Before I begin, let me just say that a small handful of redundantly overpaid, greedy executives who don't even LIKE DBZ or have any RESPECT for it have NO right to decide for themselves what we anime fans in America really want.


GEN FUKUNAGA- "For the purposes of merchandising, Nielsen ratings, and advertisements, we're targeting mainly 6-to-11 year old boys. But we also found, during our broadcast of the first Dragon Ball, that it was doing quite well with men, too, all the way up into their mid-20s. The story itself is actually for a higher age group than the basic audience target; in actuality, the characters are fairly deep. It's comparable to a number of comic books these days that are read by a higher age group than kids. We intend to leave in that depth of story and character that was present in the Japanese original."

(VegettoEX) "As for the music, he (Gen) said for the VHS release(note, we're talking the VHS release, not the DVD, which does have the original music) that they are still having problems in the negotiations, though he did say there was a good possibility that once those are done that the uncut VHS would have the original music while the edited would still have Funi's music. "

"The replacing of the music, was a FUNimation decision. With our own soundtrack, we could charge royalties for every second it's heard."

(http://web.archive.org/web/20010305093052/http://www.pojo.com/dragonball/suppa4gohan.shtml)
"Gundam Wing is only 49 episodes long. DragonBall Z is 291 episodes long. It would cost too much to have decent music for the show."

"We have way more cash flow than we know what to do with! I'd prefer not to say how much."

(on why DB's music was kept and on what plans would be for GT's music)
"It was a combination of factors including fan input, schedule and rights issues. The main driving factor is to make a show which the most number of people will enjoy. As for GT, the music decision is unknown."

(Mr. E.) "The results of our last poll showed that the average DB fan dislikes FUNimation's choice of music. Of those that did appeciate it, the two favorites were Master P and Slayer."

"No, not a chance. Bandai would not support us if we did that and we need them. You see, to be successful in marketing a cartoon with toys you must appeal to the age range of 2-11 year olds. It's that simple. We have to leave the show on Saturday morning, but remember we do plan on releasing an unadulterated English version on home video."

"Whenever you produce children's shows, you have to allow censors to dictate what exactly gets on the air. We try to keep to the scripts as closely as possible but the censors ultimately dictate what gets on. That's why we want to make an unadulterated [(unedited)] version for true fans."

(VegettoEX) "On a darker note, it seems Gen wasn't fully aware of some of the things that went on. For one, he didn't know about Tenshinhan's VA changing for a couple episodes, 2) He was surprised(and a little mortified) to find out that they still were mispronouncing attacks(ie, Kaiou-Ken), and he didn't even know about that one Freeza line, "All right big guy, whatever turns you on". He was none too pleased to hear about it..... But, the fact that Gen seems to be running his company without even checking on the day-to-day operations is not encouraging in the least. Very little organization...hell, most DB fansite staves are more committed to their topic than the company actually producing the show."

(on script changes)
"I don't know if there's a real strategy, per se, other than that we tell our writers to stick to the original story by Akira Toriyama, I mean, you can't deviate from that. Besides that, though, we just want it to get "hipped up" a little bit, you know, keep it from getting stale. But that's just sort of a subjective creativity thing that we leave up to our writers. We pretty much cut them loose on that sort of thing."

(on why characters never truly go away)
"It looks like they die, but they are really passing on to a new dimension, and they can be summoned back at a higher power."

"Watson and Fukunaga defensively use the word 'action' rather than violence, and both contend Dragonball Z is a 'moral' show with a nerdy hero who says such things as 'That's not playing fair.'"


CINDY FUKUNAGA-
"We definetely were familiar with Dragon Ball, and were fans of it, and knew of its huge popularity. We'd been told, actually, that here was this number-one hit show in Japan, the most popular ever, and that it hadn't yet come to the U.S. So we actually went in search of it to find out why, and to try and bring it over ourselves. My husband, Gen, is an American, but he's of Japanese heritage, and he's very familiar with the Japanese shows. He went back and lived over there in the eighth grade, and just loved the Japanese animation style. It's gorgeous work."

(Gen) "I have checked out a few of the many sites out there, and I've even used some to find out what happens later in the series, because I sometimes need a little refresher...in that area."

"No, we composed a new theme. It was done in Los Angeles. It's a very distinctive sound, and I'm told it's of the sort that's very popular among American children right now."


BARRY WATSON-
"The show has its own mythology that's very hierarchical. You bring that to America, and you start a whole other debate. There are many religious factions in this country that I'm not interested in angering. A kid's show is no place to start a theological discussion about heaven and hell."

(Coola Yagami) "Goku was pretty much loved by all because he was so damned adorable so it kinda appealed to all ages... Well, we saw all of DB, and DBZ meant the further adventures of Goku. All us eager Goku fans were eagerly anticipating DBZ since we've heard of rumors of DBZ and GT for a long time and wanted to find out just what happened to Goku after he married Chi-Chi. Pretty much all of Mexico was waiting for DBZ the day a tv ad announced it coming to Mexico."



Is it even necessary for me to comment on these quotes? They show, quite simply- that you do not care. In Mexico they dub it right and people of all ages like it. Here you dumb it down as much as humanly possible under the misbelief that this will make it more popular to the diapers and pre-teen crowd CN is always so much in pursuit of- despite the fact that that "crowd" would ALREADY have liked the original version to begin with. If the 2-11 year olds and older crowd in Mexico enjoyed a good dub there then why can't we Americans? France, Poland, Spain, South America, Germany, Italy, China, Hong Kong, Korea- and the list goes beyond even this. None of them made so many changes or cut out the music, yet they all were successful. Why? Is it because everyone who's dubbed it have been the biggest and most talented geniuses on the planet? No. It means, quiet simply, that DBZ is that good of a show.

On the other hand, your arguments all along have always come down to this- "Yes, we agree the changes... aren't always right. However, there is no arguing with success and we've got top ratings. We wouldn't have them if not for the changes, the changes are the reasons why people watch the show so much. It'd just be a floundering unpopular show if it was anything like the original. You may hate it, but we gotta do what we gotta do to make it popular. I'm sorry you feel that way, we disagree with some of the changes as well."

Is that the really true? You guys argue that to justify what you do, but it really is not true. Gen himself has stated that he doesn't like any of the dub music and that he doesn't even consider it to be "decent". He's also a habitual liar, frequently trying to turn the "acquisition of rights to the original music" into an issue to try and deflect criticism- when it's actually a complete non-issue. Like Toei animator Mr. Fournier said when I asked him how much it'd cost you guys to buy the music rights to either DBZ, GT or one of the movies: "Probably a lot less than they would have you believe, if anything at all."

And NOW you guys want to hire a bunch of garage and basement bands from Dallas to put rock music in Movie 8- why the hell do you want to do that? DBZ is the world's most popular anime. Movie 8 is considered to be the all-time fan favorite of the 13 DBZ movies. One could argue take those 2 facts together and then use them to argue that that makes DBZ Movie 8 the BEST anime movie of all time. To put it another way... the most successful and beloved DBZ movie across the entire planet we're sitting on has never been shown with anything but it's original music. Why on earth do you want to change that formula? Hasn't that formula already proven successful enough? And isn't your CEO's uncle a big exec at Toei? Couldn't he just negotiate the "big music rights" for 8 for virtually nothing, a pittance to your wealthy company or maybe even... nothing? It'd seem like it'd cost your company MORE money to delete every second of music from the DBZ movies and to insist to fill it in with your own stuff.

Besides that, the only remotely "logical" reason for you to do that is so you can sell your own movie cd's- and even that's a bad idea. Like VegettoEX (who has composed one hell of a very complete list of international cd's on site, btw) said, "Did you know that Germany has dozens (and we mean DOZENS!) of drama CDs? That France has a remix album? It really is interesting to see what other countries have that we get screwed out of..." You see? You guys actually CAN make money off of the original music! America has more money than Germany and a lot more people- so why have we had fewer cd's over here and why have they been less popular? Because, like FUNimation CEO Gen Fukunaga agrees along with me and fans around the world, the original score is simply better. If profits is how you see what's best then the profitability of the original music in Germany should show you something. And because the original score is superior, more fans would like it and buy more of it than the stuff you're wasting so much time and money on to replace all of it.

Which leads to another thing- Blue Gender, Yu Yu Hakusho, Dragon Ball, Fruits Basket, Lupin III. You know what they have in common? They ALL have the original music in there that you guys went to the trouble of "negotiating" for and none of them have gotten 1/10th as many complaints of Z and GT! And speaking of GT, the day it came out literally EVERY DB message board was filled with dub and sub fans cursing your company out and demanding blood- and yet you still insisted on ignoring them. Because you replaced it's best feature and used a bunch of overpaid, foolish "consultants" to come up with the exact same results that Mr. E. was able to with an internet poll, and you trusted these people who know nothing about anime, you have again created yet another series like DBZ that people will continue to complain about and be dissatisfied with.

Many people say that they like your other well-dubbed animes, some moreso than their originals. It's obvious that you took the complaints from DBZ and applied them to those, and watching those just shows that you guys DO know how to do animes right- but you only choose to do so if a bunch of guys dressed like accountants with child psychology phd's being paid $10,000's to interview and test hundreds of 2-11 year olds tell you what's best for anything that is animated. Why not apply the complaints to DBZ to DBZ itself as well? If all those Lupin III movies can have the original music then why can't DBZ's?

Besides that, Pioneer put in the original music for the first 3 Z movies- when DBZ wasn't NEARLY as popular as it near is. And look- those 3 Z movie dubs are STILL the favorites among most American fans. Even Harmony Gold's unsuccessful and half-hearted attempt at making DBZ popular with a few movies in a few cities at redundantly bad hours with no advertising had the "expensive" original music- including their own ENGLISH DUBBED VERSION of the song Head Cha La! And yet, despite all that- you simply REFUSE to listen to ANYONE who complains! You just ignore them and delete/censor/lock anything they say at your message board. Instead of giving fans a right to speak and listening to their concerns you're just saying, "Our message board is a propaganda board. You can post there, as long as you're in favor of everything we do 100%! Should you ever complain, we will always ignore you because we just don't care at all."

Yes, Movie 8 will sell a buttload no matter how it is dubbed- the dubbing of Movie 7 proves and confirms that. However, with the original music, the version you'd present would be of superior quality. The fans would be delighted and shower you with compliments- and begin to forgive you for a lot of what you've done to DBZ. The music would be popular, and perhaps your site could start a lucrative business of selling original music cd's for it and other animes. If you replace it you'll make less money, piss off the fans who are already mad at you even more, (already pissed at gangsta rock/rap deleting a significant portion of GT's best feature- and you also skipping 25% of that series), and create music cd's that'd be less enjoyable to listen and that less people would buy.

So please FUNimation- just give the fans (and Toei employees who come by this site and also agree with us) what we want- give us a dubbed version of Movie 8 equal to, if not better than, many of the other ones across the globe. For once for DBZ, just pull your heads out of your asses and listen to not only what's right but what's also most profitable and what your CEO thinks would sound best. Anything else would be the epitome of arrogance and ignorance.

- GreatSaiyaman777