Category: Features

For many years little was known about Dragon Ball in Finland internationally, manga or anime, the latter more so because during the years it was broadcast (2003-2007) Google Translate was not as ubiquitous as it is today.

A few years after the final episode of Dragon Ball Z premiered on SubTV a fan confirmed on the Kanzenshuu forums on two occasions it was aired with the German dub after the entire series was broadcast in English with subs.

There was little discussion about this broadcasting anomaly in the years that followed these comments being shared, at least on English websites and forums from what I’ve seen, I can’t speak for Finnish sites. In any case we can see from this Twitter thread other fans did indeed remember this instance of the final episode being shown in German.

The above tweet can be translated as “By the time Goku arrived at Namek, the dubbing changed to Funimation’s version. Would it have been with Androids or Buu, when between Ocean and sometimes Funimation. The last episodes were in German dub”.

While fans have reported the Funimation dub airing in Finland it is natural to suspect they also received the Westwood dub from the artificial human, Cell and Boo arcs, or even, as the comment suggests there could have been random switches back to Funimation even after the Westwood dub started.

After all the UK, Ireland and Netherlands had those brief switches from Westwood back to Funimation, which is well known about for the British Isles with CNX premiering the “Fusion saga” with the US cast, but less so for Holland, where fans I’ve spoken to have more vague memories. I don’t blame them though, the UK has a much greater population density and memory doesn’t tend to be as reliable as we would like and time distorts it even more. An archived page from SubTV’s website even states they licensed Dragon Ball Z from “AB Productions” or more accurately “AB Groupe”, the same distributor other European territories mostly made deals with back in the early to mid 2000s.

Now whether or not Finland did switch back is anyone’s guess at this point, but as I mentioned previously this would not be the most peculiar aspect of the SubTV broadcast, if true, but rather the switch, not to another English dub but to the German dub on the last episode is probably one of the most bizarre stories in anime history that I wish was better known up to this point.

If you think it’s strange learning about this all these years later, one can only imagine how it must have felt for fans that tuned in to SubTV on that fateful day. There is one thread regarding the issue on a local forum where we see confusion, frustration and even justification on some fan’s part for what happened that day. The screenshots below feature the original posts in Finnish followed by an automatic Google translation.

“What were they freaking out there with the sub???

Where in Germany did they dig that episode???”

“I was just browsing Sub’s website and noticed that someone else has been wondering the same thing and asking why this is the case. I can put Sub’s answer here.

“There haven’t been any more episodes dubbed in English. Since fewer episodes of DragonBall Z have been made than we have been sold, there will be reruns from next Sun 17.12. onwards on Sat and Sun at 10.00 from episode 124 onwards.””

“”There haven’t been any more episodes dubbed in English. Since fewer episodes of DragonBall Z have been made than we have been sold, there will be reruns from next Sun 17.12. onwards on Sat and Sun at 10.00 from episode 124 onwards.”

You could say to subtv that “Not true, NOT TRUE!” 😀 It’s quite blatant lying when you can see from Subtv’s self-provided listings that they were supposed to air the final episode of the series, “Goku’s next journey”, made entirely in English, this Saturday.

Dig up youtube etc. for the last episode that I missed now. The episode is called “Goku’s next journey” in English, its episode number is 286/290 or a little smaller. (At the moment, I guess the DBZ stuff on YouTube is pretty weak, but I wonder if they’ll start appearing there again soon.

Lousy activity on SubTV!”

“It’s not SubTV’s fault that they’ve been sold fewer episodes than they bought.”

“Subtv has shown episodes with dubbing of FUNimation, that series has 276 episodes. All the episodes that were part of that series have come, why not the last one?

It seems to be quite unprofessional anyway when

a) lying to viewers (that the last episode hasn’t been dubbed in English – ridiculous… And of course they could get that episode somewhere if they wanted to),

b) not checking pre-ordered products (thinking that even after the last episode there would still be something to show until February), and

c) using unreliable and unprofessional suppliers.”

Top can be translated as:

“GERMAN LANGUAGES?!
AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS IN JAPANESE!!
SO I FREAKED OUT!”

For the bottom:

“Well actually, it was quite amusing when the text announced “We apologize for the lack of subtitles” and the TV shows the “wrong” episode dubbed in German LOL”

It’s quite amusing that some viewers were entertaining the idea of SubTV searching for the final episode online. The fact one assumed it was the Japanese version they saw also seems like a natural response. If German isn’t a common language in Finland it boggles the mind why the final episode of a Japanese show would be shown without subs in a random European language.

The fact the final episode of Dragon Ball Z had aired in most, if not all other territories that either aired the Funimation or Westwood dubs by that point also disproves SubTV’s claim there were no more English dubbed episodes available for them to use.

So why did the final episode air in German, without subs on a channel called SubTV of all things?

A friend of mine suggested it may have been to do with Bonnier providing an indirect connection between SubTV and the publisher Danish manga publisher Carlsen Verlag.

In the pre-Crunchyroll days the Swedish company Bonnier Group owned Carlsen Verlag, and while SubTV were once owned by Alma Media they were then sold to Bonnier in early 2005. Carlsen were founded as a German subsidiary of Forlaget Carlsen, so there were likely people at the company with enough familiarity with German. The Danish version of the Dragon Ball manga and the anime are known to reference the German versions, so it stands to reason if SubTV were desperate enough for a copy of the final episode that they could easily acquire a version that may have been floating around these companies.

It is rather unfortunate that SubTV either couldn’t find a German-to-Finnish translator in time or none were available to write subs for the final episode within a satisfactory deadline. Fans were naturally shocked when the episode aired and they had to watch their favourite characters in action speaking a language most native Fins didn’t understand.

After the final episode aired Dragon Ball Z remained in reruns on SubTV for a short while, first on weekend mornings as the above response from the channel indicates and also on weekdays for another 8 months¹.

Issues of the Helsinki Times also corroborate reruns, which took place throughout early 2007:

Hopefully one day the show will return to Finnish screens, maybe Daima will be that opportunity, or better yet MTV Sub (as Sub TV is known now) can be convinced to air the Ocean dub of Kai as the voices would no doubt be familiar to Finnish fans.

1. _{This was confirmed by Leena Saarinen of the Helsinki Times who checked TV listings and seen the last time any episodes of Dragon Ball Z were shown was on August 21, 2007 with a double bill of episodes titled “New Venture” and “Peace on Earth”. See Apu, 17.08.2007, no. 33, p. 79 https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/aikakausi/binding/1799480?page=79 National Library’s Digital Collections} ↩︎