Forum - View topic

NEWS: Funimation Puts Dragon Ball Z on Blu-ray Disc This Fall

penguintruth wrote:

Making Goku a butch, moralizing superhero who spares his enemies out of the goodness of his heart barely changes the character?

... how is this any different in the original Japanese version? Goku spares his opponents left and right. The only two characters he intentionally kills in DB or DBZ are Piccolo Daimao and Kid Buu, aside from throwaway beasts or monsters here and there. He spares countless other characters, including Raditz the first time he grabbed him by the tail, Nappa after all his friends had been killed, the Ginyu Force, even Freeza 2 or 3 times before Freeza fired that final blast while Goku was trying to help him. He's always been moral, he always foolishly spares even the most dangerous opponents for short-sighted moral reasons, and he always foolishly extends fights longer than he should in order to enjoy battle. I don't recall this being different in any version.

As for being more butch in the American version? Is this simply because he is voiced by a man rather than a woman? Or is there more to the change? I don't recall any of his American voices changing the essence of the character, or American Goku/s sounding like more of a hardass than he was in the JP version.