|
|
SEASON 3: MY TWO CENTS
Written: 8 November 1999
Author: PJ
After reading all the other editorials and opinions on the new
Season 3 circulating around the web, I felt it my duty to give my
two cents worth on the subject. It's quite apparent to me that
there are two categories of which fans fall into on the
controversial argument of the newly dubbed season: Love it, or
Hate it. There's no in between. There's no "Its Okay."
You love it, or you hate it.
Well, folks, it seems that I might be the first (and perhaps the
only?) person to file into the "It's Okay" category.
Sure, I totally agree that it doesn't even hold a candle to
regular, Japanese DBZ, but, hey, it's not that bad considering
some of what we've been...exposed to in the past. It seems
FUNimation may be finally starting to get the hang of this
"Dragon Ball Z" thing.
When Season 3 started, I was utterly disgusted. I was frightened,
even. The announcer sounded absolutely repulsive. The cheesy
lines that were being slung around forced constant shudders to
travel up and down my spine. And the voice acting...
While we're on the subject of voice acting, it seemed as though
FUNimation had randomly picked a group of talent-less,
experience-less "actors" off of a list or something.
When reflecting upon the first few episodes' voice acting, I
truly get the mental image of a group of morons, bumbling around
a sparsely furnished room, attempting to shove a cube down a
round hole and the such. The pure level of crapiness was
absolutely mind-boggling.
However, on the plus side, new music was finally composed. Sure,
it wasn't nearly as good as the original Japanese score, but it
sure beat the original dub's soundtrack (I don't know about you,
but I personally got tired of hearing the same four or five cheap
keyboard-esque tunes over and over and over and over...). But,
you could barely hear this new soundtrack. Why? The volume of the
characters' speech was ridiculously high. The punching and
kicking sounds were almost completely drowned out as well. This
was fixed after three or four episodes, however, but still....
*Gokou was way to spiffy. Kuririn sounded like he was constipated
to an all-time, new extreme. Gohan was too raspy. Vegeta was
striving way too hard to sound like Brian Drummond. Bulma sounded
like a valley girl (and still does, for that matter.) FUNimation
completely threw away the chance to recover what they'd done to
Freezer, but failed to, instead achieving only in worsening the
situation. Dende's voice was all right. Nail and Saichoru were
the only two voices that were actually better than the ones in
Season 1-2. I won't even start on the announcer, Chi-Chi,
Kamesennin, the Ox-King, Puar, or Oolong's new voices. The sounds
were ludicrously unbalanced.
(*I'll write more about the voice actors in a later editorial.)
However, as time passed, FUNimation seemed to get back on track.
Perhaps they were a tad rusty after having not worked with Dragon
Ball Z after all these years? Perhaps they hadn't yet gotten used
to these new standards, those of which required less censoring on
their part? Who knows? The point is, they improved.
And I have a few things to say about the new censorship
standards. Some of the new rules they have completely baffle me.
Okay, so, Dende (the only character in Japanese DBZ which doesn't
cuss, mind you) can say, "Don't piss off the God of
Love!" but Bata saying, "Bite me," is changed to
"Turkey!" What the? And a character can still be
blasted, cut, beaten, and flung around like a lifeless rag doll
and only respond in saying, "Darn!" Come on!
The controversial subject of blood currently springs to mind.
Apparently, its ok for blood to be plastered on the characters'
faces, but moving blood is a big no-no (save for one time they
showed an close-up shot of one of Vegeta's fresh cuts). Even
weirder is the fact that many a time before in the show
"Powerpuff Girls," which plays on the very same
channel, blood has been shown spilling, flying, and lying in a
puddle in large amounts. And how about the monumental,
BLOOD-LESS, scene where Kuririn explodes, and we get the awkward
cut of him actually bloating up? Come on, even folks who haven't
scene the original scene would notice something odd with how it
was put together.
Logic? No, sir, not here.
On the plus side, however, FUNimation seems to finally be
acknowledging the existence of the after-life instead of
"The Next Dimension." Sure, there were some instances
where they were, I suppose, forced to say the daunting phrase
that still makes me cringe at the sound of it, but they are
finally straying away from it. More often will you hear them
refer to it as "King Kai's," or something referring to
the dead. They may have even gotten completely out of its grasp
once and for all, with the brand, spanking new "Spirit
Realm," used twice in the same episode, once by Vegeta, and
once by Bulma. Sure, its no where near as good as regarding it as
"Heaven," or the "After-life," (and we may
not even know if its a permanent change, since it was only said
on the last episode before it started replaying again...) but,
hey, its better than this "Next Dimension" crap.
Speaking of which, they're also finally acknowledging the concept
of death! No longer do characters "fade into another
dimension!" No, sir, now, get this, they're
"dying"! No longer will characters be "sent to
another dimension," but, rather, be "killed"
instead! And don't worry about being trapped in another
dimension! This time around, you're "dead"!
However, while we're still on the subject of a Heaven and a Hell,
it still seems that we still can't handle the concept of a Hell.
Rather, we're still stuck with HFIL, the home for infinite
losers. You can't win 'em all, I guess.
Perhaps all I'm trying to say, in conclusion, is that Season 3 is
a step in the right direction for FUNimation. Is Season 3 as good
as its Japanese counterpart? Of course not. Is it better than
Seasons 1 and 2? Well, if it isn't better, it's at least just as
good. Is it worth watching? Well, that all kind of depends on
what kind of a "fan" you are.
As long as this "fan" isn't doing anything at 4-p.m.
Central Time, however, he'll continue to watch.