Hard to say, but it's typically something along those lines. There's a reason nearly every show released between 2000-2005 that DOES get a BD release is an upscale. Sonic X would be no exception. In short, don't fret over it. You're not missing out on any real detail because that detail honestly wasn't really there to begin with.
I suppose I'm mostly remembering things like Yamcha's surfer voice, and Vegeta and Piccolo's now mainstay over the top gruff tough guy voices. Well, I wasn't meaning to imply that it was a 100% transformation. It still attempts to maintain humorous moments, but the non-humorous moments are embellished the fuck out of. The name change means nothing. There's no shift in tone between the "two" stories. Things begin getting more serious in the Red Ribbon Army arc, and gradually continue doing so up through the Cell arc (with the silliness of the Buu arc following it). There's no night and day demarcation point, and the 23rd TB-Saiyan border isn't one no matter how much Funimation has painted it as. Toei didn't drastically change the background music and narration when they slapped a Z on it. They changed the opening and ending themes, recap and NEP music, etc. Inconsequential shit like that, which still maintained the general tone. Have you watched DB in the original, immediately followed by Z? It really doesn't feel like a different show at all when you actually watch it in its original production, in the original production order, and what I'm saying regarding the tonal consistency is a lot more intuitive and apparent once you experience it that way. The fact that people have to actually sit down and watch the original in order for a very large chunk to truly understand this speaks wonders, I feel, about the job they did dubbing it. You're not doing a very great job at defending this assertion. What you're saying amounts to little more than "it's not and that's all there is to it!" You say that with the implication that there is a sole, objective, quantifiable notion of what "logical fantasy-based extension of actual martial arts abilities" entails, without actually expressing what that is supposed to be. You're either confused as to what I'm trying to say, or you're being unnecessarily stubborn. I'm going to assume the former, and attempt to clarify. There's a reason that ki blasts and flying around are logically considered fantasy-based extensions of martial arts. The Kamehameha is introduced initially as a technique developed by a martial arts master. He later uses this at a martial arts tournament. The announcer for this martial arts tournament comments on the technique, and yet does not note any peculiarities about it being "not martial arts", or anything like that. He never does that for any of Ten's bullshit, or later, Piccolo's bullshit. It's all acceptable shit to be doing in a martial arts tournament, in stark contrast to weapons. If all of that wasn't martial arts, I imagine the people running the show would be disqualifying everyone for not using....whatever you want to call it at this point, to win at a martial arts tournament. Or they'd at least make a comment about it or something. The crazy things we see in Z are logical extensions of what we'd seen before. Bigger ki blasts, more sophisticated control over bukujutsu, being able to track someone by their ki rather than with your vision, etc. are all literally extensions of what everyone was doing up until that point, which was for all intents and purposes fantasy martial arts. Aliens and space travel don't undermine that, robots and time travel don't undermine that; rather they make it more fantastically retarded than it already was. Now I'll grant you that it's not all directly played up as martial artists once the tournaments drop off, but that means very little in regard to what I'm actually arguing here. Just because they're not being referred to 24/7 as being martial artists performing martial arts techniques, it does not logically follow that they aren't martial artists performing martial arts techniques. When we see that they in fact logically have evolved from what we had been calling martial arts up that point, there is no sense in referring to all of this crazy shit as anything more than absurdly over the top martial arts taken to its extreme. Not having things 100% spelled out for us does not automatically preclude this from being a logical extrapolation. Superman doing similar things as an extension of other concepts does not erase what these things have logically extended from, as depicted in the story. I'm sure you're aware that ki is just the Japanese equivalent of "chi", and I'm sure you're aware how principle chi is as a concept in Eastern martial arts, mythology, philosophy, medicine, etc. These all blend together in regard to inspiring Dragon Ball. The characters at the most early points are very clearly martial artists, there's no denying that. They learn to hone their skills, which are martial arts skills, by various masters as the story progresses. Well, a lot of the things being taught by these masters pulls a lot of inspiration from Eastern martial arts, mythology, philosophy, etc., which as I said before, are all interconnected schools of thought. Derek Padula's written some really insghtful stuff on the matter if you're interested: http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/the-origin-of-the-tenkaichi-budokai/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/ossu-ora-goku-explained/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/bukujutsu-explained/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/the-genki-dama-explained/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/dragon-ball-kiai/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/the-kaio-ken-explained/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/taiyo-ken-explained/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/spirituality/room-spirit-time-explained/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/hammer-of-gods-dragon-ball-martial-arts-double-axe-handle/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/rock-paper-scissor-in-dbz/ http://thedaoofdragonball.com/blog/martial-arts/lotus-position-anime-manga/ --- Now, my point with all of this, is that overall the change in narration voice, narration style, and general tone of the plethora of musical scores that were given in the adaptation absolutely do not reflect this basic notion. The original Japanese score greatly fits a crazy sci-fi fantasy wuxia martial arts inspired action adventure. It fit with "classic" Dragon Ball, and "Z" changed far too little to justify the huge change in musical score and narration style, and that is very much so evidenced by the way Toei handled it initially. The music has the same kind of feel, and the narrator is exactly the same. Kai is an interesting beast, as that does take Z and treat it like its own series. That's a tad more justifiable, I feel. While with the original version of the anime, Funimation did that to Z, but kept Dragon Ball the same. Shit just doesn't jive as one single story like that once you start thinking about it enough, which seems to be why so many people in the western fandom seem to treat them like two totally distinct things. Granted, I don't think what they did with Z is necessary as bad as some of the shit that 4Kids has done. I would say that if 4Kids-ish-ness is a 10, and a perfect dub is a 1, that the old Funimation dub is much closer to that 10 than to that 1, somewhere between a 6 and an 8, if that makes sense. --- Now, this conversation has fuckall to do with Sonic X, and is thus grossly off topic. If you're not convinced, or don't at least understand my viewpoint here, there's not much else I can say, and we'll have to agree to disagree.
A "shift in tone" doesn't necessarily just mean the show merely got lighter and softer or darker and edgier - it encompasses such things as what elements the show focuses on and what narrative themes it has. Dragon Ball was a comedy/adventure with martial-arts-based action scenes. Dragon Ball Z dialled down the comedy, the adventure, AND the martial arts to make it more of an action show focusing on raw power with the latter two as minor elements (and the third barely even being there at all.) Furthermore the character focus almost completely changes. To highlight: Among the "main characters" of classic Dragon Ball are Goku, Bulma, Krillin, Yamcha. Among the "main characters" of Z are Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, with the previously-established characters being reduced to plot devices at best and minor cameos at worst. If you went and told anyone else there was no fundamental shifts in the storytelling between the King Piccolo arc (Which while being considerably darker than the rest of classic DB was still an adventure with martial arts) and the Saiyan arc (which had next to no adventuring and battles reduced to ki blasts and punches), quite frankly, I believe you'd be laughed at. Because from my perspective the argument (IE: that anything can classify as being "martial arts" if it simply self-professes to be such) is as nonsensical as saying that the world is flat, the sky is brown, and Sonic is a Nintendo product. The burden of proof should not be on me to back up this assertion. And you just completely ignored that I said "The show merely claiming it's an extension of martial arts doesn't make it as such." I don't give two fucks whether the story says that Roshi learned the Kamehameha as a martial arts technique, because at the end o the day it's a fucking ENERGY BEAM. Energy Beams are not based on applying "chi" to whatever, nor are they based on anything other than the desire to make martial artists look like superheroes with superpowers. If the show was not considered a martial arts anime, the Kamehameha would be the exact fucking same thing except not labeled a "Martial arts technique". Roshi could've gotten it from being bitten by a radioactive spider for all it really matters. Likewise, flying in the air, teleporting, and transforming are not "martial arts techniques", because there's nothing to separate them from looking like anything more than a Marvel Comics superpower. Simply saying "It's using chi" doesn't cut it, because all that amounted to is handwaving no one considers these techniques "superpowers" in-universe. What made classic Dragon Ball more a martial arts anime is that there were other elements that actually WERE like martial arts, especially moments like this. Now, tell me, has a climax like that EVER happened in Z? AT ALL? And if you want another example of a show having elements of super-abilities actually grounded a bit better in martial arts, let's try something like Hokuto no Ken. While not entirely perfect, a large chunk of Hokuto Shinken, which is a major focus of the series, is mostly techinques based on the distinctly martial-arts idea of attacking people's pressure points - in other words, if the show wasn't a martial arts anime, a large aspect of the show would be completely different, which is not something I can say for most of the major abilities of Z (Or Classic DB, for that matter) at all. Also, characters aren't constantly flying and teleporting in it, and multiple climatic battles were actually decided by intelligent use of techniques and technical details rather than "Let's overpower the enemy with energy beams!" Also holy fuck those articles you linked read like someone who thinks DB is real-life. >_< None of that is intellectual analysis and criticism - quite the opposite, it's the literal definition of fanwank, and nearly all the logic is internally derived from Dragon Ball itself. I felt like I was reading a Sonic the Hedgehog fan wiki.
You mean they dialed back what your sacred word allows to be considered martial arts. Comedy and adventure were getting dialed back before the Z portion ever started. I don't recall much adventure for the last 3 arcs pre-Raditz. Characters shuffling relevance and some becoming useless was happening well before the Z portion ever started. And I've attempted to give you proof for why they are such. You clearly don't accept them being referred to and depicted as fantasy martial arts. You clearly don't accept somebody with knowledge of Eastern culture very clearly illustrating the mountains of shit that indicate such. Your argument to the contrary has literally amounted to "no, I hath not decreed that this is allowed to be treated as a fantasy based extension of martial arts, therefore it's not fantasy martial arts. Argument over LOL! Let me add a sarcastic little quip, because that's necessary!" So something is not allowed to be considered fantasy martial arts because fantasy martial arts is not the only viable fictitious explanation for such a thing existing? That's like saying that we can't consider some science fiction form of teleportation to be science fiction, because it could just be magic if the writers wanted to. The fact of the matter is, all of this is, as far as Toriyama and the characters are concerned, martial arts. You clearly don't think that matters, which I find to be preposterous, but whatever, it's apparent that there's no helping that. So you're covering your ears and yelling "nuh uh!", and then proceeding to lob an ad hominem at the guy. Classy. It's pretty clear you don't understand what I'm trying to say, you don't care, and you're being a jackass about it. That's cool. We don't have to come to a mutual understanding if you don't want to. I do understand your point that other anime are more similar to real world martial arts, but that doesn't make Dragon Ball's crazy shit not justifiably labelled as a fantasy-based extension of martial arts. I'm done here though. Cheers.
How is the set developing? Will it be initially released as a complete set and then separately as seasons later on?
Uh, well, I'm waiting for more art, because the art they sent me was terrible and are like all the "B" poses... and also some of it is just mechanical designs from the space arc. I have a lot of other projects to do before this one as well.
I want to point out that Discotek really can't do dubs for their stuff. They're a much smaller company, compared to say, FUNimation, Sentai, or even Viz. Honestly, the only way I'd even see a new dub happening is if by some miracle TMS commissions it themselves, which I just don't see it happening. You're best option is for the possible subtitled version of Sonic X down the road, if Discotek decides to do so, but don't expect a redub.
It wasn't a very good anime anyway, so a redub won't fix it, just remove the 4kids butchering (presumably.) Still baffles me they couldn't be bothered to license out Sega on their own show for Live and Learn. Zero chance of any Off Course track making it in, and the less said about the arcs past ep. 52, the better.
The problem is Sega was, for the most part, completely hands off with the show in question. 4Kids Entertainment bought the rights for outside of Asia (with France securing the rights prior to this purchase) and had no real connection to Sega as the studio. TMS Entertainment, who animated and produced the series, was the rights holder for the series overseas and was the studio that licensors had to talk with. The issue was less an issue about music rights, but rather 4Kids Entertainment changing the score so they could collect their own royalties. All the other dubs that were made for Sonic X that did not use the 4Kids masters, kept all the music intact (including the French and Chinese versions keeping Natsu no Hi, though the Korean version sadly didn't). Usually when a company replaces music, it's mostly due to wanting to collect more money on a project, even if it means they're spending more money upfront to replace the music. It's a practice that is used to essentially monetize the series further, on top of whatever else deals they have in place. The only times when sometimes music can be an issue is sometimes vocal songs are not owned by the right holder, and thus further negotiations needs to be made to use them. Outside of the Off Course songs (which oddly the music label was involved with Sonic X owned it, so not sure what happened there), the rest of the songs seemed to have been made available with the material, if I'm correct. I believe even FUNimation has stated they would probably make more money if they replaced the music in there shows. Just they simply choose not to. Keep in mind, I might be wrong on a minor detail or two, but this should be fairly accurate.
Sonic X is from the wrong era for the current voices. Besides the current voices aren't offensive like 4kids direction but they're not really special at all. Just serviceable.
That's still much better than the voice acting before 4kids. People tend to forget that before Colours, the voice acting in Sonic games had always been awful. The Sonic Boom cartoon is also by far the best the franchise has been when it comes to voice acting. The voice cast could potentially still do a decent job with better voice direction. But even then, like Gene said the show wasn't that good in the first place so no real reason to bother.
Given that the English script was seemingly written in one night by a really tired guy and that they seemed to get one take per line and basically no attention was given to the editing them in properly I'd say the Adventure-Heroes era was great. The actual voices are by far the best they've ever been. They captured every character perfectly but the delivery suffered pretty big because of bad scripts, bad lip sync and no budget to do retakes. I want that era's cast + today's direction and care. That would really be something special. But this is off-topic, someone made an excellent point and that is that X kinda sucks either way.
I wonder if they will be allowed to use the concept art/model sheets of sonic x to be shown in some extras. I highly doubt that it will happen, but it would be cool to see them all, especially since they are going to be releasing all the episodes. (The only problem that I can see is that the concept art and model sheets are in Japanese, so maybe this would happen if a Japanese to English subtitle version was released in the future.)
