DragonBall: The Saga of Goku

First and foremost in the differences between the new and old dubs: the music. Although the new (2001) dub from Funimation uses the original Japanese score and English arrangements of the original themes, this uses its own score. The theme's kinda catchy, and reminds me a bit of the ending theme to Mystical Adventure (movie 3), but the music in general reeks of a generic "American cartoon" quality that doesn't fit the series too well. It's mainly this that gives it a feel quite apart from the new version.

Then there's the voices. Some of them will seem familiar to you if you've seen the first two dub seasons of DBZ, or live in part of the world that shows the KidBiz DBZ dub instead of Funimation's. In general, they're pretty good, but hard to get used to after over three years of hearing Funimation's voice actors in these roles. The pronunciation that this dub used for "Kamehame-ha" gets pretty annoying, too.

The scripts are fairly accurate outside of the censorship (which there's a lot of), but there are also the classic Funimation jokes that fall flat. Also worthy of note is that many of the lines from this dub carry over into at least the edited version of the new one, though there are some changes.

Censorship in this set is, for the most part, roughly equal to that of the version showed on Cartoon Network. It's in different areas, though. Cut-wise, a little more of the video is left in, but it's made-up for in some completely ridiculous use of digital paint and bad script rewrites. There's even some extra footage thrown in the first few episodes, and added recaps in most of them (since true recaps didn't really start until about episode 22 or so).

One example of the goofy censorship in this version: Goku catching a fish in the first episode. In the newer Cartoon Network version, Goku is naked, though much of the scene is cut. In this version, all of the scene is left in, but Goku is wearing very poorly-drawn digital underpants. One major digital censor that carries over into the newer edited version is the use of American dollars on the fishing pole in episode 5 to catch Oolong (instead of Bulma's panties); you may notice that, when the episode airs on Cartoon Network, Goku dives into the water nude, but is suddenly wearing underpants when he surfaces.

The feature, "Curse of the Blood Rubies," is a sorta-dub of DB movie 1, "Shenron no Densetsu" ("The Legend of Shenlong"), with some footage from episode 2 thrown in. I'm not quite sure why this was done, though it was probably either to replace a very perverted scene or just balance out the amount of cuts from the film... probably both.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend getting this if you like DB for its off-color and oft-perverted humor; the newer "Tournament" tapes will suit you fine, and if you wait about a year, you should have an uncut version of these episodes to feast your eyes upon. Only get this set if you're really itching to see what Funimation intended all of the Dragon Ball franchise to be like when they first set out to dub the series: a mere shadow of its original self, aimed squarely at kids far too young to appreciate Akira Toriyama's quirky sense of humor.

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DO NOT BUY THIS SET. Eventually, FUNimation is bound to release the originals, in all their uncut glory. But until that day, hold off. Patience is a virtue.

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DO NOT GET THE REGION 4 DVD FROM AUSTRALIA!!!!!!!!!! You can not play this on any American DVD player unless it specically says that it is multi-region. That is going to cost around 200 dollars! It may work on your computer, but I rather watch it on my TV. I am almost positive that they will release the same DVD set you can by in Australia in America in the region one coding. We just need to wait a while. The company is almost done releasing all the Dragonball series on DVD and only have the Tien and Pilaf Saga left. Just be patient and it will eventually come out in America.

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