our show is about," which is what a first episode should be doing.

Yes, that logic might work if it was a pilot but it's not. It was episode 154 of Dragon Ball. There's also another school of thought that stories should unfold. The Wire is pretty slow in the beginning, but gains steam.

I don't know if Funi's dub is the worst, but I shudder to think that there is a worse dub.

[DBZ Mick]

By contrast, look at the original dub of the beginning of the series. It utilizes footage mostly from episode 2, which actually does accomplish all the things you claim of episode one. It introduces the characters: we see Goku interact with his friends, and we thereby learn both their personalities and enough of their histories to get a good sense of who they are. We really get to meet Raditz, who exposits all we need to know about who he is, who Goku is, why he's here, and what he intends to do. And Gohan is kidnapped with the price of return being Goku's loyalty, thereby setting up conflict for the hero. And, coincidentally enough, because I doubt FUNimation actually researched this, the story ends up being told much more like Toriyama himself originally told it.

I do agree with this. I coincidentally saw Episode 1 of the Ocean Dub today and it does a terrific job of setting up the characters and plot.

I do agree with ABED in that some don't get introduced from the first ep. (I mean I got into the show when reading up on the Artificial Human arc and ironically I found them boring and it was Cell who got me more interested. Now those two arcs are my least favourites...)

First episodes are usually a tough lot because they are mostly exposition/setup.


I know I enjoyed the first episode when I finally saw it though. I loved the animation and the charm, also the basic plot intrigued me.

But then again like you guys have been touching on- it's basically the middle of the series and not the beginning.

Although I personally think the Saiyan-Namek-Freeza arcs are pretty good and standalone even if you haven't watched or read the first half.

Gah..

[Hades]

I get that Funi's first dub was far from the best, but what makes it as unwatchable as a playthrough of Spec Ops: The Line?

[ABED]

I get that Funi's first dub was far from the best, but what makes it as unwatchable as a playthrough of Spec Ops: The Line?

Could you please pick a less obscure reference? It's like you so badly want us to play that game that you mention it every chance you get.

What makes the dub unwatchable for me is the terrible dialog and bad acting.

[90sDBZ]

Absolutely no-one was saying that back in 1999.

Granted, we didn't have Lil Wayne yet, but you get the point .

I disagree. No-one who was already a fan of the Japanese version was saying that but plenty of kids and dub fans loved it and still do to this day.

Anyway like others have said no show is failure-proof. Just imagine if 4kids had got a hold of Dragonball.

Also a lot seem to speculate that a more accurate dub would have been more successful. I also disagree with this. Kai is much more accurate but no-where near as popular or successful in the US and certainly not in the UK. And that even cuts out boring filler so I doubt a Z dub with Kikuchi music that started off with Gohan doing boring stuff would have been a successful way to introduce the show. The way they introduced the show was smart imo. They had the classic "Rock the Dragon" intro to get everyone pumped and excited to watch the show, letting them know right off the bat that this is a fast-paced fighting series rather than Head Cha La which would have been an instant turn-off for the target audience that made up the bulk of success for the show.

Anyone can say that it would have been successful anyway but you can't deny that Kai, despite being much more faithful and better acted, has failed to generate the hype or high ratings of the Z dub.

[Gaffer Tape]

Anyway like others have said no show is failure-proof. Just imagine if 4kids had got a hold of Dragonball.

To be perfectly honest, there were times in DBZ's run where FUNimation wasn't any better than 4Kids, so I'm not sure I'd have to do much imagining. That said, 4Kids dubbed Pokemon, and it was a very huge hit.

[ABED]

FUNi did do worse than 4 kids. Despite whatever qualms you have with the company, their product never looked or sounded cheap.

You may have liked the Faulconer score, but I can't imagine why anyone would think that's what increased the ratings.

Also a lot seem to speculate that a more accurate dub would have been more successful. I also disagree with this. Kai is much more accurate but no-where near as popular or successful in the US and certainly not in the UK

That's not proof of anything. Kai is a second go around, of course it won't be as popular. It's not new. Also, 10-15 years later, NOTHING is drawing ratings as high as they used to.

Are you honestly arguing that "Krillin's in da house!" and "Mondo cool" and "It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's Goku!" are what made it popular in the states? Your statement about Kai being better acted and written makes it seem like you honestly believe that what kids wanted was surface level "action, action, action" and the only way to convey that was through music. Forget acting and writing, what kids want is music they think fits with non-stop action. As anyone here will tell you, there's a fair bit of filler, and most of it ain't more action. It's typically cutaways to Muten Roshi or Chichi. If kids weren't put off by that, then I don't think the lack of "Rock the Dragon" or a score that didn't scream "non-stop action" would turn them off.

would have been an instant turn-off for the target audience that made up the bulk of success for the show

How do you know this for a fact? Toonami didn't even air the intros so your point is moot. I find it hard to believe the opening song is enough to turn people off completely. Due to time constraints, I imagine, if they had went with Cha La Head Cha La, they would've made a broadcast version of it. Assuming they did still use the Faulconer score, a more accurate dub would've been infinitely better. So many lines are intollerable and not in character at all.