Part 2 - Dragon Ball in the Eighties
Let's go ahead and chew into the very first English dub of Dragon Ball. To do that we have to turn the clock back a couple years. No, not 2010. Not, 2001. Not 1995.
1989? Stop right there. That's right. English-American Dragon Ball had it's first appearance in 1989.
Most people are not aware of the original English dub of Dragon Ball in the eighties. It happened. Say hello to the "Harmony Gold" dub of Dragon Ball.
Featuring a translated version of the original Japanese intro, the original music, and a higher level of access to the original video and audio tracks than the much more well known FUNimation/Ocean Dubs, the Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball was the first English dubbing of Dragon Ball and barely much of it exists anymore.
What is known, is that at least 5 proper episodes of the show were dubbed with the intention of airing in two television stations in Detroit. This apparently happened until Episode 2 of the show. Episode 2 featured the Bulma shower scene (who is named Lena in the Harmony Gold dub) and Harmony Gold made no attempt to censor anything in this scene and thus the series lasted literally two episodes due to locals calling and complaining about the filth that was being broadcast on Detroit TV.
Harmony Gold also had the disadvantage of being a pioneer in coming up with English-friendly names for the characters.
The Harmony Gold Cast
Zero
Lena
Bongo
Master Roshi
Whiskers the Wonder Cat
However, the most well known feature they produced was a very drastic cutting of the first and third Dragon Ball movies together into a 1-hour special. There were just no rules whatsoever with this. However, it did also feature heavier censorship than before and things like "blood rubies" was changed to "earth rubies".
Harmony Gold was not new to dubbing, and actually dubbed and brought Robotech to America. However, they also had the problem of trying to figure out who the hell in America would watch Dragon Ball and their marketing seemed to miss the step of trying to even understand the source material. Harmony Gold, being only a shell of the folks that brought America Robotech, saw a cartoon and thus it's marketing and dubbing was done with a demographic of "ages 8 and under" in mind.
After completely failing in the United States in every way imaginable, someone took the materials from Harmony Gold and brought them to Latin America. The assumption is that by "materials" we mean "VHS" and were probably editing the Spanish dub onto the original Harmony Gold tapes.
Without the access to the original audio tracks or anything really, they were forced to lose all the original audio that had English dialog and just rerecorded Spanish audio onto the episodes and use whatever music they could come up with. The only exception is the intro which is still in English.
Oh and they changed the name of the show to "Zero y el Dragon Magico". Which means "Zero and the Magical Dragon."
ZERO AND THE MAGICAL DRAGON
FEATURING THE CAST OF
ZERO
BULMA
CACHITO
MAESTRO ROSHI
With the Harmony Gold Spanish dub and the remnants of the English dub, together you can recreate the ultimate Harmony Gold dub experience. It's like finding a Little Caesar's in a K-Mart.
We don't know what event lead to Harmony Gold finally taking a hint and knocking it off, but I sorta imagine it was a brick thrown through their window and everyone looking at each other and saying "We should just quietly embezzle money and not actually release anything."
So, what are the chances of ever catching this on DVD? Slim to none. With FUNimation holding the rights to Dragon Ball in America and nearly all original footage and materials lost, and Harmony Gold too busy releasing films about Big Foot in 2014
Yeah that's happening. Harmony Gold still exists and this is their catalog
http://www.harmonygold.com/catalog/This really is like finding a Little Caesar's in a K-Mart.
I keep thinking about food. I'm starting to feel like Zero. I mean, Goku.
Guess I'll have to sink my teeth into this in Part 3
Next Time, Part 3 - The BLT Dub of Dragon Ball