Remember the person who e-mailed me about Christopher Neel Bligh? Well, he's (or maybe she's?) come through again. I recently got this in my e-mail box...

"I've mailed you before.
Have you ever thought about the fact that Chris Bevins has done nothing of value? That he's never acted (unless you consider the dog from DBZ) or directed a show before? That he worked in retail stores for years, never having any experience in anime whatsoever? That the only roles he plays are the ones he casts himself in? That he fully supports the music changes? What that says to me is that FUNimation put its least experienced, careless director on GT so they could get it over with.
Enough for now.
(identity witheld)"

I didn't respond to him as soon as I should have (my apologies man!) and this came in a little bit later...

"Not sold yet?
Well this speaks for itself:
http://www.tcjc.cc.tx.us/collegian/archive/articles/032603/exstudent.html"

It's an interview with Chris Bevins. Feel free to take a good look first before reading on as I'll only be posting a few of the main highlights here.

"The company purchases animation from Japan and then the real work begins. The script is rewritten and the voices are recorded in English.
'We change the music sometimes because it is dated or cheesy,' he said.
Each episode of Dragon Ball Z has a turnaround time that is different for each portion, Bevins said.
To translate from Japanese to English normally takes one week, and the rewrite is the same, (GS777 note- it took THAT long to come up with Piccolo giving off his "eat, drink, sleep healthy, blah blah blah" speech before the Gotenks vs. Buu fight?) but the actors' recording time can differ.
"We put in U.S. phrases and make it more understandable to Americans," he said.
..... Bevins was recently promoted to director, handling his own show and in charge of all aspects of the process. Dragon Ball GT, takes place seven years after Dragon Ball Z. The company is still working on the precursor to Dragon Ball Z, which is simply called Dragon Ball. GT has most of the characters from Dragon Ball Z, but they are all older except for Goku, who is transformed into a 10 year old again."


Basically, it's like this. Originally Sonny Strait was set to be the main director of DBGT- however, Barry Watson nixed the idea. Why? So he could hire himself to do the job and take all the money and glory. Unfortunately though, Watson isn't a very nice or talented person. This job isn't about working on an anime he loves- it's nothing more than a good 9/5'er. I know for a fact that he doesn't really give a shit about production, and he's also responsible for many of the biggest mistakes, bad voices and screwups of the first 4 seasons and beyond, in addition to ordering his writers to "beef things" up for those wonderful Engrish scripts from Toei.

Sonny, on the other hand, at least seems to care about DBZ to some degree, beyond it just being a "9/5'er to pay my bills." I think Chris Psaros stated it best when he said,

"A friend of mine once said that nothing would have gone wrong if the English version had been produced by a group of hardcore fans. That statement got me thinking, and I realized he was right. Who is more reverent of something than a fan? Who would go to those extra lengths to be certain that everything, every word of dialogue, every nuance in an actor's voice, was just right? Who would be more careful that those things that made the experience special were retained? A fan understands that it's every little tiny, seemingly insignificant detail that adds up to making the thing that they love what it is, and only a fan can know what to change when something has to be, and how exactly to change it correctly.

And a fan wouldn't alter the show so that it would "fit in" with inferior American formulae for animated shows. He wouldn't add stupid "cartoon sound effects," or cheesy humor that wasn't originally intended. He would want this show to stand out by being different, by being its true self, and to show the world why the show is so special to him.

There need to be people working on the English version who care just a little too much, who spent far too many late nights watching the show huddled in the dark, who know the characters like they know themselves, who have some kind of emotional investment. There need to be people working on it who, well, let's face it, are freaks like me who love this f***ing thing a whole lot more than they should. "


Look at Justin Cook- he's seen the whole 100+ episode Yu Yu Hakusho anime on fansub at least 5-6 times, in addition to reading the whole translated manga series and he's doing a really good job with Yu Yu Hakusho. And Fruits Basket- I have no idea how much of it he saw before dubbing it, but he's done a fantastic job with that anime. And he was a hardcore fan who was doing the work.

Which brings me to another point- a story I'd like to tell. In episode 264 there was a "special" line... It was so incredibly bad that one of the directors for that episode (I won't say this person's name, at least not yet, but he knows who he is) called up a friend of his who'd seen the whole series on fansub and complained to him about it.

"?, was that line in the original?" He was told that it wasn't... but ultimately, because the line was referenced to later in the episode, he decided it wasn't his TIME or EFFORT to change it. This man had been around for YEARS directing DBZ and bragging about what a big DBZ fan he was, and you know what? He didn't bother ONCE to check out the series on fansub! Aside from the movies, he considered doing that to be a simple waste of his time. (I actually watched 1/2 of Seasons 6 and 7 in a 24-hour setting when I first got the tapes to my immense delight, go figure.) And partly because he didn't go to the extra effort, many of the voices for those seasons got severely screwed up (coughcough, Gotenks, Majin Buu, Super Buu, coughcough, SUPER BUU, coughcough) and lots of other stupid lines stayed in.

Now who would you rather have had directed DBZ and who do you think would have done a better job? "Mr. X." who didn't care enough to go to the extra effort (mainly because he thought the original version was simply inferior and a waste of time, and that his company's dub was infinitely superior) or someone like Justin (I really can't stand his Super Buu, but I'll admit that I'm a fan of his work outside of that character) who has immense respect for the original show and product and is interested in studying how the original studio handled the dubbing and anime adaptation of the show, treating DBZ like Fruits Basket and Yu Yu Hakusho? Obviously, a guy like Justin.

Which brings me to this- Sonny Strait, prior to dubbing Bardock, actually tried to hunt down the original Japanese version to watch and study (nobody at FUNimation had fansubs of the series to speak of to give him, gee what a surprise) but instead wound up with the Spanish version- which he watched. Although I disagreed with some of the lines he was given, I think he gave Bardock a great voice and acted him tremendously well.

Now when GT comes and experienced VA Sonny Strait is about to get the job, Barry then uses his seniority and clout within the company to "take" (or rather steal) it from him- and then hires Chris Bevins in his stead. Like I was just told, why Bevins? He's been in retail for years- he barely know anything about anime to begin with. And, as a voice actor, he's completely inexperienced and hasn't demonstrated much in the way of talent. Once he joined FUNimation as an intern and realized what a gravy train he was on, he decided to quit his years of experience as a retailer and then to try to stay on the FUNimation gravy train for as long as possible.

Yet- well, you get the picture, there's no need for me to sum up (name witheld)'s comments. But why did someone like Bevins get the job? Apparently, the dubbing of GT really doesn't matter to Barry or the higher-up's at Funimation. If they, or Barry, wanted to do the best job possible then they'd bring in one of their "big guns" like Justin Cook or Mike McFarland (or Sonny- hey, I bet he'd make a great director for GT.) to handle it. By hiring a guy completely inexperienced with anime, who hates the original version and everything about it and is more than delighted to "Americanize" as much of it as possible, to use DBGT as a "practice course"- they're just hurting the dubbing of GT even more. Sure, writers Eric and Andrew and undoubtedly most of the voice cast care about doing the best job possible they can, but the directors have the most important jobs and they don't seem to care.

Why didn't Sonny stay on as at least 2nd in charge of directing? Well, I've read a few books and studied a bit about corporate psychology. By keeping Sonny off it's a way for Barry to express his "power" within the company (like, say, a CEO berating an assistant incessantly and scaring others around him to obey him more out of fear of being treated like the assistant). And by hiring Bevins, who sounds like a total suckup to Barry and is someone who really swallows and fully believes in all of FUNimation's bottom lines without question, (ie, "Americanizing good. Anything original, bad.") Barry is reinforcing his so-called "power" and "dominance."

So let's get this straight- the DBGT dub isn't being handled in the best manner humanly possible or being shown the maximum amount of respect simply because of the involvement of greed, vanity, some huge ego's and office politics. Now is this really the kind of respect that the final chapter of the DB anime series deserves? Or any anime series for that matter?

- GreatSaiyaman777