8000 Saiyan wrote:Sure, there were some characters that sounded absolutely ridiculous in the Saban dub, but even that practice was carried over to the in-house dub. McFarland's Roshi, Hebert's Ox-King, Schemmel's King Kai and Sabat's Recoome come to mind as characters who sound absolutely ridiculous, unless McFarland in real life sounds like a moron who can't never sound serious when in a serious moment. Seriously, I'll never get the praise McFarland gets as Master Roshi. Being able to handle comedic moments means absolutely nothing if you are unable to sound serious when delivering serious moments or badass when it comes to that Kamehameha delivery in one of the episodes of the Emperor Pilaf Saga.
And if you ask me, yes, it was a big downgrade changing from the Ocean cast to the in-house cast. It felt like a big slap to the series that was originally recorded by professional voice actors from Japan for only to have it being recorded in English by a bunch of unexperienced guys in Texas. I'm not saying that DBZ needed to be recorded by Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep and Marlon Brando, but it just needed to be recorded by people who knew what the fuck they were doing.
If there's one thing that I'll give the in-house cast is praise for finally giving us a respectable dub with Kai. It's just a damn shame that we had to wait eleven long years for them to show us that they indeed could rise to a level beyond mediocrity. Oh, and I'll give them credit for Rick Robertson, Kyle Hebert, Dameon Clarke, Kent Williams, Chuck Huber, Kara Edwards, Andrew Chandler, Chris Rager and Duncan Brannan.
I guess them taking eleven long years to give us a tolerable dub is another reason why I can't never go back to watching their stuff. It's like: "Oh, they can finally act now. ", even though they should have learned how to act a long time ago.
I never said the practice of silly voices didn’t get carried over to the in-house dub. My point was that the practice of having ridiculous voices in a Dragon Ball dub didn’t start in 1999. I just don’t think the change from the Ocean cast to the in-house cast was as big of a downgrade as people make it out to be. Sure, it was a downgrade to an extent, but not as much as people act like. Mind you, I don’t care much for Ocean productions in general. I wasn’t entirely crazy about
Beast Wars, I hated
X-Men: Evolution,
My Little Pony is a joke, and the only actor who I think did a truly amazing job in
ReBoot was Tony Jay.
I’m not saying they’re bad actors or anything, but the problem with Ocean productions is that a good chunk of them are Saturday morning cartoons from Canada that, as far as I know, are a cheaper alternative to using LA voice actors. I hear a lot of praise for the dubs of
Death Note and
Black Lagoon, and I’m sure those dubs are pretty great, but those are also shows that are much more mature than most of the other works done with the Ocean group. As a whole, the Ocean group just seems like they’ve been used for a lot of low tier cartoons.
Frankly, I never understood the praise for voices such as Brian Drummond’s Vegeta. To me, he makes Vegeta sound like a one-note bad guy. Sure, his screams were pretty good, but the voice as a whole just doesn’t fit Vegeta, in my opinion. It really seems like the main thing his Vegeta voice is remembered for is giving us a meme. I’ll take Chris Sabat’s current voice for Vegeta over him.
I’m still interested in seeing how the Ocean dub of
Kai turns out, but I can’t imagine it really topping FUNimation’s dub, especially if they’re using a replacement score.
