Discussion TheyChangedItNowItSucks / AnimeAndManga

• The first two seasons of Dragon Ball Z were dubbed into English by The Ocean Group while being licensed by FUNimation, and the English dub handled and controlled by Saban Entertainment; however, the show suffered from poor time slot placement and didn't get a lot of mainstream exposure until it began airing on the Cartoon Network, and then its popularity exploded. To meet the high demand for more episodes, FUNi made plans to dub the rest of the series, but broke off their connection with Saban, and realized realized it would be more economical to produce an in-house dub at their own facilities in Texas rather than outsource the work to Ocean in Canada, which they could no longer afford without Saban's funding. As a result, all the character voices in the third season sounded radically different from those in the previous two (before they were redubbed that is), creating a fiery backlash among viewers who had been fans of Ocean's work. To be fair, Funi's voice work at this time was admittedly pretty lousy, although they have since gotten better (see: Fullmetal Alchemist); rumour has it that they were recruiting people off the street with no prior VA experience during auditions, Frieza was voiced by a woman, and Puar and Chiaotzu were voiced by a librarian. However, while many of the voice actors had no prior experience in voice acting, most were to some extent. Sonny Strait (Krillin) had even voiced the original TOM on Toonami before his stint in DBZ.
  • I defy you to watch a scene comparison between Z and Kai on youtube and read the comments. You will constantly find people looking for one change in the scene and using that one change and call that justification to call the Kai version bad. It doesn't matter how good the Kai version is. If the scene doesn't last as long, it doesn't let you soak up the emotion. If the music is different, that's the reason why the Z version was better. It doesn't matter if the voice acting quality is better, the words are slightly different so it sucks.
  • Also keep in mind this was hardly the only issue in play when FUNimation took it in-house. Saban Entertainment had creative control over the original dub of the first two seasons for its broadcast run, and directed FUNimation to bowdlerize the show mercilessly. Hence the term "the next dimension". If Saban didn't let it go, FUNimation would've turned into 4Kids. And it took a while for them to re-learn to walk after that.

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