Dragon Ball Z dub vs. sub: how the ocean dub started the fight

The dub versus sub argument in the Dragon Ball fandom is nonsense, and in 2016 it still hadn't gone away. I thought it was no longer a big deal, but I kept seeing it more and more. So here is the history of how it started, mostly around Dragon Ball Z, and what I think it really comes down to. In my view, it's not about preference. It's about how much you want to dig into Dragon Ball.

This is for everybody, wherever you're from and however you watch Dragon Ball. I'm only covering Dragon Ball and mostly Dragon Ball Z here, not other anime and their own dub fights.

How Saban, Harmony Gold and FUNimation shaped the first Dragon Ball dubs in the 90s

Before the anime boom of the 90s, anime was already coming to America, but we weren't supposed to know it was anime. Saban Entertainment, famous for Power Rangers and Samurai Pizza Cats, was putting out shows in the 80s that were masked. Shows like Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Littl' Bits and Maya the Bee on Nick Jr. were dubbed, edited and changed for American audiences. They were Americanized. If something came here from Japan and was rebranded, chances are it was either Harmony Gold or Saban.

In 1995, FUNimation got the rights to Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z from Harmony Gold. They started with the first 13 episodes of Dragon Ball, the ocean dub, recorded at Ocean Studios in Vancouver. It was a FUNimation production with Saban helping out and Pioneer putting out the release, so you had around four companies involved. Saban still had that mentality of editing a show and Americanizing it.

They only did 13 episodes. Somebody decided to jump to Dragon Ball Z because it was more action packed, more of a superhero type show, and would go over better with young American kids. There was some truth to that. But they stopped right before the tournament was about to start, so they missed the good action part of Dragon Ball. I don't think they should have done that, but that's my opinion.

The ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z cut 67 episodes down to 53 and ended on a cliffhanger

The original Dragon Ball Z dub aired in syndication, meaning different local markets aired shows at different times. Most people I've talked to saw it on the WB. Saban edited the series heavily. They chopped out the blood, softened the name of the underworld to "home for infinite losers" and cut a lot of the filler. That shortened 67 episodes down to 53.

Those episodes ran from the arrival of Raditz all the way to Goku landing on Namek. After Vegeta's speech about Goku possibly being a legendary Super Saiyan, the last thing you heard was the narrator asking if Goku had really become a Super Saiyan. That was the end of season two. We were left on a cliffhanger, and it took two years before FUNimation continued the series.

During those two years, Dragon Ball Z moved to Toonami. Cartoon Network wanted action packed anime, and Sailor Moon had already done very well for them. Dragon Ball Z went to Toonami at 5 p.m. and blew up. This was still the original ocean dub, those 53 episodes, before Chris Sabat, before Sean Schemmel and before Bruce Faulconer. So anyone who says Faulconer is the reason DBZ is popular is repeating a myth. The show blew up before he was even hired.

Why fans went to tape trading and Japanese versions

I was a teenager in the late 90s, and the fans back then, teenagers, preteens and some adults, were hooked. The show cut off right after Goku knocked Recoome out with one elbow. We were so obsessed that we went to the internet, which was new and very different then. We started tape trading and downloading the rest of the series in very poor quality, because the only way to watch it was the Japanese tapes. Some people, like me, had the Spanish dub, but not every market had it. Some had French or German dubs.

The English dub of DBZ is the most convoluted mess. I could spend two hours telling the whole story of it, from FUNimation to Harmony Gold and beyond. Other countries such as France, Germany and Latin America didn't have this problem. They had Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT and the movies, aired in order, with no missing episodes. I don't know what the reason is, but the English dub was a mess.

Dragon Ball Super is the same situation. In 2016, fans following Super were watching it in Japanese because there was no English dub yet. Their only choice was Japanese, and that was the same for us.

Subtitled anime was rare in the 90s, so the uncut Japanese Dragon Ball Z was a revelation

In the 90s, subtitled anime wasn't really a thing. The companies I remember are ADV, Pioneer and Manga Entertainment, and almost everything they did was dubbed. You could get some anime subbed, but this was the tape era. When DVDs arrived around 1997 to 1999, we had multilingual releases for the first time since laserdisc, which almost nobody had. You could watch Akira, Ghost in the Shell or Ninja Scroll in English, Japanese and sometimes other languages.

We were so hungry for Dragon Ball Z that we didn't want to wait, and we didn't even know if the series would continue. So imagine going from the heavily edited ocean dub, which had good voice acting and pretty good music, to Japanese tapes with blood and the uncensored afterlife. You were mind blown. This was how the show was supposed to be.

It was like discovering a rock band before it gets popular. "Dragon Ball Z was our show." The blood, the violence and the mature themes had been erased from the English dub by censorship and by people running production companies who were too sensitive and too insulting to American kids. They thought American kids couldn't handle Dragon Ball's themes, which I thought was nonsense, but that's my opinion. We got the uncut version, and we fell in love with watching it subbed.

If Dragon Ball Z had been dubbed properly, most sub fans probably would never have found the sub

Here's a harsh reality that many elitist sub fans don't want to accept. If Dragon Ball Z had been dubbed in the 90s the way FUNimation, Viz or Manga Entertainment dub anime now, with every episode out in order and in a timely fashion, the vast majority of people who watch it subbed probably would never have discovered the sub. Some people have said I'm one of those elitists. I'm not.

Personally, I would probably have tried it subbed anyway, because I like watching things in their original language, including movies like Godzilla and films from Italy and Israel. I always wonder if I'm missing something. But perhaps I wouldn't have developed that taste had it not been for the Dragon Ball Z fiasco.

Why FUNimation went in house and hired Bruce Faulconer

Because of the show's popularity on Toonami, Cartoon Network went back to FUNimation and asked for more episodes. To cut costs, FUNimation dropped the Ocean group, Pioneer and Saban and did everything itself: its own voice actors, its own scripts, a new music composer and its own releases. That's why it's called the in house FUNimation dub, and that's when Chris Sabat and Sean Schemmel were hired.

Bruce Faulconer was hired because the tapes from Japan had lower quality music, and because FUNimation wanted to sell his music to make royalties. The other reason, which I find very insulting, is that they felt American kids couldn't handle silence. They wanted music every second, as if every English speaking kid, American or Australian, couldn't sit still through an episode. That's also why there was music at all times even before Faulconer, when Shuki Levy did the music. This has nothing to do with your opinion of Bruce. It was an archaic and disrespectful way to see your audience, and FUNimation was definitely not the only company doing it then.

Dragon Ball fans are hardcore, semi hardcore or casual, not dub or sub

People say there are two kinds of Dragon Ball fans, dub and sub. I disagree completely. There's hardcore, semi hardcore and casual. If we weren't hardcore, we would never have gone after the Japanese tapes. I've seen people say they won't watch Super and are waiting for the dub, and that tells me they're not hardcore. A hardcore fan doesn't care if it's in Japanese, Chinese, German or Dutch. When Resurrection F was coming out, people watched bootlegs in many languages before it reached US theaters. It's new stories of Goku, Vegeta and Gohan.

There's nothing wrong with being a casual fan. I'm a casual fan of many things, like Indiana Jones or Family Guy, which I watch once in a while without seeking behind the scenes information. But there's a group of Dragon Ball fans so hardcore they want more, and the only way was Japanese. Along with the uncut version, we discovered Masako Nozawa's Goku and Shunsuke Kikuchi's music. Many people don't like that music, and that's fine, it's taste. But back then it felt epic and grandiose and made the series feel better.

The original FUNimation Dragon Ball Z dub was weak, but it still made new fans

The in house dub aired on Cartoon Network and exploded again. Meanwhile, fans of my generation were angry about the lack of bilingual DVDs, because we wanted to watch in Japanese with better quality tapes, and because the dub wasn't very good. Compared with the Kai dub, Fullmetal Alchemist or other modern FUNimation dubs, the original Z dub is poor. The voice actors weren't well trained at the time, and the scripts were heavily homogenized and changed, not for the better.

Elitist sub fans need to understand this too. Even with the script changes and different music, many kids grew up with the Toonami dub and got into the series through it. Did it spread misinformation? Yes. Did it have script issues? Yes. But it also created a whole bunch of new fans now learning more about the series. At the end of the day, it was a good thing for the most part.

Dub fans need to understand that people got into the sub because they wanted more Dragon Ball Z and that was the only way. With Super, it's happening again. People who grew up with the Faulconer dub are watching in Japanese, falling in love with it and saying they got used to Goku's voice.

Bruce Faulconer's music and Masako Nozawa's Goku are the two big dividing lines

In conversations with another fan, we agreed the fandom's two biggest division lines are Faulconer's music and Goku's voice. To understand Goku's Japanese voice, know that Nozawa was chosen by Akira Toriyama and voiced Goku as a kid in Dragon Ball. You're supposed to watch Dragon Ball first, then Z. That order was butchered here because Z arrived first and blew up. Women voice kids in all languages. Goku as an adult is an overgrown man child, not a superhero, so Nozawa was kept.

Fans who grew up with Schemmel's Goku say he sounds like a girl. No, he sounds like an overgrown man child. Not liking the Japanese voice is fine. Disrespecting Nozawa or any voice actor is not. Chris Sabat greatly admires Ryo Horikawa, and saying you hope Goku's voice actress dies would anger Sean Schemmel. Show respect to everyone who has voiced this show, from Brian Drummond to Chris Sabat to Horikawa. There's a reason they're considered legends, and Nozawa is a legend in Japan because of her Goku.

I don't understand why this fandom is obsessed with comparing Schemmel to Nozawa. Nobody compares the American and Japanese Little Mermaid, or the English and Japanese Homer Simpson. You can compare inflections and intensity, but how can you judge a performance in a language you don't speak? The Japanese version is the original. Whether it's the best depends on opinion, but without it there would be no other dub.

Nostalgia, imprinting and why the Faulconer debate flipped

The Toonami dub was so powerful because it's the first thing imprinted on you. I associate Spirit vs. Spirit with Gohan turning Super Saiyan 2, and a Faulconer fan would say something different. Everybody has a right to their opinion, but I think disrespecting the original version is a no. I've criticized the Z dub because it makes unnecessary censorship changes, and I'm very against censorship, especially when it changes a story's morals. I genuinely think Kikuchi's music is better. That's my opinion.

When I was growing up, Faulconer's music was the most hated thing ever, and the internet was about 95 percent anti Faulconer. As younger fans grew up on his score, it became balanced, and now some fans hate Kikuchi and Norihito Sumitomo and love only Faulconer. Still, almost every hardcore fan I know started with a dub and graduated to the sub. I'm not saying you must become a sub elitist, but since Super was only available subbed, you either watched it that way or you were a casual fan, and that's okay.

Casual fans shouldn't argue with hardcore fans, and hardcore fans should teach

I've lived through every single dub, and I got into this in 1994. If the FUNimation Dragon Ball Z dub is your only exposure, you don't have the knowledge to argue with people who've seen it in Japanese, read the manga and watched Kai. You're not dumb. You're a casual fan with nostalgia. Do your research, and you'll see we're pretty much going to be right. "It's not an elitist thing it's more about hardcore versus casual." The issue is casual fans who think they know more than they do, but that's every fandom.

Whether you like Schemmel, Drummond, Scott McNeil, Sabat, Faulconer or Sumitomo, whatever you like. Just don't spread opinions as facts, and that goes for both sides. Dragon Ball is Japanese, and learning it on a high level means going into that world. I won't tolerate insults to anybody, and that includes Nozawa.

My challenge is this: educate yourselves and become better fans. If you're casual, accept it, because there's nothing wrong with it. To the hardcore fans: "teach rather than attack." Make the casuals hardcore. Some won't hop over, and so be it. Fellowship with each other.