AB Groupe dub

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The AB Groupe dub was an English dub of the Dragon Ball franchise produced by the French company AB Groupe. It is colloquially referred to as the Big Green dub due to Piccolo being renamed "Big Green". AB Groupe's dub is also known as the Toonami UK dub and Bridge Entertainment dub.

The dub covered all the original films and TV specials that Toei produced between 1986 and 1997, with the exception of Dragon Ball Z movies 10-13, and Dragon Ball: The Path to Power.

History[]

From 2000 to 2003, European distributor of the brand - AB Groupe, commissioned alternate English dubs of the Dragon Ball franchise for distribution in the UK, Ireland and Netherlands through Cartoon Network. These dubs notably featured voices from Canadian dubbing studios Ocean Productions and later, Blue Water, which would also later be broadcast on Canadian television by way of YTV. However, AB had already begun producing English dubs of the films and TV specials, these were first released on home video in the Netherlands (with Dutch subtitles) by the Dutch home video distributor/film productor company Bridge Entertainment Group as the distributor. Here they released nine of the thirteen Dragon Ball Z movies and both TV specials on DVD.

The UK and Ireland would also see DVDs and VHS tapes of this dub being distributed in 2003 through Warner Vision International. However, only the movies Super Battle in the World, The Strongest Guy in the World and Super Saiyan, Goku were distributed before being discontinued. These versions of the movies and TV specials were eventually all broadcast on Toonami UK for a marathon in 2005.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] The Legend of Shenron, Sleeping Beauty in Devil Castle, The Great Mystical Adventure, the first nine Dragon Ball Z movies, the two Dragon Ball Z TV specials, and Four-Star Dragonball is the Proof of Courage all featured this particular cast.

The dub has been later translated and use in Sweden, Norway, Denmark (dubbed versions), Iceland, Finland and Greece (subtitled versions). In some of these translations, the names are often corrected to reflect the original translations used in those countries, such as "Big Green" being reverted back to "Piccolo". Some DVD releases in these countries feature the original English AB Groupe dub as an audio option.

YTV did not broadcast the AB produced movie dubs in the same way that they did for the Canadian series dubs. While there is speculation that this was because YTV adhered to a Canadian content broadcasting rule, this is disputed due to the channel also broadcasting non-Canadian programming in addition to a substantial amount of Funimation's Texas produced Dragon Ball Z dub. It is instead more likely that AB simply did not have any distribution outlet in North America and that Ocean Productions handled distribution directly to YTV instead, hence their company logo being featured at the end of the YTV broadcasts.

These AB Groupe dubs of the films and TV specials were notable for being recorded in France using English speaking actors. It is not known why AB did not also commission the same Canadian studios to dub the movies as they did with the series, however, based on the Bridge Entertainment release dates, it can be speculated that the French production either started at an earlier point or at roughly the same time as the Canadian production.

Translation[]

This dub used the French dub audio tracks and video masters and adapted their scripts from the French translations. The AB Groupe dub is notorious for its poor voice acting (presumably due to poor and/or rushed voice direction and scripts, as well as the French "Rythmo Band" technique being commonplace for dubbing in France). There is also unusual character nomenclature as a result of using the French dub names. Blue Water, used the same source for it's dub but changed the names of the characters to those from the Ocean dub, to maintain continuity, but here names have not been changed which caused additional confusion among fans. For example, as in the French dub, Krillin is named Clearin, Bulma is named Blooma/Bloomer, the Saiyans are called Space Warriors, Super Saiyans are called Super Warriors, Master Roshi is named Genius Turtle, Chiaotzu is named Chaos, Turles is named Turls/Talles (like in French dub, he is now Goku's second brother), Baby is named Mutant, Power Pole is named Magic Stick or Magic Baton, Senzu Bean is named Magic Beans, Dragon Balls are named Crystal Balls and Flying Nimbus is named Magic Cloud.

Most notably, this dub also refers to Piccolo as Big Green, which is where the infamous nickname for the dub first originated. It is worth to mention that in French dub, Piccolo's name was changed to Small Heart (Petit Cœur). On the other hand, Mr. Satan name has been left unchanged, instead of French Hercule, but it's pronounced differently (Mr. Satun or Mr. Satana). Due to changes in the translation of the French version of Dragon Ball GT, the DBGT special episode is the only one to use the name Saiyan instead of Space Warriors. Instead of Whale (Cachalot), Broly refers to Goku as Kakarotto, while Vegeta only uses Goku's earth name. Other names, although correct, are pronounced like in a French dub, for example Vegeta as Vejituh, Gohan as Gohand, Bojack as Boujacque. Some character names from anime have been skipped or given bizarre ones, for example, in this version of Bojack Unbound, Goku does not mention how Mr. Satan defeated Cell (despite the French dub did it) and renames King Piccolo to Evil Bad Guy.

The French dub was also known for not mentioning the names of some characters or only referring to them by nicknames, such as in Movie 2 where Master Roshi is only ever referred to as "Old One". This dub is also known to replace most attack names with Kamehameha, seemingly misinterpreting the attack's name as a generic battle cry. On some occasions, characters avoid naming their attacks at all, such as when Goku shouts "I want total power!" when using Kaio-ken. The AB Groupe dub even replaced attack names that were featured in the French dub, for example in Lord Slug, Spirit Bomb is translated as Force de lumière (Force of light), but in the AB Groupe dub, this was again simply replaced with Kamehameha.

Films/Specials[]

Dragon Ball Z[]

AB Groupe's English dub of the Dragon Ball Z films/specials was labeled out of order on DVD and VHS in the Netherlands. The Dutch release of the dub occurred between 2001 and 2003.^[5]^[6]^[7]Some of the titles were changed, but most based on Toei's original English titles for each movie.^[8] The Scandinavian release of the dub took place between 2003 and 2005. The Greek release took place in March 2006 as a bonus for GamePro magazine, with the second movie being only one known for now, to be distributed.

Super Battle in the World (Movie 3) (1990, AB Groupe version released in 2001)
The Strongest Guy in the World (Movie 2) (1990, AB Groupe version released in 2001)
Super Saiyan, Goku (Movie 4) (1991, AB Groupe version released in 2001)
Super Rivals (Movie 5) (1991, AB Groupe version released in 2001)
Fight! 10 Billion Power Warriors (Movie 6) (1992, AB Groupe version released in 2001)
Super Battle of the Three Super Saiyans (Movie 7) (1992, AB Groupe version released in 2001)
The Burning Battles (Movie 8) (1991, AB Groupe version released in 2002)
Super Guy in the Galaxy (Movie 9) (1993, AB Groupe version released in 2002)
The Father of Goku (from French title Le Père de Sangoku) (Special 1) (1991, AB Groupe version released in 2003)
Gohan and Trunks (Special 2) (1993, AB Groupe version released in 2003)
In Pursuit of Garlic (from French title À la poursuite de Garlic) (Movie 1) (1989, AB Groupe version released in 2003)

Dragon Ball[]

AB Groupe's English dub of the Dragon Ball movies has never been released on home video, and only ever aired on Toonami UK.

The Legend of Shenron (from French title La Légende de Shenron) (Movie 1) (1986, AB Groupe version released in 2005)
Sleeping Beauty in Devil Castle (Movie 2) (1987, AB Groupe version released in 2005)
The Great Mystical Adventure (from French title L’Aventure mystique) (Movie 3) (1988, AB Groupe version released in 2005)

Dragon Ball GT[]

AB Groupe's English dub of the Dragon Ball GT special has never been released on home video, and only ever aired on Toonami UK.

Four-Star Dragonball is the Proof of Courage (Special 1) (1997, AB Groupe version released in 2005)

Cast[]

The names of the cast used in this dub have not been disclosed for years, although it has long been believed that the cast consisted of American and British actors living in France. Some fans have also speculated that members of the cast may have appeared in many French animated series like Orson and Olivia, Code Lyoko, and Chris Colorado.^[9]

In 2015, actress Sharon Mann was confirmed as the voice of Krillin in this dub^[10] as well as other characters, including some adult male characters (e.g. Vegeta's adult form in The Father of Goku sounds the same as his child form).

Other voice actors such as Jodi Forrest, David Gasman, Doug Rand and Paul Bandey are also now strongly believed to have appeared in this dub (although they have not been officially confirmed yet). Before he was identified, many people referred to Paul Bandey as the "Old Bastard" (and many still do) due to him sounding quite old and poorly voicing a large number of characters. It was recently revealed that Ed Marcus was also involved in this dub, having voiced some roles that were originally claimed to be performed by Bandey. Some fans have even joked to have found that there was a second "Old Bastard".

Even before information for identifying the voice actors started to be determined, Forrest had confirmed her involvement in this dub in a Code Lyoko-themed forum. She said that she had performed the voice of young Gohan.^[11]

Reception[]

People from outside of Europe such as Alejandro Saab have mistaken the AB Groupe dub as being a parody or an abridged version of the series, rather than an official dub.^[12] In 2018, WatchMojo.com ranked it as number one on their list of the "Top 10 Hilariously Bad Anime Dubs".^[13] CBR included it on their list of the "5 Worst Anime Dubs of All Time",^[14] and stated in December 2019 that it had "spawned a variety of memes and hilarious moments."^[15]

Many people complained that the actors' voices weren't good choices for certain characters in comparison to the Japanese version, not realizing that the actors were chosen to sound more similar to the French dub.

Despites heavy criticism, Big Green dub was praised by fans for using original Japanese soundtrack (although the Japanese opening "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" and Japanese insert songs were occasionally replaced with instrumental mixes) and by the fact that few lines are more faithfull to Japanese dub than other English versions (but very rarely).

Trivia[]

AB Groupe's previous English dub done with Ocean often avoided words such as "kill" (presumably due to pressure from broadcasters Toonami UK and YTV). However, such terms are used freely in this dub, despite the fact it was also aired on Toonami UK.
In the Big Green dub of Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks, the narrator says that all the Z-Fighters except Piccolo survived the Androids' attack, despite the fact that they are clearly shown being killed on-screen. However, subtitles and translations into other languages are correct.
Despite Super Saiyan being called "Super Warriors" in the dub, the fourth movie was titled Super Saiyan, Goku and the seventh movie was called Super Battle of the Three Super Saiyans, respectively.
The ending credits at the end of the Big Green dub of Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone still shows the voice actors and crew from the Ocean/Pioneer dub.
- Similarly, the Big Green dub of The History of Trunks (known as Gohan and Trunks), the French title of the special (L'Histoire de Trunks) was kept for some reason.
The four movies from the Dragon Ball Z series were not dubbed, probably due to the fact that AB Groupe's strategy in Europe allowed them theatrical release of these movies firstly and then VHS/DVD versions.