The Original JPN Version is the best from the little I've seen of Best Wishes! and all the other sagas. While I can see there's clearly more effort and emotion put into things, it doesn't make either of the dubs bad by any means.Despite that, as I grew up with it, and I'm not missing anything remotely important in terms of plot (dub fans, I'll admit we are missing some of the more naughtier things from the subbed, e.g. Takeshi's perversion is even greater; Kasumi likes to flaunt herself, in addition to the excellent orchestrated score by Shinji Miyazaki playing the whole way through with no dub BGM, nothing major has been lost at all). Thus, I go with the dub, solely because (1) I like hearing things in English, even if the subbed version is superior, because it creates a greater sense of familiarity for me and (2) the show is now completely for children, and I'm not missing scenes like Kojiro/James inflating his breasts anymore, so I'm not missing anything.
Of the two dubs, I'm definitely more fond of the 4Kids dubbed seasons, though. What can I say? They're much funnier, more emotional, have better script writing (aka Team Rocket is not spouting rhymes/alliterations, Ash is actually saying things a normal 10 y/o kid would, etc.), and the voice acting is clearly better than that of the current dubbed seasons. Now, the current TPCi dubbed seasons were pretty abysmal for their first 3 seasons, but something happened around Galactic Battles that seemed to go in the right direction, and since Black and White began, the dub is once again at least decent and watchable again. The only real problems I have with the current dub now are (1) *coughs* the bad script writing/dialogue, particularly in Team Rocket's case *coughs*, and (2) the openings/endings are still mostly pretty poor. Still, the TPCi dub has been good since Black and White to me, so I can't really complain considering they've shown marked growth this series.
Gotta say, even when the new dub was at its worst, it was better than, say, the initial new dub of DBZ was on its best day, both in terms of music AND voices. Anyone who was unfortunate to watch Funimation's first take on DBZ without the Ocean Group cast should know what rock-bottom is for replacement dubs.
Well, I agree and disagree. I agree that the FUNimation cast was pretty terrible when they started out, but personally I disagree in that it wasn't nearly as jarring for me as the Pokemon recast because (1) that happened after only 53 episodes + 3 movies, not a whopping 422 episodes + 8 movies, nearly 8 times the amount of episodes with the same cast, and (2) the characters in DBZ actually age, making some remote sense for the change to occur, while in Pokemon they do not age (I blame the writers for that), which is amazing because everyone excluding Jessie, who sounds like she went back 10 years in time, in the TPCi dub has far more rough and deep voices than they used to, which doesn't make any sense (I disagree on the voice actor front).
On the music front, I agree wholeheartedly though. Even 4Kids' and TAJ's synthesized themes TPCi continued to use and add as well when they took over are LEAGUES better than what Bruce Faulconer came up with for the dub of DBZ (at least until the Majin Buu Saga, IMO).
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