DBZ: Canadian Cast re-dub of Dragon Ball Z - Fan Support Petition

To:  Turner Broadcasting Systems

Dear Turner Broadcasting or Whom It May Concern,

We the fans are signing this petition in support of the Canadian "Ocean" cast English redub of the hit anime series, "Dragon Ball Z." To clarify, the term "Ocean cast" is used here to describe a particular group of professionals in the voice acting community of Vancouver, British Columbia who have performed work in both ADR and pre-lay voice-acting for many cartoons and anime, and are an amazingly talented group of people. The name Ocean is derived from the fact that The Ocean Sound Corp. (Vancouver) was the original studio and production facility contracted to dub the DBZ series in English, and Ocean Studios was where the actors originally performed the voice recording for Season 1 and 2 episodes. The individual names of these wonderful actors will be provided at the end of this letter.

Dragon Ball Z, originally created and broadcast in Japan, has become the most popular anime series ever produced. It consistently ranks as the number one animated show of all time in many countries including the United States, Japan, France, Spain, Hong Kong, and Mexico. This series has been translated into more than 40 languages, and despite being almost 20 years old, is still eagerly watched by devoted fans all across the globe (65 million fans in the USA alone). "Dragon Ball" has also been the number one most-searched-for term on the Internet for the past two years (2001, 2002) according to TerraLycos, and is the only term to ever repeat in the number one slot two years in a row. This background information is provided to show the tremendous impact this show has had upon the world, and the devotion of DBZ fans worldwide.

To continue, it is of interest to note that the English-dubbed version of DBZ (broadcast in Canada - YTV, Great Britain - CN:UK then CNX, Australia - CN:AU, The Netherlands - Yorin, and the United States - CN:USA), has been performed by two different groups of voice actors over the past five years: one group based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the other based in Ft. Worth, Texas, USA. Originally performed by the Canadian "Ocean" cast, the English voice recording for DBZ was moved to Texas after the show's second season, where the Ft. Worth cast was employed. The various American accents that were newly applied to the characters met with such enormous outrage across the international fan community, however, that the original Canadian cast was re-hired to dub more of the series for international broadcasting.

Despite the re-recording effort, though, a large span of episodes were apparently skipped during this Canadian re-dub, and this truly damns the series with a great incongruity for those of us worldwide who receive, enjoy, or prefer the original "Ocean" version. Also, there is no reason to think that the fans won't raise the roof again when the series goes to reruns and repeats the Texas-dubbed version of eps #54-107 again -- the very episodes that caused the uproar in the first place. We have also very recently seen (January 2003) that Cartoon Network has newly purchased and broadcast the "Ocean" version of DBZ episodes that had already been purchased and aired in the U.K. dubbed by the Texas group! Since the precedent has now been set that your network will on occasion purchase the same exact episodes twice (in response to fan requests? kudos!), we fervently encourage you to contract the redub of the remaining episodes that were previously missed by Ocean.

To wit, this petition stands in support of contracting the original Canadian "Ocean" cast to finish dubbing the entire DBZ series, specifically completing the span of episodes that was missed: English episodes #54 through #107. These episodes constitute fully one-sixth of the series, and some would argue that the particular story these episodes tell is one of the most, if not the most, emotionally intense, dramatic, and plot-critical saga of them all. The sudden switch to a different set of voice actors in the middle of this important portion of the story is quite interruptive, and is truly detrimental to the enjoyment of the saga on the whole. This problem is compounded by the fact that the replacement Texas actors were not only brand new to voicing the series, but also had much less acting experience as compared to the professional Ocean cast. Despite the new actors' earnest attempts to mimic their original counterparts, the Season 3 "Texas dub", was a tragically mediocre performance at best. The abrupt cast switch also seems a rather indignant way to treat the number one anime series of all time.

For these reasons, we, the undersigned, sincerely urge you to contract, fund, produce, and broadcast a complete Canadian "Ocean" cast recording of English-dubbed Dragon Ball Z, specifically including the "missing" episodes (#54-107) that were skipped during the original Ocean recording sessions, so that we, the multinational DBZ fan community, can enjoy the entire series with a consistent and wonderfully talented voice cast that truly makes the series a joy for us to watch. The specific Vancouver based "Ocean" actors to whom we are referring are as follows:

Alistair Abell
Lisa Ann Beley
Maggie Blue O'Hara
Don Brown
Ted Cole
Michael Coleman
Ian Corlett
Michael Dobson
Paul Dobson
Brian Drummond
Andrew Francis
Jason Gray-Stanford
Doc Harris
Saffron Henderson
David Kaye
Peter Kelamis
Ellen Kennedy
Terry Klassen
Campbell Lane
Lalaina Lindbjerg
Scott McNeil
Kirby Morrow
Richard Newman
Pauline Newstone
Enuka Okuma
Doug Parker
Jane Perry
Ward C. Perry
Laara Sadiq
Alvin Sanders
Matt Smith
Robert O. Smith
Monica Stori
Brad Swaile
French Tickner
Jerry J. Todd
Dave Ward
Cathy Weseluck
Alec Willows
Dale Wilson

.................

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The DBZ: Canadian Cast re-dub of Dragon Ball Z - Fan Support Petition Petition to Turner Broadcasting Systems was created by Ocean DBZ Fans Worldwide and written by Carol Carmichael (Zcat6@aol.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

Send this to a friend