How did the re-cast characters turn out (in your opinion)?

[dbboxkaifan]

Thank you. I don't know how someone could deny this basic biological fact.

Look, I'm just going by real life experiences and for me I've not met kids who have high-pitched voice if I did I'd have said so. Abed, you can keep liking your Colleen as that's fine and it is your preference but don't try to imply she's better as it's no more than just an opinion.

FUNimation Kai dub fans sure are stubborn eesh.

[kei17]

Thank you. I don't know how someone could deny this basic biological fact.

Look, I'm just going by real life experiences and for me I've not met kids who have high-pitched voice if I did I'd have said so. Abed, you can keep liking your Colleen as that's fine and it is your preference but don't try to imply she's better as it's no more than just an opinion.

FUNimation Kai dub fans sure are stubborn eesh.

Well, it's obvious that who's really stubborn here.

[Gyt Kaliba]

FUNimation Kai dub fans sure are stubborn eesh.

No more stubborn than fans of the original dub, or fans of the original Japanese version, or fans of the Ocean dub, or fans of etc. and so on.

I'm still not seeing the argument that Colleen's is too high-pitched, but at the same time I also don't see the argument that Nadolny's was too raspy either. Both voices to me are no different than the kind of voices given to Bobby Hill or Bart Simpson, which again I've never really heard people have an issue with.

[Smochi]

FUNimation Kai dub fans sure are stubborn eesh.

No more stubborn than fans of the original dub, or fans of the original Japanese version, or fans of the Ocean dub, or fans of etc. and so on.

I'm still not seeing the argument that Colleen's is too high-pitched, but at the same time I also don't see the argument that Nadolny's was too raspy either. Both voices to me are no different than the kind of voices given to Bobby Hill or Bart Simpson, which again I've never really heard people have an issue with.

I think the problem with anything where you're comparing two versions of something is that you'll get fans of both who will defend their favorite to the end. It's the same level of of stubborness on both sides, but it's only because they're as passionate as their favorite as you are of yours. Having stubborn fans at all means that both productions were a success so you can feel confident about your choice while respecting another's.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I think the problem with anything where you're comparing two versions of something is that you'll get fans of both who will defend their favorite to the end. It's the same level of of stubborness on both sides, but it's only because they're as passionate as their favorite as you are of yours. Having stubborn fans at all means that both productions were a success so you can feel confident about your choice while respecting another's.

I agree completely. The problem sadly comes from a majority of people on both sides refusing to do that 'respecting' part. I love it when it does work out that way though. I actually quite enjoy being able to discuss stuff with fans and bounce back and forth between references to the original Japanese version and the dub both.

[Dbzfan94]

I cant stand Jieces voice, sounded almost ripped from the Abridged show where he still has that stupid accent only.

You do realize the abridged copied the Funimation voice right?

[SingleFringe&Sparks]

A quick question for all of those that don't like the 'rasp' that Nadolny and arguably Clinkenbeard bring to the role - does it bother you in regular animation as well, because it tends to happen in a lot more than Dragon Ball. Take Bobby Hill from King of the Hill for example. That's pretty raspy and not very realistic of a little boy voice, but I've never heard any complaints towards it really.

Maybe because Bobby has a softer voice and the guff in more so infused with his tone of speaking, where as Kid Goku/Gohan are intended to have a higher childish voice which contrasts with the gruff undertone. Though I cant find a definite answer. Spanelli uses the same voice as Bobby except even higher and raspier than him. Maybe her character image hides it as something expected from the character. However I found Gus having the most age approprate voice and what I'd use for Gohan of that cast.

Colleen has the high voice but also has that undertone where you can already tell its a woman, Stephanie Nadolny at least sounded masculine and thats probably the thing people are most frustrated with for Teen Gohan in Kai.

I cant stand Jieces voice, sounded almost ripped from the Abridged show where he still has that stupid accent only.

I think the problem with anything where you're comparing two versions of something is that you'll get fans of both who will defend their favorite to the end. It's the same level of of stubborness on both sides, but it's only because they're as passionate as their favorite as you are of yours. Having stubborn fans at all means that both productions were a success so you can feel confident about your choice while respecting another's.

I agree completely. The problem sadly comes from a majority of people on both sides refusing to do that 'respecting' part. I love it when it does work out that way though. I actually quite enjoy being able to discuss stuff with fans and bounce back and forth between references to the original Japanese version and the dub both.

Thats the exact issue with debates on the script as well outside the voices. I for one don't like most of Kai's dialogue but understand its what DBZ was supposed to be, where as the opposing treat it as a crime to like Z over Kai at all. That "never looked back" attitude is unecessary as both coexist.

You do realize the abridged copied the Funimation voice right?

Yes, and Funimation (Chris and Sean) watched it, and copied them for Kai.

[Gonstead]

Sabat and Schemmel are not employees of Funimation though. Sean is a freelance voice actor while Chris runs his own sound studio, Okatron 5000, which does have ties to Funimation for certain projects.

Also, Abridged Jeice and Kai Jeice sound nothing alike. At all.

[Freeza Soldier #156]

Yes, and Funimation (Chris and Sean) watched it, and copied them for Kai.

I have no idea where you are getting this from. As Gonstead pointed out, Abridged Jheese and Kai Jheese sound nothing alike. Now, original dub Jheese and Abridged Jheese obviously sound alike seeing as how Abridged was parodying that voice. The only voice in Kai that sounds remotely similar to anything in Abridged is Freeza.

[matt0044]

I thing Abridged!Freeza and Kai!Freeza sounding alike is just a mere happy accident.

[CaBrPi]

Stephanie Nadolny at least sounded masculine

I stand by my statement that Nadolny didn't really sound like anything ever. No person I've ever met sounds remotely close to that, even chain-smokers.

It's just... sort of a voice. It doesn't sound like a child, a boy, a pubescent boy, nothing. It just sounds like someone of indeterminate age and gender with an utterly massive rasp.

[WittyUsername]

I don't think the rasp was massive really. The rasp got toned down in the later years of Nadolny's career and her Gohan voice started to sound more nasally. Regardless, yeah, I don't really see how her voice sounded masculine. It's fairly obvious that the person doing the voice is female, just like with Clinkenbeard.

[gohann]

Freeza: Chris Ayres is good, especially since he's working with a better script but Linda Young just sounds so much better, she sounds more weird which adds to the scare factor. If Linda Young had a better script she would have been the best, no contest.

Gohan: Hate it, he sounds like a little girl now. I'm still mad that they apparently never contacted Stephanie Nadolny.

Narrator: Alright but I wish the recast didn't happen.

Bulma: Monica Rial is alright, Tiffany Vollmer is even better

Andriod 18: Awful. She sounds better in Kai than the games but still not fitting. Not only that but she's the worst Android 18 voice ever.

Zarbon: Great! J Michael Tatum fits his personality perfectly.

Kid Vegeta: Laura Bailey is a bit better though I still liked Chris Sabat.

[Freeza Soldier #156]

Freeza: Chris Ayres is good, especially since he's working with a better script but Linda Young just sounds so much better, she sounds more weird which adds to the scare factor. If Linda Young had a better script she would have been the best, no contest.

Gohan: Hate it, he sounds like a little girl now. I'm still mad that they apparently never contacted Stephanie Nadolny.

Narrator: Alright but I wish the recast didn't happen.

Bulma: Monica Rial is alright, Tiffany Vollmer is even better

Andriod 18: Awful. She sounds better in Kai than the games but still not fitting. Not only that but she's the worst Android 18 voice ever.

Zarbon: Great! J Michael Tatum fits his personality perfectly.

Kid Vegeta: Laura Bailey is a bit better though I still liked Chris Sabat.

Freeza: Chris Ayres is fantastic. Much closer to Ryusei Nakao's performance than Linda Young could ever dream of being. She's done a great job in other roles, but she was greatly miscast here. The only scary thing about her Freeza voice is how awful it is. Even with better scripts, such as in the video games, the voice still does not fit in the least.

Gohan: I already shared my opinion to you in the other thread.

Narrator: Again, much closer to the Japanese performance by Joji Yanami. Dragon Ball is not a wrestling or monster truck extravaganza.

Bulma: Nothing to really argue here. I wouldn't say Tiffany was better, I definitely prefer Monica, but her voice never bothered me.

Android 18: Again, I did prefer Meredith McCoy to Colleen but Colleen was not awful by any means.

Zarbon: 100% agree with this one.

Kid Vegeta: Agree with this one as well.

[gohann]

Freeza: Chris Ayres is fantastic. Much closer to Ryusei Nakao's performance than Linda Young could ever dream of being. She's done a great job in other roles, but she was greatly miscast here. The only scary thing about her Freeza voice is how awful it is. Even with better scripts, such as in the video games, the voice still does not fit in the least.

Gohan: I already shared my opinion to you in the other thread.

Narrator: Again, much closer to the Japanese performance by Joji Yanami. Dragon Ball is not a wrestling or monster truck extravaganza.

Bulma: Nothing to really argue here. I wouldn't say Tiffany was better, I definitely prefer Monica, but her voice never bothered me.

Android 18: Again, I did prefer Meredith McCoy to Colleen but Colleen was not awful by any means.

Zarbon: 100% agree with this one.

Kid Vegeta: Agree with this one as well.

Frieza: It is closer to Ryusei Nakao, but closer doesn't equate to better automatically. I agree that she has had better roles (Genkai is her absolute best). Why exactly was she "miscast" for you? I thought she sounded appropriately sadistic, especially in the Season 3 dub in the Frieza arc. It is definitely not "awful". The video games have better scripts than the old dub(s), but I was more referring to the Kai scripts. If Linda Young could have gotten more lines like, "I promised you, didn't I? That I'd show you a nightmare beyond the horrors of Hell? ... When you see him in the next world I suppose you'll have to tell him what he missed.", she would have been even better.

Narrator: See my first sentence on Frieza - the old narrator sounded much more excited.

Android 18: I don't think Colleen Clinkenbeard was a miscast, just misdirected.

[matt0044]

I think Clinkenbeard mirrors the Japanese VA well for #18.

[ABED]

Freeza: It is closer to Ryusei Nakao, but closer doesn't equate to better automatically. I agree that she has had better roles (Genkai is her absolute best). Why exactly was she "miscast" for you? I thought she sounded appropriately sadistic, especially in the Season 3 dub in the Freeza arc. It is definitely not "awful". The video games have better scripts than the old dub(s), but I was more referring to the Kai scripts. If Linda Young could have gotten more lines like, "I promised you, didn't I? That I'd show you a nightmare beyond the horrors of Hell? ... When you see him in the next world I suppose you'll have to tell him what he missed.", she would have been even better.

Narrator: See my first sentence on Freeza - the old narrator sounded much more excited.

Android 18: I don't think Colleen Clinkenbeard was a miscast, just misdirected.

I agree that sounding closer to the original doesn't equate to better. Ayres is just great because he's talented and his voice fits the character. Young never fit Freeza. Freeza is hoity toity and effeminate, not and old lady. I never understood why some think she sounds threatening. She sounds like someone TRYING to sound threatening. I'm sure a good script would've helped a lot, but she still wouldn't have been good.

Excited doesn't equate to good. He's not a monster truck announcer, he's supposed to sound avuncular.

[gohann]

Freeza: It is closer to Ryusei Nakao, but closer doesn't equate to better automatically. I agree that she has had better roles (Genkai is her absolute best). Why exactly was she "miscast" for you? I thought she sounded appropriately sadistic, especially in the Season 3 dub in the Freeza arc. It is definitely not "awful". The video games have better scripts than the old dub(s), but I was more referring to the Kai scripts. If Linda Young could have gotten more lines like, "I promised you, didn't I? That I'd show you a nightmare beyond the horrors of Hell? ... When you see him in the next world I suppose you'll have to tell him what he missed.", she would have been even better.

Narrator: See my first sentence on Freeza - the old narrator sounded much more excited.

Android 18: I don't think Colleen Clinkenbeard was a miscast, just misdirected.

I agree that sounding closer to the original doesn't equate to better. Ayres is just great because he's talented and his voice fits the character. Young never fit Freeza. Freeza is hoity toity and effeminate, not and old lady. I never understood why some think she sounds threatening. She sounds like someone TRYING to sound threatening. I'm sure a good script would've helped a lot, but she still wouldn't have been good.

Excited doesn't equate to good. He's not a monster truck announcer, he's supposed to sound avuncular.

Chris Ayres is a good actor, but I find Linda Young nails certain aspects of his personality better, especially his arrogance. She didn't even sound that much like an old lady -- you can tell an old lady is voicing Frieza, but it doesn't define her performance. She didn't get the "fancy" side of him down like her predecessor (Pauline Newstone) did, but she did manage to put on a creepy, gender-neutral voice for the character. For the reasons I listed and more, she sounds threatening. I do agree that a good script would have helped.

[TheBlackPaladin]

...but I was more referring to the Kai scripts. If Linda Young could have gotten more lines like, "I promised you, didn't I? That I'd show you a nightmare beyond the horrors of Hell? ... When you see him in the next world I suppose you'll have to tell him what he missed.", she would have been even better...

Well, interesting that you should say that...because she was given those lines.

For what it's worth, Linda Young was initially cast as Freeza again for the Kai dub. It was even in a news release that FUNimation put out, and if you'll notice, Freeza's laugh in episode 1 of the Kai dub is very clearly Linda Young (if the credits that list Linda Young as Freeza didn't already give it away). Chris Sabat said in an interview that they initially had no intention of recasting Freeza, but eventually had to because Linda was, to use Sabat's words, "having trouble keeping up with the scripts."

Essentially what that means is that Linda was brought in to record lines for Freeza, and by extension, it's likely that audio files of her takes (and outtakes) for an episode or two of the Kai dub exist somewhere on a hard drive at Okatron. So they gave her a shot...but she was having trouble keeping up with the scripts. Which I can understand. By comparison, Freeza talks much more slowly in the DBZ dub than he does in the Kai dub. So to increase the speed and throw in a lot of Shakespearean dialogue...I can see how that could mess an actor up when they thought they had the character down for a number of years. Adding to the difficulty is that this is a dub role, and in dubs, actors have to match the lip movements of the characters...so it would be one thing to have faster and more Shakespearean dialogue, but she had to deal with faster dialogue, more Shakespearean dialogue, and matching that faster and more Shakespearean dialogue to the lip movements.

Re-casting actors in mid-production is not a practice unique to Young, either. Producers will re-cast you if they feel that you're not performing at the quality and/or speed that they require of you. Crispin Freeman said that one of his all-time lows in terms of personal morale was when, shortly after he moved to LA, he won the role of the lead villain in Cowboy Bebop and less-big-but-still-important role in Digimon...only to lose both roles after a few sessions because he wasn't performing up to the level that the studios wanted.

[KaiserNeko]

I honest to goodness do not understand or identify with the idea that Linda Young was better, in any way, shape, or form, than Ayres. Not just because she was an old woman, not just because it was the original dub, but because Ayres just gave the better performance with the more appropriate voice and infinitely better dialogue. His tenor and rhythm were pompous and condescending, subtle in the right nuances and terrifyingly sharp and venomous in his outbursts. Young never, even once, sounded close to as intimidating as Ayres. The attempts she made were hard to listen to; the grunts and wails of an obviously old, old woman trying to scream from her chest. I never could separate her obvious age and gender from my mind, from the first time I heard her to the last.

While Ayres sometimes crosses into the realm of gender-ambiguity, it's exactly that: Ambiguous. Freeza's design is exceptionally feminine in the face and his demeanor; exceptionally aristocratic and perhaps even fay. But where Linda Young might have been somewhat acceptable for these parts (though I never, even once, felt like her performance ever came even close to properly conveying the subtleties of Freeza's character, be it due to her own abilities or due to the script (or both)), she fails miserably to capture the wider ranges of his personality. She is not masculine in any way.

I take similar issues with Stephanie Nadolny. While I can still enjoy her Goku for the most part, her Gohan was nigh-impossible to take seriously at any point. A soft-spoken, shy child with this raspy, garbly voice? I understand that some children have a rasp, but never in my life have I encountered a child that sounded anywhere close to that; not during my own childhood and not into adulthood. While Clinkenbeard doesn't nail the character in my opinion either, I do believe that her performance is leagues better than Nadolny (who I personally believe is a sub-par actress at best) and her tone and pitch are exceptionally closer to the character. Now, this does not mean I think whatever actress plays Gohan to sound like Nozawa. Fact is, I'm okay with voices sounded different from their Japanese counterparts to a certain extent. But they need to be true to the original character, and Nadolny has never even once made me feel that way with Gohan. Goku, on the other hand, she has a much better time with, partially because she plays him much different and drops a lot of the rasp. Also, Son Goku as a child isn't shy, polite, reserved like Gohan; as such, Nadolny's voice is able to play to Goku's strengths much easier.

I like Colleen Clinkenbeard better as Android 18. Meredith McCoy's performance wasn't subtle, it was wooden and poor. She grew as an actress over time, but Android was never supposed to sound so old or so monotone. As we see, while the characters are cool and collected, they're still very much human; young humans at that. Colleen's interpretation is much closer and much better acted. This also is due to the fact that Colleen Clinkenbeard is one of the best in the industry right now.

Monica Rial as Bulma started out as a bit grating, but she really, really slips into the role as the series progresses. She's probably my favorite Bulma now; although beating out Tiffany Volmar for me is not particularly hard.

I love Greg Ayres as Guldo. Don't really have much of an opinion of Leibricht as Jeice. R. Bruce Elliot is not my favorite Ginyu, but he does a more than serviceable job. (My favorite is still Richard Newman.) Recoome... needed to be recast. Vic as Burter is serviceable as well. Mark Stoddard as Dr. Briefs is perfect, as is Maxey Whitehead as Dende. J. Michael Tatum as Zarbon is perfection itself.

Lastly: Should have recast King Kai, but I get why they didn't. I get it: A lot of fans of his dub voice think he's funny. But that voice ruined some scenes in the Freeza saga of Kai for me; the tension is high and the drama is at a fever pitch, and then suddenly the sounds of Sean Schemmel (an actor who, by the way, who's talents I very much respect; so this next part is in no way a shot at him) blathering out with what sounds like an entire bag of erasers in his mouth made me want to just stand up and walk away. This is another example of missing the point with a character: He's not supposed to just be comic relief. He's a mentor character with plenty of jokes behind him. While Mike McFarland managed (in DragonBall at least) to bring his Roshi down to Earth in the heavier moments, you cannot do that with a voice like Sean's King Kai.