Recently I got this in my e-mail address under the title "GT 22" from a... well, I'll keep the person's name anonymous. Anyway, ahem...

"I work with funimation regularly, so I feel that I can be a true source of information. I think the credits are messed up in the first few releases of GT as far as writers go, but for GT 22, Eric Vale and Andrew Rye wrote the episode.
As you'll see with most of GT, there are 2 head writers. Eric Vale and Neil Bligh. This is a fucked up situation, and though I don't know how it came about, I can only assume some asskissing was involved on the part of Neil. The consensus at Funi is that everything Neil Bligh writes turns to shit, which I can vouge for. He still seems hellbent on doing the wacky, not funny, over-Americanized scripts.
On the other hand, most everything that Eric Vale and his team write is really good stuff. They're as true to the original as they're allowed to be, and they don't fill up the script with lame attempts to punch it up. I've noticed that sometimes they may change a line completely, but it still gets the same point across as the original. Now granted, GT is a pretty lame show even in it's Japanese form, but I think you'll find that the Eric Vale (and his team) scripts far outweigh the Neil Bligh scripts. So if GT seems inconsistent as far as quality in writing goes, now you know why, and you'll know who to blame. "


At first I was highly skeptical. While I knew it could possibly be true, I also know it could be a highly elaborate fanboy plot to trick me. I researched what he said, and found out that Andrew Rye is indeed a script writer for GT. Hmm... that was pretty interesting to learn since I had never heard of him before. Plus, the info on "Neil" definitely checked out. And the cursing-censorship sounds like a Gen Fukunaga/FUNimation mandate imposed upon them. (Interestingly enough, I've heard that the dub of Movie 8 has a GREAT and VERY accurate script, but it doesn't have a single curse word in it...) Plus, that whole "sewage system thing" I mentioned did change a line completely, but it still did the same point across as the original. I wasn't complaining about it when I mentioned it, (GT's filler anyway :P) in some ways it was kind of a slight improvement I might say.

Finally, this was written very shortly after my last editorial. It'd take far longer than that extremely short period of time for a fanboy to concoct a plan as elaborate as this. No doubt about it, this was definitely the real deal. So I responded,

"....Eric Vale and his team take their jobs as writers seriously, so I guess I shouldn't be so hard on them and my respect for Eric and Rye has definitely gone up a few notches. Thanks, I really appreciate the information. However, this does raise one question. According to the GT interviews Jerry Carmile is the "script supervisor". Beforehand I'd always thought that he was the guy completely in charge of the scripts. If that's not what he does then what exactly does his work entail?"


I got another response.

" Neil Bligh is also known as Christoper Neil Bligh. I think I'm spelling his last name wrong. You know who I'm talking about. Jeremy Carlile is the script supervisor. Every script for every property Funimation dubs goes through him. He gives the head writers the episodes they need, goes over finished scripts to make sure character names, continuity, storyline all add up. Makes sure the script is good enough to be recorded. Things of that nature. Nice guy."


Heh, boy am I EVER familiar with Christopher Neel... or should I say, Neel Bligh. Who is he? Well, as best as I've been able to piece together so far,

1. He lives in Canada. (Remember the GT preview Fruits Basket DVD where they bragged about having a "highly skilled script writing team from here to Canada?" Eric, Andrew and Jerry live in Texas.)
2. He's a "temporary worker" at FUNimation headquarters in Ft. Worth. What that means, I'm uncertain, but he has consistently been given work by FUNimation.
3. He's never actually travelled to FUNimation. Many of the people down there, surprisingly, have never heard of him before.
4. He's been around since DBZ Season 1.... go to DBZU to find out more.
5. He "helped" with some of the voice changes for Season 3. (case in point- he and Klassen told the directors that Yamucha needed a "surfer dude accent" as he was a "jock, gungho kind of guy." His "jock" nature comes from the one single FILLER episode where he is seen playing baseball.)

6. Him and Terry Klassen... Season 3... I think I've said just about enough... big boy!
7. He was given very, VERY heavily mistranslated scripts for 61.5% of the series.
8. He HATES almost all original attack names and loves to change them. Case in point (and these are just a few of maaaany)- mistaken "Kamekameha" by Goten was altered to "Kamehameha", completely ruining the joke. Another 10-word name attack by Mr. Satan (which was also meant to be a pun- this time on over-elaborated attack names) was altered to a one big, giant "ARRRRRGH!" And this was just during the time Neel Bligh was given CORRECTLY translated scripts to work with.

9. He knows jackshit about the series, and what little he knows about... he has no respect for. (again, I refer you to DBZU. I'll also refer you to my Movie 7 review, as that was his latest big "undertaking" and he seriously screwed up the story for that one major-league bigtime.)
10. He's Barry Watson's "very talented" script writer who "punches up the humor, you know, beefs up the comedy." Barry and Gen have travelled to Canada before, and spoken to him either in person, by phone or e-mail.
11. I'll just let our buddy Gen handle this one. "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."


Do you see why I hate this man? More so than almost any other person except for the main executives, he is the most responsible for the butchering, kiddyization and "Americanization" of DBZ than anyone else. The fact that he's so hated at FUNimation that somebody would e-mail me complaining about him goes to show how incredibly unpopular is. Not even FUNIMATION thinks he's a good script writer at all- and that's certainly saying quite a lot. In fact, as someone who goes by their 2nd and 3rd name, I find it peculiar that he's going by his 1st and 2nd name in the credits when he's known mainly by his last 2 names... Were I to go by my 1st and 2nd name, many people would not know it is me. I guess Neel Bligh's got something he wants to hide...

In any case, the blame does not all lie with Neel Bligh. For starters, it is important to note that he was first hired in 1995... and has been working for FUNimation for almost 8 full years, consistently bein paid money to do his "stuff" to the show. Furthermore, the directors and voice actors can be blamed just as much as him. The directors accept his scripts and adopt them, and the voice actors accept most of the scripts. (many times they've actually complained at stuff they considered too goofy. Hell, originally the directors and writers wanted Sean Schemmel to call himself a "Super Duper Saiyan" during one episode, but he balked and refused. Just goes to show...)

Of course, it is unfair of me to blame ALL of the voice actors. After all, the directors and those in charge did nothing to encourage or instruct them to watch fansubs- and even they didn't bother to check out the original version in any great depth. In fact... nah, I'll get into this later (wuddup Steve Harmon), for now you get my point.

What I'm trying to say is that everybody at FUNimation who accepts his work, especially and particularly the directors, are just as guilty as he is for what he produces. They're saying that they're happy with the material he produces, (looks in the direction of head GT director Barry Watson. "GOKU'S BRINGING DA LAWWWW!" indeed. More like Neel Bligh's bringing down the stupid.) and they want him to keep doing his "magic." Jeremy Carmile may be a nice guy, but still... he ACCEPTS Bligh's work. To be fair though, maybe there's more to this "script processing" I don't know about and he's forced to accept this crap. But if he does automatically accept it, then it's the same as if he himself wrote it. If there are any problems, the scripts should just keep being sent back to Neel Bligh. And 8 years of Bligh's zany antics... hasn't this gone on long enough? He may be stupid, but I'm sure he's explored the Net and seen how much people hate his work... but yet, he's refused to improve. I couldn't phrase it any better than by saying, quote...

"For every diehard fan, you have inspired at least an equal number of people who hate or mock the show because of your efforts to 'adapt' it, which have only succeeded in turning it into a laughingstock, a cheap parody of itself. And the fact that you have chosen to ignore criticism rather than use it to improve the show's adaptation goes beyond stubborness. It has become the anime equivalent of being raped and then being told to 'just lie back and enjoy it'."


To be fair though, he's not the only bad script writer and it'd be completely unfair for me to use this opportunity to make him into a scapegoat for all of FUNimation's script problems. Far from it, he may be the most famous but he's not the epicenter of the bad scripts. There are other less famous, less "colorful" individuals who've done very bad jobs with the scripts. The most famous, the "mini-me" of bad script writers, the Monarch of Mondo, of course... none other than Terry Klassen who "teamed up" with Neel to give us Season 3's infamous scripts. Then there's "Chris Forbis" who was around at least during Season 1. (beyond that, I'm not too sure what he's done) And there are many others I'm sure I'm also missing. But Neel could have actually improved- had Gen and others "put a leash" on his activities instead of "letting him loose" and threatened his job and ordered him to. Or had he himself wanted to. But, they didn't. And Neel Bligh has no intention of improving himself. Left completely to their own devices, the script writers have done what theyhave done. Some of it's been good... but an unhealthfully large chunk of it's been just plain awful.

FUNimation... if Movie 8's script is almost perfect, and 2/3rds of your GT script writing force is great, why not fire him for good and make ALL of your writing force pretty much perfect? He's the only thing standing between making your DB-related script writing team becoming completely professional, as he's about the equivalent of a smelly hobo covered in feces at a formal attire party- he's so bad that he's doing stinking up the whole joint. And his smell kee[s attaching itself to others, some of them innocent bystanders like Eric Vale and Andrew Rye. Please, be rid of him. Get him away from GT and correct any GT "scripts" he's already dirtied, and don't let him work on anymore DBZ movies... and keep him the hell away from the DBZ redub of Seasons 1 and 2. He's already dirtied those 2 seasons up bad enough the first time (example, turning Bardock into a "scientist") so there's no reason why he should be brought back. Besides, the redub's supposed to be a correction of all the main problems those 2 seasons had... and he was definitely one of it's main problems.

He really should have been fired immediately after he mistook Freeza for an effiminate, crossdressing homosexual and completely destroyed what Akira Toriyama had intended to be the ultimate villain of all time. (Well, at least during that particular saga of DBZ...) Yet he wasn't. "Whatever turns you on, big guy!" and yet you keep wanting to hire his services and have him produce more "quality scripts" like that one? FUNimation... please fire Neel Bligh and be rid of him. As much as I've complained about you guys in the past, I've only once said that one of you deserves to lose their job... and that someone was Neel Bligh. None of the fans like him, most of you hate him, his script "adaptations" been the source of many insults and dislike towards your company (not to mention plot holes... cough, cough, Goku was 3 years old during the first episode, cough, cough) and he has no intention at all whatsoever of ever improving... so what's the point of even bothering to keep him around? After all, I don't see the point of rewarding someone to beat you over the head, so why let Neel Bligh constantly get away with turning what is an otherwise good show into mindless crap?

As for you Eric and Andrew... thanks guys. Here's hoping that what little is left of DBGT is left completely in your capable hands.

- GreatSaiyaman777