Years later, I began watching the show "properly", & with FUNi's dub (part 1, not as bad as Z, but still). I used Kai for Z, again somewhat better, but still too "faithful to the original dub". I recognized, but wasnt attached to the voices. This may strike some people as "pleb", but I wasnt watching the dub because I had some serious issue with Nozawa or the Japanese music (though the old bad tape sound qualty turned me off), but rather because (altho I'd have a hard time verbalizing this at the time) connecting with the performances was very difficult, especially for a massive series like DB. I've gotten better at this now, but watching 4 Asian-language (live-action) films with no English in between is incredibly difficult for me. It all just blurs together after awhile. I realized this might be incredibly racist/xenophobic, but at the same time, those performances were done with the intention that the Japanese audience in mind.
Not everything has to be English, & I watch plenty of subs either because it's what exists, or because a great Japanese actor, but it's mostly for study/research (vs entertainment), & I've only become interested in Japanese VO as a subset my interest in English (besides just dubs) VA's. I know people be like "lol, just watch/play the show/game as-is, in the language of the writers"..Well, the last time I checked, one language Yuri Lowenthal doesnt know is French, so I guess I shouldnt play Prince of Persia, eh?
.Ofc anime is something that's been limited to mostly Japan only with niche side-releases, so I understand it more in that regard..but I guarantee that our experience'd b heavily improved if there was enough money to do a proper English track like on Gundam Unicorn, Tekkonkinkreet, or Final Fantasy (Dissidia, World of, FF7, & main series)...All this talk aside, I realized that, if I were getting (me or someone else) into the show, pre-anime fandom, without any manga to guide me..how would I go about watching it? It's a children's show, in Japanese because of Japanese children...how would non-Japanese kids watch it? I mean Batman TAS, Adventure Time, & Disney films get Japanese dubs...for the most part, (I assume) they are accurate, & I can imagine most kids would not like not understanding through the actual dialogue.
* Recently I began introducing my child brother to the original TVTokyo version of Pokémon. He loves learning the actual character names & songs, but has an issue w/Digimon (likely because the dub was a lot more OTT). When we watch Naruto, it's the English dub (which I can vouch for & explain why it is very & especially good), altho I check out the Japanese on occasion. It frustrates me that I couldnt show him Dragon Ball, as the dub is pretty highly inaccurate (part 1 getting points for OST I guess), & even the comics I used..have its own issues. The best I could do is probs DB dub+Kai dub..but it's still bad. What I have heard JRPictures do is "DB dub+subs" , for an overall decent audio experience, "acceptable" but certainly not "way its meant to be seen".
& honestly, just wanting to kick back & watch the series (for fun, not learning) myself...will sound silly, but I feel lied to, watching their dub. The voices are mostly wrong, the dialogue (until BoG, & to an extent Kai) is almost always wrong. Kai is just "the old (bad) dub castings, in the dressing of the real show"...better than the old dub, but still bad castings all around. The Harmony Gold dub arguably had better castings (props for that, btw)
Otherwise, it's Japanese-only...for ~450 episodes. So how DO you introduce a child/non-fan to the series?
