This second half is often called “the Westwood Dub” to distinguish it from the earlier version. Ocean Group took over the dubs again at episode 108 after AB Groupe contracted them for a Canadian and European release. Only 53 episodes of the Ocean Group Dragon Ball Z were dubbed before Funimation switched to in-house talent. Somehow Brian Drummond’s Vegeta and Pauline Newstone’s Frieza actually managed to sell clunky dialog like this. All references to death were covered up by claiming characters were being sent “to another dimension”. Saban did a lot of editing to the episodes, inserting their own music, like the still-awesome opening song, “ Rock the Dragon“. For example, this is where “Over 9000!” came from. For American kids who grew up in the ’90s, this would be the dub they first knew when they were introduced to Dragon Ball Z. To produce these, they partnered with Saban Entertainment (the company that Americanized Super Sentai into Mighty Morphin Power Rangers).įor much of the ’90s, Funimation relied on Canadian studio, Ocean Group, to complete its voice acting. Funimation decided the more action-packed sequel, Dragon Ball Z, would be more marketable. But much like the Harmony Gold attempt, these received poor ratings. Originally, Funimation joined with BLT Productions to produce the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball. At first, it relied on partners to get television distribution and had to outsource voice acting. Dragon Ball was Funimation’s first big get, but the company was still small. Ocean Group Dubįunimation was founded in 1994 by Japanese businessman Gen Fukunaga, whose uncle was a producer at Toei, the company who created the Dragon Ball anime. Considering Harmony Gold’s treatment of Macross, we can probably count ourselves lucky that this project failed. We also know that for some reason Goku was renamed “Zero”, Bulma was renamed “Lena”, and in an inspired decision, Korin was renamed “Whiskers the Wonder Cat”.įor all intents and purposes, most of the Harmony Gold dub has been lost to history. We do know Harmony Gold dubbed over the first and third Dragon Ball movies and edited them together into a single film as a kind of pilot. Nobody is exactly sure how many episodes were dubbed or even when they aired. Harmony Gold could only find a small sporadic release on local stations, only able to air a few episodes before giving up. This was the very first dub of the series and the first time Dragon Ball was ever shown on American television. Harmony Gold briefly bought the rights to Dragon Ball to release in the United States in 1989. Faithfully adapting anime was not really much of a concern in the ’80s. For some reason splicing together two or three shows into one was Harmony Gold’s standard operating procedure. They were the ones that created Robotech, a Frankenstein’s monster of three different anime series, including the first Macross series. But when the original Dragon Ball anime ended to switch over to Dragon Ball Z, Harmony Gold was one of the biggest anime importers around. Today Harmony Gold are a largely defunct company mostly existing to ruin the lives of Macross fans. Here, we review all seven of the known English Dragon Ball dubs. But 20 years ago, things were a lot more complicated. Today, kids can watch the latest subtitled version of any anime series in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Japanese cartoons were becoming big business in the West. The show came out during a transition period in anime imports. We also had no idea we were watching a show older than we were - and this was just the latest of many versions. Most kids watching had no idea the cast had changed from the Canada-based Ocean Group to Funimation‘s in-house voice actors based in Texas.
The Saiyan Prince Vegeta went from Brian Drummond’s rasp to the Mid-Atlantic arrogance of Christopher Sabat. If you were watching Dragon Ball Z from around 1998 to 2001, you will have noticed that as the episodes progressed, the characters voices slowly changed.
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Some were highly professional and still beloved. Dragon Ball has had a long weird saga of many alternate versions. For any young kid, it was an action-packed show of heroes and fantastic powers. The anime adaptations of Akira Toriyama‘s manga Dragon Ball went through several different English dubs during the ’90s and early 2000s before it finally settled on the Funimation cast that has lasted since. Most Americans first saw the show when it aired on Toonami in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Dragon Ball Z was one of the seminal titles of the anime explosion in the U.S.
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