Should FUNimation dub Kai's Final Chapters' OP & ED Songs?

[dbboxkaifan]

Both of the tracks are in English but it's so hard to understand what they're saying that FUNimation should just dub it and provide a professional clean OP/ED English version of them.

The only things I gathered from Fight It Out!! were "Fight It Out!!", "Every moment", "Excited", "Universe", "Power", "End of World", "... By yourself", "Twista", "Gather the Power" and "Kame Kame Ha".

I for one won't watch Kai dubbed but I like hearing the songs in English too.

[Valerius Dover]

There didn't seem to be a problem with the Engrish songs in Battle of Gods, so I don't think comprehensibility matters. They're in English, and will probably be left in English. Also, isn't Kai pretty much just worth it for the new dub?

[dbboxkaifan]

There didn't seem to be a problem with the Engrish songs in Battle of Gods, so I don't think comprehensibility matters. They're in English, and will probably be left in English. Also, isn't Kai pretty much just worth it for the new dub?

There are dub-countries which had their best performances on the Dragon Ball Z series and then it was downgraded on the Dragon Ball Kai due to the script, different voice actors / actresses or other issues, so no there's more to it than just a new dub (just because it's new doesn't mean it's better anyway).

And if FUNimation leaves the OP/ED as is then there'll be customers complaining what the hell the singer is trying to say (for the dub they don't use subs unless they activate).

[UltimateHammerBro]

Maybe it's not that they wouldn't dub them, it's that they can't.
IIRC, they stopped dubbing the songs in One Piece because they were told to: I wouldn't be surprised if the music groups (or maybe even Toei) had suddenly gone fussy and forced the international companies to keep the songs in their original language.

In my opinion, that's why they made Engrish (I refuse to call that English) versions of the songs in Battle of Gods: they thought that they would be more palatable to both English and non-English-speaking audiences (a point I strongly disagree with: those songs made my BoG theatre experience a lot worse). I also think that it's the reason why they made the new Kai songs only in English, in order to be able to market them to other countries while forcing them not to dub them.

However, France didn't dub Dragon Soul, YBCB and Wings of the Heart, so it's no surprise that they didn't dub the new ones. I'm not sure if Korea dubbed them or not. I'll wait for "The final Chapters" to air in a language (not English) which previously dubbed all the songs to see if they dub these ones too or not.

I doubt they'll do it, but if I could choose, I'd air the songs with subtitles, as a "Take that" to Toei: "you forced us to include your Engrish versions, which are so broken that English speakers need subtitles to understand them".

[Samwize78]

The songs will most likely remain the same for FUNimation's release. The fact that the songs are sung in English in the first place is indicative of Toei's intentions to market to an international audience. Though I do think they could still subtitle it. They subtitled Black Lagoon's opening, and that was sung entirely in Engrish too.

The (unfortunate) situation with One Piece however is less a move by Toei than it is by Avex Tracks, who own the rights to One Piece's songs. Their reasoning for no more song dubbing was so the original artists could receive the recognition and credit for their songs, which is understandable. The songs for Dragon Ball on the other hand are owned by Columbia (I believe), so in theory FUNimation should be able to dub them if they want. Personally, I wouldn't mind if they did, I loved listening to One Piece's openings and endings in English.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Their reasoning for no more song dubbing was so the original artists could receive the recognition and credit for their songs, which is understandable.

Understandable, yes, but over-the-top...in my opinion, anyway. I understand giving the original artists credit, but here are the two problems I have with Avex Tracks--or any music company, really--using that as an excuse to not allow the dubbing of songs:

1) The original artists were being credited already. Actually, it's the dub singers who weren't credited, because they weren't allowed to be. This fact is even more odd considering that the dub singers are allowed to be acknowledged and credited in every single capacity other than the actual product...in other words, the dubbing company can't say in the credits who the dub singers are, but they can acknowledge who they are on blogs, social media, in person, and heck, the singers themselves can publicly acknowledge what dubbed songs they sang...so it's like, what's the point? There just doesn't seem to be much consistency with that rule.

2) If a music company is so worried about dub singers being mistaken as the singers of the original song, then I don't see the problem with doing something in the credits like, "Original Japanese song by X, available from Columbia Records," and "English-dubbed song vocals by Y." That way, the dub singers get acknowledged as being only the people who sang the dub, and the original singers get acknowledged as being the real singers. Not being able to do this reminds me of the old days when dub actors couldn't be credited to their roles, with the credits simply saying, "Featuring The Voices Of..." and then the names of the English voice actors were listed in a seemingly random order. That changed, and the original Japanese voice actors are still just as honored and acknowledged as they were before...so why can't it be the same with singers?

All that to say, I could see the dubbing of the OP and EDs going either way, but based on the fact that neither Korea nor France has dubbed them, I think they're going to remain undubbed. After all, the Korean dub did dub "Dragon Soul," but they didn't dub "Fight It Out."

[Puto]

Korea dubbed Dragon Soul because there's a very strong anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea — they would never in a million years air something with Japanese lyrics. Fight it Out is ‘English’, so it made it through.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Korea dubbed Dragon Soul because there's a very strong anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea — they would never in a million years air something with Japanese lyrics. Fight it Out is ‘English’, so it made it through.

Oh, really? That's very interesting...

I'm curious to know more. What's the reason (in a nutshell, to avoid taking this thread off-topic) for such a strong anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea? North Korea I could understand (because they don't get along with anybody other than China it seems), but South Korea too?

[Puto]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japan ... t_in_Korea

[kei17]

I'm curious to know more. What's the reason (in a nutshell, to avoid taking this thread off-topic) for such a strong anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea? North Korea I could understand (because they don't get along with anybody other than China it seems), but South Korea too?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_(cultural)

The Korean have a cultural-psychological trait called han that has resulted from Korea's long history as a dependent country. Han has been one of their strongest motivations to band together, which is basically grudges against those who harmed them especially in cultural ways. Japan is currently their biggest target of han because of the colonial occupation in the last century and their passive independence that resulted from Japan's surrender, which made it impossible to gain independence for the first time on their own.

[Valerius Dover]

Ok, with Han in mind it could go either way, I suppose. France didn't dub the other ones and Korea only did the ones that were in Japanese. But what about the songs in Battle of Gods? These are incomprehensible from what I hear, so why should Funi treat this any different?

[TheBlackPaladin]

Thank you very much, Puto and Kei, for the great reads--those were very informative and interesting!

Ok, with Han in mind it could go either way, I suppose. France didn't dub the other ones and Korea only did the ones that were in Japanese. But what about the songs in Battle of Gods? These are incomprehensible from what I hear, so why should Funi treat this any different?

Well, France was no surprise, because from what I've observed it's very rare that they dub songs. They have on rare occasions, yes, but they are exceedingly rare. Usually they just keep the songs as-is or make up completely new ones.

As for why FUNimation could conceivably treat these songs differently than the ones in BoG, it's important to keep in mind that with BoG, it was a situation very similar to the One Piece situation. The band involved, Flow, requested that their songs not be dubbed. So unless the company and/or singers behind "Fight It Out," and "Never Give Up" specifically requested that the songs not be dubbed, FUNimation may have the option to dub the songs.

I could see it going either way, but if I were forced to make a bet, I'd put my money on them not dubbing it, as much as I'd like them to. If anything, I think it's more likely that we'll hear the songs dubbed in other languages for other dubs, like Spanish and Portuguese. If I can be even more greedy, I'm hoping that either Rodrigo Rossi or Eduardo Falaschi get to sing the Portuguese dubs of the songs.

[kei17]

Though it is true that South Korea tends to eliminate any Japanese portions in anime shows as Puto stated, it is not solely due to their strong anti-Japanese sentiment.

From what I know, in South Korea, there is a law regulating foreign contents on TV, and anime channels are constantly violating the law because fines for it are less expensive than the profits they gain from airing Japanese anime. Such channels hide non-Korean elements in their foreign contents as an excuse for their illegal percentage of imported programs.

Considering that they ARE censoring foreign languages in the Buu arc, too, there is no reason for them not to dub the theme songs unless Toei didn't let them do so.




This is just all my guess and things might have changed during recent years, though.