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Right now, if you look around on almost all Dragonball Z sites, you can find
a huge slur about outrage of the new Season 3 Dub. (NOTE: I'm pointing at
VegettoEx's site. You can find a lot of people saying good and bad about
Season 3 on that site.) Anyway, I bought an uncut video recently without
hearing about the change in voices and music. I was in shock. I popped the
video eagerly into my VCR, anxiously awaiting to see the (supposedly)
enormous changes I would find on an uncut video. (I'm not too familiar with
fansub sites or sites that have uncut views or movies of these episodes I was
watching.) I hoped eagerly that "Rock the Dragon" would no longer curse my
ears. I was dissapointed. "But no matter," I thought. " 'Rock the Dragon' may
still curse your ears, but this is UNCUT! You will finally see what you
signed so many petitions on the net for. Perhaps FUNimation has stopped being
so commercial." I was dissapointed again. Slews of advertisement products
showed up on the screen. At this point I thought I was fighting, but I didn't
know fight and struggle to cope until I heard the new voices. "Okay, Okay." I
thought. "Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean. The music might have been the
original music. Who knows? Perhaps the voice actors have improved over the
last what seems like an eternity since I last saw a new episode." This,
ladies and gentlemen, was my greatest disappointment of all. For a moment I
thought it WAS the original music. The scene that showed the dead Namek-jin
warriors Freeza had defeated (I bought the second video) had music that sent
a chill down my spine as I thought that the original music was here! My heart
jumped into my throat! But as I heard the music in the next scene, it
immediately sank into my ass. It came out of my ass when I heard Freeza's new
voice. The last Freeza sounded like an old woman with Asthma, this one
sounded like an old woman with DIPHTHERIA! (Sorry if I spelled that wrong)
Nail's new voice helped a little bit. Seeing the Freeza VS. Nail battle
helped A LOT! It soothed me greatly to see Nail have HIS ARM RIPPED OFF WITH
BLOOD SPURTING OUT! My heart climbed back into it's proper place, but sank
again came the "Back Scratcher" on Freeza's part. If FUNimation tried to make
that a symbol of Freeza's evil, it was more like a symbol FUNimation's stupid
one-liners that have disgraced the name of Dragonball Z. Then the inevitable
happened, my heart fell out of my body when I found out that FUNimation had
gotten rid of the Season 2 voice actor for Captain Ginyu! (I'm sure Chris
Psaros was as equally disgusted as I.) I couldn't take the fact that one of
the only good English voice actors was gone. I'm a hardcore fan, but not as
hardcore as some. If one that was more hardcore than I was in my situation
they would have thrown a boulder at the TV. Thankfully for my mother and
father's paychecks, I only threw a TV Guide. Then I felt that my whole
anatomy would collapse when I heard Buruma's new voice, than I heard
Kuririn's and I couldn't take it anymore. I muted the TV, literally yelling
at it saying, "That's it! I don't need the sound for the story! I'd rather
guess than listen to you crack heads disgrace the works of Akira Toriyama!" I
found later that this was impossible. My conscience of fandom of DBZ finally
told me that I love the story enough to subject myself to such torture. I
watched the rest of the video with the volume down low, almost like
stretching a torture rack 5 feet instead of 10. I found that there were some
improvements. I found that the new Gokou could pronounce "KameHameHa"
correctly! I was so thankful to FUNimation I said to myself, "Well, I guess
FUNimation didn't screw up everything." (That's my idea of intense praise.
One man's respect for FUNimation only goes so far.) I watched on and when the
video was over, out of curiosity, I fast-forwarded through the darkness of
the screen and saw something that made me sick. FUNimation, at the end of the
video, had put the original beginning, "Cha-La-Head-Cha-La," at the end of
the video! Don't get me wrong folks, this is good in general. But a guy on
VegettoEX's page said he talked to FUNimation's Gen Fukunaga and he said that
FUNimiation doesn't have the rights from Toei Animation to make subtitled
episode videos. MY ASS! THEY SAID THAT THEY DON'T HAVE THE CONTRACTS TO USE
ANY OF THE JAPANESE SOUND YET THEY CAN PLAY "CHA-LA-HEAD-CHA-LA" ON AN
EPISODE VIDEO! THOSE LYING SONS OF BITCHES! Although, not all came bad of the
3rd season. There were some voices I greatly enjoyed. Gohan may take a little
getting used to, but I think whoever is doing his voice has the oppurtuinty
to be much greater than Saffron Henderson. Gokou's new voice has an
oppurtunity to be great as well. But best of all, VEGETA! Vegeta's new voice
was so good compared to the others that I was shocked! He voice could use a
little improving, but very close to the orginal in my opinion. But his voice
isn't all it, his line delivery, his acting itself, fantastic. I can see
where Vegeta's voice actor can go a long way instead of Brian Drummond's
retarded hissing noises. Just like the first season, with a little time, we
can grow to love the voice actors. Many bad may come from the third season,
but I think more good will come than bad. Only time will tell...
- Rick |
   
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