Moth Plays Dragonball Xenoverse, Episode 7: The Dreaded Tyrant and the Legendary Warrior! · 2:42am Feb 4th, 2018
Welcome back!
Last episode, I spent time training with Piccolo and undertaking various Parallel Quests where I refought old battles and defeated past enemies again to grow stronger. Now, it's time to go on another Time Patrol.
Episode 7: The Dreaded Tyrant and the Legendary Warrior!
Well folks...this is it. This is the big one. The one I've been dreading.
Frieza.
When your enemy is Frieza, you know you're in for a hard time. When Frieza starts sequence-breaking his transformations and his attacks at ANY stage do incredible damage, you're in for a REALLY hard time. Instead of fighting all of Frieza's forms, what happens here is he starts off in his first form, then when you beat him...he goes straight to his final form.
Yikes.
The basic flow of this battle: You fight untransformed Frieza. Then you fight Final Form Frieza with Vegeta, Gohan, and Kuririn. At a certain point, Frieza strangles Vegeta. Then you fight him with Piccolo. After a while of this, Goku shows up. You fight Frieza with Goku for a little bit, then Goku stops fighting to gather a Genkidama, leaving you to keep Frieza entertained.
Frieza hits really, really hard. He also has a habit of flying all over the map, and if you get a really, really good rhythm of combos going? He'll spontaneously bust out one of his supers and either you're forced to back off and defend or--worse--you don't block in time and get caught right in the worst of it, which completely changes the flow of the battle. Also, I wish healing items triggered...a bit more quickly than they do, because I got killed in this fight more than a few times trying to heal up. It got better later, but...seriously, healing items kinda need to respond more quickly.
Anyway, once Goku throws the Genkidama, you have a couple of quick, easy fights where you basically just have to sit back and let SSJ Goku pummel Frieza (seriously, I should've just stayed out of the last battle entirely for an easy Z-rank), and...
That's it.
Time Patrol mission successful. But Toki no Kaioushin is worried, because Towa and Mira didn't seem to interfere this time. And maybe, just maybe...there's somebody else messing with history we don't know about yet...
I'd like to take a moment to digress:
If you listen to the voice audio in this episode? This is an example of why I will always, always prefer the original Japanese voices to the Funimation dub voices.
Don't get me wrong, Funimation does a terrific job dubbing DBZ--most of the time. I'll always prefer Nozawa Masako to Sean Schemmel, because that's just how Goku's supposed to sound. I'll always prefer Nakao Ryuusei as Frieza, because that's how Frieza is supposed to sound. No disrespect to Chris Ayres, but...
Well, let's face it:
In English, Frieza tends to sound like an evil lizard grandma. I'm sorry, but that's the truth of it. And that's just not what Frieza is supposed to sound like.
Frieza is a very special type of villain. A very rare type of villain. You don't encounter this villain archetype, vocally, in Japanese media very often. Frieza speaks in very formal, cultured Japanese. Frieza's voice carries an elegance and nobility to it, while at the same time possessing a homosexual lilt and a mocking malevolence. Frieza is amused by you. Frieza mocks you by using proper honorifics and formal speech. Frieza's sexuality is highly dubious.
Listen to his voice. The taunting tone, the gay lilt, the formal dialect. Just listen. Frieza is a psychopath, but he's a cultured psychopath, and his amusement oozes from every syllable of his creepy delivery.
Only the Japanese voice properly captures the oily, slimy wrongness of Frieza.
There are other characters in recent popular media who share this archetype, who are voiced exactly like Frieza, and the voice style has become, effectively, shorthand for "run away from this guy and don't look back". One notable example of this: Orochimaru, from Naruto. The second Orochimaru first shows up and starts talking, you know he's the Frieza of the franchise.
The English voice actor for Frieza just...really doesn't convey the same level of terror and malice in quite the same way.
Kinoa has witnessed the birth of the Super Saiyajin in person, and fought the most evil tyrant in the universe and lived to tell the tale. Our demonic time criminals are still at large, and we aren't sure what they're planning. What's going to happen next? Find out next time, on Moth Plays Dragonball Xenoverse!
See ya next fight!
It's so weird seeing the Japanese terminology mixed in with the non
I have a couple questions regarding everything you said about Freiza's voice.
First, what do you think of how Team Four Star voiced Freiza?
Second...would this be a good english voice for Freiza?
4788929
I don't do Abridged. I have no idea what their voices sound like. Also, no. Like...hell fucking no.
Well, you should know Frieza's English voice used to be FAR worse! Up until Kai he was voiced in all Funimation projects by Linda Young. As a kid, I always thought Frieza was actually a girl because of her voice, and while she did her best she was not a good choice for Frieza at all. Christopher Ayres does still have those tendencies to sound feminine, but I think he gets it a lot closer to what Frieza is supposed to be like.
And most of the rest of the Funi voice cast is spot on for me, the only one I still wish was different is Christopher Sabat's Recoome. It's not his fault, but the voice he uses always makes Recoome sound stupid.
4789007
Ugh, I HATED Linda Young's Frieza voice. Throat Cancer Grandma Frieza, no thank you!
Oh, and Recoome IS stupid. :P
That'd just be Linda Young's Frieza, with no disrespect to her. That said, LittleKuriboh and Chris Aryes Frieza nail it for me. Much like Damian Clake, (probably butchered his name) as Cell just OOZES smug malice, which rapidly turns into an almost Saiyan like growl when he starts losing.
Honestly, I never grew up with Dragon Ball. When I was younger I watched a couple of episodes of Z (the battle between Goku and Freeza on Namek was one) and just couldn't see the appeal.
My proper introduction to Dragon Ball actually came via Team Four Star a few years ago, and after that I decided to give Dragon Ball a proper chance.
Let's just say I glad I went with the dubbed version of Kai rather than the original variant; Little Kuriboh and Chris Ayres will always be my favourite interpretations of Freeza, but I can't deny that they would be nothing without Nakao Ryuusei.
4789088
Agreed on LittleKuriboh's work. If any English performance hits Frieza's "condescending effeminate nobleman" aspect, it's his.
4789121
I think Chris Aryes might have been influenced by his performance. Just listen to the two back to back. They're near identical, or at least very similar. Certainly better than Linda Young, with no offense to her, I'm sure she's a good VA but, she was not the best Frieza.
4789051 I get why she was originally cast, she was to voicematch Ocean Frieza who was voiced by Paulina Newstone, who was even raspier. But there was no reason at all why she had to stay around until Kai.