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Otaku Evolution Episodes 285 – Why The American DBZ Soundtrack Sucks

I don’t get it, folks. I really do not understand the popularity of the American soundtrack to Dragon Ball Z, outside of base nostalgia. It’s so tacky and borderline racist to replace the music to begin with, but then to do it with music that is such an enormous departure from the original sound is even more insulting. Most of the Faulconer Productions score is lousy, or utilized poorly, or both. Especially when compared to Shunsuke Kikuchi’s fantastic orchestral score.

After this, no Dragon Ball for a while, okay? I’ve done two videos in a row and… wait, I’ll have to talk about the Broly movie again in my next video, because it’s an English Dub Review video. Well, other than that, no Dragon Ball for a while. I’m burned out on the franchise. read more

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Top 10 Shunsuke Kikuchi DB/Z Tracks

 

 

Few people talk about Shunsuke Kikuchi. While not the quality of say, Yoko Kanno’s contributions, or the emotional power of Hiroshi Miyagawa’s work, Kikuchi has been in the business of incidental music (that is to say, background music) for decades. Cutting his teeth on tokusatsu programs, Kikuchi got work scoring the anime adaption of the popular Akira Toriyama manga Dr. Slump. He is best known, however, for scoring the anime adaptation of Toriyama’s most popular work, Dragon Ball. Taking cues from old films, Kikuchi is a little Wang Fu-ling and a little Bernard Hermann. read more