Thoughts on FUNimation's treatment of Dragon Ball

[Captain Awesome]

Well that's what I get for posting this late at night.

I actually need to spot check more of DB, I think I switched audio tracks on my dvd's twice throughout the entire series, so I'm not super familiar with it.

[Captain-Sora]

Don't worry, it's no problem, I make mistakes like that all the time. >_>;

Anyways, besides the things I already explained on why I like DB's FUNi work over the subs was because, as I said, they keep decent level of maturity on it in the dialogue plus the voice cast have of course, gotten far better than their work in DBZ. Now, way back during Z, as you gave an example, they kept mutating the dialogue and representation of characters plus toning it down for the kids.

Meanwhile in DB, they actually made a script that not only had the characters have a bit more wit and seemed alive compared to the subs, but it was made of a great amount of dialogue, all done without a care for children to understand them or not, compared to their old work for DBZ where it used simple and dumbed down dialogue making it kill the characters' and setting's mood that was intended from the original version, although I do give props for still giving a sense of wit and being a little more lively throughout their Boo Saga parts.

[Xell]

From what I gather, Funimation used to Americanize ALL their anime before Fruits Basket.

I believe it was because of Justin Cook and him wanting to dub Fruits Basket as true to the original that Funimation now makes their anime the way they do today. Fruits Basket did so well, they realized they didn't HAVE to Americanize their anime.

Unfortunately, the dub of Dragonball Z came before Fruits Basket and Americanizing it seemed to work in terms of sales.

I think they're just scared to make massive changes now to make it seem like the Japanese version because they are worried this will ruin sales and the dub fans that LOVE the English version will get all annoyed over it.

[B]

Yeah, Dragon Ball is not special in that regard. A lot of FUNimation dubbed anime has their script altered. Sometimes slightly, sometimes not so slightly. Desert Punk's dub isn't extremely faithful to the original for the sake of comedy, as it is a comedy anime. And if you've ever watched Shin-chan, you'll know what they did that show's script.

Also are we talking about TV edits or the new sets that have been coming out? I haven't picked one up yet, and decent DB information is sometimes hard to come across, so I don't know if they're actually redubbing it to be more accurate, or just slapping old voice tracks on cleaner looking footage.

[Raki]

I've always found Funi's treatment of Dragonball to be somewhat of a joke. A horrible and terrible joke that has caused the series to a laughing stock among common anime fans.

[Vekurotto]

Funi's treatment of Dragon Ball was never, "They made a mistake but it was easy to find out why they did.", but was and is, "This takes a lot of work to even think about screwing up."

[Super Ghost Kamikaze]

I've always found Funi's treatment of Dragonball to be somewhat of a joke. A horrible and terrible joke that has caused the series to a laughing stock among common anime fans.

That's fine by me. I can't stand common anime fans, and I have my original Japanese version on DVD with a great subtitle track. Unlike in the days of DBZ Uncensored, it's hard to complain.

[Herms]

I actually need to spot check more of DB, I think I switched audio tracks on my dvd's twice throughout the entire series, so I'm not super familiar with it.

I've seen the Funi dub of the first 26 episodes or so of the dub (up to the end of the 21st TB), and then the second half of the Piccolo Daimao arc and all of 23rd TB, and while the voice acting was pretty good on the whole, I didn't see the script quality didn't seem much better than with DBZ, both in terms of accuracy to the original and sounding stupid on its own. So I don't really agree with Captain-Sora on that, so I do agree that the subtitles for DB were arkward at times.

[Captain-Sora]

I actually need to spot check more of DB, I think I switched audio tracks on my dvd's twice throughout the entire series, so I'm not super familiar with it.

I've seen the Funi dub of the first 26 episodes or so of the dub (up to the end of the 21st TB), and then the second half of the Piccolo Daimao arc and all of 23rd TB, and while the voice acting was pretty good on the whole, I didn't see the script quality didn't seem much better than with DBZ, both in terms of accuracy to the original and sounding stupid on its own. So I don't really agree with Captain-Sora on that, so I do agree that the subtitles for DB were arkward at times.

Heh, well maybe it's just because I'm just overrating FUNi's work as a whole for Dragon Ball(not including Z), but still, I really respect their work during the TenShinHan saga since that's where I think where their good job really stands out. And Piccolo Jr. Saga was great too(although the most obvious mistakes could be spotted during that one but again, their preformance and great dialogue makes up for it there).

I admit sometimes the dialogue and script isn't all that cracked up to be during the parts like the early episodes and a few episodes of Red Ribbon saga but at least the best parts of DB got good attention.

[Herms]

Heh, well maybe it's just because I'm just overrating FUNi's work as a whole for Dragon Ball(not including Z), but still, I really respect their work during the TenShinHan saga since that's where I think where their good job really stands out. And Piccolo Jr. Saga was great too(although the most obvious mistakes could be spotted during that one but again, their preformance and great dialogue makes up for it there).

Well, I have never seen the 22nd TB episodes, dubbed or otherwise (despite actually having won the Funi set of them from an old Daizex contest), so I'll have to check them out sometime.

[bkev]

The one thing I didn't like about the Tenshinhan saga (the only DB Saga DVD I own) was that they dubbed over a silent series of flashback paintings involving TaoPaiPai. The Crane Hermit started to babble on about how he should have treated him like a pupil rather than a brother, et cetera. But other'n that, it's good.

[Super Ghost Kamikaze]

The dub of Dragon Ball goes over silence a bit too much, though to a lesser extent than Z I suppose.

One thing I hate is Dub Roshi. His voice is completely goofy, with no range. The "serious martial arts master" moments are hurt by the voice alone, and the dub seems to like to toss jokes into them, which really hurts that dramatic contrast.

[Innagadadavida]

The dub of Dragon Ball goes over silence a bit too much, though to a lesser extent than Z I suppose.

One thing I hate is Dub Roshi. His voice is completely goofy, with no range. The "serious martial arts master" moments are hurt by the voice alone, and the dub seems to like to toss jokes into them, which really hurts that dramatic contrast.

I disagree, Roshi's voice actor in the FUNimation dub works well with the character IMO. He does great perverted stuff and serious martial arts master. There isn't much in between for Roshi.

[Bardock the Mexican]

I just watch the show and enjoy it for what it is. I think that's really what everyone else should do and not be so offended by crap that, at the end of the day, isn't affecting them. Whatever the hell FUNimation or ANY company does to ANY anime isn't literally destroying the original version of the show to where you can't see it the way you want to, they're just "things that exist" that you can easily ignore.

I think you forget that sometimes its not about what is more quality but what is more easily found in a certain country or place. I mean, in the US one cannot find certain things as in other places. It takes more looking and searching, but you are right in what you are saying. It is not a detriment to the original if they change somthing when they obtain the material.

[Miracles]

Personally, I never found FUNimation's alterations to the Dragon Ball series annoying or frustrating.

Any true Dragonball Z original Japanese watcher would agree with you.
Cause we really know how Dragonball Z was done!

[Bussani]

The one thing I didn't like about the Tenshinhan saga (the only DB Saga DVD I own) was that they dubbed over a silent series of flashback paintings involving TaoPaiPai. The Crane Hermit started to babble on about how he should have treated him like a pupil rather than a brother, et cetera. But other'n that, it's good.

Dubbing companies seem to hate silent scenes. It's like they're afraid that the kids will get bored and walk off if there isn't talking every second.

In the UK, Tenchi Muyo!'s run on TV was even worse. They cut out all the establishing shots to save time, completely butchered the flow of the show. I could barely follow it.

[Tanooki Kuribo]

I didn't mind FUNimation when they did the original 13 episodes of DragonBall, and the first two season of DragonBall Z. Yea, they were edited but the movies were very well done. I really thought the movies were a small taste of what the series would be like uncut but, I was wrong. Once FUNimation went to Texas everything went downhill, once it got to the bottom of the hill it just kept going deep into the ground, past the Earth's core and out the other side into space where it just exploded into a million pieces.

[SSJ2bardock]

Personally, I never found FUNimation's alterations to the Dragon Ball series annoying or frustrating.

Any true Dragonball Z original Japanese watcher would agree with you.
Cause we really know how Dragonball Z was done!

And this is the reason why people get angry.

[Tanooki Kuribo]

Any true Dragonball Z original Japanese watcher would agree with you.
Cause we really know how Dragonball Z was done!

I don't think it's really that. There are some pretty good DragonBall dubs out there.

[RyujiOtogi]

The only problem I really had with the Dragon Ball dub was that all of the perverted jokes were changed. No more Puff Puff, or anything like that. The pervy jokes were still kept, but they were toned down a lot. There was no swearing(which isn't really a big deal I guess) and some of the voices were off. But I like the vocies for the most part.