I know that what FUNimation is doing is successful and is selling well, but does that automatically mean that the people behind the big decisions (replacing of the music, "Americanization," "ventriloquization," complete re-writing of the script, having Faulconer cut out "Head Cha La" and "We were Angels" and "Zenkai power" and putting in rock music instead) are geniuses who are doing the best thing humanly possible for the DBZ?
Toei and Toriyama made DBZ into the great work of art that it was and FUNimation acquired the rights and dubbed it into what it now is. Gen selected that anime from Toei because he knew (and his Toei executive uncle told him) that it was their best possible property he could acquire. In fact, it was the best possible anime property on the face of the planet that any dubbing company could have acquired. The success of DBZ is no surprise as it has proven successful pretty much all across the globe. I'm not quite sure how to put it into words except to say that Dragon Ball has some sort of... universal appeal to it. Whatever that might be, as Chris Sabat once said, “It’s almost like there’s some kind of magic attached to the series. Wherever it goes, it’s incredibly popular.” Indeed. Thus, it should come as absolutely no surprise at all whatsoever that it became successful and popular in America.
However, does this success automatically mean that FUNimation is doing the best possible job with DBZ and that there's absolutely nothing they could have done in the past to make it better? Does it mean that, artistically, profitably, and from a viewer's level of enjoyment that they've put DBZ into a level of absolute perfection for the U.S.? It- does not, believe me. It came here and now it's incredibly popular- like it was in so many other countries with dubs drastically different from ours. FUNimation though will insist to viewers and people with complaints that it's their alterations that are responsible for the show's popularity. But first, let's take a look at their main alterations.
1. All of the original music was replaced so that replacement music could be sold on music cd's and so royalties could be charged to tv networks However, as Gen stated in late 2001, "You can't make money from fees paid by the networks." Officially FUNimation claims that their real reason for replacing the music is because they believe that American fans would simply despise anything unique to what they're accustomed to listening to. They deny the willingness of anime fans to accept anything Japanese and think that making it "like everything else" is the best way to make it stick out and be enjoyed by audiences.
2. FUNimation also wanted non-stop music without any breaks of silence since they believed that their core audience they were reaching out to (2-11 year old American children) would be too easily bored and would never be able to appreciate any silence. Another thing they did to further eliminate any silence was to add in lots of ventriloquist dialogue to fill in those "long gaps" when characters did not speak.
3. 140 episodes of DB were skipped to dive straight into DBZ. New, inexperienced anime company + bad time slot + limited funds = anything to survive. FUNimation's main goal at that time was survival and so- the best option for them at the time was to skip approximately 1/3rd of the 444 DB-Z anime episodes. Thus, DBZ did not explode in popularity when it first began- it grudgingly had to build up popularity from the ground up and did not become popular until after about 100 dubbed episodes had been shown on tv. Another side effect of this is that most American fans today view DB a a "prequel" to DBZ.
4. Mistranslated scripts. FUNimation got free scripts from Toei to save them the costs of hiring a translator. Toei, not happy about being forced to pay for FUNimation's own translations, intentionally used the worst mistranslations they could find to "subtly" hint to FUNimation that they didn't like doing this. The first DB dub (13 episodes) and English episodes 1-179 all were based off of bad mistranslations.
5. Americanized, dumbed-down, "hipped-up" scripts. FUNimation decided that the original was "too Japanese" and that fans would be repeled by anything dissimilar to their American way of life. Thus, script writers were ordered to make things "cooler." Despite their changes FUNimation has never complained towards them at all. Even when VegettoEX informed Gen Fukunaga about Freeza's "whatever turns you on big guy!" line, it still didn't faze him. As he once commented, "that's just sort of a subjective creativity thing that we leave up to our writers. We pretty much cut them loose on that sort of thing."
6. Failure to become familiarized with the series. After skipping 140 episodes, FUNimation didn't search for fansubs or fan-translated manga's to fill in knowledge about what happened during that time. From then on out even to the end script writers, voice actors and directors made their own choices about how to proceed with dubbing, with no prior knowledge at all to guide them except for what FUNimation's script writers sent them.
Did any of these make the show better at all? Of course not, only a complete raving fool would actually believe that. But what was the end result of all of FUNimation's actions? DBZ, despite what happened to it, became a hit in America. It achieved #1 status on Cartoon Network, made a ton of money and turned FUNimation into a wealthy, well-established anime dubbing company. Ever since DBZ's popularity exploded in 1999 FUNimation has done progressively less and less to listen to complaints. It's like the more successful they become the less they give a damn what anyone negative thinks about them. On the other hand, just take look at the Mexican dub (see Features-Interviews) and it's popularity. To quote Coola Yagami, "Goku was pretty much loved by all because he was so damned adorable so it kinda appealed to all ages." "Well, we saw all of DB, and DBZ meant the further adventures of Goku. All us eager Goku fans were eagerly anticipating DBZ since we've heard of rumors of DBZ and GT for a long time and wanted to find out just what happened to Goku after he married Chi-Chi. Pretty much all of Mexico was waiting for DBZ the day a tv ad announced it coming to Mexico."
The same certainly cannot be said about DBZ in America. It's almost laughable how much different DBZ's reception was- over here only a small handful of hardcore, oldschool fansubbie/Japanese fans were waking up early on Sunday to see DBZ make it's debut at 7:30 am in the morning. And DBZ didn't even approach the popularity of the Mexican dub until after 92/107 dubbed episodes reached massive syndication. Unfortunately I don't think FUNimation will ever be able to comprehend just how many more people would be watching the series and how much more popular it would be and how much more money people would be spending on DBZ had the dubbed things correctly while staying true to the original. Why's that? Because they've already earned a fortune and have become the envy (as well as the despisement) of the American anime industry. So long as they have had and will have VHS tapes that are consecutively in the top 10, are selling tons of DVD's and are making a continous flow of lucrative profits, they will continue to pat themselves on the back and re-affirm that they have down the best possible thing for DBZ in the states.
As the old saying goes, "There is no arguing with success." Unfortunately, there's no arguing with closed-minded stupidity either. And when you combine the two- how does one argue with that?
- GreatSaiyaman777
