All Systems Goku 03

Never really understood Chris Sabat's gruff-perpetually-has-bronchitis-kinda-fake-british-accent take on Vegeta's voice. In the Japanese and Spanish dubs he's pretty smooth talking until he gradually becomes a little ball of privileged outrage that eventually becomes just grumpy outrage.

Yeah, the average DBZ fight doesn't get that much slower than this but there's one fight in particular that could be a roadblock.

These early story arcs drag out a whole lot. The conflict with the Saiyans and Frieza all together is nearly 1/3rd of the series. To give a more precise example, the fight between Goku and Frieza is 10 episodes.

To put it in perspective though, the "Frieza Saga" ends with episode 54. In the original run of Dragon Ball Z, it's episode 107. DBZ Kai is 167 episodes, and DBZ is 291. They cut out a whole lot of filler stuff for Kai, including the entire 10 episode Garlic Jr. Saga.

I will always be a Yamcha apologist, for reasons that even I don't understand

I can't wait for them to get to the Android Saga, to see my boy Yamcha shine.

The cool part of Yamcha:

From the film Dragon Ball: The Path to Power film.

Listen Kami splits himself way earlier than dragon ball and forms king piccolo and Kami as we know him and forms the dragon balls. Then Goku kills king Piccolo and Piccolo Jr is born. Kami is like a an uncle to Piccolo and there will be some crazy shit with them.

I think Dan's managed to misremember and misname, like, every single thing in this episode. Possibly all the episodes, I'd have to go back and check.

@stanek1: Legit hilarious video there.

He toned it back quite a bit in Kai, while it's still a cartoon voice it sounds a lot more natural than it did in DBZ and the PS2 era video games.

Next week they'lll get through the first actually big fight of the series. I'm looking forward to their thoughts.

So right before you guys started watching kai, i started watching original dbz with my 6 year old. Listening to your thoughts and his thoughts is HILARIOUS! He even sat through allllll the filler and loved it, oh to be a little child again.

All of their questions about seemingly random characters and concepts would be answered if they had started with Dragon Ball. Same as being equally befuddled with Empire Strikes Back without seeing Star Wars first.

But, also watching DBZ without context adds a lot of inherent fun and wackiness to the experience.

It's a struggle. Duality of man and such.

Regarding Vegeta's voice, I grew up watching the original "Ocean dub" team, and though I have grown to like some of Funimation's team more over the years - early Vegeta was voiced by a guy named Brian Drummond (the same guy who voices Ryuk now on the anime version of Death Note).

Looking back now, I'd actually say Drummond's take on Vegeta's voice was much more "visceral" than Christopher Sabat's take. I'd maybe even describe it as more appropriately "vicious."

Drummond is also the one who is the voice you hear in the famous "Over 9,000" meme, not Sabat. (Also in Kai, they fix the mistranslated number so that it's 8,000)

Christopher Sabat has grown on me more since then, but I do wish they would have had actually hired a bigger full voice cast and not just been cheap and had Sabat play so many voices early on than he ended up doing permanently (Mr. Popo, Korin, Grandpa Gohan, Piccolo, Yamcha, Kami, Vegeta, ShenLONG, Chi-chi's dad The Ox-King, Zarbon, all of the Ginyu Force except Goldo, etc.)

Last fun little note - I know I'm getting way ahead for the folks who aren't familiar with the Dragon Ball universe in general, but I thought I'd share this fun fact that apparently in Dragon Ball Super, Funimation got Drummond to come back to play the voice of a clone of Vegeta that he ends up fighting. Really fun little fan-service-y thing to do, but I loved it nonetheless.

Sooo, is there a cheap and legal way to watch Kai? Or...

for @jeff:

Hopefully someone's already warned them that they might want to do 6 next time, since episode 16 ends on a massive cliffhanger!

Yamcha dying like that is the iconic Yamcha picture.

I can't wait to hear your thoughts on HHH/Frieza.

Does Dan frame everything in the context of professional wrestling as a goof, or is that the only way he can make sense of the world and everything in it?

Yes

@something_clevar: or.

You're right, but I have to say that Sabat does in my opinion an incredible job juggling so many different voices. This possibly can be just chalked up to me being a dumb kid then, but back in the day I never could have guessed all those voices were the same guy.

I really love it and I can't explain why to be honest. A lot of other people seem to as well. It's a really fun voice to try to imitate, which for me at least has something to do with it. It's also a really unique voice (in the sense that nobody actually talks like that in the real world) which makes it stick in your mind I guess.

Im pretty sure Sabat does most of the voices since he's the director and he probably get's more money for so many roles. But he is a good voice actor so it's all right.

Two years later, I feel like I can finally answer the question of the kind of person who would own a Yamcha shirt.

Either someone who is an ENORMOUS tryhard, or someone who is a SUPER fan that would also NEVER talk shit about "watching the series wrong."

And NO ONE in-between.