Are There Any Updates On The Harmony Gold Dub Of Dragon Ball?

[Robo4900]

Again I never claimed only Funi would've grabbed it, just that it likely would've taken much longer to have been dubbed.

You can't say that wasn't implied in your post.

But fair enough.
However, I would contest that it taking longer wouldn't have been a bad thing. After all, Funi dubbed it pretty slowly in '96-'97, took '98 and most of '99 off... Really it mostly was happening late '99 until early '05. (Early '04, if you exclude GT)
And if some other company had picked it up, then with all the other anime successes going in in '98, '99, '00, and earlier... Someone would DEFINITELY have picked it up by '01.
So... A. I don't see why it taking longer would be so bad.
And B. It wouldn't even have taken that much longer.

I strongly disagree that i'm "giving them too much credit" , sure there were a few somewhat succesful films, but anime was still overall seen as pretty niche, especially in the realm of TV, so by all means hate them and hold a grudge against them for their dubs all you want(even though it seems pretty pointless nowadays and there are far more productive things you could be doing with your time instead but I digress ), does not make them any less influential, and it's not just me saying that, it's people FAR smarter and more well-versed then you and I:https://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceroger ... b24c0966c1

Except Dragon Ball came to TV about the same time as Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other things in the late '90s/early '00s that took America by storm. And DBZ was the only one Funimation did that hit big.

if Funimation didn't exist it likely would've taken a hell of a lot longer for it to have been dubbed in the U.S..

Unlikely.
Even if it had taken until the late '90s/early '00s, that's only three or four years later than Funi brought it over, at which point, Pokémon, Digimon, Sailor Moon, et al. had hit big, and companies like Saban, 4Kids, etc. would have been grasping to get the next big thing, and with Dragon Ball being so big in Japan and Europe, we'd have got it then.

In that case the most likely scenario would've been 4Kids getting their hands on it(which as CureDragon pointed out means the very likely scenario where we either don't get subbed episodes at all or they only get a few token DVD releases before ending like 4Kids short-lived uncut DVDs of Shaman King and Yu-Gi-Oh)

I don't think that's as bad as many people say. 4Kids would have at least given us the full original run, with a tone similar to the original, and while death would probably have been censored similar to how it was in Yu-Gi-Oh etc., we already got that with the Saban and edited Funi dubs on TV, with the HFIL stuff, which was pretty well justified in the show by the existence of its own afterlife.

So, the presentation in the west would've been more faithful, and covered the actual whole run.

The subbed version would've been more obscure because of likely dub-only home video, yes. But personally, I'd prefer to have decent, available dub-only DVDs than the unwatchable bullshit Funimation have consistently put out. And at least that way, people who watched it on TV could actually watch the damn version they grew up on. (Fans of either the American or Canadian dubs are screwed in this regard; you literally cannot buy the version you remember watching as a kid)
Either way, home media does not serve anyone but the most casual fan, so whether or not the hardcore fans would have to do their own fansubs or not, both versions of this play out the same: Official releases are unwatchable shit, and the hardcore fans prefer to pirate the show so as to not watch an utterly butchered, unwatchable version. So I don't see how this is a drawback.

Honestly I don't blame them for skipping DB(and I was never confused by any of the stuff with Piccolo),

I'm not going to dignify this with any substantial argument, but suffice it to say: Skipping DB is the single greatest disservice Funimation ever did to Dragon Ball, and to this day, we're still stuck with most people talking about "The Dragon Ball Z franchise", with the entire first 153 episodes/194 chapters that preceeded it being relegated to an even more sour status than GT: A skippable side-adventure only for the hardcore fans.
That is my final word on this, and I'm willing to agree to disagree, if only because I am so fucking tired of arguing about whether or not it's okay to skip the first half of the original run, that I simply refuse to do so here. Apologies if this comes off too harsh; I'm simply fed up with this "Debate" of whether or not the first ~five years of Toriyama's manga was just him faffing about before he got to the "real stuff".

4Kids did something similar with Yu-Gi-Oh by skipping the first 27 episodes(mainly because Toei wasn't eager to license them as the lack of card games probably made them a more difficult sell) and that paid off for them.

So, what you're saying here is essentially equivalent to comparing the skipping of DB to Funimation only licensing the remake version of Neon Genesis Evangelion, rather than the original series; although the fans like to refer to the original 27-episode run as "Season 0", it was an entirely different production, by an entirely different studio, with an entirely different voice cast, an entirely different animation style, an entirely different style of show-running, etc. And I'm pretty sure Toei lost their license to do anything with their 27-episode Yu-Gi-Oh series before the second, more successful show began. The original Toei Yu-Gi-Oh series hasn't even had any home media release (either in Japan or elsewhere) since the original VHSes (and the Laserdisc of the movie) released when the show was new.

4Kids didn't skip anything, they picked up the only Yu-Gi-Oh show that was licenseable, and dubbed the entire run (with cuts, admittedly, but... You know what I mean; it's Saban Z-style cutting of stories and episodes, rather than skipping the entire first half of the story).

For all intents and purposes, Yu-Gi-Oh (1998 series) and Yu-Gi-Oh (2000 series) are two entirely different, unrelated adaptations of the original manga. The only reason anyone characterises them as having any kind of connection is that, while the 1998 series' approach was to adapt the early stories in an abridged/cut-down manner, the 2000 series was a much more faithful, traditional adaptation of the manga with filler, starting from when the Duel Monsters card game was introduced... Despite the fact the two series were produced in entirely different manners, and ultimately don't canon with each-other, they do adapt different portions of the original manga, so a lot of fans who aren't as informed about it get the idea that there's a connection beyond them just happening to be adapted from the same manga.

Another apt comparison is the two different anime adaptations of Fullmetal Alchemist. (Admittedly I've never seen either -- and I've never seen any version of Evangelion, either, come to think of it -- though from what I hear, the comparison isn't all that apt, since the voice cast was still largely the same, and I hear the second one rushes a lot of the stories the original had told, since it expected most people to have already watched that, so it's an inexact comparison. But, still, the two anime are considered distinct adaptations, and yet they have a far greater connection than the two Yu-Gi-Oh series, so... That does say a lot about how disconnected the two Yu-Gi-Oh series really are)

Look I like DB as much as the next person on here, but it does kind of take some time to really get going and even if it did have better promotion and timeslots in syndication, i'm not too sure it would've been nearly as big as DBZ was.

This is very similar to the "I prefer the Ocean cast for the Saiyan and Namek sagas and the Funimation cast for the Frieza saga onwards" argument; it's the "The way we got it was the best way" way of looking at it. It's impossible to disprove, because we simply didn't get it another way. But I will say that the fact Latin America, France, Germany, and every other non-US territory that got Dragon Ball, got OG DB first, but still went on to have all three series become absolutely massive in their respsective territories, shows that any ideas that OG DB is inherently unmarketable in a way Z isn't, is unsubstantiated bullshit, and ENTIRELY stems from the fact that the way the west got it skipped OG DB, and people have a natural tendency to assume the way they're used to things is the only way of things.

I'll tell you now: Not only are we not in the best timeline as far as Dragon Ball in the west is concerned, I'm fairly certain we're in one of the worse ones. Though if you want some optimism, I'll note this is far from the darkest timeline: Harmony Gold may have ended up not dubbing all of Dragon Ball, but still sitting on the rights such that we never get the rest, ADV could have acquired it and then got it into a similar mess to Evangelion such that the western rights to it are left in limbo for roughly 20 years...
But Funimation getting ahold of Dragon Ball was still most certainly one of the worst ways it could have gone.

Hell even when DB was airing in prime-time slots on Toonami it's ratings were still nowhere near what DBZ was pulling.

Of course that was how it happened. They aired it in the middle of the frickin' Cell arc, they had no idea how to market it (ads presented it as "BEFORE ZEEEE... THERE WAS... DRAGON BALL... MORE ACTION etc." type of thing, then you watch it, and it's got the original, classical-style score, it's telling small-scale, intimate stories, most of the characters you know aren't there, and it has no relevance to the intense, climactic story you're already right in the middle of. It was a fucking sham)

Look away from the USA for a moment, though. Canada and the UK aired OG DB, and they aired it after GT (weird, I know). Being the only Dragon Ball on air, thus not having to compete with an in-progress climactic story from the end of the run, it pulled in the same kind of ratings as one expected Dragon Ball franchise material to pull in at that time.

Then there's GT which actually was a bigger success here then it was in Japan ironically(where it's ratings while not bad were nowhere near what the series was pulling in it's peak), matter of fact America was one of the only places where GT didn't fail and part of that came down to Funi skipping the first 16 episodes to get right to the episodes that most emulated Z(and then making more money by selling them as "lost episodes" on DVD)

In ratings? Yes, more people watched GT in America than in Japan. The same is true of the Boo arc of Z; Japanese fans checked out of Dragon Ball in the mid-Boo arc, and never tuned back in, really. Actual appreciation of GT is pretty neutral, but people just didn't care at the time. Dragon Ball had run for over ten years by then, people were done.
Meanwhile, Funimation's presentation in America, while it brought in high ratings, could not be called a success in anything other than that; the fans utterly hated it, and GT has always been a joke in the western fandom.

And once again, you refer to "Part of that came down to Funi skipping the first 16 episodes"... Again, I must ask how you know this was a positive factor? Pretty sure ratings for the entire run of GT were solid in both the UK and Canada too, and they aired the full runs. Same in France, Latin America, etc... And their presentations were far more faithful, and are looked on far more kindly than America; no one loves GT, in fact I'm told it draws a lot of criticism in France -- it's remembered as the weakest of the three shows, but it's not hated with a burning passion like America. I hear from some friends that Latin American fans could be said to generally just kinda like GT. Again, no one loves it, but it's not the buttmonkey of the fandom.

And as for "get to the episodes that emulated Z"... That's nonsense. It went back to the long-standing style Dragon Ball had had since the 21st Tenkaichi arc (the second ever storyline) of being more villain-centric, rather than "adventure of the week looking for macguffins" as it had been in the very first DB arc. Other than that, I will say... Yes, GT was far more comfortable in its own skin 16 episodes in; it had settled into its unique style, and found its niche. But you'll find you get that with ANY show where you skip an arbitrary number of episodes from the beginning. And by doing that, you mess up character progressions, and skip any good stuff the beginning may have had to offer.
Again, what you're doing here is just "The way we got it was the best way", which is always nonsense, argued only by people who refuse to see the flaws in something they're nostalgic for.

Some shows that are big in Japan and other overseas countries just don't catch on here for whatever reason and that's just the sad truth and no amount of angry words for Funi are going to change that. Just look at Saint Seiya, its been dubbed no less then three times now in the U.S. and it's still nowhere near as big as it is elsewhere, sometimes you just have to accept that certain things just aren't going to catch on here.

Sure.
But Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT have consistently been big everywhere. And OG DB wasn't even a failure necessarily in the USA; it has a rather significant cult following. But most people barely even think of it as existing.

So nope, not seeing any "false dichotomy" here at all

A false dichotomy is when you present "It's either this or this" in a situation where that's not the case. And so far, your post is full of that; at every turn, your philosophy has been "Either it's how it was, or it wouldn't have done as well as it did." Which there is zero evidence for. Dragon Ball was a success in the west, yes. That doesn't mean we got it in the best way that we could have, or that any decision made along the way other than importing it, was a good one.

In fact, we know pretty well that back in '99, people hated Funi changing the cast, people hated Funi changing the music... Every change Funi made was utterly loathed by the fans at the time. But the casuals just watched on without caring, and grew to understand the way they got it to be the only way they knew it, and most of these people have never considered that things could have been better. Most people don't consider that it would've given better work if Dragon Ball had actually been voiced by professional voice actors throughout its entire run, rather than just in the first two seasons of Z. (Yes, Funi's in-house cast eventually could be called professional, but back in '99-'04? Hell no)
Most people don't consider that it would've given a better product if they'd got it all in order. Everywhere I know of where Dragon Ball was successful outside of the USA, the UK, and Canada, Dragon Ball was done in order, and generally was presented more faithfully than the USA version, and we got consistent smash-hits. And naturally, one can't really argue that a run is better if you deprive it of 153 episodes that would have been well-loved, and most people in the USA simply never gave OG DB a single glance, so clearly, the ball was dropped hard here.
Most people don't consider that it would've given a better product if it had been presented more faithfully. People love Dragon Ball, they don't love Funimation's adaptational changes. If that was the case, Kai 1.0 would have been a massive flop, and the shows would've fallen in popularity over their run (despite Funi's work on the original run being consistently shit, they did improve; not enough, but it was a lot of improvement, and in fairness, after how bad season 3 was, there was no where to go but up), and yet Dragon Ball's popularity in the west only grew.

Again, you have a core misconception to your understanding of this: A false dichotomy that either we got what we got, or we got something worse. And that's simply nonsense. We got what we got, and we have no idea what would've happened if anything was different, but all evidence from how it's gone down in other countries points to Funimation fucking it up at every turn.

Dragon Ball was a success in spite of Funimation, not because of Funimation.

[KBABZ]

Dragon Ball was a success in spite of Funimation, not because of Funimation.

To emphasize this last point, all the various dubs of the show have run the gamut of great to truly bad, and yet we still find them so appealing because the story that's being told is still compelling at the end of the day. I really don't like things like Goku being called Zero, or the Harmony Gold voice, but the episode was good anyway because, bloody hell, it's Dragon Ball still.

[Robo4900]

Dragon Ball was a success in spite of Funimation, not because of Funimation.

To emphasize this last point, all the various dubs of the show have run the gamut of great to truly bad, and yet we still find them so appealing because the story that's being told is still compelling at the end of the day. I really don't like things like Goku being called Zero, or the Harmony Gold voice, but the episode was good anyway because, bloody hell, it's Dragon Ball still.

Even the infamously-butchered French -- and French-derived -- dubs are still beloved because of the material they're working off of.

Gold is still gold, even if you drop a few lumps of horse manure on top.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Spoiler:

Again I never claimed only Funi would've grabbed it, just that it likely would've taken much longer to have been dubbed.

You can't say that wasn't implied in your post.

But fair enough.
However, I would contest that it taking longer wouldn't have been a bad thing. After all, Funi dubbed it pretty slowly in '96-'97, took '98 and most of '99 off... Really it mostly was happening late '99 until early '05. (Early '04, if you exclude GT)
And if some other company had picked it up, then with all the other anime successes going in in '98, '99, '00, and earlier... Someone would DEFINITELY have picked it up by '01.
So... A. I don't see why it taking longer would be so bad.
And B. It wouldn't even have taken that much longer.

I strongly disagree that i'm "giving them too much credit" , sure there were a few somewhat succesful films, but anime was still overall seen as pretty niche, especially in the realm of TV, so by all means hate them and hold a grudge against them for their dubs all you want(even though it seems pretty pointless nowadays and there are far more productive things you could be doing with your time instead but I digress ), does not make them any less influential, and it's not just me saying that, it's people FAR smarter and more well-versed then you and I:https://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceroger ... b24c0966c1

Except Dragon Ball came to TV about the same time as Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and other things in the late '90s/early '00s that took America by storm. And DBZ was the only one Funimation did that hit big.

if Funimation didn't exist it likely would've taken a hell of a lot longer for it to have been dubbed in the U.S..

Unlikely.
Even if it had taken until the late '90s/early '00s, that's only three or four years later than Funi brought it over, at which point, Pokémon, Digimon, Sailor Moon, et al. had hit big, and companies like Saban, 4Kids, etc. would have been grasping to get the next big thing, and with Dragon Ball being so big in Japan and Europe, we'd have got it then.

In that case the most likely scenario would've been 4Kids getting their hands on it(which as CureDragon pointed out means the very likely scenario where we either don't get subbed episodes at all or they only get a few token DVD releases before ending like 4Kids short-lived uncut DVDs of Shaman King and Yu-Gi-Oh)

I don't think that's as bad as many people say. 4Kids would have at least given us the full original run, with a tone similar to the original, and while death would probably have been censored similar to how it was in Yu-Gi-Oh etc., we already got that with the Saban and edited Funi dubs on TV, with the HFIL stuff, which was pretty well justified in the show by the existence of its own afterlife.

So, the presentation in the west would've been more faithful, and covered the actual whole run.

The subbed version would've been more obscure because of likely dub-only home video, yes. But personally, I'd prefer to have decent, available dub-only DVDs than the unwatchable bullshit Funimation have consistently put out. And at least that way, people who watched it on TV could actually watch the damn version they grew up on. (Fans of either the American or Canadian dubs are screwed in this regard; you literally cannot buy the version you remember watching as a kid)
Either way, home media does not serve anyone but the most casual fan, so whether or not the hardcore fans would have to do their own fansubs or not, both versions of this play out the same: Official releases are unwatchable shit, and the hardcore fans prefer to pirate the show so as to not watch an utterly butchered, unwatchable version. So I don't see how this is a drawback.

Honestly I don't blame them for skipping DB(and I was never confused by any of the stuff with Piccolo),

I'm not going to dignify this with any substantial argument, but suffice it to say: Skipping DB is the single greatest disservice Funimation ever did to Dragon Ball, and to this day, we're still stuck with most people talking about "The Dragon Ball Z franchise", with the entire first 153 episodes/194 chapters that preceeded it being relegated to an even more sour status than GT: A skippable side-adventure only for the hardcore fans.
That is my final word on this, and I'm willing to agree to disagree, if only because I am so fucking tired of arguing about whether or not it's okay to skip the first half of the original run, that I simply refuse to do so here. Apologies if this comes off too harsh; I'm simply fed up with this "Debate" of whether or not the first ~five years of Toriyama's manga was just him faffing about before he got to the "real stuff".

4Kids did something similar with Yu-Gi-Oh by skipping the first 27 episodes(mainly because Toei wasn't eager to license them as the lack of card games probably made them a more difficult sell) and that paid off for them.

So, what you're saying here is essentially equivalent to comparing the skipping of DB to Funimation only licensing the remake version of Neon Genesis Evangelion, rather than the original series; although the fans like to refer to the original 27-episode run as "Season 0", it was an entirely different production, by an entirely different studio, with an entirely different voice cast, an entirely different animation style, an entirely different style of show-running, etc. And I'm pretty sure Toei lost their license to do anything with their 27-episode Yu-Gi-Oh series before the second, more successful show began. The original Toei Yu-Gi-Oh series hasn't even had any home media release (either in Japan or elsewhere) since the original VHSes (and the Laserdisc of the movie) released when the show was new.

4Kids didn't skip anything, they picked up the only Yu-Gi-Oh show that was licenseable, and dubbed the entire run (with cuts, admittedly, but... You know what I mean; it's Saban Z-style cutting of stories and episodes, rather than skipping the entire first half of the story).

For all intents and purposes, Yu-Gi-Oh (1998 series) and Yu-Gi-Oh (2000 series) are two entirely different, unrelated adaptations of the original manga. The only reason anyone characterises them as having any kind of connection is that, while the 1998 series' approach was to adapt the early stories in an abridged/cut-down manner, the 2000 series was a much more faithful, traditional adaptation of the manga with filler, starting from when the Duel Monsters card game was introduced... Despite the fact the two series were produced in entirely different manners, and ultiamtely don't canon with each-other, they do adapt different portions of the original manga, so a lot of fans who aren't as informed about it get the idea that there's a connection beyond them just happening to be adapted from the same manga.

Another apt comparison is the two different anime adaptations of Fullmetal Alchemist.

Look I like DB as much as the next person on here, but it does kind of take some time to really get going and even if it did have better promotion and timeslots in syndication, i'm not too sure it would've been nearly as big as DBZ was.

This is very similar to the "I prefer the Ocean cast for the Saiyan and Namek sagas and the Funimation cast for the Frieza saga onwards" argument; it's the "The way we got it was the best way" way of looking at it. It's impossible to disprove, because we simply didn't get it another way. But I will say that the fact Latin America, France, Germany, and every other non-US territory that got Dragon Ball, got OG DB first, but still went on to have all three series become absolutely massive in their respsective territories, shows that any ideas that OG DB is inherently unmarketable in a way Z isn't, is unsubstantiated bullshit, and ENTIRELY stems from the fact that the way the west got it skipped OG DB, and people have a natural tendency to assume the way they're used to things is the only way of things.

I'll tell you now: Not only are we not in the best timeline as far as Dragon Ball in the west is concerned, I'm fairly certain we're in one of the worse ones. Though if you want some optimism, I'll note this is far from the darkest timeline: Harmony Gold may have ended up not dubbing all of Dragon Ball, but still sitting on the rights such that we never get the rest, ADV could have acquired it and then got it into a similar mess to Evangelion such that the western rights to it are left in limbo for roughly 20 years...
But Funimation getting ahold of Dragon Ball was still most certainly one of the worst ways it could have gone.

Hell even when DB was airing in prime-time slots on Toonami it's ratings were still nowhere near what DBZ was pulling.

Of course that was how it happened. They aired it in the middle of the frickin' Cell arc, they had no idea how to market it (ads presented it as "BEFORE ZEEEE... THERE WAS... DRAGON BALL... MORE ACTION etc." type of thing, then you watch it, and it's got the original, classical-style score, it's telling small-scale, intimate stories, most of the characters you know aren't there, and it has no relevance to the intense, climactic story you're already right in the middle of. It was a fucking sham)

Look away from the USA for a moment, though. Canada and the UK aired OG DB, and they aired it after GT (weird, I know). Being the only Dragon Ball on air, thus not having to compete with an in-progress climactic story from the end of the run, it pulled in the same kind of ratings as one expected Dragon Ball franchise material to pull in at that time.

Then there's GT which actually was a bigger success here then it was in Japan ironically(where it's ratings while not bad were nowhere near what the series was pulling in it's peak), matter of fact America was one of the only places where GT didn't fail and part of that came down to Funi skipping the first 16 episodes to get right to the episodes that most emulated Z(and then making more money by selling them as "lost episodes" on DVD)

In ratings? Yes, more people watched GT in America than in Japan. The same is true of the Boo arc of Z; Japanese fans checked out of Dragon Ball in the mid-Boo arc, and never tuned back in, really. Actual appreciation of GT is pretty neutral, but people just didn't care at the time. Dragon Ball had run for over ten years by then, people were done.
Meanwhile, Funimation's presentation in America, while it brought in high ratings, could not be called a success in anything other than that; the fans utterly hated it, and GT has always been a joke in the western fandom.

And once again, you refer to "Part of that came down to Funi skipping the first 16 episodes"... Again, I must ask how you know this was a positive factor? Pretty sure ratings for the entire run of GT were solid in both the UK and Canada too, and they aired the full runs. Same in France, Latin America, etc... And their presentations were far more faithful, and are looked on far more kindly than America; no one loves GT, in fact I'm told it draws a lot of criticism in France -- it's remembered as the weakest of the three shows, but it's not hated with a burning passion like America. I hear from some friends that Latin American fans could be said to generally just kinda like GT. Again, no one loves it, but it's not the buttmonkey of the fandom.

And as for "get to the episodes that emulated Z"... That's nonsense. It went back to the long-standing style Dragon Ball had had since the 21st Tenkaichi arc (the second ever storyline) of being more villain-centric, rather than "adventure of the week looking for macguffins" as it had been in the very first DB arc. Other than that, I will say... Yes, GT was far more comfortable in its own skin 16 episodes in; it had settled into its unique style, and found its niche. But you'll find you get that with ANY show where you skip an arbitrary number of episodes from the beginning. And by doing that, you mess up character progressions, and skip any good stuff the beginning may have had to offer.
Again, what you're doing here is just "The way we got it was the best way", which is always nonsense, argued only by people who refuse to see the flaws in something they're nostalgic for.

Some shows that are big in Japan and other overseas countries just don't catch on here for whatever reason and that's just the sad truth and no amount of angry words for Funi are going to change that. Just look at Saint Seiya, its been dubbed no less then three times now in the U.S. and it's still nowhere near as big as it is elsewhere, sometimes you just have to accept that certain things just aren't going to catch on here.

Sure.
But Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Dragon Ball GT have consistently been big everywhere. And OG DB wasn't even a failure necessarily in the USA; it has a rather significant cult following. But most people barely even think of it as existing.

So nope, not seeing any "false dichotomy" here at all

A false dichotomy is when you present "It's either this or this" in a situation where that's not the case. And so far, your post is full of that; at every turn, your philosophy has been "Either it's how it was, or it wouldn't have done as well as it did." Which there is zero evidence for. Dragon Ball was a success in the west, yes. That doesn't mean we got it in the best way that we could have, or that any decision made along the way other than importing it, was a good one.

In fact, we know pretty well that back in '99, people hated Funi changing the cast, people hated Funi changing the music... Every change Funi made was utterly loathed by the fans at the time. But the casuals just watched on without caring, and grew to understand the way they got it to be the only way they knew it, and most of these people have never considered that things could have been better. Most people don't consider that it would've given better work if Dragon Ball had actually been voiced by professional voice actors throughout its entire run, rather than just in the first two seasons of Z. (Yes, Funi's in-house cast eventually could be called professional, but back in '99-'04? Hell no)
Most people don't consider that it would've given a better product if they'd got it all in order. Everywhere I know of where Dragon Ball was successful outside of the USA, the UK, and Canada, Dragon Ball was done in order, and generally was presented more faithfully than the USA version, and we got consistent smash-hits. And naturally, one can't really argue that a run is better if you deprive it of 153 episodes that would have been well-loved, and most people in the USA simply never gave OG DB a single glance, so clearly, the ball was dropped hard here.
Most people don't consider that it would've given a better product if it had been presented more faithfully. People love Dragon Ball, they don't love Funimation's adaptational changes. If that was the case, Kai 1.0 would have been a massive flop, and the shows would've fallen in popularity over their run (despite Funi's work on the original run being consistently shit, they did improve; not enough, but it was a lot of improvement, and in fairness, after how bad season 3 was, there was no where to go but up), and yet Dragon Ball's popularity in the west only grew.

Again, you have a core misconception to your understanding of this: A false dichotomy that either we got what we got, or we got something worse. And that's simply nonsense. We got what we got, and we have no idea what would've happened if anything was different, but all evidence from how it's gone down in other countries points to Funimation fucking it up at every turn.

Dragon Ball was a success in spite of Funimation, not because of Funimation.

I really think FUNi's attitude of toward the original series is by far the biggest travesty in their 25+ year history of having the license to the franchise here, because ever since stopping with episode 13 of their initial syndicated run back in '95 they have essentially reinforced on the notion that it's a comedic, less important show when compared to Z (Seriously, just take a look at the much later episodes after the first arc.) and the noticable lack of push when compared to the latter speak volumes of how little they think of it. Heck, it's gotten a grand total of just two DVD releases (and GT as well) over here in the last 16 years when compared to the deluge of DBZ on a constant basis. Skipping over the rest of the series in the mid 90's and straight to Z then not coming back to it until many moons later was a cascading ripple effect in terms of the franchise over here as a whole. It's such a disservice, because doing that basically devalued the original series and first portion of the overall story in favor of the more "action packed" second half of the manga's run which Z covers. It just really gets me that they've essentially been playing favorites and emphasizing one part over another of what is actually one whole story beginning to end. It's no less important than the other series, but FUNi has continually doubled down in making the original series seem like it's the unimportant prequel show that doesn't need to be watched which isn't as good as Z when that isn't even remotely true.

I mean really, they've done some crap things through the years but this one ranks top for me aside from their multitude of garbage home releases over the last decade plus.

[Valerius Dover]

Hey, so back to Harmony Gold. How do you guys think the pervy scenes in the remaining 4 episodes were written around?

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Hey, so back to Harmony Gold. How do you guys think the pervy scenes in the remaining 4 episodes were written around?

Probably either cut entirely or heavily re written i would assume.

[MasenkoHA]

[
Not really sure what you're getting at with Ebert, I don't really see how that contradicts anything I said

You: Funimation helped make anime mainstream with DBZ

Counterpoint: No, and here’s a mainstream film critic talking about anime in 1999. His readers were not in the same target audience as the DBZ viewers.

I don't recall DB being marketed that way at all, besides plenty of things that are poorly marketed still do well anyways. So i'm not convinced that was the sole reason DB didn't do nearly as well.

You have this show called Dragon Ball Z that’s presented as this hardcore show with loud music and rock bands and punching and kicking

And then along comes Dragon Ball which is presented a lot more light hearted and goofy and silly like DBZ Babies. (One of the Toonami taglines was “Earth’s mightiest heroes just got a lot smaller!” “They’re so cute at that age” )oh and it doesn’t have Toonami era fan favorites like Vegeta and Future Trunks. Therefore a good portion of DBZ fans didn’t give it a chance and many people who might have preferred Dragon Ball probably were hesitant because it had ties to Z.

Again, I’m sure Z was always going to be more popular than Dragon Ball but had Dragon Ball not been presented as a silly irrelevant prequel series to this HARDCORE show and been allowed to stand on its own two feet it would have done better.

And no Harmony Gold’s extremely limited test run and Funimation’s crappy timeslots in 1995 do not count as proof thar Dragon Ball couldn’t succeed or that Funimation was justified in skipping to Z

Again I never claimed only Funi would've grabbed it, just that it likely would've taken much longer to have been dubbed.

Except there’s no reason to believe it would have taken longer than it did. Harmony Gold licensing it the same year it ended in Japan is proof of that. More than likely it took as long as it did because the show was in licensing hell. Harmony Gold had the license from 1989-1994 but wasn’t doing anything with it. Once it was up for grabs Fukunaga played “My Uncle works for Toei” maneuver and grabbed it.

Had it not been Funimation another (probably more competent) licensing company would have gotten it circa 1995. It’s not like Funimation was the only company that saw $$$ in this already hugely popular series.

[eledoremassis02]

Hey, so back to Harmony Gold. How do you guys think the pervy scenes in the remaining 4 episodes were written around?

I wanna assume it's similar to the BLT dub with asking a date with an older woman. But sice they also fully cut out parts, I'm pretty sure they'll be a few skip scenes

I'm not.much into the FUNidubs but what HG names and terms are still in use besides Master Roshi?

[KBABZ]

If anything DBZ's success in America had much more to do with it's release schedule than the company dubbing it. I mean, the entire voice cast got switched out after months of re-runs and that didn't slow it down one bit!

Hey, so back to Harmony Gold. How do you guys think the pervy scenes in the remaining 4 episodes were written around?

Having done T1C, it would have been fairly easy actually if you don't mind a shorter episode. Bulma doesn't have to convince Roshi to give her the Dragon Ball until AFTER he's handed it to her, and anything involving Bulma's underwear can be easily cut too, with remaining irritated expressions easily written away as "I punctured the tire on my motorbike on the way back here, HUMPH!".

The double decker camper episode would be much tricker though considering Yamcha fondling Bulma's breasts is the reason why he has to be escorted out of it by Puar.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

If anything DBZ's success in America had much more to do with it's release schedule than the company dubbing it. I mean, the entire voice cast got switched out after months of re-runs and that didn't slow it down one bit!

Hey, so back to Harmony Gold. How do you guys think the pervy scenes in the remaining 4 episodes were written around?

Having done T1C, it would have been fairly easy actually if you don't mind a shorter episode. Bulma doesn't have to convince Roshi to give her the Dragon Ball until AFTER he's handed it to her, and anything involving Bulma's underwear can be easily cut too, with remaining irritated expressions easily written away as "I punctured the tire on my motorbike on the way back here, HUMPH!".

The double decker camper episode would be much tricker though considering Yamcha fondling Bulma's breasts is the reason why he has to be escorted out of it by Puar.

That, or where he accidentally peeks at Bulma showering and stumbles upon her asleep naked thinking it's the Dragon Balls under the sheets. Parts like those obviously wouldn't have been allowed.

[MasenkoHA]

For what its worth the BLT dub (and probably Toonami) did keep the scene of Yamcha pulling off the sheets on Bulma.

[Planetnamek]

I don't see how Ebert talking about anime somehow means i'm incorrect. Just because a critic knows about something does not mean most everyone else does, it makes sense that he would know about anime as well-versed as he was, does not mean most of his readers knew or cared about it.

These ads proves that CN was not marketing DB as some goofy light-hearted and irrelevant show(at least not all the time) so i'm not sure where you're getting that from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-Y9nKFBtZk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp9Fy6_2NW4

I never once claimed HG's dub as proof of anything, I said the likely reason HG only did 5 episodes in a few test markets is that's likely all they could afford to do. HG weren't exactly made of money after all.

Taking longer might not necessarily be a bad thing, but it is possible that might've killed the show's momentum and kept it from being popular here. After all Saint Seiya taking so long to get a proper English dub is often cited is one of the main reasons for it's lack of success in the states compared to most everywhere else(a lot of time got wasted on a planned live-action film adaptation of SS that never got off the ground) and in the time since it originally aired in Japan several other anime that were heavily inspired by SS had come out, one of which-Ronin was being dubbed in the U.S. as early as 1995 and had aired on Toonami back in 1999 to pretty good ratings(perhaps that's why CN put Knights of the Zodiac on SVES instead) so by the time SS came out in both edited and uncut form, Ronin had already established itself and as a result SS got unfairly labeled as a rip-off, not to mention it was starting to show it's age when it first aired on CN as it was the oldest show on SVES.

Considering how much hatred i've seen for 4Kids by anime purists, I don't think you'd see too many people happy at them being in charge of DBZ, oh I can just picture the guys that created YGO Uncensored foaming at the mouth at the thought of that happening

Also there's no guarantee 4Kids would've done the entire run, they certainly weren't above skipping the entire last season of GX and several episodes in 5Ds. Also doubt it would''ve been more faithful considering how severe many of the changes to Yu-Gi-Oh were.

You are correct about dub fans being unfairly screwed over with the DVDs though, I genuinely wish there was an easier legal way to see the version I grew up with than collecting the singles one by one(And even then many NEPs and recaps are missing and Dale Kelly got replaced with Kyle Hebert on the ones we did get on the DVD, so it's still not quite the same version that aired on TV)

Having seen the 1995 dub of DB I too am kinda bummed they didn't do the whole series like that as it was pretty enjoyable, but from a business standpoint I get why they wanted to skip straight to Z even though I totally understand why some people are upset about that. I'd like just as much as you for DB to be considered as important as DBZ, but unfortunately we don't always get to choose which works become the most well known. For example Orson Welles was never overly fond of Citizen Kane and always considered "The Trial" to be his greatest accomplishment, but the general public hardly ever talks about that film compared to CK and critics didn't praise it anywhere near as much. I'd certainly always encourage people to see the original DB, but I can't exactly say i'm surprised or angry to learn that most of the people that grew up watching DBZ never saw it.

Wasn't aware of that info about the original 27 episode run of YGO, that does explain a lot.

So perhaps you're right and perhaps DB could've done better, I guess we'll never know for sure.

I didn't say skipping the first 16 episodes of GT was a good thing, but i've seen several Funimation detractors claim that it was a wise-business move on their part(GreatSaiyama777 most notably said that on DBZU2) even if they didn't like it. I never claimed any of this was necessarily "the best way" or anything like that, but I can at least see where Funimation was coming from even if I personally don't agree with it.

Still not seeing how anything I said was remotely a false dichotomy or whatever, I never said it was "either this or this" or anything like that. All I really said was that DB could've been a hit here, but there's no surefire guarantee that it necessarily would've been.

[Danfun64]

Hey, so back to Harmony Gold. How do you guys think the pervy scenes in the remaining 4 episodes were written around?

I wanna assume it's similar to the BLT dub with asking a date with an older woman.

I disagree. Look at the double feature for example. Roshi's perverted tendencies were toned down, but they weren't removed entirely like what BLT tried to do. From the Movie 1 half, "All I want is a little kiss in your tongue." Sure it's not as bad as wanting to see Bulma's boobs, but it's still more than BLT tolerated. From the Movie 3 half, "As my two prized pupils, I am giving you the opportunity to learn many things. You will learn to carry yourselves like gentlemen and to fight with honor." (Both Zero and Bongo Goku and Krillin say "Yes Sir!") "Most of all you will learn to observe" (stares at two young women) Turtle: "Get a grip on yourself, Master. Well, will you?"

[Valerius Dover]

^Yeah, they even kept him going all Happy Hands on the flight attendant in the scene just before that. So, you never know.

[MasenkoHA]

Re: 4Kids. I highly doubt they would have any interest in Dragon Ball. They typically favored kidvid anime with obvious intentions (to sell crap to kids) the Pokemon, Yugiohs, Sonic etc. Didn’t they not want One Piece despite it being the hottest shonen property? Dragon Ball probably wouldn’t appeal to them.

If any crappy dubbing company besides Funimation was going to license it it would probably have been Saban. The goofy martial arts aspect of the series would have fit in with their portfolio. And most of the Harmony Gold cast ended up being Saban regulars and would have probably reprised their roles.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Uhhhh... about that...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxLACQtI434

[Planetnamek]

Re: 4Kids. I highly doubt they would have any interest in Dragon Ball. They typically favored kidvid anime with obvious intentions (to sell crap to kids) the Pokemon, Yugiohs, Sonic etc. Didn’t they not want One Piece despite it being the hottest shonen property? Dragon Ball probably wouldn’t appeal to them.

If any crappy dubbing company besides Funimation was going to license it it would probably have been Saban. The goofy martial arts aspect of the series would have fit in with their portfolio. And most of the Harmony Gold cast ended up being Saban regulars and would have probably reprised their roles.

I wonder if DiC would've licensed DB given that they did license the similarly violent Saint Seiya.

Toei pretty much forced 4Kids to do One Piece by holding two other anime that 4Kids wanted to dub hostage(Magical DoReMei and Ultimate Muscle) unless they agreed to do One Piece too.

[Robo4900]

Hey, so back to Harmony Gold. How do you guys think the pervy scenes in the remaining 4 episodes were written around?

I wanna assume it's similar to the BLT dub with asking a date with an older woman. But sice they also fully cut out parts, I'm pretty sure they'll be a few skip scenes

Yes. I imagine we'll see a lot of the same kinds of censorship that BLT did, done earlier here.

I'm not.much into the FUNidubs but what HG names and terms are still in use besides Master Roshi?

Power Pole, Flying Nimbus... Possibly Master Shen?

[Danfun64]

HG gave the crane hermit the name Wuzu. Complete nonsense of course, but at least it wouldn't have bitten HG in the ass like Shen bit Funi in the ass.

[MasenkoHA]

Uhhhh... about that...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxLACQtI434

You know 4kids didn’t dub Dragon Ball Z Kai right?