Who is your least favorite Dragon Ball composer?

[Kakacarrottop]

The composers for Dragon Ball are:
Shunsuke Kikuchi (Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z) 2 Votes
Akihito Tokunaga (Dragon Ball GT) 0 Votes
Peter Berring (1995 FUNimation dub of Dragon Ball) 2 Votes
Ron Wasserman (1996-1998 FUNimation dub of Dragon Ball Z) 5 Votes
Faulconer productions (1999-2003 FUNimation dub of Dragon Ball Z) 5 Votes
Tom Keenlyside (Westwood Media dub of Dragon Ball Z) 3 Votes
Mark Menza (FUNimation dub of Dragon Ball GT) 20 Votes
Nathan Johnson (2004-2006 FUNimation dub of Dragon Ball Z) 7 Votes
Kenji Yamamoto (Dragon Ball Kai 1.0) 8 Votes
Norihito Sumitomo (Dragon Ball Kai 2.0 and Dragon Ball Super) 9 Votes

Most people will probably say Bruce Faulconer, but for me it's either Nathan Johnson or Mark Menza.

Johnson's music from the first two seasons wasn't offensively bad or anything, but it came off as so unmemorable, as if it was content to quietly sit in the background the entire time. I know the same thing could be said about the original Saban (Ron Wasserman) soundtrack, although personally i felt that score at least sounded somewhat different from most typical TV soundtracks. Also unlike the Saban soundtrack, it failed to ever get me excited or pumped up. Overall his score just had this really modern "American movie" feel to it which i think doesn't fit Dragon Ball Z at all.

The Menza GT soundtrack was just too repetitive (it seriously felt like the same guitar riff being played over and over again) and really lacked any emotional or sad music. The Tokunaga score, despite obviously being done on a synthesizer, was better in every aspect imo. The music used in the Westwood dub was also pretty bad at times (mainly the stuff they recycled from 'Megaman") although i enjoyed some of the darker ambient pieces.

[Kamiccolo9]

Yamamoto, for reasons I have made abundantly clear in the past.

[DB1984]

Shuki Levy. I like a lot of the music him and Haim Saban composed for domestic children's cartoons during the 1980's, but not so much for imports, like DBZ and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (A.K.A. Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger).

[Kakacarrottop]

Shuki Levy. I like a lot of the music him and Haim Saban composed for domestic children's cartoons during the 1980's, but not so much for imports, like DBZ and Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (A.K.A. Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger).

I disagree, but fair enough. Although all criticism/praise of FUNi's first DBZ soundtrack should go to Ron Wassserman (the guy who sang the Power Rangers theme song) since he appears to be the one who actually composed it.

[MajinMan]

Nathan Johnson. It's so bland you might as well just remove it completely. Menza is a pretty close second because of his boring and repetitive tunes.

[Shiyonasan]

I'd have to go with Mark Menza. Some of his compositions are okay, but most of them are dull and repetitive in my opinion.

[fadeddreams5]

Mark Menza, hands down.

[ekrolo2]

Whoever of the ones listed above did the Ocean Dub score, really generic and unmemorable stuff all around as far as I'm concerned.

[NitroEX]

Faulconer with Menza a close second.

Overall it's the wrong style of music for an early 90s anime series imho. Also the Faulconer Cell themes are techno ear rape.

[MagicBox]

In my mind, the foreign dub musicians and the video game musicians don't "count" whenever I rank the composers. To me, it's just a contest between Shunsuke Kikuchi, Akihito Tokunaga, Kenji Yamamoto, and Norihito Sumitomo. I simply think of the dub themes and video game themes as bonus "image songs" for the franchise. I used to include Keiju Ishikawa (The "Plan To Eradicate The Saiyans" composer) and Hiroshi Takaki (The "Plan To Eradicate The Super Saiyans" composer) in my rankings, but not anymore since those specials were only produced for their respective video games (and nearly all of Takaki's score for "Episode Of Burdock" was recycled from his video game work, so I don't count that either).

With all of that said, Sumitomo is easily my least favorite. I liked some of what he did for the 2013 movie, but I've listened to all of his music since then (Kai, Super, Resurrection 'F') and it does absolutely nothing for me. With two full TV shows and two movies under his belt, he's had plenty of time to pop out something worth listening to. Yet here we are.

Yamamoto is a close second-least favorite. I liked a lot of his original themes for Kai, and I really like his arrangements, but his score as a whole was far from perfect. Actually, now that all of his work has been replaced and he's been officially "erased" from history, I've been thinking of excluding him from my rankings as well. I'm not quite there yet, though.

[Kakacarrottop]

Whoever of the ones listed above did the Ocean Dub score, really generic and unmemorable stuff all around as far as I'm concerned.

Well if you're going to pigeonhole every Ocean-voiced dub into a single entity, then there are three composers overall: Peter Berring for the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball, Ron Wasserman for the Saiyan/Namek Saga and then Tom Keenlyside for the rest of DBZ. I assume you are talking about the Keenlyside score, which recycled a lot of crappy music from "Megaman".

[DB1984]

Kakacarrottop, kinda off-topic, but how much music did Levy and Haim Saban actually compose during the past 30 years or so? Since Levy didn't really do DBZ's American score.

Similarly, I've heard someone claim that Bruce Faulconer didn't really compose much of his own music, but I don't know if that's actually true or not.

[Lord Beerus]

Mark Menza. Literally no redeemable tracks.

[Kakacarrottop]

Kakacarrottop, kinda off-topic, but how much music did Levy and Haim Saban actually compose during the past 30 years or so? Since Levy didn't really do DBZ's American score.

Similarly, I've heard someone claim that Bruce Faulconer didn't really compose much of his own music, but I don't know if that's actually true or not.

During the 80s they did compose a lot of TV music & themes (like Inspector Gadget, The Real Ghostbusters and He-Man), but it was in the 90s they started stealing credit for other peoples work, so they could earn music royalties. Basically every single show Saban were involved with in the 90s (such as Digimon, Spider-Man, X-Men, Power Rangers and DBZ) had "Shuki Levy & Kussa Mahchi" falsely credited under music, with the name "Kussa Mahchi" being an alias for Haim.

Faulconer, unlike Levy, actually did compose some music for the series, although he worked with an entire team of musicians, so simply crediting "Bruce Faulconer" for everything is a bit unfair.

[DoomieDoomie911]

As Magic Box said, I don't think it's really right to consider dub composers.

I haven't heard enough from Yamamoto to really judge, but Sumitomo's scores just haven't really impressed me. They're not really bad per se, but they're really not memorable at all. They pale in comparison to the Kikuchі score, or even the Tokunaga score.

[ShadowDude112]

Nathan Johnson, Mark Menza, and Bruce Faulconer are my votes.

[AM Reflection]

I've never heard any of the dub soundtracks post-Faulconer so I guess I can't comment on this as a whole. But from what I know, Sumitomo's work is the worst by far.

Six episodes into Super and there hasn't been a single memorable track aside from maybe Beerus' cor anglais theme because the bloody thing plays almost every time he appears on screen. Totally generic anime/video game soundtrack. The stuff all sounds like some stock royalty-free music you can search for by mood or scene description. You have things like your "rich people gathering for a party" theme, your "kids getting into mischief" theme, your "tension building/RPG mini-boss" theme, various other "RPG battle" themes etc. It's hard to even call what he's doing composing. There's little consistency with the instruments and sounds being used between tracks. So I guess there's no need for him to actually have any creative use of melodies or percussive rhythms within his own style to create a desired mood or feeling. Just the most basic, cliche selections will suffice. Super weak.

[DBZAOTA482]

Mark Menza. Literally no redeemable tracks.

This.

[Dbzfan94]

Mark Menza. Literally no redeemable tracks.

This.

I heard Mark Menza did the opening that was on all 291 episodes of Z, imho that's the only good track he did. Everything else for GT was just bad.

That being said, I have to go with Mark Menza or both the Ocean Dub scores. But if I had to pick one, I choose Menza.

[Doctor.]

I dislike all of the dub scores. Shuki Levy, Bruce Faulconer and Mark Menza are the only ones I have some experience with, so I don't have much of an opinion about the other dub composers, but from these, it's a tight match between Mark Menza and Shuki Levy, I don't like any of the soundtracks they produced, while I can enjoy Faulconer's on occasion, even if I think it doesn't fit the series.

From the japanese composers, it's Yamamoto because, well, I think everyone should know why. Taking out a person's character out of the equation, though, it's Sumitomo, but I like the guy's tracks a lot, still.