What If Harmony Gold's Dub Was Successful?

[Hellspawn28]

So what if their dub of Dragon Ball was a not a failure and Harmony Gold did continued to dub the series after 1989? How do you think Dragon Ball will be like today? How would Harmony Gold handle DBZ, GT and the DBZ movies? I think things would be very different today and we would have people on Youtube telling fans stuff like "His real name is Goku and not Zero!" . If their dub started in 1989 then we won't get DBZ until 1992 or 1993 then GT around 1998. I would imagine they would do changes worst then Funi & Saban did in 1996 - 1998, all of the characters in DBZ and GT would get name changes expect for Cell, Super 17, maybe Buu and Bebi.

[DynasticHunter]

After watching some clips on YouTube I like the voice acting but I would imagine the changes in names would have been horrifying.

[Hellspawn28]

I grown to like the HG dub as well. I do kinda wish the dub was more successful, but I'm happy how things are now.

[theoriginalbilis]

I think it's a cool thing for historical/archival purposes, and the voice acting really is quite charming (outside of Lunch), but I'm glad none of the later dubs carried over those horrendous name changes.

I will be showing clips from the HG dub at Anime Weekend Atlanta for my DragonBall rarities/obscurities panel.

[Hellspawn28]

I guess Yi Xing Long would have been called "Omega Dragon God" if HG dubbed GT. It would be kinda neat to see what names changes that they would have done if the 21st Tenkachi Budokai arc - Shadow Dragon arc was dubbed by HG.

[TheGmGoken]

The dub wars would be worst now. People would say "What type of retarded name is Goku! Zero fits better". Would be cool to see Freeza Arc dubbed.Only good voice IMHO was Goku.

[Hellspawn28]

I'm not sure what happen to Harmony Gold after the 90's? I guess after the 90's, we might not never got any of the DBZ releases like the Season Sets and Dragon Boxes.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I think it's for the best that it wasn't successful.

POTENTIAL PROS:
-We would have gotten it earlier.
-We would have never had to worry about a replaced musical score.
-Some of the voice acting performances were actually pretty good. I particularly liked Wendy Lee as Bulma and Barbara Goodson as Goku.
-Since it was based in Los Angeles, Harmony Gold would have had access to some of the most talented voice actors in the industry. There are certainly exceptions to this generality, but generally speaking, the best North American voice actors live and work in LA.
-Dubbed songs........I know the lyrics weren't loyally-translated in the slightest....but I must begrudgingly admit....Harmony Gold's adaptation of "Makafushigi Adventure" was catchy. Who's to say they couldn't have also done a catchy dub of "Chala Head Chala"?

POTENTIAL CONS:
-They weren't fantastically loyal in the writing/adaptation department, and not just with regard to the altered names. For all we know it could have been worse than what FUNimation did.
-Without naming names, some of the performances were....really not that good. Sure, they could have improved in time (we've definitely seen that happen before with other actors), but it's still an item worth putting in the "Cons" list.
-Harmony Gold is certainly capable of producing enjoyable English adaptations (Robotech), but they're also capable of producing horrifically unfaithful English adaptations (Robotech...again). Who's to say they wouldn't later mix "Dragon Ball" with other series, or switch around the order of "Dragon Ball," "Dragon Ball Z," and "Dragon Ball GT"? "Robotech" certainly suggests that they were capable of doing that.
-We wouldn't have gotten a home video release until later. Speaking of which...
-Bilingual uncut releases? Ho boy.....nah-uh. It would have been a nightmare and a half for that to work out. Too much footage was switched around/edited out, and since they were dubbing it in the 80's, it's quite possible that they wouldn't be able to get some of the voice actors back for any redubbing. If anything, they'd have to do a seperate home video release of the dubbed and the subbed versions (if they even bothered with the subbed version).

I'm not sure what happen to Harmony Gold after the 90's? I guess after the 90's, we might not never got any of the DBZ releases like the Season Sets and Dragon Boxes.

Well, I don't know what they're doing now, but they're definitely still around. They have an office in the Hollywood area.

[Puto]

-We would have never had to worry about a replaced musical score.

Somehow I doubt that.

See, what Harmony Gold did dub was mostly just for pilot purposes, and for pilots, they typically keep the BGM. They did that for the Macross pilot dub, too, but when they did the actual Robotech dub, they changed the whole thing. So yes, if they'd gone through with an actual full dub for the entire series, I doubt they'd keep the BGM through.

[Famicon3DS]

Oh god, the youtube wars.

"Zero is bettar naem than gukuu"
"Blue midget smurf is better than peelef"
"freddy mercurie with an afro is battar then mister saten"

I do want Freeza to be voiced by Rob Paulsen though, and I guess the dub would be extremely accurate, would probably not have a uncut release.
Freeza would probably be Freezer (A ridiculous name on it's own)
Piccolo Daimao would be Demon King Piccolo
Kami would be God (Why not? They already made a direct translation of Shen Long)

[Hellspawn28]

At least Roshi's name would be the same though. I'm pretty sure Cell's name would be the same since his name is simple and easy to know. I guess Buu would be called "Demon Buu" instead of being called Majin Buu. I have no idea what Freeza would be called though.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I'm pretty sure Cell's name would be the same since his name is simple and easy to know.

Even that's not a guarantee. Let's not forget that they changed Karin to "Whiskers the Wonder Cat."

[Kuwabara]

I don't think there would be any "dub wars," at least none on the YouTube video comments level; any fans of it would probably be much older than current fans of the franchise, and the series would be so old in the eyes of the American consciousness that any changes made wouldn't affect much of anyone during the Internet age. My guess would be that Dragon Ball would have probably assumed the same status as shows like Jayce & The Wheeled Warriors or The Mysterious Cities of Gold. Harmony Gold's version would be well regarded by cult followers who watched it in the 80's but still remain fairly obscure, with the added element of hardcore fans of the original series like Robotech has with Macross, Genesis Climber MOSPEADA etc. (Robotech and the three series it's made up of are all appropriately treated as separate entities with little squabbling, at least from what I've seen). The original series would probably see limited subbed releases with collectors in mind, just like with Macross.

There being no uncut bilingual release would be really bad, so it's better that the Harmony Gold dub never took off.

[TheGmGoken]

-They weren't fantastically loyal in the writing/adaptation department, and not just with regard to the altered names. For all we know it could have been worse than what FUNimation did.

and I guess the dub would be extremely accurate, would probably not have a uncut release.

Lolwut?

[Hellspawn28]

It took Funi two years to dub the original DB series from 2001 - 2003. I wonder how long it would have took HG to dub the original DB series? I think if the show was popular then I think most people will still remember it today like they do with Voltron, G1 Transformers and MMPR.

[superrayman3]

-They weren't fantastically loyal in the writing/adaptation department, and not just with regard to the altered names. For all we know it could have been worse than what FUNimation did.

Question, have you even seen the harmony Gold dub personally and if so have you taken the time to compare the scripts like I have or are you just basing this opinion blindly? I've compared the Harmony Gold Script to the FUNimation ones and for what it's worth Harmony Gold's dub script wise blows FUNi's scripts (especially in Movie 3's case) out of the water in terms of faithfulness.

[TheGmGoken]

-They weren't fantastically loyal in the writing/adaptation department, and not just with regard to the altered names. For all we know it could have been worse than what FUNimation did.

Question, have you even seen the harmony Gold dub personally and if so have you taken the time to compare the scripts like I have or are you just basing this opinion blindly? I've compared the Harmony Gold Script to the FUNimation ones and for what it's worth Harmony Gold's dub script wise blows FUNi's scripts (especially in Movie 3's case) out of the water in terms of faithfulness.

Movie 3 and Movie 2 never got re dubbed by Funimation. That's not a fair comparison.

[superrayman3]

Movie 3 and Movie 2 never got re dubbed by Funimation. That's not a fair comparison.

How's that not a fair comparison? FUNi dubbed movie 3 once as did Harmony Gold, I compared the HG script of movie 3 to FUNi's script and HG was more faithful, also even if FUNi went back and redubbed movie 3 it would probably still be inferior to HG's script becuse FUNi would probably half ass it, hell when FUNi was redubbing Movie 1, they had the perfect chance to give Movie 1 a faithful dub script that could have surpassed HG's script easily and what did they do? They botched that up by taking their 1995 edited dub script (which was inferior to HG's movie 1 script) and using that as the basis for the 2010 redub.

[TheGmGoken]

Movie 3 and Movie 2 never got re dubbed by Funimation. That's not a fair comparison.

How's that not a fair comparison? FUNi dubbed movie 3 once as did Harmony Gold, I compared the HG script of movie 3 to FUNi's script and HG was more faithful, also even if FUNi went back and redubbed movie 3 it would probably still be inferior to HG's script becuse FUNi would probably half ass it, hell when FUNi was redubbing Movie 1, they had the perfect chance to give Movie 1 a faithful dub script that could have surpassed HG's script easily and what did they do? They botched that up by taking their 1995 edited dub script (which was inferior to HG's movie 1 script) and using that as the basis for the 2010 redub.

I mean....nevermind. To hard to explain.