Funimation Dragonball voice actors controversy.

For those who don't know what controversy I'm talking about this is it.

On Friday, anime fans were met with the news of a leak involving Funimation voice actors. The audio features dubbing for the popular Dragon Ball Z franchise that has nothing to do with the actual translation. Instead, listeners were treated to offensive dialogue involving sex, rape, homophobia, and incest. The fallout from the revelations has been a constant trending topic on Twitter throughout the day. While the company and actors have yet to comment, fans have been split on their thoughts about the subject.
#Funimation has a double standard, that's why people are mad over the leaks. It's not the content, is that they fired Vic over a jellybean joke that wasn't even sexual, yet they go recording pedophilic and incest raunchy porn.

One of the series most well-known actors, Sean Schemmel, has been drawn into the controversy as some of the clips claim to be of him uttering homophobic remarks. The dialogue has not been confirmed, Schemmel’s previous work as Goku offers fans a comparison between the release and possible ties. The actor—who has not released a statement—is facing claims from some Twitter users that he is actively blocking those who speak out against the dialogue. He is also facing backlash from the franchise’s LGBTQ fans.

 

How old is the dubbing?

 

https://heavy.com/entertainment/2019/08/funimation-dragon-ball-z-audio-leaks/

At least link to the article you’re sourcing from, or put it in quotes or something.

 

At a guess, 7-10 years ago.
So, around as old as the mentioned jelly bean incident.
Which was a pretty bad dad joke.

Vic&Monica share a panel at a convention.
Monica has a bag of jelly beans.
Vic asks her for one.
She signs one and gives it to him.
He eats it.
Then says something like: "Now I've eaten Monica"

Cringy dad joke even 10 years ago, yes. Sexual harrasment? Doubtful.


Compare this to a 4 minute gay joke about sacred ointment with licensed music and DBZ sound effects, among others.
And since the leaks are from the Funimation server, Funimation is saying "no comment" instead of denying that it belongs to them when talking to news outlets. Or that they are copyright striking anyone on youtube playing part of the audio?
Doesn't take much to think it was at least recorded in thier studio.
If it was on or off company hours is unknown.

The outrage is that the same voice actors in those skits are claiming moral high ground against vic for the jelly bean.

 

For some reason I couldn't link at the Time it's working now though so that's good.

 

So, easy-ish deepfake video/audio forgery became possible last year. Now, leaks appear that purport to be voice actors from a popular anime saying all sorts of ridiculously inflammatory stuff that is absurdly out of character unless there was an aristocrats joke involved.

Not suspicious at all.

 

Well, it would be one thing if they'd all deny it, or if there wasn't that gay he-man parody one of the same VAs did, or if Funimation didn't copyright strike anything with that audio. You know, since copyright striking stuff pretty much means you claim it as yours.

And again, it's supposedly stuff that was recorded years ago, when stuff like that didn't get you social pariahd. So it's not exactly a stretch to assume it's real.
And didn't some of them also say some stupid stuff like "That wasn't supposed to be public!"? Because all this combined pretty much confirms it as real.
And again, if someone doctored something of you saying stuff like that and then spread it around, wouldn't your first reaction be to say: "Thats a fake and i never said anything like that." instead of "no comment"?
One sends the message that you at least attemt to distance yourself from whatever it is, the other pretty much is an admition of guilt, even if only on the basis that you didn't deny it.

At least you'd think Funimation would have a statement about the audio by now, 5 days or so later, but they don't.


It's very much the correct stance to be critical of things people post online, but at some point occam's razor suggests it's actually true.

 

Honestly I don’t give a shit, they were just messing around. Who cares.

 

most of the Internet.

 

To be honest the internet has the attention span of a more inbred than usual dog. Besides, I though the popo-kami role play was hilarious!

 

People that don't like selectively enforced rules?
I'm also unsure why you came into a discussion thread where people discuss the thing in the title just to tell everyone that you don't care about the thing that is discuessed in this thread.
Because look, you cared enough to post here and engage with people to talk about it.

True, i guess that's why the internet didn't stop forgetting this ever since the seeds for this were sown back in january?

 

I’m saying I wasn’t up in arms about it and isn’t a big deal. The discussion is fine I just see it as something funny and weird. It’s my opinion, and I was posting it on the thread where my opinion should be posted.

 

Ok, fair.
And i agree that some of it was funny, that's not the problem people have with it.

People have a problem with it, since the audio violates Funimations written policy, the same written policy they are saying Vic violated and was fired for.

 

Didn’t know that part. The way I see it, they can’t fire the whole damn dubbed cast of DBZ!

 

And yet there are some people on the Internet demanding it.

 

It’s hilarious! Let’s be honest, there are probably some recordings out there of the avengers doing a bunch of rude jokes and crap. These guys just got caught.

 

I remember hearing about this from someone in a chat conversation and he said the whole thing was stupid since that Vic guy was not fired because of one case of making dumb improper jokes years ago when he was young and dumb but from more repeated and current and more serious things...

 

Everything said against him are allegations.
The thing is, whenever people asked for concrete evidence, they were brushed off with "Oh, we have it, but we won't give it to you because we don't want to ruin him" when they just got him fired from his job and publicly smeared his reputation.
So, as this spiraled out of control and more people wanted proof, they switched to calling it harrasment if you ask them for proof.
Chats and group texts surfaces where people were discussing how to best doctor images to make him look bad.
People asked them why they didn't file police reports then, or how they can't manage to get a single incriminating recording(voice or audio) of him when he has done this allegedly for decades.
Then some of thier claims were that he did this at X convention of a certain year, when Vic was at a different convention at the time.

Then Texts surfaced where one of his accusers is contacting a convention owner and telling them to breach thier contract with vic or other VAs would breach thier contrac and he'd withhold promised sponsorship money. Also that any day now Vic would get sued over his conduct.(Spoiler, he wasn't)
That same person then was dumb enough to publicly conform those texts as real.

Then it turns out one of the people accusing him is a convicted pedophile.
Another of his accusers has a photo floating around where an at the time 20y old man is tounge deep in a 14y old.

They are claiming his behaviour is an open secret, then still take him up on 1 on 1 invitations, according to thier own stories. Why would you do that? If i knew someone was a sexual abuser, i'd make sure to never be alone with them, let alone agree to go to thier room together.
But that is what they are claiming happened.

The problem for Funimation is that they went out of thier way to make public statements about "We at Funimation don't condone harassment" in response to people asking Vic being recast. Worse, they said "following an ivestigation".
So people wanted to see the investigation.
then the investigation got leaked.
Just 3 things were investigated.
1. The jelly bean
2. He kissed someone and stopped when they said no
3. He was in a relationship with someone

The people in 2 and 3 aren't the people accusing him, the person in 1 is.

And recently, Someone testified under oath that there's rumours at Funimation that actresses are hired or recast based on if they accept or reject advances by Funimation employees. He said he found the rumours credible based on his experience working there.

They sure as hell could, since these aren't actually the Original VAs, but like the 4th Bulma and the 3rd Goku. They could easily replace them with anyone else, since they gradually did it with everyone already.

 

Well damn that is just sad to hear, it would be bad enough if one person is a fuckup, but the idea that the entire studio is some kinda evil organization intent on ruining the guy is just a shame... like, I hadn't read much about this thing aside from this thing where it was mentioned that he has been having accusation for ages, got banned at conventions, and people made a 6-year running website to complain about him being an ass...

Like, wow, I am not sure what would be sadder, all of that being part of a long-running plan to get rid of him or some of the accusations being true but going under because Funimation is going full retard evil overlord and thus making it impossible to trust anything anyone says.

 

Then you might aswell lock the thread now and be done with it.
Any discuission about Funimation+VAs at this point in time is going to be colored in either direction by the Vic case.
Mostly because one side in this thread will predictably take the stance to support Funimation and these VAs anyway, the other will be opposed to them because it contradicts thier behaviour in the last year.
So, if you forbid speaking about the case, you essentially tell one side of this that they aren't allowed to give reasons for thier stance on things, which means they'll by default lose any credibility to argue in the minds of people that don't know and/or care either way.

If you go up a bit and read, you'll see Gorgrath177 and my exchange.
You´ll see us both agree that it's not actually a controversy. Except it is if you know how hypocritical it is.

And, since this is part of OPs opening post, if we aren't allowed to say anything, just lock the thread and be done with it.


The only thing left to talk about in this thread then, is that Goku is the Olympics Japan Mascot and Japan probably won't be happy to have such audio from official VAs floating around and providing bad PR.

Possibly the Sabat casting couch?
Maybe the Funimation employee reviews that are all saying the workplace is total dogshit?

The thing is that everything about this is at minimum tangentially related to the Vic drama.
So tell us clearly which topics are allowed or lock the thread for now.

I´d rather not eat an infraction for bringing up relevant arguments in discuissions, so i need some clarity here.

 

I'd say the discussion isn't done until funimation or toei decides if there going to be punished or even fired.

 

I´m not saying that either, reread that post again please.
What i am saying, is that the side calling for Firing them based on equally enforcing rules, isn't allowed to put these arguments up, since it would be talking about vic, which was just deemed unlawful by a mod.
And if one side is banned from participating in a discussion, is it really still a discussion at that point?

Might aswell tag Megaolix myself instead of him getting informed via a report or something.

Again, i´m not disputing his decision, i just want to know what safe discussion topics are then.

 

Well guys, you heard Megaolix. Thread over. MasterOfDragonsGod as the OP could you ask the mods to lock this thread?