#ocean dub

[theknucklehead]

I think we all know who she is referring to:

[auditect]

Hear me as the voice of King Cold in my friend munsonVA's newest fandub! I also edited the sound effects and the music.

[ojamayellow]

[ocean dub]

Was watching some Westwood era dub and really interesting how they do Vegito's voice. Instead of dual voices, they have Brian Drummond (Vegeta) imitating Kirby Morrow's Goku. At the end I placed a clip involving both Vegeta and Goku for a comparison.

[animenostalgia]

Dragon Ball Z Narrator, Voice Actor Doc Harris Dies

Harris died at hospital on Saturday morning at age of 76

Some sad news to share - Doc Harris, the original English narrator for the Ocean dub of Dragon Ball Z, has passed away. While he had some roles in other anime dubs--including playing lead character Genki in the Monster Rancher anime--he's by far best remembered by fans as the guy who would say "Next time, on Dragon Ball Z!" in that original Ocean dub. He was 76 years old.

Thank you for all the memories, Doc Harris. You will never be forgotten by Dragon Ball fans!

[punster-2319]

Ocean Dub DBZ

I’ve been collecting DVDs of the Ocean Dub throughout the past couple of years whenever I could find them, but as of today, I now have all 53 episodes of the Saiyan and Namek sagas for that dub. Good timing considering this year marks the 30th anniversary of DBZ’s initial English dub.

Dragon Ball Z is one of my favorite shows, and the Ocean dub was my introduction to the series. My earliest memory of the show was watching Saiyan Saga reruns on FOX (along with reruns of Sailor Moon) sometime around 1998 (depending on where you lived, DBZ’s syndication run was either on FOX, The WB, or UPN). I loved it almost immediately, and my enjoyment of it grew once I started seeing it on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block shortly after. As most older fans probably know already, those 53 episodes were originally 67 episodes of the original Japanese series, but were cut down primarily due to censorship. When Funimation got the rights to the series, they collaborated with Saban Entertainment to distribute the series in syndication, but Saban had very strict guidelines when it came to the show’s content. References to death were mostly replaced with “another dimension”, blood was digitally erased, and shots of characters getting hit would be cut out or replaced with crudely drawn stars. You could find more info about these edits on the defunct DBZ Uncensored website, which documented most of the changes made for that dub (along with a few once Funi started dubbing in-house). Funimation eventually redubbed and released those original 67 episodes uncut, but I will always have a soft spot for this dub despite how corny and butchered it was. The Rock the Dragon intro would get me pumped whenever it came on.

BONUS: A few years ago, I also found the 1995 BLT English dub of OG Dragon Ball (which also includes Curse of the Blood Rubies as a bonus feature).

This particular dub only got through the first 13 episodes before being cancelled due to low ratings. Because of this, Funimation decided to skip ahead to dubbing DBZ in 1996 (Funimation went back to dub OG Dragon Ball for Toonami in 2001 with their in-house cast and less censorship restrictions compared to when they were in syndication).

[straightfacedstrangeness]

Every day the Ocean dub gets a little closer to flat-out killing me

[anarchic-miscellany]

Gundam SEED: A Dubbing Journey

More fun physical media tales! "Gundam SEED"

It's not the best Gundam series, but it's good fun and the first iteration of "Gundam" which I watched. Hence I have a sense of nostalgia for it, despite its flaws (looking at you 48 episode length...).

Anime is already a fairly niche field, despite the hilarious jokes and mainstream creep us filthy degenerates are making into modern society. The age old "debate" I guess, between those of us who have never seen the sun, seems to be between watching in the original language with subtitles, or watching it dubbed.

My personal thoughts go towards the dub. Aside from the fact that there are dozens and dozens of brilliant actors in this field who make the material fantastic and more accessible (Tara Platt, Yuri Lowenthal, Colleen Clinkenbeard, my homie Kirk Thornton, Steve Blum, Michelle Ruff, Wendee Lee, Kari Wahlgren, Todd Haberkon, Joel McDonald, so, so, so, so many others) to simply ignore the dub through snobbery is to disregard the hours and hours of effort and work put in by hard working, under-appreciated actors across the field. Voice actors are my jam.

So, "Gundam SEED" came out in 2002/2003 but was dubbed by the Ocean Group with Bandai in 2004, released by Beez on DVD. It's a good dub: No "Baccano!" or "Cowboy Bebop" but then again, what is? There are some great actors in this (Andrew Drummond's brother Brian plays the best character: Andrew Waltfeld THE DESERT TIGER, Lisa Ann Beley is the ship's captain, Trevor Devall from "Cowboy Bebop" and "Team America" as Mu La Flaga, Samuel Vincent as one of the two leads and, for some god-damned reason Brad "Light Yagami" Swaile as one of the best characters) as well as some lesser known names in the industry but also great in their parts. Chantal Strand is a standout as Lacus Clyne.

The dub was an excellent work, and my first exposure to the series, it's great.

The series was released on DVD, but had a rather short run: the always excellent Beez released it in the ever delightful format of five episodes per disc and one disc per box, their usual M.O.

I am going somewhere with this, bear with me.

So far so good.

In 2014 the series was re-released in HD, fine. Excellent! More of Beez's back catalogue coming out again and to the forefront is always a good thing.

However.

The dub was redone.

The actors, for the most part, were completely replaced from the top down. Gone were Matt Hill and Samuel Vincent as Kira and Athrun, gone were Drummond and Swaile. Everybody has been changed, right down to the lesser known actors playing some major parts in the series.

And they are the people who I want to talk about.

Bill Switzer, Sarah Johns and Lisa Ann Beley are not ever going to be household names, nor ever known truly amongst the clique-like cult who follow weaboo shit. But I am going to focus on these three people for a moment.

Respectively, in the Ocean Dub, they play Sai Argyle, Lt. Badgiruel and Captain Murrue Ramius, all fairly major characters in the series.

And they were replaced.

Bye, so long, farewell, hope that you got something out of the experience.

This isn't about rambling about how "the new dub sucks" or "Grrrr, change is bad" (well, maybe the latter a little) because, in all honesty, I haven't watched it. Heck, maybe it's fantastic!

But on a more philosophical level, I guess, consider this:

Mr Switzer, Ms Johns and Ms Beley have put a lot of work, time and effort into those parts, they're actors underappreciated, underpaid and glossed over in an already niche field, and then the one big piece of art they get to do, the one big part they have to be remembered and loved, is forgotten, soon to be washed away by the new dub. Sounds dramatic, sure, but now in future should Gundam SEED be sought out by people hoping to catch up on Gundam (though, why you'd start with "Gundam SEED" like a moron when the fantabulously gay "Gundam Wing" exists I shall never know) or just picked up and watched it's more likely that one will watch the remastered dub, and Mr Switzer and co will be banished and forgotten by history.

I guess what I wanted to say was simple:

Remember forgotten art, remember obscure actors, writers, producers and the like. All art has meaning, be it terrible, great or forgotten. Every piece of art has effort and love put into it by some people.

Don't let Bill Switzer and Sarah Johns and Lisa Ann Beley be mere forgotten footnotes.

Buy a DVD of something obscure and forgotten. Remember the effort put into it.

[ararebreedstory]

If you get this joke, I want us to be friends.