Does the original Dragonball need a reboot?

[Lord Beerus]

I don't see any artistic merit in a reboot for the first Dragon Ball anime. It's a perfectly fine product in itself as it already is.

I believe the term, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", applies to this hypothetical scenario.

[KBABZ]

Nadolny is more suited to play Kid Goku than Kid/Not a teen Gohan but her performance is still pretty atrocious.

Maybe in your opinion. I've already gone over why I like it a lot.

[MasenkoHA]

Nadolny is more suited to play Kid Goku than Kid/Not a teen Gohan but her performance is still pretty atrocious.

Maybe in your opinion. I've already gone over why I like it a lot.

It’s a bad performance


Exhibit A:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qym9fKhhY8c

[FoolsGil]

I personally wouldn't say no to a back to basics, less ki attack more martial arts series with a bit more comedy.

[KBABZ]

Nadolny is more suited to play Kid Goku than Kid/Not a teen Gohan but her performance is still pretty atrocious.

Maybe in your opinion. I've already gone over why I like it a lot.

It’s a bad performance


Exhibit A:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qym9fKhhY8c

Disagree, I have no problem with it.

[Kunzait_83]

I personally wouldn't say no to a back to basics, less ki attack more martial arts series with a bit more comedy.

Ki attacks ARE martial arts. Mythical fantasy folkloric martial arts from ancient Taoist spiritual beliefs, but martial arts all the same.

It’s a bad performance


Exhibit A:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qym9fKhhY8c

Woof. This shit always manages to be somehow way worse than I remember it as. Nadolny's shrill woodenness is also further compounded by by McFarland's Christ-the-fuck-awful Muten Roshi performance on top of it, creating almost a symphony of unlistenability. Good god, no wonder so many of you guys hang onto the original score being kept as such a substantial boon in the original DB dub's favor: Kikuchi is literally the one and only audio element in that entire scene that isn't 100% ear-rape.

Any drama and gravitas that pivotal scene ever had is just completely sapped dry by how cringingly shrill and over-the-top unnatural everyone sounds. Not a single authentic emotion to be had in what's supposed to be (and certainly was in the original) one of the most achingly heartfelt moments in the whole series. I stand by every word I ever said about this dub: these people cannot fucking act. At all.

If this series ever somehow got a do-over of any kind (be it a redub of the original, or a full blown anime remake of some kind), it is 100% essential and imperative that ALL of these English VAs across the board be immediately shitcanned out the gate and replaced from scratch, and moreover the whole core approach taken to the general acting style and voice direction completely rethought from scratch as well. The nostalgia of every FUNimation dub fan on the planet can rightly go to hell and get fucked. Seriously, this shit is just totally indefensible on even the most lax and forgiving of metrics.

This scene is also PERFECTLY emblematic of what I've long been babbling about on how totally and objectively wrong the acting style of every single FUNimation production is and has always been for this whole entire franchise top to bottom (Kai included): scenes like this (and Dragon Ball certainly has more than its share like it) are WAY too sincere, earnest, and raw to be acted in such a "Saturday morning cartoony" manner.

This material absolutely 100% requires ACTUAL earnest naturalism in its delivery in order to have ANY of the clearly intended weight or impact whatsoever. Without it, when played by a bunch of hammy, over-acting caricatures from a bad cartoon, it lands like a wet fart and has almost all of its emotional power robbed from it. It ends up sounding like a bad parody.

Like just imagine a scene from any straightforwardly dramatic film or TV show (like I dunno... The Sopranos, 12 Years a Slave, what have you) being dubbed over and acted out by the voice cast of something like Tiny Toon Adventures or Ren and Stimpy or something along those lines in that same exact style of cartoon-ish voice acting, but trying to be serious: that's more or less the kind of general cognitive dissonance effect you get with all of the FUNimation Dragon Ball dubs taking this "90s kids cartoon" approach to all of DB's many earnestly human, grounded moments, and it just. Does not. Work. At. All.

Because for all the wacky gag manga comedy hijinks in which that style of voice acting would indeed certainly fit just fine... there's also at the same time no END of deathly, starkly seriously delivered drama present that those kinds of voices are simply fundamentally INCAPABLE of effectively swerving into without wholly undercutting and undermining it. And that's exactly what they do every single time the series ever wants you to take it even a smidge seriously: something it increasingly asks of you an awful lot as it goes on.

These voices are all unsalvageable, because the entire root approach taken to their delivery and how they're directed has been broken, misguided, and ill-conceived from the very start. The foundations of the dub itself are and have always been fundamentally incorrect to the very core of its approach: hence why no matter how much FUNimation tries to "polish it up" over the years, it'll always end up - and indeed HAS always ended up - sounding totally unnatural and ill-fitting to the material: because their entire foundational approach from day 1 has always been unnatural and ill-fitting to the material.

With a naturalistic approach to the acting, you can still have them play wacky, silly slapstick humor plenty effectively... while also at the same time being able to then suddenly swerve on a dime into gravely serious and grounded drama without missing a beat. You leave your actors with FAR more room to bend and adjust the emotional range and tone of their performances when they're not being forced into vocal artifice and caricature 100% of the time.

And tonal/emotional flexibility is something that is absolutely, unmistakably REQUIRED and utmost ESSENTIAL for the acting any kind of material like Dragon Ball (and for that matter, pretty much a LARGE swath of Wuxia genre material out there in general, since so very, very many of them do this) that so starkly and suddenly on a dime flips and alters its general emotional tone from one extreme to the other and back again on the fly.

This scene here (where Goku discovers Kuririn's body after Tambourine murders him) is played in the original Japanese 100% straight and natural, as if it were a scene from an actual Kung Fu movie (which certainly often include such sorrowful scenes of mourning for a friend or master's death), without the slightest inkling of over-the-top cartoon-ishness in the performances... and the results are night and day and lightyears for removed from FUNimation's version on every possible level.

And its not that the Japanese actors are Oscar-worthy Brando-caliber thespians (although they are indeed VERY damn good actors in general): its all in the core creative approach taken to tackling the material via the direction. The Japanese version understands that you need to be able to effectively make the swerve from slapstick to grave drama, and has its actors just play every scene as straight and natural as possible.

Meanwhile by contrast, the dub approached the series originally as just a typical early/mid 90s Fox Kids-esque action cartoon ala the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or G.I. Joe Extreme or whatnot, and stuck firmly to that approach even as the dub moved out of 90s syndicated U.S. kids TV and into the realm of home video and Cartoon Network prime time, all in the name of playing to what their fanbase was used to and had grown nostalgically attached to.

And that approach fundamentally misreads what this series is at its essence (which is a Shaw Bros.-esque fantasy martial arts epic played more or less completely straight, even with its self-deprecating Toriyama-isms, as a long-form serialized Japanese kids' anime) and continually steers it in that same wrongheaded direction, even as it becomes ever-increasingly apparent that that approach was a bad call from the outset, and it only continues to run the show's emotional impact into a ditch from which it cannot possibly come out of without just starting over from scratch.

[Kokonoe]

If this was like during Kai days, sure. But I think it's better they focus on newer content from a business perspective.

Not to say this couldn't work, it would just require a different studio to work on it and it be a side thing. Maybe a 20 episode OVA or something.

[KBABZ]

I throw it in the same category as Nozawa's "KCHKCHKCHKCHKCHK". After 101 episodes you just get used to it.

[ABED]

I get that the scene deserves better acting, but why would anyone earnestly drop The Sopranos and 12 Years a Slave into a comparison with DB? It's not remotely the same thing. I don't want Saturday Morning Cartoon acting, but you are comparing an over the top cartoon with poop on a stick jokes to a grounded show about a Mafioso.

[Kunzait_83]

I get that the scene deserves better acting, but why would anyone earnestly drop The Sopranos and 12 Years a Slave into a comparison with DB? It's not remotely the same thing. I don't want Saturday Morning Cartoon acting, but you are comparing an over the top cartoon with poop on a stick jokes to a grounded show about a Mafioso?

I know those were over-the-top examples, and I didn't mean to compare Dragon Ball to those kinds of films/shows (clearly they're from TOTALLY different creative universes): I was simply trying to illustrate how badly fitting and clashing the style of acting is with the material its being mismatched to. I just pulled those particular examples out of my ass on the fly as examples of "serious, straight drama".

[Kokonoe]

The nostalgia of every FUNimation dub fan on the planet can rightly go to hell and get fucked. Seriously, this shit is just totally indefensible on even the most lax and forgiving of metrics.

This is really an inappropriate way to go about your argument.

[ABED]

I get that the scene deserves better acting, but why would anyone earnestly drop The Sopranos and 12 Years a Slave into a comparison with DB? It's not remotely the same thing. I don't want Saturday Morning Cartoon acting, but you are comparing an over the top cartoon with poop on a stick jokes to a grounded show about a Mafioso?

I know those were over-the-top examples, and I didn't mean to compare Dragon Ball to those kinds of films/shows (clearly they're from TOTALLY different creative universes): I was simply trying to illustrate how badly fitting and clashing the style of acting is with the material its being mismatched to. I just pulled those particular examples out of my ass on the fly as examples of "serious, straight drama".

While VASTLY different genres, I would use something like Futurama. It's also an over the top silly show, but is capable of very earnest emotion.

[Zephyr]

It ends up sounding like a bad parody.

I could probably re-watch the dub if I viewed it as a sort of officially licensed parody.

[Kunzait_83]

It ends up sounding like a bad parody.

I could probably re-watch the dub if I viewed it as a sort of officially licensed parody.

I'm hardly a big TFS fan (like... at all), but give them this: their effort goes down a LOT better on that particular score than does FUNi. Hell, even their voice acting is leagues and leagues better by comparison: which is less a mark of honor for TFS, and more a sign of how dire FUNimation's VAs are at their jobs that a fan parody done entirely by non-industry amateur fanboys (well, they started out that way anyhow) can run circles around them: doing imitations of their own shtick no less.

[Zephyr]

I mean, fair, but Funimation made their parody on accident, whereas TFS set out to be one from the starting line. Plus, one being officially licensed adds an entire layer of irony to it all.

[MasenkoHA]

I think this needs to be clear even by the standards of Saturday Morning Cartoon schlock the acting in Dragon Ball from Funimation is atrocious.

Like compare DB dub directly to its peers (Sailor Moon and Pokemon) whose dubs also did Saturday Morning cartoon for the lowest common denominator of children (of which I was obviously) the actors still appeared to have been made aware of human emotions.

The clip I used is probably the worst example of Nadolny’s “acting” (she handles the reuniting with Grandpa Gohan sliighly better but its still crap)but it gets the point across. And of course I’m picking on Nadolny (since it’s Goku scene) but Volmer and dude voicing Tien are just as bad.

[FoolsGil]

I personally wouldn't say no to a back to basics, less ki attack more martial arts series with a bit more comedy.

Ki attacks ARE martial arts. Mythical fantasy folkloric martial arts from ancient Taoist spiritual beliefs, but martial arts all the same.

Spare me, if you've seen Dragonball you know what I'm looking for.

[KBABZ]

I think this needs to be clear even by the standards of Saturday Morning Cartoon schlock the acting in Dragon Ball from Funimation is atrocious.

I think the fact that the dub is remembered fondly today by many people (who obviously haven't watched the Japanese version or even Kai) is clear evidence against it being "atrocious". I personally watching it at age 12 (aka being in the direct target audience) didn't feel there was anything bad about it.

[MasenkoHA]

I think this needs to be clear even by the standards of Saturday Morning Cartoon schlock the acting in Dragon Ball from Funimation is atrocious.

I think the fact that the dub is remembered fondly today by many people (who obviously haven't watched the Japanese version or even Kai) is clear evidence against it being "atrocious". I personally watching it at age 12 (aka being in the direct target audience) didn't feel there was anything bad about it.

There are people who remember Power Rangers fondly.

Having fond memories of something you enjoyed as a kid is hardly indicative of any sort of quality. People like crap from when they were kids

[KBABZ]

I think this needs to be clear even by the standards of Saturday Morning Cartoon schlock the acting in Dragon Ball from Funimation is atrocious.

I think the fact that the dub is remembered fondly today by many people (who obviously haven't watched the Japanese version or even Kai) is clear evidence against it being "atrocious". I personally watching it at age 12 (aka being in the direct target audience) didn't feel there was anything bad about it.

There are people who remember Power Rangers fondly.

Having fond memories of something you enjoyed as a kid is hardly indicative of any sort of quality. People like crap from when they were kids

That explains why Rocky and Bullwinkle is as popular as Dragon Ball Z, then.