User:Puar2000/sandbox

NOTE: If you think the reasonings are generic, you are welcome to edit this sandbox to improve. While this Canadian dub of the original Dragon Ball isn't successful by ratings and factually, I didn't see as much negative criticism of this dub than about the Canadian dubs of the sequel when I looked it up. This is only an opinion sandbox, since this dub is considered my favorite Canadian dub of the anime.

Dragon Ball is a Japanese comedy-fantasy-adventure shonen anime that was based on a Shonen Jump manga by Akira Toriyama. The anime aired from February 26, 1986 to April 19, 1989 on Fuji Television. This anime tells the story of Son Goku's childhood and teenagehood as he goes on an adventure to gather the seven magic dragon balls to grant a wish from the eternal dragon. In 1995, Funimation Entertainment, Josanne B. Lovick Productions, and Seagull Entertainment made an English dub of the anime for syndication. This dub only lasted the Emperior Pilaf arc and the first movie before they stopped due to low ratings, low viewership, and a lack of interest from Funimation themselves. This dub was recorded at Dick and Roger's Sound Studio in Vancouver, Canada.

Why This Dub Rocks

 * 1) This dub isn't as censored as the Saban dub of Dragon Ball Z, as they allowed the topic of death to be said on screen, a scene with minor blood to be kept (the scene where Chi-Chi accidentally decapates a dinosaur that was chasing her), and a few minor innuendos to slip by (such as Oolong wetting his pants when he was scared by the Ox-King, Chi-Chi's revealing outfit (including Goku's comment on it), and Yamcha freaking out over looking at Bulma's chest while she was waking him up to tell him that Pilaf and his gang stole the dragon balls).
 * 2) Tolerable voices for the characters, especially from the main characters (Goku, Bulma, Yamcha, Oolong (who actually sounds like a pig), Master Roshi (who has two voices for this dub) and Puar (who actually sounds like a cat))
 * 3) Decent voice acting from the Canadian cast, especially from Saffron Henderson (Kid Goku), Don Brown (Emperior Pilaf), Alec Willows (Oolong), Ted Cole (Yamcha), Kathy Morse (Puar), Lalania Lindjberg (Bulma), and others. Speaking of that, the voice direction is good too.
 * 4) The dialogue is decently-written.
 * 5) The music is tolerable to hear and matches the light-hearted and comedic tone of the anime

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The paint edits are cheaply pasted in, making it look very distracting and causing animation errors. The edits occured the most in the sixth episode.
 * 2) Speaking of that, the censorship might not sit well to some viewers, despite it being lighter compared to the Saban dub of DBZ.
 * 3) While the writing is decent, there are some writing errors at some point, such as when Oolong was telling the Yamcha story to Goku and Bulma, it clearly showed the animation of the Ox-King story that he originally told in the Japanese version.
 * 4) This dub suffered the "13-episode curse", where a show ends up being axed after only 13 episodes. This wasn't the only syndicated Vancouver dub that suffered a 13-episode-only run, as an earlier syndicated Vancouver dub of the first Dragon Quest anime ("Dragon Warrior") suffered the same fate.

Reception
This dub has recieved a warm reception from fans who grew up with it, but the dub wasn't successfull by ratings due to bad timing and low viewership.

Trivia

 * This dub is also known as the "BLT Productions dub", even though BLT Productions wasn't involved in this dub, most likely because Josanne B. Lovick Productions is a similar company by the same founder.
 * This dub was distributed on VHS and DVD by Trimark Video (formerly known as Vidmark) as part of thier "Kidmark" strand.
 * A majority of the Canadian cast would later reprise thier roles in the Canadian dubs of Dragon Ball Z
 * The exact same dubbers would later on make a pilot English dub of the 1989 anime film "Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone", which is considered lost.
 * Over two versions of this dub of the first movie exists, one where the characters had the names from the Harmony Gold dub, and one where most of the original names were kept.
 * Originally, there were plans to dub more episodes of the anime, but due to the low ratings and bad timeslots, the ideas were scrapped and they went straight to dubbing the sequel.