What is Dragon Ball GT? Dragon Ball GT is the follow-up series to Dragon Ball Z. After about a decade's worth of DB work Akira Toriyama retired from writing his DB manga around 1995. However, DBZ was a huge commercial property and Toei decided to try and continue without him, and they then created Dragon Ball GT by themselves (Toriyama did provide some sketches and character designs though).

With Dragon Ball GT Toei tried to capture the silly and humorous atmosphere of Dragon Ball, as opposed to the non-stop, spectacular fighting of DBZ. Unfortunately, by then that's what fans had gotten used to the spectacular fighting of DBZ so the dramatic change of pace was very disheartening to them. Besides that, many of them didn't consider it to be a "true" anime since it wasn't based off Toriyama's work but rather solely off of the imaginations of Toei's script writers. Ratings fell and after just about a year's worth of 64 episodes for GT and 508 episodes total (DB 153 + DBZ 291 + GT 64), the DB anime series formally came to an end.

However, Dragon Ball GT does have it's good points. If you're expecting DBZ-like amazing fights THEN you'll have to wait until the "Vegeta episode" for those (you'll know the episode when you see it- the episode is 100% about Vegeta and the things he's gone through in the past with his rival Kakarroto), though there a few before then. Humor-wise, GT's pretty good and it also has very nice animation. But above all else, the one place where GT really, really shined was with the music. The ending song changed about 3-4 times throughout the series but the intro song always stayed the same. The intro song, considered by many to be the greatest anime sons of all time, is called "DAN DAN Kokoro Hikarete" or "Bit by bit my heart is drawn closer" and is song by a Japanese band called "Field of View." The song goes a little something like this...

"Bit by bit my heart is drawn closer

To your bright shining smile.

Let's escape from the darkness,

HOLD MY HAND!

When I first met you,

I remember the scenery I treasured when I was a kid,

Won't you dance with me?

The winding road of light and shadow,

Are you still... into him?

There are times- when- I feel like turning back,

But I'll fight with love, courage and priiide!

Bit by bit by heart is drawn closer,

This star's shard of hope,

I'm sure everybody wants - eternityyy!

Though I pretend not to mind,

See how I love you,

Let's escape from the darkness,

HOLD MY HAND!" (translation courtesy of Project X Productions)

Nice song, eh? And there are even better-translated versions out there that sound better than this translation of the song. If you want to hear it you can easily download it from many places on the net or just check out the next episode of Dragon Ball GT on the International Channel this Sunday. In fact, this song was so beloved by Japanese audiences that it was the ending song for the final Dragon Ball movie ("DB Movie 4- 10th Anniversary Special") and an extended-length version of it was used to close the curtain of Dragon Ball GT during the credits of it's final episode. Truly it is an amazing song. Now then, let's see what kind of song Funimation is going with for it's dubbed version of the intro to Dragon Ball GT....

"Exclusive Dragon Ball GT (copyright) Theme Song"-

"Main singer- 'STEP INTO THE GRAAAAND TOUR!'

Group- 'GRAND TOUR, GRAND TOUR!'

Main singer- 'STEP INTO THE GRAAAAND TOUR!'

Group- 'DRAGON BALL GT!'

Eternal Dragon/Dragon God- 'Your wish... has been.... graaaanteeeed....'

Main singer- 'STEP INTO THE GRAAAAND TOUR,

A BRAND NEW ADVENTURE BEGINS,

WE HAVE A FIGHTER/SAIYAN (? I really couldn't understand what he was saying here) WHO'S A CHILD AGAIN!

THE DRAGON BALL'S ETERNITY TIME IS GROWING THIIIIN,

THE BATTLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL NEVER ENDS!

GRAND TOUR! '

Robotic voice- 'HERALDS BRO!' (????)

Main singer- 'TAKE THE GRAND TOUR, GRAND TOUR!'

Robotic voice- 'JEERR-WOO-ZOOZLE!' (????)

Main singer- 'TAKE THE GRAND TOUR, GRAND TOUR!'

New Voice- 'TIME IS RUNNING OUT!'"

Guardian of the Earth... that song is just horrible! Not only that but this... "thing" is sung to the beat of hard-core rock, funky techno and rap all very poorly combined into one. You can listen to this Craptacular Creation yourself at Funimation's Dragon Ball GT site (dragonballgt.com) and even listen to a 60 second and two-and-a-half minute version if you so chose. I chose to translate the 30 second song since that was the only one I could tolerate without going insane and since I assume that they will be going with that one, since Cartoon Network will want advertisers to have as many opportunities as possible buy ads during the Funimation's dubbed versions of Dragon Ball GT's episodes. Well, at the very least Barry Watson was right about "expecting the unexpected"- this is the absolute last kind of theme song any fan was ever expecting to see. What we were REALLY expecting for was to see Field of View produce an excellent English-translated version of their great song. And no Barry Watson, rap music is definitely NOT "more of the stuff we love."

Man, I'm really dissapointed with Funimation, especially after having reviewed Movie 6. I was so impressed with the script and music that I assumed that Funimation was finally getting it. I thought that they were finally understanding that we don't want lame rewrites from untalented script butchers who think that they're intelligent, hip, and cool (I'm currently looking in the general direction of Christopher Neel and Byron Watson) and who believe that they can automatically make everything "better" through their "clever" rewrites. Tein's parachutes? Freeza's desire to flirt with every male alien in a 10 mile radius? Vegeta cracking lame jokes in lieu of ever actually uttering the name of his Big Bang Attack, except for the dub of DBZ Budokai during which Toei executives flew to Funimation headquarters to oversee the dubbing? Majin Buu being turned into a dumb, obnoxious idiot who speaks "baby-talk?" Super Buu losing his deranged and sadistic nature and becoming quite simply nothing more than "Mr. American Badass"? Etc., etc.?

Sigh. Funimation really hasn't learned anything after all these bad years. I've seen the dub of Movie 7 and I can tell you that not only is it their worst dub ever (yes, even worse than the Movie 4 dub) but that the DVD that it's on is also their most poorly designed DVD ever. The music is empty and terrible and the voice acting delivery was so poor it made me feel sick just to hear it. And the lines... they were the worst of all, especially the ventriloquist ones. Even more worse was that Funimation spent over 2 weeks on this movie, the shortest movie of all time, and this was all they could come up with! Even more worse than that, this is after almost 7 years of "experience" butchering animes and they still haven't learned anything. Oh wait, they have. DB, Blue Gender, Yu Yu Hakusho, Lupin III, Fruits Basket. Those animes all have their original music in (cept for a couple of songs w/ Japanese lyrics cut from DB, but they've stopped doing that) and they're actually being dubbed okay. Funi's not "hipping up" their scripts (at least not 1/10th as much as they do DBZ) or replacing the music... Ah the music. If you've explored this site a bit then you probably already remember why Fukunaga insisted on changing DBZ's music. If not, I'll tell you and if so, then I'll just refresh your memory a bit.

Gen Fukunaga, on why the music was replaced: "The replacing of the music, was a FUNimation decision. With our own soundtrack, we could charge royalties for every second it's heard."

And do you know what the majority of all fans think? Here's a little something from the old site Planet Namek that explains EXACTLY what they think.

Mr. E. of Planet Namek, on the results of a Planet Namek poll: "The results of our last... poll showed that the average DB fan dislikes FUNimation's choice of music."

And do you know what else? During his musical creations for DBZ Funimation never ONCE asked Bruce Faulconer to watch the Japanese version to see how they handled particular scenes. Even during his replacing of the "Spirit vs. Spirit" scene none of Funimation's directors told him about that song or encouraged him to listen to it and he was completely unaware of how important a scene it was to Japanese audiences until that topic was brought up to him during an interview with Jon Allen.

So what about now? Are we expected to believe that Funimation has changed and has told their latest crop of "rap stars" since the History of Trunks dub about GT's intro song or even bothered to show it to them? And would these "mad phat thugs" really care even if they did see and hear it? Sigh... this is really, really sad. It's been less than a day since this song was made available on Funimation GT site and already virtually every fan aware of it is strongly protesting this incredibly inept decision. People who had complained about Funimation's poor dubbing for years, and who then eventually just got plain tired of complaining all the time are now once again complaining for the first time in years. And sites that usually are neutral and even friendly towards Funimation are complaining about it. And not a single fan on Funimation's own official message boards has yet to say a single nice thing about this song, not even the moderators who work there. Those guys are just trying to pacify them by reminding them that the DVD's will have the original Japanese episodes with all of the original Japanese music! It utterly surprises me that even Funimation possess this much ignorance! Don't they remember what fan reactions were to the History of Trunks dub? Even the most positive of reviews insulted them greatly for the decision to play several rap songs during that movie... and now they're back at it again?

And you know what else? In an interview Fukunaga stated that the majority of his profits don't come from "getting paid to show the episodes on tv" but from "DVD/VHS and merchandising sales". So basically Funimation is just butchering the music again just so they can sell more DBZ "American music" cd's and so they can squeeze extra "royalties" from CN which by Gen's admissions aren't even that much to begin with! Is Gen so dumb that he still hasn't realized that keeping in the superior original music would make the series more appealing to watch and would attract more viewers who would in turn spend more money on Dragon Ball products?

Sigh... actually, there is another reason why Funimation is doing this. You see, after DBZ Funimation decided that they didn't want to rehire Faulconer to compose new music for Dragon Ball GT. Faulconer, however, has made a lot of money and gotten a lot of publicity for his work with DBZ and so, to try and convince Funimation otherwise he sent out e-mails out to everybody who had ever contacted him before, including some people who had even sent him critical e-mails. The e-mails basically were written to look like they were each personally written by him and they asked people to personally e-mail Gen Fukunaga, Barry Watson and Daniel Cocanougher and to ask them to rehire Faulconer.

The result of this action? Funimation became aware of Faulconer's little deed (and were a bit unhappy that he gave out the e-mails of all the head executives) and that probably convinced them even less to go with Faulconer again. But on the other hand, another effect it had was that it helped convince them that the overwhelming majority of all DBZ fans were immensely pleased with the dubbed version music and wanted Funimation to continue to replace and cut out all of the original Japanese music.

As for how GT will turn out... it doesn't look too good. For starters there's the music issue and the crappy dub of Movie 7, which was the last DB-related dub they've come out with. Then there's the new script supervisor, Jerry Carlolly or whatever the hell his name is- the last script supervisor for Dragon Ball Z was John Burgmeir who, despite creating quite a few bad script, really helped redeem himself with his script for the dub of Movie 6. But just as he finally got in touch with what fans really wanted from the scripts, Funimation then stopped him from working on the DBZ movies and has replaced him with some new guy I've never even heard of before and whose name I've never seen in any of the credits. And the final clencher- someone working at Funimation has actually stated that... "If you thought the raping of Dragon Ball Z was bad, wait until you see what they do to Dragon Ball GT."

... Yes, as much as I wish it wasn't, that actually IS a real quote. As if things are already bad enough for Dragon Ball GT they've already dubbed a couple of GT episodes and have probably already made a few GT DVD's, so... maybe it really is too late. Not only that but, as ex-lumberjack Barry Watson stated in his online interview, "We've redone the music... to pump up the dynamics of the series." Perhaps GT is doomed just as Z was, and perhaps it will turn even worse than Z did. So what can we fans do... give up? Hmm... maybe it is too late but we should at least try to stop them and let them know what we think.

Daniel Cocanougher: daniel.cocanougher@funimation.com

Gen Fukunaga: gen.fukunaga@funimation.com

Barry Watson: barry.watson@funimation.com

Dragon Ball GT feedback- http://www.funimationcentral.com/feedback/contact_us.cfm?property=dbgt

Here. These are the e-mails of Funimation's head executives and an e-mail area where you can give them general feedback on Dragon Ball GT. I know that you're most likely very angry and are very tempted to flame them and insult them for this... but... well, I can't honestly blame you if you do, just try and exert some will power and please try not to. Just let them know what you think about Dragon Ball Z's original music and dubbing and what you really want to see in Dragon Ball GT. And if you feel like making a petition for the GT music then please... by all means go ahead and do it. For example, when Pioneer stopped releasing uncut DB mangas they were heavily e-mailed and were even sent a petition with over 10,000 signatures that encouraged them to from then on to only release uncut mangas. I'd do it myself but I already have another petition idea I want to do and I think more than 1 DB petition from a single person is too many. Anyway, unless Funimation cleans up their act then you shouldn't even bother watching the dubbed episodes unless you've already seen DBGT subbed and just want to see how badly things might turn out. And if you haven't seen GT subbed then you should just wait for GT's DVD boxed sets to come out and be discounted. The way things look now, I'm sad to say, that's probably the best option American fans are ever going to have.

- The Great Saiyaman