Dragon Ball (Harmony Gold English Dub; 1989)

Dragon Ball is a well-known Japanese anime production, originally a manga series serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump starting in 1984. The anime was produced from the mid to late 1980s. Dragon Ball's English dub is well known for being produced by Texas studio FUNimation Entertainment (now known as simply FUNimation), which first released the series through BLT Studios in 1995. After that version flopped, FUNimation would later redub the series in 2001 and manage to adapt all the episodes.

However, before either FUNimation dub, there was another company that attempted to dub the series into English. A California based television distribution company known as Harmony Gold USA licensed Dragon Ball in 1989, in an attempt to bring it to America. They had previously had success in 1985, via the release of Robotech (adapted from the three series Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada). Harmony Gold's attempt at Dragon Ball was produced after Carl Macek departed from the company, and would be one of their last attempts at marketing anime in the United States. Both this title and The Magical World of Gigi were two Harmony Gold licenses that Carl Macek had passed on acquiring for his Streamline Pictures company, leaving their rights to eventually lapse.

Two different types of test dubs were produced. The first one involved a merger of the first and third Dragon Ball anime movies into a hour long feature. The dub was censored however, with the words "blood rubies" changed to "earth rubies." A scene involving one of the female characters firing her pistol was edited out, although other weapons were not edited out in the film. This dub aired on Philadelphia television station WGBS in the early '90s, and a copy does exist on the internet on a Russian video website. Another notable feature of the dub included the fact that nearly all of the character names were localized; Son Goku becoming "Zero", Bulma becoming "Lena", etc.

The other attempt at the dub consisted of at least the first five episodes of the series, that aired in test markets (including the Detroit channels WGPR-TV and WXON20, which reportedly dropped the series after episode 2 due to Bulma's bathing scene). Both these episodes and the special feature were dubbed at Intersound, Inc. in Los Angeles, California.

There are people on the internet that claim to have seen the short-lived dub of the TV series, claiming many controversial scenes to be unedited from this dub. Unfortunately, no clips from it appear to exist, and the episodes have never seen the light of day since at least 1990. It is thought that FUNimation may have the episodes in their library, as the materials may have been passed on to them when they acquired the license in 1995. However, FUNimation has only released their in-house 2001 dub of the series, and nothing of the 1989 Harmony Gold dub.

Harmony Gold's TV movie and episodes were utilized as the source for an early Mexican-produced dub titled Zero y el Dragon Magico, which covered approximately 60 episodes. In an interview with a translator for the dub, he claims that Harmony Gold had translated the scripts that far, and that there was difficulty with handling further adaptation. Due to budget issues, they left Harmony Gold's opening theme in English. The first five episodes of this dub also did not have the original audio masters, leaving the production team to have to insert original music into some moments in an attempt to try to cover up the English voice acting (although some of Barbara Goodson's yells as "Zero" can still be heard).

Found footage of the dub of the cut movies
Part 1 of the Harmony Gold dub of the movie

Part 2 of the Harmony Gold dub of the movie (note: the video is out of sync with the audio a bit, but it doesn't matter)

Character Name Changes
Some of these name changes would also crop up in the FUNimation dub, such as "Master Roshi". The "Major Domo" and "Penny" names were also retained in their first redub of movie 1, although Pasta's name was localized as "Raven" in that adaptation. The later redub reverts to using the original Japanese names for the mentioned characters.
 * Son Goku -> Zero
 * Bulma -> Lena
 * Oolong -> Mao Mao
 * Pu'ar -> Squeaker
 * Yamcha -> Zedaki
 * Lunch -> Marilynn
 * Kuririn -> Bongo
 * Tenshinhan -> Shinto
 * Korin -> Whiskers the Wonder Cat
 * Turtle Hermit (Kamesennin/Muten Roshi) -> Master Roshi
 * Crane Hermit (Tsurusennin) -> Lord Wu Zu
 * Tao Pai Pai -> General Tao Pei
 * Sergeant Metallic -> Major Fist
 * Bora -> Haymaker
 * Upa -> Littlefoot
 * Pansy -> Penny
 * Pasta -> Aldevia
 * Bongo -> Major Domo

This dub also literally translated Shenlong as "The Dragon God".

The setting of Penguin Village in the movie 3 portion had its name changed to "Happy Valley", although the production team for Harmony Gold's Dr. Slump pitch pilot had retained the original name.

Production Crew (TV Movie)

 * Director: Ahmed Agrama
 * Producer: Yukio Hayashi
 * Executive Producer: Frank Agrama
 * Writer: Ardwight Chamberlain
 * Theme Song Lyrics: Kathryn Nelligan
 * ADR Director: Eduardo T. Torres

Voice Cast

 * Betty Gustafson (Barbara Goodson): Zero


 * Wendee Swan (Wendee Lee): Lena


 * Clif Wells (Gregory Snegoff): Master Roshi


 * Jeffrey Platt (Michael McConnohie):  General Tao Pei, Major Domo, Narrator


 * Myron Mensah (Robert Axelrod): Lord Wu Zu


 * Colin Philips (Dave Mallow): Mao Mao


 * Reba West (Rebecca Forstadt): Chaotzu, Penny


 * Carole Wilder (Cheryl Chase): Squeaker


 * Ryan O’Flannigan (Kerrigan Mahan): Zedaki


 * Penny Sweet (Edie Mirman): Marilynn, Aldevia


 * Ray Michaels (Mike Reynolds): King Gurumes


 * Christy Mathewson (Eddie Frierson): Shinto


 * Bob Papenbrook: Haymaker


 * Wanda Nowicki: Bongo


 * Jamie Johnson


 * Ted Lehman (Ted Layman): Whiskers the Wonder Cat


 * Barry Stigler: Mao Mao (transformed state)

There are other actors believed to have been uncredited for the work in this dub, such as Julie Maddalena (speculated to have voiced Arale, the "Happy Valley Girl") and Steve Kramer.
 * A. Gregory (Bill Capizzi): Major Fist