Today's double feature is another fine occasion for me to talk about how the Saturday song features are usually planned ahead by me, as well as to talk about when planning changes have to be made due to varying reasons.
This feature's story, however, is a bit too long to explain pre-feature up here, so see you after the jump for the full story...
On January last year, I've made a SotW double feature with Maka Fushiji Adventure (from the first Dragon Ball Anime series) as one of the tracks, with the intention of having a similarly-specular feature by the end of December '17, with CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA to represent the latter portion of the original Dragon Ball series for the end of the year.
Thing is, however, ... that I forgot about the plan, come December. Whoops...
As another kind of SotW forward-planning, there was the intention of making a Dragon Ball Z double-feature right after the (supposed...?) ending of a popular fan dubbing project of the series on the Internet. That event, in fact, has happened last week but as you can see, last Saturday's feature was instead about a more fitting theme to the current Taiko scenario events. As you may remember in fact, ...
...well, to put it lightly, shit happened. You can see why the change of priorities occured, can't you?
So here we finally are, an almost 2-years-in-the-making project coming to an end today. I hope it was worth the wait for you who are about to read this themed double-header feature!
CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA Dragon Ball Z| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taiko 5, Taiko PS2 3 | x3 (85) | x4 (119) | x4 (222) | x7 (291) (video) |
| Taiko PSP 1 | x3 (88) | x4 (124) | x4 (237) | x6 (309) (video) |
| Taiko 8 | x3 (90) | x4 (135) | x4 (246) | x7 (320) |
| Taiko 9, 10 | x3 (90) | x4 (135) | x5 (246) | x6 (320) |
| Taiko 11 to 14, Taiko PSP DX, Taiko DS 2, Taiko PS Vita, Taiko Switch, Taiko + | x3 (90) | x4 (135) | x5 (246) | x6 (320) |
Taiko 5, 8 to 14 (+11 Asia), Taiko PS2 3, Taiko PSP 1, DX, Taiko DS 2, Taiko PS Vita, Taiko Switch, Taiko +
154
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chalaDragon Ball Z (ドラゴンボールZ) is the Anime adaptation of mangaka Akira Toriyama (鳥山明)'s latter portion of the original Dragon Ball manga series, spanning from 1989 to 1996 across the 325 chapters that were included from the 17th series tankobon to the very last one (the 42nd). This 291-episodes series' name was decided by Toriyama himself, as he felt to be fully exausting ideas for Dragon Ball as a whole for the project (with the letter 'Z' being the last one of the alphabet), and it was produced alongside the Dragon Ball manga's run, resulting with the addition of new scenes and characters that are not featured from the source material.
Picking up 5 years after the 'Dragon Ball' arc's end, the series starring the adult life of Son Goku and his aquaitances marks quite the change of tone from the more light-hearted tales of kid Goku's journey. For the latter portion of Dragon Ball's story, that meant a more decisive push towards action and outer-wordly imagery from the Journey Through The West-inspired setting, as the newcoming threats to Son Goku's company and planet Earth will often have heavy ties to space, other planets or other supernatural forces and locations. The change of tone was also reflected in the production staff changes, as director Kōzō Morishita (森下孝三) and screenwriter Takao Koyama (小山高生) of Saint Seiya Anime fame were picked up to fill up the role.
Suffice to say, Dragon Ball Z's legacy for Japanese animation has left quite a big mark in popular culture that lasts on to this very day, spanning multiple media outlets across the years. During the original DBZ run alone, one OVA and 13 movies have been made (with two more for each category years later), with the overall release of almost 60 different videogames (and counting!) that embrace the franchise's stories in a multitude of gaming genres, from multiple-type fighters to RPGs! The Dragon Ball story as a whole has also got a re-mastered broadcast in Dragon Ball Kai, as well as a couple of Anime-born story continuations: the pre-2000s Dragon Ball GT and the still-ongoing Dragon Ball Super.
CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA, arguably the most popular theme from the series, was used as the opening theme for the first 200 episodes of DBZ, composed by Chiho Kiyooka (清岡 千穂) (with Kenji Yamamoto as the arranger) and lyricized by Yukinojo Mori (森雪之丞). The song has been the 15th single for the recurring Anime songs artist Hironobu Kageyama (影山ヒロノブ), here performing as the singer. Nowadays spanning over dozens of different covers/remasters and language-changing versions (including an English one from Kageyama himself for his 1996 album Mixture), CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA is considered by its singer to be his best work to this day, as he's joyful over people willing to happily sing it across the years. It also was quite the selling piece, as the original single of the same name (from May 1st, 1989) managed to sell over 1.3 million copies in Japan alone! In general music gaming fields, the song also found its home in some of Bemani's earliest music games such as Toy's March and pop'n music.
As many popular licenses in Taiko history that managed to cross the earliest generation gaps, the song got two cover versions to be enjoyed in franchise history: the shorter Taiko 5/PS2 Sandaime cut and the one that became the current staple from the first PSP Taiko title to this day, charting the ending portion as well. It's interesting to notice, however, how the first PSP Portable game's notecharts are exclusive to that same game, as every other subsequent appearance of the song featured a slightly harder charting set that differs from the newer song cut's first usage. While the popular DBZ theme is dead on the arcade tracks since the 2nd Taiko generation's end, CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA's legacy still shines on as a returning licensed pick for a number of platforms.
Rock The Dragon - Dragon Ball Z Theme| Version | | | | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (74) | x2 (107) | x5 (171) | x4 (171) |
| All (2P) | x4 (61/59) | x2 (98/102) | x5 (151/154) | x4 (151/154) (video) |
TDM (American only) 108-216 none ???Dragon Ball Z also played quite a huge role into popularizing Japanese animation outside of its home land, resulting in quite the curious collection of treatments and changes across the years, strating from from the American-aimed productions and building up in many different directions. What comes next is a general primer on the DBZ series' many adaptations overseas, but I personally wouldn't be surprised to find out new discoveries/developments being unearthed in the coming years, on this subject matter!
The first DBZ American run was produced in 1996 by Funimation (the current media distributor for the US), having its first-run syndication period for 2 seasons with Saban Entertainment as the distributor. Due to the age-restriction clauses of syndicated runs, Saban has requested to heavily edit the series in order to save up running time and to remove the majority of death/evil-alluding situations and references, resulting in a 14-episodes-shorter cut series (53 scaled-out episodes) whose infamous edits have nowadays ascended to memes forever attached to the franchise as a whole! With Saban Entertainment not renewing the syndication deal in order to pursuit the programming aimed to the Fox Kids block, the DBZ English dub was effectively stopped at that point, up until Funimation deciding to complete the series' dubbing project years later, upon the high-viewer ratings from the reruns in the US and Canada (on Toonami).
When it comes to DBZ English dubbing, however... oh boy, are we in for a treat! Due to other syndicated limitations and monetary/time constraints, a number of different dubbings for the series were made from different parties across the years, profiling scenarios that deserve more than just a throwaway line for each:
- Ocean Studios dub - This is the series' first English dub, from the Saban-distributed run. Original known as The Ocean Group, this Vancouver-based production company was employed as part of the original 2-seasons deal in order for Funimation to cut voice-acting costs on the dubbing process.
- Funimation dub - The subsequent 'main' English dub, spanning across the entire series as well as the DBZ movies (and the respective home distribution) in the US. For the sake of saving up resources for the US broadcasting (as the Ocean group was too expensive for the company to hire at the time), the Funimation in-house cast of voice actors from Texas was employed to finish up the series. Both the Ocean and Funimation dubs for the entirety of the series share the same scripts and episode titling, due to the two companies still working together for the series' US direction.
- Ocean Studios dub (2) - The Ocean cast was later on employed by the French-based AB Groupe and Westwood Media companies to release a cheaper English dub to be released for the English-speaking Europe countries, while also fulfilling the syndication condition for Canadian broadcasting for the latter half of the series, due to the dubbing process being made by a Canadian crew. It has some of the original cast from the first Ocean dub, but several roles were swapped out during the series and a few episodes were skipped altogether.
- "Big Green" dub - A French-based English dub for (some of) the DBZ movies, released in Europe and distributed by AB Groupe. After failing to acquire an affordable Canadian-based production studio to have the DBZ movies dubbed and released in Canada alongside both DBZ and Dragon Ball GT's television runs, the company has hastely-assembled a crew to take advantage of the movie publishing rights in Europe, resulting into an hilariously bad final result. To have a scope of its laughable nature, the "Big Green" monicker by fans is there because that's how they end up calling the Namekian character Piccolo across the runs!
- Speedy Dub - Another movie-oriented, so-bad-it's-good English dub job for the Malaysian audience, made by the Speedy Video Distributors Sdn. Bhd. company. This one also stretched out to dub unedited episodes from the original DBZ anime, no less!
- TeamFourStar dub - Finishing with a bang, we have a fan project on the Internet whose goal is to have a custom abridged version of Dragon Ball Z's Anime and movies (among other things) over the course of 10+ years, starring the titular TeamFourStar unit's main trio of voice actors as well as a cast of other Internet-emerging talents from video editing to voice acting, including some other popular 'abdridged series' sensations, no less! At the time of this writing, the TFS dubbing project for Dragon Ball Z's Season 3 has just ended.
After this quite-long dubbing talk, let's come to the main course of action! Officially known with the simple title of 'Main Theme' from its first soundtrack release in 1997, Rock The Dragon is the DBZ English opening theme that was used for the entirety of the Funimation/Saban run (53 episodes), as well as episodes 54-102 that stretched out during the solo Funimation run.
The song composition and singing duties were respectively relegated to a couple of Saban Entertainment's in-house American musicians: Ron Wasserman and Jeremy Sweet, both of which most commonly known for their musical work in the Saban-distributed runs of the Power Ranger series. Due to standard practice running at Saban in the 90ies, however, neither Wasserman nor Sweet got official credit mentions for their works in any of the official media of the time; as a testament to such course of action, the aforementioned 1997 DBZ soundtrack release with the fan-called Rock The Dragon (titled Dragon Ball Z: Original USA Television Soundtrack), the two artists were only credited for a generic "music producers" mention, with Saban founder Heim Saban (with the Kussa Mahehi pseudonym) and music director Shuki Levy being credited for the overall score instead.
This is the second USA-exclusive Anime-genre song for the infamous Taiko Drum Master, after Bowling for Soup's Jimmy Neutron main theme. Despite the speed-double-up action during the solo guitar portions, the song's short length combined with the low note density/count makes it one of the easiest 4* Oni Taiko songs to date, even by the 2nd-generation standards! As per any other song in the TDM games, 2-player custom notecharts are supplied for all modes.
