I actually don't have anything against 4Kids. I've always enjoyed their dub of Pokemon and was even one of the very few who enjoyed their One Piece dub(although that was the only version I could see at that time but I'm still grateful to it for introducing me to the show). And yes their voice acting is at least halfway decent at the worst of times. But when you look at the amount of changes they made to One Piece I'd say it outweighs even Saban's changes to DBZ during the Ocean dub. With Pokemon it wasn't really that much of an issue. But DBZ is a violent show like One Piece and would no doubt have had heavier editing than even the Saban Ocean dub of DBZ. And once Funi's in-house dub began edits dropped a great deal to the point where they only cut stuff that was completely necessary, with lots of episodes airing uncut.ABED wrote: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.
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.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
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.
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.would have been an instant turn-off for the target audience that made up the bulk of success for the show
And lets not forget that Funimation have always provided an uncut release including the Japanese version ever since they dubbed Ginyu Assault. 4kids on the other hand never even released One Piece uncut and to this day still haven't had a release of Pokemon with the Japanese version included. Now imagine how much worse off we would be if this company was the one that got DBZ. One Piece, as great a show as it is and as huge as it is in Japan, actually initially failed in the US and UK thanks to 4kids treatment of it while DBZ on the other hand was handled by Funi and was a huge success. Thanks to 4kids messing it up One Piece was taken off the air due to low ratings, has only just returned to US TV after Funimation saved it and will probably never return to UK TV.
As for your point about Faulconer, I honestly think it helped the ratings. Well not just Faulconer but the fact that they used a more action-oriented score to begin with so I'd say both Shuki Levy and Faulconer were partially to thank for the ratings. As more mature viewers it's easy to forget the mindset we had as kids and as a kid I can honestly say I would have been put off by hearing Head Cha La and seeing some kid mess around for an episode. Kids were the target audience that made up the shows popularity and I can easily understand how they wouldn't consider Head Cha La to be "cool" but would appreciate Rock the Dragon. No I wouldn't go as far as saying "Krillin's in da house!!" was completely necessary but I can understand why they felt the need to change the score. And as for all of them cheesey lines, that's how most American shows were in the 90s so it's only natural that they wouldn't want the show feeling too different to others as people naturally don't like to give something a chance if it's too different to what they're used to.
And your comment about Kai being a 2nd run. That shouldn't make any difference. It was kids that made DBZ popular back in the day and there are just as many kids these days that are too young to even know about the original DBZ and yet Kai hasn't taken off like Z did. Look at it as a simple experiment. The fact is that this generation was shown Kai while ours was shown Z. Z was successful while Kai wasn't. I'd wager that if the old Z dub had been introduced to the new generation rather than Kai, it'd have been just as successful now as it was then. I can just picture it. Kai comes on, Dragon Soul plays, kid says "this is lame" and changes channel. Now rewind a decade. Z comes on, Rock the Dragon plays, kid says "omg this is epic!". It may seem sad to some but this is just the natural mentality of kids. At least not English speaking kids who aren't used to anime and would rather have a show more like what they're used to.
