Dragon Ball has a long history of localization in America.
Many viewers are undoubtedly aware of the 1996 Funimation and Ocean studios dub of Dragon
Ball Z, but the series roots in the English market go back almost a decade before that.
Many don't realize that there were several failed attempts to localize Dragon Ball before
Funimation's successful launch of Dragon Ball Z.
In this video Censored Gaming is going to take a look at one of the earliest and most
interesting attempts to bring Dragon Ball to a mainstream English speaking market: The
Harmony Gold edition of Dragon Ball, sometimes called "The lost dub".
The Dragon Ball anime first began in February of 1986, based on the hit manga series by
Akira Toriyama.
There were early ways to see non-English Dragon Ball episodes in the US.
Airings of Japanese and subtitled episodes of Dragon Ball were available on satellite
TV and certain local networks like the Nippon Golden Network in Hawaii which aired subtitled
versions of both Dragon Ball and Toriyama's earlier work, Dr. Slump.
However in 1989 the LA based company Harmony Gold acquired the rights to Dragon Ball with
the intention to dub and localize it for the US market.
While their name is perhaps not well recognized today, Harmony Gold was at one time a major
player in the US anime market.
The studio was also responsible for the widely successful Robotech series; a heavily edited
and localized adaption of several entries in the Macross saga.
Harmony Gold's initial efforts to localize Dragon ball were quite ambitious.
They localized and dubbed two movies: "Curse of the Blood Rubies" and "Mystical Adventure".
While these movies were originally completely separate reimaginings of various parts of
the anime, Harmony Gold edited them together into a single movie.
It is not confirmed how far into the series Harmony gold recorded, but they dubbed at
least the first five episodes of dragon ball and prepared scripts for up to sixty episodes,
and recruited a cast of distinguished west coast voice actors.
However most appear under pseudonyms rather than their real names.
The Harmony Gold dub is notable for keeping most of the original music, and at least some
of the skeevy humor the Japanese version of Dragon Ball is known for.
But in other ways the dub is heavily changed, far beyond even the early versions put out
by Funimation.
Almost all the names have been altered.
Goku's name was changed to Zero; Bulma was turned to Leena, despite her real name being
written on her shirt in English letters in some scenes.
Oolong became MaoMao, Yamcha became Zendaki, and Karin, the sage who lives under Kami's
lookout was given the bizarre moniker of "Whiskers the Wonder Cat".
Shenron was localized as "Dragon God" while this is a rather literal translation;
it is interesting to contrast with Funimation's minimization of the religious elements of
Dragon Ball in early localizations.
And while the Japanese music was for the most part maintained, the lyrics were redone in
English and are different to the Japanese version's.
There were also some changes to dialog.
Localizers changed Blood rubies to "earth rubies" presumably to avoid the negative
connotations of the word "blood".
Of more interest is how the dub dealt with Master Roshi and Dragon Ball's many examples
of sexual humor.
The dub maintains scenes of Roshi groping a flight attendant and leering at women.
But there was a clear limit to how far Golden Harmony was willing to allow Dragon Ball's
perverted antics to go.
In the original "Curse of the Blood Rubies" Master Roshi offers to give his dragon ball
to Bulma in exchange for a look at her bare breasts.
Bulma agrees to this but forces Oolong to transform into a clone to trick him.
However in
the Harmony Gold version he simply asks for a kiss.
Oolong's transformation is completely omitted.
Despite the intense efforts of Harmony Gold it still wasn't clear whether Dragon Ball
would be a success in the US.
As a proof of concept, Harmony Gold put the movie and episodes out in several US locals,
such as Chicago.
Unfortunately the ratings were poor and, despite the work that had already been put into the
series, the project was shelved.
While there were limited VHS releases of the Harmony Gold versions of movies one and three,
these are rare.
Due to its limited public release the Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball faded from public
memory.
And for years only limited clips of the dub were publicly available with scant details
widely known by the fan community, earning it the title of "The Lost Dub".
However Harmony Gold's work on the series did not entirely go to waste.
Harmony Gold's translated scripts were recycled for use in one of the earliest Mexican dubs
of Dragon Ball entitled Zero y el Dragon Magico, which covered sixty episodes.
A new English dub of Dragon Ball would not appear in the English market for another six
years when in 1995 Funimation and BLT productions attempted their own heavily edited dub of
Dragon Ball.
But this too met with failure and only 12 episodes were released.
Thankfully for Dragon Ball in the US Funimation's 1996 Dub of Dragon Ball Z met with much greater
success.
However it seems some of Harmony Gold's localization made it into the Funimation adaption.
Several minor characters from the movies maintained their Harmony Gold names rather than the Japanese,
and Funimation continues to this day to refer to Kinto'un as the Flying Nimbus.
It could be said the Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball remains important for its non-impact.
Some of the choices made in localization stand in contrast to the later efforts of Funimation
and the dub's failure paved the way for Funimation's arguably more faithful adaptions
of the series in the 90s and early two thousands.
How do you feel about the early attempts at localizing Dragon Ball and what series would
you like to see us cover next?
Please let us know in the comments below and, as always, thank you for watching.
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