OmegaRockman wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 5:24 pmI'd be satisfied with just a redub of the original Dragon Ball, but that will never happen unless there's a Kai recut.
Yeah, for original Dragon Ball I was going to say there's the Blue Water dub, but I guess you mentioned that option for GT and you did a Dragon Box sync so your aware its available (albeit not by any legal means sadly).
The scripts for the first 30 or so episodes of Blue Water Dragon Ball vary a lot, but exponentially improve once they get into the Red Ribbon Army arc.
The BLT dub is the most accurate English dub of episodes 1-13 we know of (maybe the Creative Corp Product and Animax dubs are more faithful, but sadly both are lost so we can't confirm or deny). Granted BLT is very clearly a dub made for TV with the heavy censorship of Roshi's antics, but they reverse the 4Kids-style changes made in Harmony Gold's dub of episodes 1-5 and re-adapt dialogue so individual lines are less faithful. Conversely the Funimation inhouse dub re-adapted BLT's dub without trying to make it more accurate other than reinstating Roshi's perverse antics.
A lot of people seem to not realise this (basically unless the edit would require visual editing to make it work, any of Funi's censorship persists in their uncut dub as well as their TV edit; but because it's just dialogue censorship, a lot of people just don't know it's a change
Generally unless an edit needed visual editing to work Funimation's censorship persists in their scripts, although because these are dialogue changes not video cuts many fans don't realize even their "uncut" dub is just uncut in name only. Effectively both Funimation and Blue Water's dubs are censored dubs, its just the former has a lot more nonsense thrown in.
Blue Water do exactly what Funimation should have done for the BLT dub scripts, and that's rework the dialogue to sound more natural, referencing accurate translations whenever corrections were necessary. Additionally their dub offers some examples of faithful terminology, like Goku referring to himself as "Son Goku" in episode 1, Nyoi'Bo, Kinto'Un, Crane Hermit isn't "Master Shen" or "Hero" (as is the case with Funimation's dub). Errors like Black having a sister, Goku's line about sensing Piccolo's power level, the feud between Crane Hermit and Tao Pai Pai, Piccolo saying he fought beings all over the universe were all discarded for more faithful dialogue.
You could argue Blue Water's scripting felt rushed for the first 28 episodes, but it's understandable considering they probably wrote and dubbed all 64 episodes between January and June 2003 and then they had until November 2004 to do all 153 episodes of original Dragon Ball. Blue Water were also working on many other shows at this time like Flame of Recca, Banner of the Stars and Gregory Horror Show (in addition to The Bloody Karte and The Second Guest) so it's entirely possible that Dragon Ball was backlogged and only picked up on the scripting in early 2004 when the Red Ribbon Army arc aired on Toonami UK. There were more writing staff on Blue Water Dragon Ball than GT too, which would also support more hands being needed.
Funimation's scripts had the edge over Blue Water for episodes 14-28 when the latter seemingly didn't have the chance or time to adapt a lot of the dialogue correctly and ended up with weird oddities like that really dark line from Nam about how Goku's state of unconsciousness sending him to the Gods and Roshi telling Yamcha a doctor can only help the living.
Blue Water GT's scripts were almost exclusively written based on original Japanese to English translations. Of course it helped that Ocean caught up with Funimation by the time they were moving on to GT. Naturally for original Dragon Ball it was cheaper for Ocean use the scripts Funimation had already written for those first 30(ish) episodes to save time on translating and adapting all the Japanese materials from the ground up.
Of course when it comes to acting that's a bit more subjective. After Dragon Ball Z Ocean began outsourcing to Blue Water to save money on paying the more seasoned Vancouver cast, but for me personally the Texas cast were not that much better than the Calgary cast at this time. Both were inexperienced, hired for the sake of penny pinching and imitating the Vancouver actors, and ultimately leave a lot to be desired when it comes to performances.
I personally find Zoe Slusar's less husky kid Goku voice more natural sounding than Stephanie Nadolny. Similarly I'd take Caitlynne Medrek's Pan over Elise Paige Baughman anyday. It also helps both were child actors at the time, the authenticity is a nice touch. Sean Schemmel as adult Goku may be better than Jeremiah Yurk's discount store Kirby Morrow but the bizarre lines about light overcoming the darkness, the value of people living good lives make Funimation's GT dub too jarring for me. Chris Sabat is fine as Vegeta but irredeemably awful as Yi Xing Long, Roger Rhodes was meh as the former and bland as the latter, albeit without the distracting voice filter.
Ultimately none of the performances in either Funimation or Blue Water's dubs of original Dragon Ball and GT but Blue Water at least put effort into the scripting and clearly cared about presenting the shows faithfully, so I'll ultimately give their dubs the edge as alternatives for both shows.
Obviously for Funimation Z vs Westwood Z the scripts are near identical, though the latter improves slightly on certain terminology like "Instant Translocation" as well as pronunciations like Kaioken and Videl. Sadly Westwood's greatest weakness is it has no uncut or Kikuchi-scored equivalent but I'd still take the experienced Vancouver cast's deliveries over what we got from Funimation's cast who were clearly learning to act as they went along, not coming in as trained professionals to inconsistent direction like Brian Drummond, Scott McNeil, etc were while still doing respectable work in spite of the circumstances.
Between the two North American dubs, and even if we want to count it the Creative Corp Product dub that's mostly lost, only dubbed up until some point in the Namek arc there's really no ideal way of watching Dragon Ball Z in English, it's never been dubbed to a high standard. Of all three original anime Dragon Ball Z would clearly benefit the most from the redub treatment and because Ocean were in a hurry to sell their dub to AB Groupe to distribute within Europe they weren't able to rely on their incredibly gifted writing staff they were able to utilise for GT and original Dragon Ball.
In light of this part of the reason I will always advocate for Ocean Kai is that once its out fans who want to watch that part of the story will have two strong, solid, consistent productions with the choice of two casts who were both seasoned professionals by the time of its production. Given their history I would also expect Ocean Kai's scripts to be on similar ground to Funimation in terms of faithfulness, maybe even re-adapting Funimation's lines to flow better, as while their Kai dub is quite good some of the overly bloated lines can be a bit overkill at times even if the performances save them.
Ultimately as a fan of dubs I do think it's unfortunate to get the best experience of the entire 1986-1997 anime storyline in English you have to jump through so many hoops between switching casts, having scripts that vary widely in separate productions with drastically different approaches, settling for censorship in the original series or a replacement score in Z if you want the better voices. It's just the biggest mess and doesn't serve anyone to the full.