SOUND IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS SCENERY
Written: 6 February 2000
Author: PJ

The auditorial part of any theatrical feature - be it a play, a movie, a TV show, whatever - is of course one of the most important sections of the production. Visuals can't do the work alone - to receive the utmost emotional impact, to basically see what the makers of the production you are viewing wanted you to see - you need sound. Its just not the same without a musical soundtrack, without those glorious sound effects, without, believe it or not, even a little silence here and there.

Unfortunately for us, FUNimation has yet to realize this.

I can't quite understand it all. I can condone their visual butchering of the show - I don't like it, but I know where they're coming from. Whether I like it or not, the television standards in the US and in Japan are not the same, even on Cable. I can understand them dubbing, because most of America is too damned lazy to read for themselves and I'm sure they'd get a lot "gocku's voise sounds gay!!!!" But some things are just unacceptable. Let us begin, shall we?

First of all we'll start with the voices. Now, I know they had to find some actors to dub them over. And I have no problem whatsoever with the actors they got to voice Seasons 1 & 2. God knows I bow down to Scott McNeil (He's at least up to par with Piccolo's Japanese voice actor) and Ian Corlett was America's Gokou (as well as Kamesennin). Brian Drummond may have sounded a little....weird at first, but once he got into Vegeta, he could make a "Next Dimension" line sound pretty good. Lalaina Lindjberg (also does the voice of Mia on Ronin Warriors...) was a pretty good Bulma, although she had room for improvement. Ted Cole was a marvelous actor and its almost a shame that he had to play Yamucha instead of a more frequent character....but, what can you do?

Anyway, my point is this - the actors in Seasons 1 & 2 were great, especially for a dub. They may have been forced some really crummy sounding lines, but the actors themselves had talent. They were doing what they were supposed to have done and they did it pretty good (well....Tenshinhan's actor could have tried to sound less like a robot, and I'm not very fond at all of the gender-bending they did with Freezer....but oh well....).

Then, along comes Season 3. Everyone is hyped up beyond belief for this baby. Blood! Less censors! New music! You couldn't cut the anticipation hanging over America with a chainsaw. The show starts up. We see the music has changed, but I'll get to that a little later...we can't quite hear the voices of the characters....but what the hell is with this announcer? Dear Christ, is he trying to squeeze out a turd or something? Is his voice normally that way, or is he being squished by a tanker or something (actual explanation: he was attempting to mimic the Doc, the announcer from Seasons 1 and 2...)?

How about we start with the main character of the show's voice? Son Gokou (or just "Goku" in the dub...). I will say its a shame that Ian Corlett had to quit voicing Gokou....he really fit the part just right. But that's old news, and Mr. Corlett quit long ago, and there's nothing we can do about it. However, this guy's pretty good, and he's getting better. The only thing I don't like about him is he sounds....forgive me....kind of wimpy. He's excessively happy, and when he screams, it just doesn't sound right. Sometimes he also screams for the heck of it, too. I know it may not be his fault, so this of course is not only directed towards the actor, but also the dubbing director. Gokou's naive. He's supposed to have a high voice and all that, like in Japan. But sometimes Goku in the dub just....doesn't sound like Son Gokou was meant to be. I will say that Son Gokou's voice is, however, improving.

Son Gohan's voice actor is doing a wonderful job of imitating Saffron Henderson, and I really don't have anything against Gohan's NA voice except for the fact that a lot of the time its pretty raspy and coarse sometimes. He/she could work on his/her screaming skills, too.

Vegeta's voice started out absolutely horrible. It was such a shame, especially after Brian Drummond grew to fit the part so well. It was so obvious that in Fort Worth Texas, Chris Sabat was standing outside of the recording booth, holding a sign to the glass that read: "TRY TO SOUND LIKE BRIAN DRUMMOND." It just didn't work. At all. They apparently realized this, and the actor grew to build his own Vegeta. I must say, while I'm not too crazy of his overly-British type accent, I kind of like Vegeta's new voice. It doesn't hold a candle to Brian Drummond's interpretation, and of course it's not even on the same mortal plane as his Japanese counterpart, but it's kinda good, especially since the actor realized that he does not have to (and can not) be Vegeta from Seasons 1 & 2.

I new that Season 3 Piccolo could never live up to Scott McNeil. I didn't like it, but I knew it was inevitable. There was no way any American voice actor could ever even hope to portray Piccolo as well as the Great God McNeil. However, Piccolo's Season 3 actor can some times be kind of good. There are scenes where I want to blow up FUNimation's headquarters for their savage butchery of my favorite character (the Piccolo/Nail merging scene comes STRAIGHT to mind), but sometimes he sounds pretty good. I especially liked how he delivered that scene where he remembered his history with Gokou....if he could be like that all the time, Piccolo would sound pretty damned good.

Bulma and Chi-Chi are obviously voiced by the same person. What's the difference between the two? Well, when she voices Chi-Chi she drops the airheaded accent. Sometimes I forget that Bulma is an engineering genius when I'm watching the dub. She just sounds like such an idiot. And the same goes for Chi-Chi. Sure, she's supposed to be unreasonable and yell a lot, but she just doesn't sound....funny. She needs to work on these two characters. Drop the airheadedness and loosen up when voicing Chi-Chi.

Freezer's voice is like having millions of tiny shards of glass shoved into your eardrums at the exact same moment. Not only did they elaborate on the gender bending of Freezer, but they also made her....sorry, him....flirt. Yes, many a times she'll....HE'LL, DAMMIT...say things like, "Whatever turns you on, big boy," and "Three strong warriors against lil ol' me?" It really sounds stupid. Freezer just doesn't sound intelligent and dubious like he was in Japan. He/she/it sounds stupid. Period. I mean, its gotten so horrible that one time Freezer (in the dub) screamed "WHERE ARE MY MEN!?!?!?! (referring to the Ginyu Force)" and I burst out laughing. I know how immature that sounds, but Christ...what they do to Freezer's voice, as well as his personality, could have been easily avoided.

Kuririn sounds really crummy. He didn't sound too wonderful when Terry Klassen was voicing him, but he sounded better than this. Now we've got a sort of 70's-hip-stylish Kuririn who says things like, "Mondo-cool!" and "Excuse me for living!" SOMETIMES I FORGET THAT KURIRIN IS A YEAR OLDER THAN GOKOU. Seriously, I remember I was watching the dub of the episode where Kuririn goes boom and Gokou goes SSJ, and I started thinking about Kuririn....and I almost fell out of my chair when I remembered he was an adult (I also really didn't give a crap that he'd died, whereas in the Japanese version it was quite an emotional scene). He sounds like a damned kid! Christ, at least when Klassen voiced him, he sounded somewhat like an adult. This just isn't even funny. It's such a shame since Kuririn is such a good character. And to make it even worse, Klassen's even working on the Season 3 team as a writer...why doesn't he just go that extra mile and voice Kuririn again? All it could mean is happier fans and more money. Yeesh.

Pretty much all of the minor characters have pretty good voices. Its almost a shame that all the best talent in the show went towards characters that only pop up from time to time. Besides the Ox-King's voice (he just sounds too much like Goofy, dammit. "I lyke Meat Lohf (loaf)!"), I really have no complaints when it comes to minor character's voices.

Nail's voice rocks. Seriously, I'm debating in my mind whether or not it would have been a better idea to cast Nail's VA to Piccolo. He's a really good actor, and its quite a shame that we'll never hear him again after the Freezer fight. He was much better than Ocean's Nail and he fit the part just right. Heck, they rarely even gave him too many stupid lines (except that scene Freezer and him talk about the Chamber of Commerce on Namek outside Saichorou's hut, which was just stupid in general...). The same goes for Saichorou. Its really a shame that both of these actors' characters died/fused.

Dende's voice is pretty good, too. Sometimes he sounds like a little girl, however, but what the heck. There's nothing really wrong with it, even though his Seasons 1 & 2 voice was better (I also really like how the got an actual kid to voice Dende in Seasons 1 & 2...oh well....).

The voice acting department in general could use some work. Its getting better, but there's still lots of room to improve.

While we're still on the subject of what the characters say, let's talk about the script. For one, there's really no explanation to some of the things that FUNi does to the script. All they have to do is translate, cut out the strong words, and maybe alter it just a little bit to fit the lip synching. Nothing more. But do they do this? Of course, not. That would just be too easy.

For one, and this may be the biggest thing I have against the script...They are still making the characters talk when they really don't say anything! Seriously, nine out of ten times, if you can't see the characters lips moving and they're talking (they do this especially a lot when the back of the character's head is facing the camera or if the character isn't even on the screen), at all, this even goes for thinking (they make them think stuff whenever they're supposed to just be watching or whatnot), THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO SAY ANYTHING. And to make it worse, much of the stuff they do say when they're not supposed to is stupid, unimportant, unfunny bull crap! Seriously, its just much better to have Vegeta sit and watch Gokou and whoever fight in silence than to have him think, for the four hundred millionth time, How did he get stronger than me? I'm the Prince of all Saiyans! Does FUNimation really think that children have such short attention spans that if they didn't hear something at all times that they'd lose interest?

I remember this one scene in particular where they tried to make Vegeta and Jiisu have a conversation while they were fighting. Their mouths were kind of opening and shutting a lot, so they deemed it fit to stick in, "How did you get so strong! My scouter said nothing of such power!" and "Just goes to show ya how far useless Ginyu technology has come!" And it looked really, really bad.

And the problem of useless gruntings, moanings, and screamings during the fighting scenes still runs rampant. It may be hard for those of you who haven't seen the Japanese version of the show to imagine this, but there's, besides music and sound effects, silence during the fighting scenes. And it works so much better than hearing them say: "Ugh ugh hu uhh uh hu hugh huh uh ah ah yah yah yah yaaaah yah huh guh gufhe hyuk smack ucck ack wak yak hey yo hay hah ha ha ha huh uh ugh uck yack glack!" What the HELL is the point of that? Are they trying to destroy the vocal chords of their actors? It's really, really, really stupid! (DISCLAIMER: I suggest you do not read the following line unless you are mature and can handle an explicit analogy).

If you weren't watching the dub with your eyes and you heard them fighting, you'd probably think the thing was a damned gay porno!

There's also the immature and childish things the characters say. While its not nearly as bad as the things they said in Seasons 1 & 2, its still there. They still call the villains bullies. They still add stupid, immature, useless crap that doesn't need to be said in substitution for things that SHOULD have been said. How about I list some examples, ne?

"Mondo cool!"

"Excuse me for living!"

"Good job, but your shoe came untied." "I don't even wear shoes." [added when you couldn't see there lips moving, which suggests they weren't supposed to say anything at all....]

"Nightmare city...!!"

"Wow, auto-wind!"

"Yes! Yes! I feel great! I can do this! Uh uh uh! I can do this, I feel great! I can win! I can win!!!!"

"You don't have to scream!" "Oh, sorry..." (since when would Piccolo apologize to Kaiou-sama...?) [added when their lips weren't moving which suggests they weren't supposed to say anything at all....]

Those are just the examples that come straight to mind (you'll notice that four of those come from Kuririn...Christ, is FUNimation deliberately trying to insult Kuririn as much as humanly possible...?). None of these needed to be said, a lot were substitutions for a much more mature, more realistic, better line, and a lot of them were just thrown in for NO REASON. They weren't even supposed to be saying anything, but FUNi apparently thought it might be cute.

There's one thing about the script of Season 3 that really gets, me though....

Dende cussed.

Yes, Dende, the little Namek kid who, by the way, never swears once in all of Japanese Dragon Ball, said: "Don't piss off the God of Love!"

Christ, couldn't they have used that "piss" in some better situation? Heck, why don't they just start cussing, period? I mean, come on, cussing is just fine on channels like ABC and FOX, so why not on Cable? Sure, I can understand why they wouldn't say "shit," "bitch," or "bastard," on it, but you can at least say "crap," "hell," and an occasional "damn" (hell, they say "damn," "crap," and "hell" on Space Ghost: Coast to Coast quite frequently...they even once said "damnable" on the Real Adventures of Johnny Quest...). It would just sound......more serious. I mean, if you were blasted at point-blank range by an energy blast, would you say, "Rats!" or "DAMN!"?

However, I do like how the characters can talk about death now. It may not be too important, but it just sounds so refreshing to hear them say, "I'm trying to kill you," or "It's a beautiful day to die!" instead of "Perhaps I'll see you sometime if our paths ever cross.....IN THE NEXT DIMENSION!!!!". However, sometimes I think they just say die or kill to impress/please the fans. Like when Gokou and Freezer were fighting, and Freezer made a wise-crack about Kuririn and Gokou remembered Kuririn's death. He threw his head back and screamed: "NOW DIE!!!!!!!"......and then just sat there. Come on, all he was supposed to do was scream, dammit. Does FUNimation like to ignore logic and reason or something?

Also, is it just me, or does anyone else find it odd that the Earth is still in one piece after so many evil, blood-thirsty, super-strong aliens visiting it? I mean, PLEASE! What the hell is with Freezer and Nail knowing so much about a Chamber of Commerce? I'm pretty sure (unless aliens gave us the idea) that Chambers of Commerce are strictly limited to Earthly purposes. And what was with Freezer knowing French? And is the "Pop Goes the Weasel" nursery rhyme known throughout all of space or something? The only explanation for the aliens knowing such Earthly culture would be for them to have been to Earth, and if its as nice as they always say it, they would have surely killed everyone on the planet and sold it/kept it for themselves.

The translations and scripts need some serious, SERIOUS, SERIOUS work. There's so much room for improvement that it's not even remotely laughable.

Now we'll move on to the music. The droning, incoherent, stupid, babyish, primitive, ear-piercing, pathetic excuse for music, even. Come on! I didn't like Shuki Levi's soundtrack any better, but I hesitate to say that Seasons 3 music is a step above it! At least Levi had some more professional-esque instruments and a little bit of talent! This is just unacceptable.

There's this one....song.....that FUNimation likes to play on scenes were it would be much better to just have silence. It consists of two drum beats, some weird computer sizzling noises, and then two strums of a guitar. And they play that song SO MUCH THAT IT'S PAINFUL. Sometimes I wish I was completely deaf instead of only a quarter deaf (I was born into this world with only half the hearing in my left ear, if any of you care...)! I also remember the.....sounds....that were being churned out when Freezer shot the Death Ball at Namek. My God. If there had been some sort of weapon around, a pen or a letter-opener would have done just fine, I would have gone either suicidal or homicidal. I'm not sure which.

However, there is this one song that is halfway good. Dash and I have tentatively titled it "Piccolo's Theme," because it only plays when Piccolo's around/Piccolo does something important. It's this violin solo (YES! VIOLINS! REAL INSTRUMENTS THAT AREN'T GUITARS!) that's pretty good and it's really surprising, considering all the other crap FUNimation blew out their rectums. If they would make all the songs as good as "Piccolo's Theme" I wouldn't be complaining about the music (as much).

And Funimation still hasn't realized the emotional impact that can be received from silence. There is not a second in the dub where there is no music. There is always something just droning on and on. And believe it or not, folks, in the Japanese version of Dragon Ball/Z/GT, they don't even play music that much! Only when its NEEDED. Yes, I know that's a novel concept....but a little silence here and there is a lot better than hearing the same space-filling music over and over and over.

I just don't understand the music. FUNimation has the damned money to just buy the soundtrack. I guess I can understand why they wouldn't buy "Cha-La Head Cha-La" (even though I wish to God that they would) but they could easily afford the original score! They're just raking in the money from all this merchandise, and the tapes alone are enough for them to buy the soundtrack 10 times over! Hell, if I were Toriyama, I'd stomp over to Texas, storm into the FUNimation offices, and give them the score. "HERE! TAKE THE MUSIC, JUST DON'T SCREW UP MY SHOW ANYMORE!!!!!"

The music, needless to say, is in desperate need of help.

So, what can we draw together from all of this? Well, personally I somewhat blame the fans. Yes, because there was so much feedback (most likely highly negative feedback) on the visual censoring in the first two seasons (and I totally agree - a lot of what they censored was just ridiculous), FUNimation probably drew the conclusion that if they showed some gore, that we wouldn't care about the music. I could be wrong, but this is just my theory.

Regardless, FUNimation needs to realize what they are doing. They aren't just dubbing some two-bit cartoon show where the characters punch and bleed. They're dealing with a highly loved, highly emotional, provocative, often funny, drama that deserves the best, most meticulous and caring touch. They need to realize that audio and visual work cooperatively to weave together an emotional roller-coaster ride. They need to think more about what real people would say in such a situation.

You can't just pick one of them, FUNimation. You have to concentrate equally on sound and scenery.