How did Toonami fans deal with the bad voice acting?

[SuperSaiyanHedgehog]

From my understanding, DBZ was insanely popular when it aired on Toonami. I hear stories about it all the time, like in Chris Stuckmann's Toonami retrospective. However, after taking a look at some of the original dubbed episodes myself, I can only wonder how those people could bear the voice acting (no offense). I can't take the show seriously with its original dubbing. Was everyone indifferent to it?

[Vidmusc]

To be fair, I was only like 6 when I first started watching. So I didn't really know there was any other version of the show, and I accepted the dub as THE show.

[Mewzard]

Most of the long time Toonami fans like myself were on the younger side (well, I was a fair bit older than 6, but hey).

The dub did improve as it went on, but eventually I started seeing the flaws in it, which is why I appreciate Kai's dub, as I liked the voices I heard (for the most part), but wanted to hear them with a more accurate script, and ideally better acting (plus the original music).

[Lord Beerus]

The shows "So Bad, It's Good" voice acting during it's original run on Toonami was what made DBZ legendary in the eyes of many fans.

[Gyt Kaliba]

Pretty much as others have said, it's best to consider and remember that for a lot of us, it was how we discovered the show, and we were a lot younger at the time. The whole show itself was just so cool and different from anything else on TV, that it was pretty easy to actually overlook any issues like that at the time.

And by a twist of fate, it's also what allowed us to be among the first to notice when things improved as they went along (dub quality wise I mean), because by the time the Boo arc had rolled around, most non-dub fans had already long tuned out.

[Chuquita]

It helps that it's been a really long time since I've seen the dub of Z, but the recent Kanzenshuu podcast reminded me about the narration and gave me a bit of fridge horror on it.

[NitroEX]

As a fan viewing the show in the UK my experience was a little different but for the most part it seems as though younger fans didn't care for the quality of the dubbing whilst the older fans (who enjoyed the Japanese version beforehand) hated it with a passion. Here's a rather hilarious review of season 3 from the perspective of a fan from that era: http://dbzu.3gkai.com/editorial/editorial15.html

It's quite amazing how nostalgia changes the perception of things. It will be intriguing to see the Kai generation grow up and how they view Z in comparison. Perhaps the Z dialogue and Faulconer music will be mocked just as it was when it was first introduced, the fandom will have come full circle.

[DarkPrince_92]

I was 8. Acting was never a factor in why I watched DBZ.

[Bardo117]

It's a cartoon , it's not like you were a grown men tuning into Cartoon Network, most of us were kids

[TheBlackPaladin]

To be honest, I didn't particularly realize it at the time...a couple reasons why:

-Like others, I was pretty young.
-I also didn't realize I was watching a dub, I thought I was watching an original American show.
-A lot of the cartoons and TV shows I was watching at the time (cartoons, lots of Saban shows, etc.) had similarly corny dialogue and acting.

Having said all that, every once in a while, in spite of all this, I would cringe at certain things. Even as a kid, with no knowledge of how poorly adapted the scripts were, I cringed at the infamous "MONDO COOL!" line. Even as a kid, I remember thinking, "That line was written by an adult who clearly has no idea how kids talk...and the character isn't even a kid."

[Gaffer Tape]

For anyone who was already familiar with the series before the atrocity that was season 3 landed on us, I don't know how anyone couldn't have noticed how bad it was. I mean, if you came into the series after FUNimation went in-house and saw that exclusively as what the show was... that I can understand. But when we tuned in that day of September '99 and heard the new recap music, the new narrator, saw the blood on Reacoom's face... I mean, it was a totally different show than what it had been... well, that exact same day. Remember that they premiered season 3 in an entirely DBZ block of Toonami, featuring the last two of the "old" episodes followed by the first two of the "new" episodes. The difference was night and day. And the new was such a sharp dip in quality that it was hard not to be repulsed by it, even as a kid. I can't think of anyone I knew who didn't at least notice it.

That said, I was certainly used to dealing with shitty production values. Hell, in children's entertainment, it was more the rule than the exception. So I pretty much took it as a fact of life. I always noticed when cartoons changed voice actors. Since I've always been interested in the production side of entertainment, keeping track of such things always fascinated me. So from that perspective, it was kind of exciting (in a train wreck sort of way) to see this "new" DBZ launch and try to figure out why exactly it was so different from the previous 53 episodes I'd seen so many times. And, plus, I had to see how the story continued, so I stuck with it.

But how did I deal ultimately? Well, I eventually found out more about the real story, what the Japanese series was, and once that happened, I could no longer deal. I watched all 70 episodes of season 4, growing more and more annoyed every day, and once that was over, I stopped watching entirely. Hell, until the DBoxes, there was no decent way of seeing the entire series. So because I'd refused to watch the dub, I actually hadn't seen most of the Majin Boo episodes at all until nearly ten years after they first officially came to America.

[DBZAOTA482]

It was production of it's time... well, for anime English dubs anyways.

[Attitudefan]

I was really young and I didn't even know the differences (I look back and wonder how I didn't see the Ocean/FUNi swap). All I knew is that I hated the "Dragon Dragon Ball.... DRAGONBALL ZEEE" opening and absolutely adored the "Rock the Dragon" opening, but never realized the voices were different at the time I watched it (I was about 5 or 6 when the swap happened initially in 1999). I do not even recall the Faulconer opening on TV. I had the Garlic Jr episodes on VHS, and thought for the longest time it was VHS exclusive. My memory is really warped during those early years of DBZ. Certain things I remembered like Vegeta's screaming when he got smacked by the Genki-dama (as a kid it gave me nightmares. Vegeta's "noooooo" scream forever printed in my mind), but not the initial swap from Ocean to FUNI nor do I remember the swap back in the Cell arc from FUNi to Ocean. So, I was so young that I couldn't even tell the difference in acting! I only knew the intro was different.

It wasn't until I revisted Dragonball in 2004 or 5, when I dusted off the old Dead Zone dvd and loved the acting in it! Then I got to see the 2 other movies, the World's Strongest, and the Tree of Might, on Youtube uploaded in the Ocean dub. I loved it being uncut with the Japanese music. I rediscovered the FUNi dub too by looking up the SSJ transformation with the Faulconer music and different voices, did I realize that they made the switch. I forgot the Westwood dub was shown in Canada until I heard the intro theme and the epsiode title jingle did I realize that I watched the Ocean Dub for most of the series years ago! It was then, in my mind, that I started to love the Ocean Dub again seeing that the acting was miles better that FUNi's attempts (Vegeta's wrath episode sealed the deal in Sabat's underwhelming performance. Even my little sister thought Sabat did an awful job; that was 2007). However, I still enjoyed the Orange Bricks but I was really hoping for the Ocean Dub!

I knew the FUNi season 3 dub was bad, and even the remastered dubs didn't live up to good standards either, but I liked a lot of it for nostalgic purposes, such as Goku's SSJ transformation.

It was when I bought the Movie 3 Pack of the first 3 DBZ movies I noticed how much better the Ocean Dub was where it kept the original music intact and the acting was so much better. Since I didn't want to wreck my Dead Zone VHS, I started watching DBZ in Japanese because the more I saw FUNi, the more the nostalgia wore off and I started to dislike it. Thanks to the redubs of the first 3 DBZ films, I realized how poorly done the dub really was, and turned to this website and the Japanese version of the show!

[Hellspawn28]

The target audience (the kids) didn't care since they where stuck into the story and action. Same with other kids shows from the 90's like Power Rangers where you never notice how terrible the acting was until you get older. I do remember the older DBZ fans on the web on the early 2000's where 50/50 on the voice acting at the time. I do remember the Ocean purist that wanted the Ocean voice cast back.

[Metalwario64]

I have a friend who, thanks to the old Funi dub, to this day still denounces the show, and specifically cites the atrocious acting as one of his reasons. He caught a few episodes of the Freeza arc on TV back then, and said to me that the actors "couldn't act their way out of a paper bag".

He also questioned me wondering why Saiyan wasn't pronounced properly.

[Kakacarrottop]

I didn't watch the show on Toonami, but I did grow up watching it during the Toonami era. Honestly, I didn't care about the acting, I watched the show for the fights. I just assumed Freeza was meant to sound like a granny tranny and the music was meant to be shitty Casio keyboard techno, it never crossed my mind that the creators didn't intend for it to be like that. No one (other than hardcore internet fans) complained about the acting back then, since the majority of viewers were children, obviously it's much different now.

[NitroEX]

It was production of it's time... well, for anime English dubs anyways.

Not really, there were some good anime dubs in the 90s and early 2000s. The Pioneer DBZ stuff was even dubbed well and that was (I believe) a year prior to season 3.

I'd say "being a product of it's time" applies more to the replaced music.

[Gyt Kaliba]

It was production of it's time... well, for anime English dubs anyways.

Not really, there were some good anime dubs in the 90s and early 2000s. The Pioneer DBZ stuff was even dubbed well and that was (I believe) a year prior to season 3.

I'd say "being a product of it's time" applies more to the replaced music.

Honestly, I'd almost say the good dubs from back then were the odd (albeit lucky) ones out, cuz as a whole, dubs in general weren't quite to the same standard then that they are now. Again, that's in general, since there's obviously some dubs done as of today that can't hold a candle to certain dubs done back then.

[DBZAOTA482]

It was production of it's time... well, for anime English dubs anyways.

Not really, there were some good anime dubs in the 90s and early 2000s. The Pioneer DBZ stuff was even dubbed well and that was (I believe) a year prior to season 3.

I'd say "being a product of it's time" applies more to the replaced music.

But those are the exceptions not the rule. Aside from a select few all dubs back then have voice acting that wouldn't really hold up by today's standards.

[90sDBZ]

On Toonami UK we had no end of different dubs. We went from Saban Ocean dub to Funimation inhouse dub to Westwood Ocean dub for Z, to Blue Water dub for DB and GT, and finally to Big Green dub for the Movies and Specials. I can honestly say as a kid during the Saban and Funimation inhouse eras I never noticed any problem with the acting. Okay looking back now the acting in early Season 3 was lacking, but even to this day it doesn't stop me from enjoying that dub. The voices themselves still suited the characters, and by the time Goku went Super Saiyan Schemmel had made the Goku voice his own instead of imitating Corlett and Kelamis. I always thought it was awesome how he delivered the "It's done" speech. And I still love the Team Faulconer music now as much as I ever did.

When the Westwood dub came around I did begin to notice issues with the performances even as a kid, particularly Peter Kelamis sounding way more forced as Goku than before and Terry Klassen sounding annoyingly high pitched as Krillin. But despite the acting for the most part the casting was still okay. In all honestly I could have looked past the bad acting in the Westwood dub if the music wasn't so damn terrible and repetitive.

Now when we got Blue Water GT is when I really started to be bothered by the voices. Adult Goku, Vegeta, Gohan and Piccolo all sounded bad. And I'm not just talking about acting but the casting too. Those voices simply didn't fit those characters. For some reason the casting in Blue Water DB was noticeably better. The acting still wasn't great but I was still able to enjoy that dub to an extent.

And then came the Big Green movies. In 2005 Toonami UK released some epic promos and had everybody hyped for the long awaited DBZ movies while conveniently not letting us hear the voices. I had already experienced the Big Green dub through the VHS Tapes that got released here prior to the movies airing. Nontheless I didn't think Toonami UK would ever actually air them like that. How wrong I was. I remember everyone being really angry and disappointed about it at the time. It had taken us years to get the movies, and when we finally did it was some weird dub that made Goku sound like He-Man, referred to Piccolo as Big Green, and called every technique kamehameha. I remember there being a text marathon on Toonami UK around the time and everyone was asking for them to "Stop showing fake DBZ movies and start showing real ones" or for them to show them in either Funimation or Ocean dub.

People these days just look at Youtube clips of the Big Green dub and get a good laugh out of it, but at the time it really was no laughing matter. In the UK we literally had no other access to the movies other than that dub, which also happened to be the only home release we had of anything Dragonball until 2012.