In English, Dragon Ball is a story of several dubs, not one. A Vancouver cast recorded at Ocean Studios gave Goku his first English voices in the mid-1990s; from 1999 Funimation moved production to Texas, where Sean Schemmel has voiced adult Goku ever since. Along the way there were cancelled pilots, a separate dub made for Europe and Canada, and a 2005 redub that finally told the opening of Z uncut.
False starts: "Zero" and the 1995 dub
The first attempt never really aired. In 1989 and 1990 Harmony Gold produced a dub of a handful of episodes and a feature, renaming almost everyone; Goku became "Zero". It was test-marketed in a few US cities and shelved.
In 1995 Funimation, then a young company, licensed the original Dragon Ball and had it dubbed in Vancouver with actors from Ocean Productions. Thirteen edited episodes aired in syndication that fall, with new music, before low ratings ended the project and Funimation turned to Z.
The Ocean dub of Z (1996–1998)
Dragon Ball Z premiered in first-run syndication on September 13, 1996, distributed by Saban and recorded at Ocean Studios in Vancouver. Fans still call it the "Ocean dub", "Saban dub" or "Pioneer dub", although Funimation owned the production. It was heavily edited: deaths were sidestepped with lines like "sent to the next dimension", and the first 67 episodes were cut down to 53. Saban also supplied a new score and the theme everyone calls "Rock the Dragon".
Goku had two voices in this version. Ian James Corlett played him in episodes 1–37 of the edited dub, then Peter Kelamis took over for episodes 38–53 and for the first three Z films released on home video with Pioneer. This version also gave the internet one of its oldest memes: Vegeta's "It's over 9000!", voiced by Brian Drummond in episode 21 of the edited dub. Production stopped in 1998, when Saban scaled back its syndication business.
Funimation's Texas cast (1999–2003)
The rescue came from Cartoon Network. Reruns of the Ocean episodes began on Toonami on August 31, 1998, and were so successful that the network ordered more. Funimation resumed the dub in-house with a new Texas-based cast, chosen partly to sound close to the Vancouver voices, and with a new score by Bruce Faulconer. New episodes aired from September 13, 1999, to April 7, 2003, with noticeably less censorship.
| Character | Ocean dub (1996–98) | Funimation dub (from 1999) |
|---|---|---|
| Goku | Ian James Corlett, Peter Kelamis | Sean Schemmel |
| Vegeta | Brian Drummond | Christopher Sabat |
| Piccolo | Scott McNeil | Christopher Sabat |
Sean Schemmel, born in 1968 in Iowa, never planned to be a voice actor: he had trained as a classical French horn player. A friend talked him into auditioning, and he tried out for a minor character due to die in the first season. After two weeks of recording he was told he would be the lead. Christopher Sabat became the other pillar of the cast, voicing Vegeta, Piccolo, Yamcha and Shenron, and later directing many of the dubs.
When Funimation dubbed the original Dragon Ball again in-house, airing on Cartoon Network from August 2001, Stephanie Nadolny, already the voice of young Gohan in Z, became kid Goku.
Did you know? Some of Funimation's renames outlived the dub itself: Mr. Satan became "Hercule" to avoid any reference to Satan, and the name stuck in Viz's manga and in the video games for years.
A different dub for Europe and Canada
British fans may remember different voices. Starting with episode 108 of the edited version (123 uncut), Westwood Media produced an alternate English dub with Ocean Studios, distributed in Europe by AB Groupe. It aired on Cartoon Network in the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland, and later in Canada on YTV. Here Goku was voiced first by Peter Kelamis and then by Kirby Morrow, who died in 2020. The original Dragon Ball got its own alternate version for Canada and Europe too, produced with Blue Water Studios.
2005: the uncut redub
In 2005 Funimation went back to the beginning and redubbed episodes 1–67 with its in-house cast, restoring the content cut in the Saban era. The new version, with a score by Nathan M. Johnson, aired on Cartoon Network from June 2005 and on DVD, the first time North American viewers saw those episodes uncut. Later remastered DVDs went further, re-recording portions of dialogue mostly after episode 67 and offering a choice between the American score and the original Japanese music.
Kai, Super and Daima
Dragon Ball Z Kai gave the Texas cast a second pass at the story with a more faithful script. Funimation's dub premiered on Nicktoons on May 24, 2010; in 2013 Schemmel and Kyle Hebert (Gohan) confirmed they were recording the Buu arc. Ocean Productions also recorded an alternate Kai dub for the first 98 episodes, featuring much of the original Vancouver cast, but it has never been publicly released.
For Dragon Ball Super, Funimation announced its English dub on November 4, 2016, and it premiered on Adult Swim's Toonami in January 2017. The US premiere drew 1,063,000 viewers. Dragon Ball Daima followed the same path: its English dub debuted in January 2025, with Stephanie Nadolny returning as the shrunken Goku.
Why the English dubs matter
In Japan, Goku has had a single voice for four decades, Masako Nozawa. English-speaking fans grew up instead with a patchwork of versions, each tied to a channel and a decade: the Saturday-morning Ocean episodes, the after-school Toonami years, the uncut DVDs. Debating which dub is "right" is part of the fandom, and the story of how Dragon Ball reached each country is told on our Dragon Ball around the world page.