Were you satisfied by the English dub of Kai?

[ABED]

I'll take Schemmel's Kaio over Sabat's Yamcha any day. Possibly even over McFarland's Kame Sennin.

Really? McFarland's Muten Roshi may not be the wise martial arts master but at least his comedic timing is pretty damn good, and Sabat's Yamcha is just a normal speaking voice. Okay there was the surfer accent early on, but that was dropped pretty quickly.

[B]

They all suffer from the same fundamental problem: only capturing one side of their character(or in Yamcha's case, none), but Yamcha and Kame Sennin suffer from being semi-major characters. Honestly, Schemmel has naturally improved as an actor with over a decade of experience, and as nonsensical and unfitting as the "character voice" for Kaio is, by Kai, he is giving perfectly acceptable line readings matched with accurate dialog. And he's not there a whole lot.

Perhaps I am speaking mostly for the original Dragon Ball, but the problems still exist in all other media. McFarland is essentially the English equivalent of Hiroshi Masuoka; yeah, he's a goofy pervert, but where is that old master? And Yamcha... Jeez. The entire appeal of Yamcha, I believe, is that he is, for no apparent reason, God's punching bag. He's a relatively handsome guy with serious combat skills... but for the longest time he freezes up around women and loses the majority of his fights. He's played by Toru Furuya, an actor well known for these good-looking guy roles. He just has the worst luck. And then you have Chris Sabat really playing up the "loser" aspect of the character that really doesn't exist. Yamcha's humorously pathetic, but not because of anything he directly does or is, which is why it's humorous in the first place. Any and all contrast you could find with the character is removed in English.

Maybe there's just no English equivalent of Furuya. =/

[VegettoEX]

Maybe there's just no English equivalent of Furuya. =/

Ted Cole played him pretty well that way originally in DB 1-13 back in 1995...

*whistles and wanders off*

[ABED]

And then you have Chris Sabat really playing up the "loser" aspect of the character that really doesn't exist. Yamcha's humorously pathetic, but not because of anything he directly does or is, which is why it's humorous in the first place. Any and all contrast you could find with the character is removed in English.

I don't see that. I don't think they play that aspect any more than is there especially in the DB dub and Kai. Even if I'm wrong, I do think how you see Sabat's portrayal is a valid interpretation. I still would much rather listen to Yamcha than Kaio in the dub. You see Yamcha a certain way, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to see him as a loveable loser who's a great martial artist by normal people's standards.

McFarland does the wise old master, but it's just not convincing. He does his best, but the voice doesn't fit.

[Looneygamemaster]

Assuming Sabat's Yamucha and McFarland's Roshi are bad, I feel that they wouldn't be as large of a problem as Schemmel's Kai, simply because they don't have as large of a role in Z as he does.

(Personally, I've only really had problems with them back when everyone was bad, but I think I'd have preferred Chris Patton for Yamucha and McFarland sounds "off" in Kai. Schemmel's Kai is still far worse than either of those two though, my vote for the worst role in the dub.)

[BurakkuForesuto]

@B You need to watch the English dub of Gundam 0079. Brad Swaile captures Toru Furuya well, unlike other VAs who try and fail to imitate the original. He's not quite as good, but he's still excellent and feels like an English Furuya. Better than Micheal Lindsay, who is a horrible VA in general.

@Looneygamemaster and @TheBlackPaladin A script is as important as the acting itself. A liberal script can destroy the meaning of the original, as it is up to interpretation, while the original script will be more direct. Accurate-literal scripts allow this directness to be conveyed. A show like Gundam Wing did not have bad dubbing because of the slavishly literal script, but because the acting and the VAs were miscast. Simple. Gundam 0080 has a literal script too, but the VAs in that were way better than the VAs in Gundam Wing. Same with F91(which is also from 1999). The VA, not the script is what matters. A lot of people dislike a lot of Funimation dubs for the same reason I do. The overly liberal, loose scripts. This is why Hellsing Ultimate was best left with New Generation Pictures. They made it close to the Japanese scripts and because Funimation only distributed and not worked on it, this meant New Gen had free reign to do what they do best.

[Looneygamemaster]

Yes, a script is just as important, which is why it must not only be accurate, but sound like something someone would say. If it has to change things in order to believably convey the meaning in a different language, so be it.

Yes, Funimation occasionally goes too far with their dub scripts (Sergeant Frog), but when their approach works, it soars (Romeo x Juliet).

[TheBlackPaladin]

@Looneygamemaster and @TheBlackPaladin A script is as important as the acting itself. A liberal script can destroy the meaning of the original, as it is up to interpretation, while the original script will be more direct. Accurate-literal scripts allow this directness to be conveyed. A show like Gundam Wing did not have bad dubbing because of the slavishly literal script, but because the acting and the VAs were miscast. Simple. Gundam 0080 has a literal script too, but the VAs in that were way better than the VAs in Gundam Wing. Same with F91(which is also from 1999). The VA, not the script is what matters. A lot of people dislike a lot of Funimation dubs for the same reason I do. The overly liberal, loose scripts. This is why Hellsing Ultimate was best left with New Generation Pictures. They made it close to the Japanese scripts and because Funimation only distributed and not worked on it, this meant New Gen had free reign to do what they do best.

You're absolutely entitled to that opinion. As I mentioned, I can totally appreciate why someone would want a literally-translated script. Many fans want to watch the original work, not an ADR writer's interpretation of the original work. However, having observed dubs that did use literally-translated scripts, I respectfully disagree. With that said, I certainly don't believe a dub should go in the opposite direction and change whatever, whenever.

Here's an example of what I mean (keeping in mind that these examples are arbitrary, as I'm not immediately certain of the Japanese pronunciations of some of these phrases). Let's say the original, literally-translated English line from the Japanese script is, "We have to leave!" It may work in Japanese, but perhaps in the original animation, the character's mouth opens and closes eight times, which is double the amount of syllables in the literally-translated English phrase. This may force the actor to deliver the line slowly, like, "Weeee haave tooo leaaave!" That line is meant to be said with urgency, and if that line is delivered slowly, the urgency is gone, and it sounds like the voice actor is stoned and struggling to get their words out. Sure, the dialogue is faithfully maintained, but the original emotion is forcibly abandoned. In situations like that, I don't consider it a bad thing to rephrase the line to something like, "We gotta get out of here now!" That's perfectly fine in my book. What's not OK in my book is if the character said completely different like, "Phew, good thing I brought my jet pack!"

The performance from voice actors does matter most, and I would never argue otherwise. I would argue, though, that the task of putting on a good performance can be irreparably compromised by a script that always maintains a 100% literal translation.

[Kid Buu]

Maybe there's just no English equivalent of Furuya. =/

Furuya is my favorite VA of all time, he might as well just do Yamcha in English as well.

[Nikkolas]

I saw no real substantial improvement in the Kai Cell Saga compared to Z. In fact, Clinkenbeard's painfully generic approach to Eighteen really turned me off.

Kai Namek/Freeza was most definitely an improvement though and I actually kinda respect Freeza as a villain now, even if his fights were all a load of crap.

[TTC817]

I did not care for a lot of the voice cast changes, and thought Piccolo and Vegeta sounded a little too close to one another. But overall, the script was far better, and I was much more satisfied with this than any former dubbed version of the show.

Now if they would just redub all of the movies and series with this quality a script, we would be fine.

[B]

I watched DBZ Abridged... #38 or #39 a few days ago, and was just bewildered at how much better Trunks and 18 are in a fan project than they're professional counterparts in Kai. The script, even with all the jokes, honestly wasn't changed to any great extent, and those two characters weren't really telling jokes in the episode I watched. In terms of Trunks and 18, it was a pretty straightforward dub and light on parody.

[thatdbzguy]

I watched DBZ Abridged... #38 or #39 a few days ago, and was just bewildered at how much better Trunks and 18 are in a fan project than they're professional counterparts in Kai. The script, even with all the jokes, honestly wasn't changed to any great extent, and those two characters weren't really telling jokes in the episode I watched. In terms of Trunks and 18, it was a pretty straightforward dub and light on parody.

So you think the TFS dub is better than the Kai dub?

[Ajay]

So you think the TFS dub is better than the Kai dub?

To be honest, I'd love to here MasakoX do an entire episode as Goku seriously.

[thatdbzguy]

So you think the TFS dub is better than the Kai dub?

To be honest, I'd love to here MasakoX do an entire episode as Goku seriously.

I'd rather see him do a serious episode as Gohan.

[TheGmGoken]

So you think the TFS dub is better than the Kai dub?

To be honest, I'd love to here MasakoX do an entire episode as Goku seriously.

Don't know. The few serious moments he does when voicing Goku ain't all that.

[ABED]

Now if they would just redub all of the movies and series with this quality a script, we would be fine.

Movie 8 is excellent.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Now if they would just redub all of the movies and series with this quality a script, we would be fine.

Movie 8 is excellent.

Yeah, the later movies are generally very good. Even the re-dubs of the first three Ocean/Pioneer movies are great purely in terms of acting quality. Ultimately I still give the edge to the Ocean dubs because they had a slightly more accurate script (I don't see why FUNimation felt the need to rewrite the good scripts for the movies and keep the bad scripts for the TV series when they went back to re-dub the first batch of DBZ episodes), but in terms of acting quality, I would argue that the FUNimation cast was on par with the Ocean cast by that point.

[ABED]

I singled out 8 because it's astoundingly close. I agree that the scripts got better for the later films, but 8 was nearly line for line, and even fixed the gaff where Roshi tells Kuririn that he's the best singer in Japan.

[TheGmGoken]

I singled out 8 because it's astoundingly close. I agree that the scripts got better for the later films, but 8 was nearly line for line, and even fixed the gaff where Roshi tells Kuririn that he's the best singer in Japan.

I think you can thank Chris Sabat for that. Who also fought for Kai to be accurate instead of inaccurate like Z.