Digimon Adventure Tri/Reunion: English Dub Review
Phew. Took me a long time to organize my thoughts, but here is my (exceedingly opinion-laden, exceedingly spoiler-heavy!) take on the English dub of the first Digimon Adventure Tri movie, “Reunion.”
2000+ word monster of an essay, under the cut.
Please note that when I use Japanese names/terminology (“Taichi,” Saikai,” “Nishijima-sensei” etc.) if I’m referring to the Japanese version, and English names (“Tai,” “Reunion,” “Mr. Nishijima”) to refer to the English version.
August 1, 2014: Odaiba Day, the 15th anniversary celebration. There was screaming. There was shouting, and a buzzing, infectious sense of euphoria. I could hardly believe it.
November 21, 2015: watching Saikai with subtitles. It was amazing, it was beautiful, it was almost everything I could ever hope for, but… nope. Somehow, I don’t think it had sunk in yet.
The subsequent flood of announcements, promo images, interviews, and merchandise, including the voice casting of the dub: A tiny part of me remained convinced of one simple truth: there was no way any of this was real.
September 15, 2016: Sitting in a theater, taking in the first few seconds of “Reunion,” hearing the first fumbling grunts of Tai Kamiya as he reaches for the alarm. Having a sense of being welcomed back into this world. It was in-character, delightful, appropriate… but still, some doubt remained.
It took seeing the dub’s Agumon, hearing Tom Fahn’s first reassuring line, and those first notes of Brave Heart, for everything that’s happened in the past two years to FINALLY sink in.
Digimon is back.
The Digimon that I know and love is back.
I squealed. I’m not sure that moment had quite as big of an impact on anyone else in the theater I was in, but this was the moment that Tri became completely and utterly real for me, at last. I may be exaggerating, but I can’t find another way to describe the fannish feeling of unbridled joy and relief I had at hearing Tai and Agumon, the Tai and Agumon I’ve loved for 17 years, back together again. It was overwhelming, in the best possible sense- and for nailing that moment alone, the dub deserves praise.
But it didn’t stop there. I let out several little small cheers as more familiar digimon voices were introduced to us, they said a few lines, and proceeded with digivolution. The rookies, we knew going into it, would be largely the same- R. Martin Klein and Jeff Nimoy have always loomed large in my mind for their distinctive characterizations of Gomamon and Tentomon, and they came away with some great, signature moments (Gomamon’s laugh as he climbed in Joe’s window! Tentomon acting the part of the butler as he buzzed the DigiDestined into Izzy’s office!). But hearing so many familiar champion-level voices, who were often voiced by different actors entirely, was a very welcome surprise: Dave Mallow as Angemon. Melodee Spevack as Birdramon. Mari Devon as Togemon… Mimi’s statement about everyone being back together rang so much truer here than it did in Japanese. In the original, the battle at Haneda airport becomes the first real taste of the familiar, of “Digimon Adventure” as it should be… but the dub audience is rewarded with a far more satisfying experience. That battle is the culmination of every good thing that has happened in the past forty minutes, because so many right notes have been hit along the way.
I started with the digimon’s voices because they left such a big impression on me, but I’ve always loved the human characters the most, and the performances of the original VAs do not disappoint. Joshua Seth, Mona Marshall, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, and Philece Sampler were, of course, perfect, and I appreciated the older, more mature-sounding tone the last three brought to their characters. I have been a fan of Johnny Yong Bosch’s work for a while, and while he certainly does justice to TK here, hearing Doug Erholtz in a different role was a little jarring. Believe it or not, I actually do live under a rock when it comes to anime, and as a result I’m not all that familiar with Vic Mignogna’s other roles, so I thought he was a fairly passable Matt. I was able to pick up hints of Michael Reisz every once in a while, and that’s about all I could have asked for other than the man himself. Kari’s new VA did a really good job capturing the unique rhythm and cadence of Lara Jill Miller, even if her voice sounded a bit harsh at times and not enough like Kari’s sweetly gentle lilt. Robbie Daymond was, unfortunately, maybe a bit too high-pitched for Joe (especially older Joe, who had a much deeper tone to his voice in 02 in Adventure), but I’m honestly looking forward to seeing what he can do in Determination. Christina Vee’s Meiko was adorable, and I’m also looking forward to upcoming Tri moments that put her in the spotlight. Biyomon’s new voice will take some getting used to, but Gatomon’s few lines sounded pretty much spot-on.
OK, this is SUPPOSED to be a review, not me just waxing rhapsodic, so putting aside my deep-seated love for the voice actors (as much as that’s possible) it’s time to delve into the nitty-gritty.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make note of many of the non-voice-actor names that scrolled by during the English staff credits, but one of the two names for “Script Adaptation” stood out to me: Ardwight Chamberlain. I recognized it; he was a script writer for “Samurai Pizza Cats,” a Saban property from the early nineties which is famous (and beloved) for NOT following the original Japanese. The other name, Anime News Network tells me, was Mark Ryan. A quick glance at their other credits shows that both of them have a significant list of script adaptation under their belts, and amazingly enough, they’ve both worked on Digimon dub scripts previously- now I’m really tempted to try to track down which ones! So even if it was just a happy accident that we ended up with two original dub scriptwriters, and even though Jeff Nimoy wasn’t involved in the writing or voice directing of Tri, seeing names like these helps, somehow. It’s one last indication that a solid effort WAS made to do this adaptation justice. Personally, I’ve always believed that a good dub should be able to stand on its own, a unique beast that takes what it needs to from the original, but is not completely beholden to it, either; freedom of choice can and should still a factor. It’s not an easy thing to balance, particularly when the writers are still constrained by things like timing and lip flaps. And like many other dubs out there, Reunion gets some things spectacularly right, stumbles in a few places, and makes a few alterations that we can only guess at the reasons for.
First, some of the spectacularly right: save for the new dub theme replacing “Butter-fly,” the music was left completely intact, at least as far as I could tell. Several key details and scenes were completely preserved/faithfully translated: Kari was too busy for Tai’s soccer game because she had to go to a birthday party (Our War Game reference!), Izzy speaking French, Tai’s line about “seeing more and understanding less,” and the girlfriend scene, which might be the best comedic moment in the movie no matter which version you’re watching. Getting more into the mixed-bag changes, at least things that I can forsee as being polarizing to the fandom: “Knife of Ramen” became “creative differences” …a little disappointing, sure, but the end result flowed really well AND very effectively provided some foreshadowing for the schism between Matt and Tai, so no complaints on my end! Some translation decisions were not internally consistent with the rest of the dub universe (the pronunciation of “Gennai” becoming the same as it is in Japanese… I can’t tell if this was a conscious decision or an oversight, especially given the reference to Highton View Terrace just a few seconds earlier!), and personally I prefer the original English pronunciation. During Izzy and Sora’s phone conversation, Izzy lied to her about where he was (“I’m in the computer lab”)- which is an interesting choice, though probably more in-character for Izzy than it would be for Koushiro. The absence of most real-world names was unfortunate; we’re all adults now, we can handle references to things that are uniquely Japanese- and while they left Nishijima’s name the same, Haneda became the very generic “International Airport,” and Meiko’s association with Tottori has been completely removed, changing her unusual “thank you” to “Meicoomon-speak.” Bizarre.
But, those details aside, some of the changes made in the dub really serve to enhance the narrative quality of the movie, to the point that I VASTLY prefer them to the original. True to dub form, Reunion is quite a bit chattier than Saikai. Dialogue was added where there was originally silence-but Tai’s monologues and the generic crowd murmurings are things I really appreciate, they really add some more depth to the scenes they occur in. And amazingly, there’s one moment where the dub chose NOT to include dialogue that was in the original, and that’s what I really want to make sure gets special mention.
THEY ELIMINATED THE PART WHERE THE OTHER DIGIDESTINED TALK OVER IZZY WHEN THEY’RE MEETING UNDER THE BRIDGE.
This was a PROFOUNDLY positive change, in my opinion. I actually hated that bit of dialogue in the original-it’s meant to be funny and in-character, because clearly Koushiro is just rattling off a bunch of technobabble at that point, and he doesn’t notice that the others have moved on because he’s so “in the zone,” but to me it came across as insensitive for the rest of the Chosen Children to just start having another conversation on top of him (initiated by Hikari of all people-Hikari!) when they’ve always been quite respectful of what he has to say in the past. Thankfully, there are almost NO lip-flaps for Koushiro/Izzy the entire time that separate conversation is occurring, and the dub-writers chose instead to have him say his piece and be done with it (save for a little muttering under his breath at the end). It’s more unified, less distracting, and infinitely more respectful to the bearer of the Crest of Knowledge, so I really don’t think I can praise that decision enough. Huzzah, dub. HUZZAH!
What else really stood out? There were a few individual lines of dialogue that I took note of, both good and the bad, though most were quite good:
(+) I didn’t catch the full name of the dessert Kari wanted Tai to buy her, but I think it ended with “Thunder Bucket.” XD
(-) Some of Tai’s internal monologue during the Kuwagamon chase scene seemed a little pre-emptive/out-of-place, given the context:
“This is no random attack… Kuwagamon’s after me, but why?” (not sure you can really come to that conclusion when Kuwagamon’s randomly smashing stuff, but OK!)
“Who’s going to get blamed for it… the good digimon!” (a bit awkward and judgey, plus whoaaa there, cowboy- spoiler alert? But I guess it shows how much Tai is concerned about the repercussion for human-digimon relations, even though there hasn’t been any other digimon activity in the real world in over a year!)
(+) Daigo gives Tai’s code name as DD1.
(+) The way Mimi refers to Himekawa: “my driver” (!!)
(+) The Digital World being referred to as both “the Digiworld” and “the Digital World.” I’ve always preferred “Digital World,” but I’m glad that we have both.
(+) “The walk-in Gennai” -> “The informant Gennai.”
(+) TK’s comment to Izzy about “hitting the can a little hard.”
(-) Tentomon’s “NO SPECIAL REASON” for Izzy being interested in clothes seemed a bit overdone (but the scene overall was still very funny).
(+) Tai’s new goggles are “better than [his] old goggles!”
(+) “Let the girls deal with the imaginary cat” combined with, “Look who the imaginary cat dragged in” preceding the Ferris wheel scene.
(+) Omegamon is still Omnimon in the dub-verse. +1 for consistency!
(+) And of course, of COURSE, “Prodigious!” I didn’t think Izzy was going to say it at all, but the timing was absolutely perfect and the best payoff EVER. The whole theater broke out in whoops and applause.
I’m sure I’m leaving some things out, but those are my first impressions from the theater viewing. I should also state that I think this story flows much better as a movie than as episodes. I don’t really know why Crunchyroll is distributing the Tri releases in a four-episode format, but hopefully DVDs will include the movie format!
So did I like it? Um… yeah, I think you could say that. The last and greatest hope I had for Tri, and the last and greatest fear, concerned the dub- a dub that was half-hearted, incomplete, or otherwise “felt wrong.” But Reunion, as it stands right now, has blown that fear completely out of the water. It’s not perfect, of course it’s not. But sometimes it’s those little imperfections, the things that make no sense, the things that represent a non-optimal but well-meaning decision that was made somewhere along the line-Digidollars, Mimi’s baby brother, Sora’s cousin Dwayne-bizarrely, make me love the end result just a little bit more.
The dub encapsulates what Digimon is, to me. And amazingly, miraculously, regardless of whatever happens as Tri continues to unfold... I think that will continue to be the case.