If Dragon Ball was first dubbed after 2007, who plays Goku?

[funrush]

Someone who is able to take control in scenes that require seriousness, but someone who is still able to give off a sense of being childlike.

[dario03]

What is wrong about Sean Schemmel? He is my favorite voice of Goku by far.

You only like him because, either your first encounter with DBZ is with Schemmel, and second, he's the only English Goku that you can obtain and watch for the whole series as Goku. Basically, you're use to him as Goku. But he isn't Goku! He's a guy in a Goku mask playing the character. He will never be the definitive Goku, no matter how long he plays the character.

People think it's okay that he sounds nothing like the original because the English dub didn't originally give us that. Therefore, we become complacent or normalized to that fact. His Kai Goku is still so far from how Goku is in the original and in the Manga (which is basically a transcript of the anime). He plays Goku his way, not the way it should be.

Bit presumptuous don't you think? I think Schemmel is a pretty good Goku now, and he isn't the first I heard. I think he is like the 3rd English Goku I've heard, and I heard Nozawa before him.

[90sDBZ]

What is wrong about Sean Schemmel? He is my favorite voice of Goku by far.

You only like him because, either your first encounter with DBZ is with Schemmel, and second, he's the only English Goku that you can obtain and watch for the whole series as Goku. Basically, you're use to him as Goku. But he isn't Goku! He's a guy in a Goku mask playing the character. He will never be the definitive Goku, no matter how long he plays the character.

People think it's okay that he sounds nothing like the original because the English dub didn't originally give us that. Therefore, we become complacent or normalized to that fact. His Kai Goku is still so far from how Goku is in the original and in the Manga (which is basically a transcript of the anime). He plays Goku his way, not the way it should be.

I'll just say that the first Goku I heard was Corlett, and I grew up listening to him, Kelamis, Schemmel, Morrow, Jeremiah Yurk, Jeffrey Watson, and the Big Green VA. Out of all of them Schemmel has always been and remains my favourite of the lot, with Corlett a close 2nd. It's very presumptuous of you to assume someone who disagrees with your opinion has an invalid reason for doing so.

Also, last time I checked you couldn't hear how Goku's voice actually sounded in the Manga.

[Attitudefan]

With your choice of Corlett and Schemmel, you like the heroic approach. They sound like Superman light.

Yes, but the way Goku was written was not someone who is smooth and good with their words nor is he heroic.

[Doctor.]

nor is he heroic.

What? Yes he is.

He's definitely not as heroic as the original Funimation dub portrayed him, but he is a hero.

[Attitudefan]

nor is he heroic.

What? Yes he is.

He's definitely not as heroic as the original Funimation dub portrayed him, but he is a hero.

I meant in the traditional sense. He's not going to stomp guys because they commit a crime like Superman would. He really just wants to fight strong guys. Hell, cities get blown up and you don't see Goku stopping someone from doing that.

[MajinMan]

With your choice of Corlett and Schemmel, you like the heroic approach. They sound like Superman light.

Yes, but the way Goku was written was not someone who is smooth and good with their words nor is he heroic.

Schemmel doesn't sound like Superman anymore, this isn't 1999. I agree that in the original Z dub that he wasn't that good, but these days he nails Goku really well. I guess if we had to replace him, we should get someone from the South(or someone that can replicate a country bumpkin accent really well) that has a high pitched voice that can yell and act. That's the closest we can get to a Nozawa clone.

[DBZAOTA482]

Hell, cities get blown up and you don't see Goku stopping someone from doing that.

I'm pretty sure he would.

He's not "heroic" in the sense that he devotes his life to keeping peace but he's still benevolent (he stayed dead so the Earth can be safe).

[TheBlackPaladin]

What I always say is that when we talk about "Schemmel's Goku," that phrase really doesn't mean much until we identify the time period in question. "Season 3"? Buu/GT? Later video game and movie dubs? Or Kai and onward?

Depending on which time period we're talking about, we're talking about very different performances. Everybody's entitled to their opinion of course, but I'm surprised that people could think his "Season 3" performance and his Kai (and post-Kai) performances are interchangeable. They strike me as being worlds apart.

[fadeddreams5]

What is wrong about Sean Schemmel? He is my favorite voice of Goku by far.

You only like him because, either your first encounter with DBZ is with Schemmel, and second, he's the only English Goku that you can obtain and watch for the whole series as Goku. Basically, you're use to him as Goku. But he isn't Goku! He's a guy in a Goku mask playing the character. He will never be the definitive Goku, no matter how long he plays the character.

People think it's okay that he sounds nothing like the original because the English dub didn't originally give us that. Therefore, we become complacent or normalized to that fact. His Kai Goku is still so far from how Goku is in the original and in the Manga (which is basically a transcript of the anime). He plays Goku his way, not the way it should be.

First Goku I heard was Corlett. Second one was Nozawa when the Namek saga was first airing on Toonami. I found the latter voice so silly, even at 8 years old. Schemmel was my preferred voice from the get-go.

Your argument can be reversed the other way too. People feel Nozawa's voice is Goku because she's the first they heard or she's the first VA heard in the first version of the anime (that, or her actual acting is just better than most others). If Japan had a great male VA, I don't think anyone would want a "high-pitched" Goku. Besides, that isn't the "original" version of anything. The manga is. And if I read the manga, I imagine adult Goku with the voice of an adult. I would never be able to visualize him having the voice of a high-pitched woman. And frankly, not many would either if she didn't end up voicing him. Of course, books are open to interpretation. That all said, I don't mean to be disrespectful to Nozawa either--I love her work with the kids (Kid Goku, Kid Gohan, Goten, and Gotenks). I think she's a fantastic voice actress.

And finally, as for Goku not being heroic... he IS heroic. He is. He is! He is!!! He doesn't go around playing the role of superhero like Gohan does, but he would never let a bad guy hurt innocent people while he's around. People argue that it was the dub that made everything hardcore and converted Goku into Superman, but it wasn't; Toei did this first with the movies and anime filler. For what it's worth, Goku can now be depicted in two different ways.

[Attitudefan]

What I always say is that when we talk about "Schemmel's Goku," that phrase really doesn't mean much until we identify the time period in question. "Season 3"? Buu/GT? Later video game and movie dubs? Or Kai and onward?

Depending on which time period we're talking about, we're talking about very different performances. Everybody's entitled to their opinion of course, but I'm surprised that people could think his "Season 3" performance and his Kai (and post-Kai) performances are interchangeable. They strike me as being worlds apart.

They're really not that different, scripts be damned. Casting Schemmel as Goku for Kai is like re-casting Morrow as Goku. Morrow is "too cool for Goku".

[TheBlackPaladin]

Well, to each their own, I guess. The improved scripts definitely helped, but I think the acting changed a lot as well...and for the better.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

The first Goku I heard was Nozawa, I grew up with that years before DBZ was dubbed in English!
Schemmel is fine as Goku now, but boy those early days were a doozy!

[huzaifa_ahmed]

He just isn't Goku in my eyes. We've heard better English Gokus, and it disappoints me that we are stuck with him out of all of them!

Maybe Ian Corlette, but even that is a stretch given how far Schemmel has come. Please don't say Kelamis, he's terrible as Goku. Yes, he's got a good scream, but that's all he has going for him.

I'd say he has more than just his screams. He was the first of the actors to succeed in making Goku sound dull-witted and more like a man child which is something I don't think Schemmel pulls off that well, even in Kai. After Corlette left, Kelamis brought more naivety and innocence to the role whilst also being able to switch to a cool and commanding tone when necessary, unlike Schemmel and Corlett who popularized the Superman-esque Goku, Kelamis just sounded more like a quirky guy which in hindsight was more faithful to how the character was meant to be portrayed.

A minor thing that bothered me with the other actors was that none of them chose to fully embraced the martial artist aspect of the character. Kelamis was the only one to use martial arts kiais and fight noises while the others just went for normal boring grunts. This is a minor detail that I felt really helped make his performance stand out among the others, even as a kid I recognized how much more energetic his Goku sounded when throwing punches and kicks.

Even at Schemmel's greenest, he was a breath of fresh air after Kelamis's run as Goku. Schemmel is passionate and understands the character.

I disagree with that, Kelamis had his bad moments but he was never this bad. Plus when you compare Schemmel's 1999 performance to the Pioneer dubs a year prior, it was clear who the better Goku was at the time. Admittedly Schemmel has come a long way since then but to say he was better than Kelamis when he started? That's a stretch.

As intriguing as the high praise of Kelamis is (where can these performances be heard?), I didn't mean to make this a Goku comparison or Schemmel-bashing. Séan Schemmel seems to be a very passionate actor. Yes, he is a baritone, but he's nuanced enough, definitely a great performance, obviously not quite the same tone as Nozawa's, but a believable character nonetheless. Obviously, I am gushin over the massive improvements by 2010(haven't seen past American Kai). He is fine for what is marketable and palatable, and it would be a greatly undue disrespect to commission a replacement at this point. Improvements in his performance is something else.

My post disregards all this stuff, and assumes that FUNimation had the Japanese voices from the beginning, interest is moderate-to-high in Dragon Ball fansubs, and any actors are at their current level of performances. The only newbies being the new actors at the time of this writing.

[ConfusedPhantom]

Probably someone with a strong tenor or baritone voice that's naturally playful sounding, but handle really Goku's more firey traits without sounding too authoritative (it's ok to have a commanding tone, though...which sounds like an oxymoron, but there is a difference...that I'm not articulating very well >>), and has a good judgment on comedic timing and how to do naive characters with sincerity. You don't have to sound like Nozawa, but the reason why she was good (at least to me) is because she has those traits. So, if you have an actor that has all or a good number of those traits, you probably found the right guy or gal. But, that's just what I'd look for. >>

[ABED]

He was the first of the actors to succeed in making Goku sound dull-witted and more like a man child which is something I don't think Schemmel pulls off that well

Sure, the character was characterized different, but that doesn't make the acting good. He's just plain awful. The unnatural rythms of his delivery ruin whatever good attributes he gave Goku. Schemmel just needed a better director and script in the early going but he definitely has the dumb Goku part down.

Kelamis brought more naivety and innocence to the role whilst also being able to switch to a cool and commanding tone when necessary

He could've if he could act. His Goku was never commanding, it always came off like he was trying to act tough. I think it's movie 3, but his line reading on "Why have you come here?" is laughably bad. You are attributing way too much of Goku's characterization to Schemmel when the real culprit were the directors, writers, and producers.

They're really not that different, scripts be damned

They are very different in terms of his growth as an actor.

He's not going to stomp guys because they commit a crime like Superman would.

Heroism isn't limited to guys that go out and stop crimes.

[Attitudefan]

Funimation did have access to the uncut Japanese version as both Kelamis and Corlett heard and seen them. Kelamis, in an interview, said that he could never match Nozawa's screams in terms of pitch and he liked that the edits took out Goku's naked ass.

Funimation did have access, but we're too cheap to use them in 1999.

Knowing that, the cast the old Ocean actors based on the Japanese cast, and you can tell with many of the characters, especially in the films. Their performances also reflect that.

Funimation always hired deeper voices post 1999. Almost none of their male characters go higher pitched.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Funimation did have access, but we're too cheap to use them in 1999.

It wasn't a matter of being too cheap, though. Not in that case.

The dubbing materials for movies and episodes arrive in packages. For example, Viz is redubbing Sailor Moon, but they only got dubbing materials for the first arc at first. Sabat mentioned getting their dubbing materials from Mexico because Toei "couldn't deliver them fast enough." So FUNimation didn't receive the entire series when they decided to dub it. They didn't get, for example, the Buu arc episodes until it was actually time to dub them. In all likelihood, what that means is that they were using audio and video materials from Toei at first (during the Ocean dub days), but when FUNimation switched to an in-house cast, they were in a time crunch and couldn't wait for Toei, so they went with Mexico's dubbing materials instead (and certainly with Toei's permission, as there's no way they could do that otherwise).

Why couldn't they wait?

Well, I wager that the time crunch probably had to do with Cartoon Network needing the episodes by a certain time. Sabat said that they were dubbing Kai very quickly because they had to get the episodes to Nicktoons soon enough for them to not only air the episodes, but also so they could spot-check for any edits they deemed necessary. As with DBZ, FUNimation tried to one-up the editing departments of the TV networks as much as possible by preemptively editing things they thought the networks would object to, but inevitably, they'd get notes back from the networks saying, "Thanks, but we need this and this changed too." Certain animes are also known to be licensed with a contractual stipulation saying that they need to go on TV, no matter what, by a certain date.

All that to say, I think there's a lot of truth to what Sabat said when he said the reason behind using the Latino Spanish dubbing materials was because Toei couldn't deliver the Japanese materials quickly enough.

[90sDBZ]

With your choice of Corlett and Schemmel, you like the heroic approach. They sound like Superman light.

Yes, but the way Goku was written was not someone who is smooth and good with their words nor is he heroic.

I'll admit I do enjoy the heroic Goku that the early dubs portrayed. It isn't everyone's cup of tea but I always liked it. But I'm a guy who likes both portrayals of Goku, the selfless hero from the early dubs and the more selfish/flawed one from the Japanese version and recent dubs. And Schemmel in Kai and BoG definitely portrays Goku's more flawed and selfish side.

And Goku is definitely heroic to an extent regardless of which version you watch. His questionable actions didn't really start until he let Vegeta live. For example he helped out many people on his early adventures, selflessly revived Upa's father, went after Raditz to rescue his son knowing he was outmatched, fought purely to save his friends and the earth in the early movies, let Frieza live with no selfish motive, and sacrificed his life to save the earth twice.

Even though the early dubs exaggerate Goku's heroic side, I sometimes think people grossly exaggerate his flawed side. I was watching the recent Goku vs Superman 2 video and noticed they mention Goku's character in the original was more "heartless", which is just plain untrue. They even went as far as to have Goku blatantly disregard the immediate safety of the earth and practically blow away a city during his fight with Superman, which is insane. Goku is neither the perfect hero or a heartless jerk, he's the flawed but well meaning and occasionally selfish hero.

[Super Sonic]

With your choice of Corlett and Schemmel, you like the heroic approach. They sound like Superman light.

Yes, but the way Goku was written was not someone who is smooth and good with their words nor is he heroic.

Could you be a little more specific as Goku doesn't sound like these guys or the guys who played him in live action. Or is that just how you read his dialogue?