I wanted to wait a bit to make sure that the leaked audio that came out where really by the main voice actors of the Dragon Ball Dub franchise. Once it had been 95% confirmed, I then wanted to talk about it and why I found the whole thing amusing in a way.
So if you’re in the anime space, by now you would’ve heard of the leaked audio that came out yesterday which had the official voice actors for the Dub version of Dragon Ball make the characters from the anime say and act out grotesque lines. Now for me, these lines ranged from kinda funny to straight up fucked up, however that’s not the main underlining issue at hand here. Had it been just the voice actors goofing off with their own natural voices, then that’s different. It’s the fact that they used Toei’s IP to make these characters say homophobic, incestuous, and overall offensive jokes while recording that’s the issue and paints them in a whole new light.
This present a problem for Funimation as these lines spoken by the character can be seen as damaging to the property. It’s like if a Mickey Mouse audio comes out and has an audio recording of him saying “death to all Jews”! The outrage would be astronomical in today’s age.
Dragon Ball is no small IP either. Now, on it’s own, one COULD chuck it out to be just a bunch of guys goofing off in a recording booth and having fun (be real, none of us are that pure. We’ve all made one of THOSE jokes behind closed doors), but what people are really focusing on and rightfully so, is the hypocrisy of Funimation and the voice actors themselves.
If you can remember, Funimation recently cut ties with Vic Mignogna, a voice actor known for working on various anime titles like Fullmetal Alchemist and Dragon Ball Super: Broly, following sexual harassment allegations in which one of the highlighted “crimes” was him eating a jelly bean with another female co-workers name on it. After that, these voice actors who championed Vic’s exile carried themselves like they were above these types of joke and campaigned a narrative of being considerate of others are virtues. Funimation backed their claim by stating in their post:
Everyone, we wanted to give you an update on the Vic Mignogna situation. Following an investigation, Funimation recast Vic Mignogna in Morose Mononokean Season 2. Funimation will not be engaging Mignogna in future productions.
— Funimation (@FUNimation) February 11, 2019
Funimation would also add:
Part of our core mission is to celebrate the diversity of the anime community and to share our love for this genre and its positive impact on all. We do not any kind of harassment or threatening behavior being directed at anyone.
— Funimation (@FUNimation) February 11, 2019
It would be safe to say that the lines spoken in the leaked audio are not at all celebrating the diverty that they claim to be champion. If we were to go by their logic, all these people should in theory also be exiled from Funimation. However, I’m not the type of person to advocate someone losing their entire livelihood.
As you can see, Funimation is not practicing what they’ve been preaching and this has led to the backlash that we saw yesterday. It should be interesting to see how Funimation will be handling the ordeal going forward. If they do not take action and address this in a professional manner, it’s safe to say that either they’ll lose the rights to the Dragon Ball IP, or the community will unite and try to boycott that platform all together. I’ll keep you guys updated if the story progresses. If you set out a rule, it should expected that you abide by those same rules and apply it equally.
