Afraid to Buy American Releases?

I've been in the mood for DBZ lately, thanks to Dragonball Kai, so I hooked up my VCR and have been watching old tapes. It's stuff I recorded off of TV, fansubs, and even a few videos from Funimation that I bought when they came out (when the show finally got continued, where Goku fights the Ginyu Force). While watching these tapes, I thought about maybe saving up my money and buying the season sets, since they're cheap and I don't have the entire series on tape. But then I got a little worried. What if the season sets weren't as good as the fansubs? Could I actually get a better product if I downloaded the fansubs?

That sounds insane. Of course a DVD will be better quality than something you download off the internet. But I'm not worried about video quality; I care about the quality of the translation and whether I'm buying the actual series, with the original music and everything. DBZ has been through a lot in the US. At first, the series was cut up to get to the action quicker and to remove some violence. The original score was also removed and replaced with a new score. When the series was brought back during the Ginyu fight, the video was uncut; no scenes were cut out and the violence was still there. But the music was still gone. Furthermore, the script was totally fucked. Lame jokes were added in, sometimes there would be dialogue where there was none in the original version, and talk of death was still sidestepped, instead saying stuff like "exterminated" or "disposed of" (a lot better than "sent to the next dimension" but still shitty).

I think about that stuff, and I begin to wonder if anything is fixed in the season sets. I'm sure the original Japanese audio is there (it'd be crazy if it wasn't), and I imagine/hope the original music plays when the audio is set to Japanese, but what about the script? If the subtitles that show up are just the script for the dubbers, then it's worthless. Even if the original audio is there, I don't speak Japanese, so I can't understand what's being said. And such a thing is not unheard of. It's been said that the American release of Zeta Gundam has subtitles based on the dubber script instead of the original Japanese script.

And it's not hard to find series that have been screwed over when released in America. Pretty much everything 4Kids has released has been cut to ribbons in every way imaginable. The original Gundam is still not available subbed. Rave Master has received a similar treatment. And though I thought it died years ago, some series have their opening and closing songs redone in English. While I'm sure the original Japanese versions are available on the DVDs, I think it's just bad to redo something like an opening song. If they are so desperate to ensure that no Japanese is heard by the viewer, then who knows what else the company is liable to do to the series?

A lot of American releases are perfectly fine. But DVDs aren't cheap. I'd hate to shell out a lot of money for something and find out that I've been screwed, that I'd have been better off downloading it for free. Even if only one out of a thousand releases has some sort of problem, how do I know I won't be buying the bad one?

I know this is extreme, but I think there is some validity in these paranoid ramblings. How can we trust companies when they've fucked over series in the past? Some companies are trustworthy, but when I look at Funimation, for example, I'm not sure what to think. On one hand, I see the great job they've done with some series, and on the other hand, I see the shit they did to DBZ. At least with fansub groups, there's a lot of discussion online, and if a group does a bad job translating, then you know about it. And even if the translation is subpar, at least you didn't shell out $50+ to watch the series.

An interesting remark you've got there. I've seen some fansubbed translations on several recent anime and some fansubs groups have tried their best to retain the Japanese translation and incoprate in a way that we can understand. Offical US companies like Funimation have done their best to do the same with translations such as One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist. But they sometimes feel the need to cut up and add some lines so that the translation sounds right to the American public.

Though with that one scene where they had the US voice actor for Gohan near the end of the Cell Saga say some monologue about Android 16's love for life and nature. I felt it was unnecessary. Seeing Gohan seeing 16 killed by Cell and then that red line going through Gohan like something had snapped summed up that Gohan wasn't going to take it no more. Then they cut up the awesome Spirit vs. Spirit song. Keep in mind that I bought and watched the remastered dvd set from Funimation.

I'm not sure if I want buy any more dvds from them but it's only a matter of time until they realize that parents and children aren't the sole audience but rather the people who want to see something they haven't experienced before. An anime in it's whole entirety; if not the voices then the sound and music. The translation especially needs to be reworked and remain faithful to its Japanese counterpart.

For now though I'll stick with watching fansubs for now. Read reviews from an anime review site to see if the quality and the essential translation is worth the buy to your collection. Then again, everyone's different on what they see as a good anime so it's good to see discussions being placed in forums like these.