The Odd English Language Dubs of DBZ

in 1998 i had moved into a new home with nothing but a small crt tv to keep me occupied i flipped through the channels until i found something new something strange this was the first time i had ever seen dragon ball z or anything related to the dragon ball franchise and it was the ocean dub guns blood excessive violence sexual content vulgar language references to smoking or alcohol and even tears were censored in the ocean dub the ocean dub was created by funimation with the help of saban sabin let's go with saban entertainment and ocean productions almost every fan of anime knows a funimation the company was started by gen fukunaga in 1994 to produce and distribute anime and other japanese entertainment to the united states and international markets they acquired the rights to dragon ball and dragon ball z in the 90s but funimation needed assistance this is where saban entertainment steps in saban entertainment had already established itself by importing super sentai and creating the mighty morphin power rangers out of it and it wouldn't be long before they brought digimon to western markets as well finally there is ocean productions a studio based out of vancouver canada that provided the voice cast for the english broadcast of dragon ball z for the first 67 episodes due to this many fans are quick to point the finger at ocean productions ocean productions only supplied the voice acting and i'll quickly break it down for you here toei translates the scripts and hands them off to funimation saban with funimation look at these scripts and make heavy edits funimation okays these scripts and then passes them on to ocean productions there the voice actors do their work sabon meanwhile having tossed out large portions of the script now turns towards the music they remove shinsuke kukuchi's music in favor of their own and the three come together to deliver us the ocean dub saban edit of dragon ball z let's look at some of the weird censorship and dubbing of dragon ball z in its first form home of the it's over 9000 what does a scouter say about his power level it's over 9 000 and a whole host of funny lines meant to cover up the extreme violence of dragon ball z reddit's throwing the bullet back to the farmer so you want some napa destroys some news helicopters but don't worry tien sees something with his third eye that we can't [Music] look i can see their parachutes they're okay they'll show the visceral attack of napa breaking tien's arm off but don't [Music] wait till it worry back the bullets don't have an impact of course as napa fights the good military of earth we can't have our good men and women in uniform perishing and no there there are no parachutes those are just fireballs in the sky there's this one sequence with a brilliant flash of light as his energy attack devastates an entire city leaving a massive crater but it's okay they evacuated that part of the city that that whole swath of city yeah they're safe that area may have been evacuated but it'll give him something to think about there's also napa's rampage as he just destroys buildings but they've all been evacuated you know with the very little to no warning these people were given they're really fast at evacuating buildings and cities a little target practice on some empty buildings and they scatter we can't show violence against children of course so in the sabon edit we have gohan not being smashed across the battlefield but we smash cut to him flying across the battlefield implying he was hit [Applause] in the very first fight of dragon ball z piccolo and goku team up to defeat raditz this is a violent fight extraordinarily graphic and in the climax of the fight goku sacrifices himself grappling raditz while piccolo charges his attack which then drills a hole through both raditz and goku and it is extraordinarily violent and bloody you can see the holes punched through the two fighters the pain on raditz's face it's a lot to take in for the very first fight and it really sets the tone for the series it shows you the stakes are high the tension in each fight and how each victory is going to be an insurmountable mountain that must be climbed unless you watch the ocean dub in which case we've edited all of that out the beam doesn't go through both of them don't worry how goku got injured he just did and of course we won't be showing any of that blood weirdly enough they'll show piccolo losing his arm and the blood dripping out of it but it's okay we've changed the blood from red to green one of my favorite weird edits is one you can barely see in the fight between goku and vegeta the head blows are actually covered up by these little action flashes of light but immediately after they do two head blows covered up they show vegeta smashing goku's head in and of course in the wake of all these violent battles there are corpses strewn across the battlefields but only in the japanese version no they're never shown in the ocean dub we just have to infer that krillin is pulling the scouter off of raditz's corpse that we've never seen when yamcha defeats the cybermen only to have the cybermen jump back up and blow himself up killing yamcha as well well in the original japanese version we see yamcha lying there dead with a bit of cyberman arm whereas in the ocean dub we're left with a smoldering crater which is wild to think about because you can just buy toys of dead yamcha these days there's even a funko pop there's this scene where dodoria just goes wild killing namekians but in the sabon edits there is no hole punched in his chest and that guy on the ground well he's still breathing he's okay the incredible rematch between vegeta and zarbon where vegeta punches a hole into zarbon's stomach blood pouring out and he blasts a hole right through him sending him packing well not in the ocean dub vegeta just punches him in the stomach really hard and he goes flying back into the water even remove the blood from vegeta's hand so it's not that bad the absolute best is when vegeta decapitates goldo and the way they handle this they poorly draw his head right back on and you know maybe there's a reason there aren't corpses strewn across these battlefields it could be because you don't die no everyone goes to the next dimension i'm facing into another dimension maybe you won't be such a disappointment in the next dimension adversaries which managed to succeed in transporting yamcha into another dimension it's too risky quick i want them all in the next dimension i lied when i said you could go at least partially lied for i will let you go to another dimension and of course the next dimension has hell or as it's known in the ocean dub the home for infinite losers h-f-i-l you know they just do a little flick of the brush right over the letters and that fixes that mess up there's also just a lot of weird translations such as vegeta referring to goku's father as a brilliant scientist as a matter of fact it was your genius father who invented this little technique my father we ran into some radical weaponry on ryegolf7 and things were looking grim until your father did this your father was an average fighter kakarot but he was a brilliant scientist of course they had to remove adult vices so cigarettes were edited out as well as alcohols or things that looked like alcohol being changed to different beverages as you can see in this clip here they've drawn over master roshi's drink to make it look a lot less like alcohol and it has this weird floatiness to it as it's drawn over no longer is it the amber liquid that could be mistaken for alcohol instead it's blue also removed is the ensuing sexual harassment from master roshi towards bulma and bulma's violent response to this more stuff that kids shouldn't experience nudities such as gohan's bare ass had to be drawn over and covered in the next scene they've pulled the camera in a little closer so you can't see gohan's butt crack and in the final act in the epic that is gohan's bare ass you can see where they got a little clever taking some of the damage on vegeta's pants and just pulling that cloth right on over gohan's ass strangely they edited gohan's tears out in the first episode that one i'm not really sure of why it's clearly evident where they drew over raditz's armor for gohan's tears it's got this strange texture and floatiness about it of course in the western markets attacks had their names changed to be easier to understand makon kosapo well now that special beam canon kenzon well that's destructo disc time for the destructo disc it's very easy to understand why they changed the names of the attacks and i think dragon ball z abridged by team 4 star does a very good job of illustrating this my concept make a supper oh the hell with it special beam cannon while the trio of these companies produced the first 67 episodes of dragon ball z they were edited down to 53 and with poor ratings dragon ball z wasn't continued these heavily edited and censored translations from the 80s and 90s are a big part of why people to this day still hate dubbed versions of anime a lot of these edits are understandable i mean look at the source material akira toriyama's original manga dragon ball is filled with extraordinarily graphic violence and that's not gonna fly in western nations like america or canada but at the same time you can see how fans of the manga would be very disappointed in the us animation was a tool to sell toys to children cartoons weren't about telling grand stories they were expressly for kids and the cartoon violence was heavily toned down stories often ended within a single episode but in japan animation and manga are for all ages they tell stories for mature audiences and weren't afraid to take a story to a darker place a place where violence sex and alcohol were routine their plots would span many episodes meaning you couldn't just skip an episode or two here or there western companies were attempting to warp japanese anime to fit our western view of media and we end up with a bastardization of great stories every time this happens in the here and now where uncensored anime is commonplace we accept animation as for all it's strange to look back and see how people once twisted these amazing stories into unrecognizable messes thing is i watched this all when i was eight so i didn't think anything of it i didn't notice the editing or the censorship or how weird and off some of the dialogue is and it was the first time i had seen dragon ball z so i just assumed that's how it was so you can imagine my surprise when the jarring cut to the funimation dub happened in episode 53 this was because funimation ceased working with saban in 1998 and the censorship of dbz fell to the wayside sabon entertainment was bought by walt disney in 2001 and was subsequently sent to the next dimension in 2002 but in 1998 dbz began airing on a new animation block on cartoon network toonami ball c full on today with renewed interest funimation continued dubbing the series without saban entertainment funimation could no longer afford the cast and services of ocean productions they also lost the music of saban entertainment with funimation taking full control of production and using their own in-house voice actors a new dub the funimation dub was born funimation picked the series up where saban and ocean had left off in saban's absence dbz went on a run from 1999 to 2003 with little censorship but they did choose a whole new voice cast and a new musical score bruce faulkner and his team were hired to create a new score one most americans know and it's actually the music i prefer for dbz even if production didn't know when to let a scene breathe in silence and instead overpowered it with the heavy tones and synth of bruce faulconer it felt as powerful as the characters to a young me and it's extremely nostalgic to me every time i hear it even today as an adult initially the funimation voice actors played their roles as close to the ocean dub as possible but they slowly transformed the character's voices into their own with a new style i remember vividly people being confused at the new voices and some even hating it to this day people still watch dragon ball z with the ocean dub switching over to the funimation dub and it's kind of funny to see people's reactions and it wasn't just voices the bloodless battles of the sabon ocean dub where the loser faded into another dimension well they became violent struggles for survival where losing meant death and it was odd to see the series evolve so immediately it's like watching a pokemon change from a cute little animal to a large violent beast at this time you could actually watch episodes uncut on dvd or vhs as well as catching some late at night on toonami midnight run and then in 2004 funimation gained the distribution rights for the first two seasons from pioneer at this time they would redub the episodes from the saban ocean era with their new funimation cast and again there are some jarring voice changes to give an extreme example here's jace of the ginyu force he's from space birmingham enough of this cat and mouse let's show this bloke what the ginyu force is all about england not alabama then in the funimation dub nope i've had enough of this think it's time to throw some pain in the barbie now he's a space aussie with newfound violence and voice actors one thing didn't change funimation's terrible dialogue let's listen to frieza in the ocean dub talking about the dragon balls you are certainly on the ball today if you were a dog i'd scratch your belly if you were a cat i'd give you more milk until you started to purr but since you're neither of these i'll just say thanks for her job well done it was my pleasure you know how much i enjoy serving your hornet highness having these balls makes me feel something that resembles joy i think i want to caress them okay now let's listen to frieza in the funimation dub talking about violence in the ocean dub some names were changed as well mutant roshi to master roshi and tenshinhan to tienshinhan those aren't really that big of a deal and their name changes are kept in the funimation dub however in the funimation dub mr satan is changed to hercule and the change is a little strange because in the united states we already had a marvel comic called the son of satan a comic even approved by the comics code authority which if you like comics you know is a bit of a joke if you were a dragon ball z fan in the 90s and 2000s it was rough the mix of dubs made continually confusing and buying the right box set even more difficult there weren't many full releases and consistent voice casts music or even plots were hard to come by but years later something new would come this is where dragon ball z kai comes in a high definition recut of the series dragon ball z kai keeps the english names for most of the cast but opts for original japanese names for attacks they also opted to utilize new music as well as some of the original japanese music as opposed to bruce falconer's score and to the happiness of fans everywhere they removed most of the filler the series no longer felt as padded out the plot of kai was actually as close to akira toriyama's story as you're going to get the new musical score by kenji yamamoto was dropped when toy learned that yamamoto had actually been plagiarizing most of his music during his tenure at toei there had to be some changes made surprisingly episodes with yamamoto score can still be found in the wild some airing in other countries as well as on cartoon network by mistake thus old music from the original dragon ball z run was utilized to fill out the score as well as a few new songs some of the violence is actually toned down a little bit in kai especially in the nicktoons version this nicktoons version is encroaching upon saban edit ocean dub levels of censorship and do you remember that scene i talked about where master roshi's drink had to be changed from an alcoholic color to blue well in this one it's white similar to the ocean dub the nicktoons dub has also removed master roshi's sexual harassment although in the regular kai it's actually kept intact but you didn't have to go to all that trouble i mean you could just give me a sample of those other goodies [Music] i think a good demonstration of the four different approaches to violence is the doria's kill of dende's brother in both kai and the original japanese edit he's killed by dodoria and it's shown on screen in the nicktoons edit he's killed off screen but he is still killed and in the ocean dub it's implied he's escaped but not you meanwhile both the original japanese and the uncut kai edit will show his dead smoldering body these two different edits of kai caused confusion and many began to believe that the nicktoons version was just how kai was going to be of course that's not true but it didn't change the fact that it hurt kai's image at first for most people kai will likely be the definitive dragon ball z of choice it cuts down on filler it's in hd and it's streamlined with the least amount of inconsistencies you'll get the same voice cast the whole way through as well as one running plot but for many it's difficult to know which version they prefer i actually like the funimation dub in some ways i may not like the filler but i love bruce faulconer's score except for the driving school episode this is the best filler anyone could have ever asked for please keep this in all future iterations if there happens to be another thing like kai that master re-edits dragon ball z keep this [ __ ] episode i like many others also enjoy the ocean dub cast while the saban edits and the dialogue may be terrible the voice work is actually really well done and if you're a fan of the ocean dub they actually did pick the series back up around episode 108 all the way to episode 276. in canada they actually have broadcasting rules that limit non-canadian programming and dragon ball z using an american cast failed to meet that however this ocean westwood blue water dub whatever you would like to call it actually allowed them to meet the bar for this unfortunately it is a little rushed and some of the dialogue is well a bit strange [Music] [Music] overall i would say that i prefer funimation's in-house cast and their work much more but the strange thing is there's no perfect combination of dragon ball z for everyone as everyone's going to like different aspects of the series a lot of the magic of dragon ball was watching it as a child nostalgia is a powerful drug dragon ball z was an important part of my childhood and likely the version that you watched when you were a child will heavily influence which version you like as an adult if you're new to dragon ball z and you're looking for a version to watch i would probably choose kai it's an easy no-hassle version of the series to consume and if you're older like me you might watch the funimation dub at times to relive some of those nostalgic moments which is for you are you a purist who prefers the original japanese version maybe you like what you grew up with and want the ocean to funimation dub out of nostalgia perhaps you want a consistent voice cast and enjoy some of the filler with the funimation crew the whole way through or you power right through the funimation island to get back to the ocean cast you might want to watch it with your young child and seek the nicktoons version of kai or you like a simple and clean dragon ball z experience with the uncut kai or maybe none of these are for you and you actually prefer a dub in a completely different language oh wow it says somebody really cool is watching i know it may not look like it because i'm not the greatest editor or animator but i really do put a lot of time and effort into the videos i make so it really means a lot to me that you watch this i just wanted to say thanks

Channel: DerfDeRox

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Id: ost7m1Q9HfY

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022