Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies, (ドラゴンボール 神龍の伝説, Doragon Bōru: Shenron no Densetsu) originally known as Dragon Ball: The Legend of Shenron, is the first anime movie in the Dragon Ball franchise. It premiered on 20 December 1986 in Japan. The movie is an alternate retelling of the events of the Emperor Pilaf saga from the original Dragon Ball series, retelling the meeting of Goku and Bulma and their encounters with Oolong, Yamcha and Master Roshi. Emperor Pilaf and his gang, however, are replaced with the evil King Gurumes and his subordinates Bongo and Pasta.
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Dubbing History[]
Curse of the Blood Rubies was first dubbed by Intersound, Inc. for Harmony Gold alongside the first five episodes of the series. It was edited together with the third film, Mystical Adventure, with dialogue rewritten to closer link the two films. The Harmony Gold-dubbed double feature was aired on various TV channels in the United States in a limited run in late 1989.
The movie was then dubbed in 1994-1995 by BLT Productions in association with Funimation. The movie was dubbed first as a test to serve as a pilot for the series for TV stations. Much like the TV series, the movie was censored for content (scenes such as Roshi requesting to see Bulma's breasts in exchange for the Dragon Ball, and Oolong transforming into Bulma and showing him them). Two versions of this dub were made of the film, one using Harmony Gold's names, and the other using the names closer to the Japanese version eventually used by FUNimation. The version with Harmony Gold's names appears to have been a test and was never publicly released, but it was eventually found by the Twitter user Tanooki Joe in 2019.[1] When later aired, in order to pad out the running time and the gaps left by the cuts, scenes from BLT's dub of Episode 2 of Goku and Bulma getting to know each other were spliced into the film. As with the BLT-dubbed TV Series, the movie featured a new score composed by Peter Berring.
In Europe, the film was presumably dubbed by Chinkel Post-Production for AB Groupe (now known as Mediawan Thematics), using their limited France-based voice cast of five voice actors. (It is to be assumed Doug Rand was not cast in this film, nor the other two films, as his voice is not heard anywhere in the dub; he did provide voices for the later Dragon Ball Z films.) This dub aired on Toonami in the United Kingdom, under the original title The Legend of Shenron, though was never given a home video release like many of their dubs for the Dragon Ball Z movies.
For many years, the film was the only one left undubbed by Funimation's in-house studio. This is mainly due to the licensing of the BLT dub of episodes 1-13 and the film by Trimark Pictures. This licensing agreement would end up being extended with the acquisition of Trimark by Lionsgate in 2001. The license finally expired in 2009, allowing Funimation to finally release the film with their own dub.
Unfortunately many years had passed since the dubbing of the original Dragon Ball series, and many voice actors, such as Stephanie Nadolny (Goku) and Tiffany Vollmer (Bulma), had since left Funimation. Thus characters were recast with the dub cast utilized for Dragon Ball Z Kai, which was currently being dubbed. The script was mostly recycled from the 1995 script, which itself was based on the 1989 script, only reverting the characters' changed names back to their originals. The censorship of the Harmony Gold and BLT dubs were not retained, and thus contains the inappropriate moments and profanity of the Japanese version.
Cast[]
Additional Voices[]
Harmony Gold Dub
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BLT Dub |
AB Groupe Dub |
FUNimation Dub
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Notes[]
- In the Harmony Gold dub, Pansy is renamed "Penny", Bongo is renamed "Major Domo" (for the reason that Krillin was renamed Bongo in their dub) and Pasta is renamed "Aldevia".
- The BLT dub also keeps some of these renames, excluding Pasta, who is renamed "Raven".
- Maggie Blue O'Hara dubs Bulma in the BLT dub of the film, but for unknown reasons, she did not return for the BLT dub of the TV series' first 13 episodes. Instead Lalainia Lindbjerg took over as the voice of Bulma. And yet, Lindbjerg's voice was featured as Bulma in a scene from the BLT dub of the second episode of the TV series, interspliced into the 1995 version of the BLT dub.
- On another note, O'Hara would later reprise her role as Bulma in the AB Groupe-financed Ocean dub of the latter half of Dragon Ball Z when Lindbjerg did not return, only for O'Hara herself to be replaced by France Perras, starting with episode 269 (254 edited).
- Although several places state there was an extremely limited VHS release of the Harmony Gold dub of this movie by Carl Macek's Streamline Pictures, no evidence has been found to support this.
- An obscure lost fifth (chronologically first) dub of the film may have been done by the Tokyo dubbing company Frontier Enterprises. This was based on comments made by Frontier voice actor Richard Nieskens, who had previously listed it on his LinkedIn profile (albeit erroneously referring to it as Dragon Ball Z). Given his comments in an interview where he states it was done around 1986, and given Frontier's dubbing activities at the time, that likely means it was this first film.[2]
Video Releases[]
| Distributor | Year | Format | Dub | Region | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vidmark Entertainment | 1996 | 
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BLT | NTSC | United States | 
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| Speedy Video | 1997 | 
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PAL | Malaysia | 
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| Trimark Pictures | 2000 | 
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1 NTSC |
United States |
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| FUNimation Entertainment | 2010 | FUNimation | ||||
References[]
- ↑ @TanookiKuribo (May 31, 2019). "So I got my VCR up and running on my PC...". Retrieved February 21, 2020.
- ↑ Nieskens, Richard (January 2013). PUTTING WORDS IN THEIR MOUTHS! Dick Nieskens Talks Dubbing!
External Links[]
- Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies at the Internet Movie Database
- Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
