1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

The roughly mid-90's and earlier (generally pre-Toonami, pre-anime boom) era of anime & manga fandom: early cons, clubs, tape trading, Nth Generation VHS fansubs, old magazines & fanzines, fandubs, ancient merchandise, rec.arts.anime, and more!
Tom_Servo
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1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by Tom_Servo »

This thread is for the purpose of documenting and discussing the 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball.

I was able to track down two individuals, one in California and one in Pennsylvania, with tapes of episodes of this rare and coveted Dragon Ball dub. They are still digging them out and digitizing them, but the fact that tapes have been found after 30 years of waiting is monumental.

Also, an anonymous individual on another forum shared a VHSRip of the first episode of the dub off of a Detroit television station, and I was able to upload it to the Internet Archive for all to see. I will not post the link here, but it’s easy to find.

If anybody might have more tapes or have connections with individuals with more tapes, don’t hesitate to let me know! It is my goal to get this historic piece of Dragon Ball history shared with the web!
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DKop
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by DKop »

I'm part of a private tracker site of people that rip from tv recordings of tapes to the internet, and someone a year or so ago had the first 4 episodes of the HG Dragonball Dub off the philly stations with commercials in tact. Most of my contributions have been my recordings from Cartoon Network, I think the rarest would be the Evangelion recordings from Giant Robot Week that I used in a Anime on Cartoon Network panel this past AWA.
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by davemerrill »

hey Tom_Servo, didn't we talk on the Anime Hell Facebook group?

I have two tapes full of Speed Racer taped off Philly 57, those commercial bumpers are pretty distinctive. My family visited Philadelphia in the early 1980s and 57 was running Star Blazers and Force Five on Saturday mornings, which was a treat to see. That must have been a pretty outstanding UHF station, at least in our eyes!
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by Tom_Servo »

davemerrill wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:25 pm hey Tom_Servo, didn't we talk on the Anime Hell Facebook group?

I have two tapes full of Speed Racer taped off Philly 57, those commercial bumpers are pretty distinctive. My family visited Philadelphia in the early 1980s and 57 was running Star Blazers and Force Five on Saturday mornings, which was a treat to see. That must have been a pretty outstanding UHF station, at least in our eyes!
Yup, that's me. Just branching out to different groups and sites to try to gather information and tapes. :p

Sounds like a heck of a station WGBS was. I'll have to watch more of those commercials!
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DKop
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by DKop »

Dave, are you able to capture/rip from those tapes to your computer and share those on a google drive with me and Tom? I'd like to check those episodes out. I can start a "Shit I get from Dave Merrill" anime DVD collection :lol: I need to run that as an informercial some day...
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by davemerrill »

at some point I'll get around to ripping those ads, sure. In the meantime there are several sets of 80s ad breaks I ripped and posted to the Mister Kitty YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MisterKittyTV/videos
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by Tom_Servo »

All five episodes were found by my source and uploaded to the Internet Archive. Enjoy!
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by Tom_Servo »

Unfortunately, it would seem both Harmony Gold tapes I own at the moment (another one was anonymously donated to me from Minnesota) are in rough shape and difficult to restore. I was informed by some of my sources that Daniel/AnimeSennin has a tape that’s in better shape, so I have contacted him in hopes he might be able to help provide more material for a private restoration I’m undertaking.Hoping for the best!
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by _D_ »

I see Kanzenshuu finally shut down the DB broadcast audio thread, though the fight rages on in other threads. I give all my old tapes and discs to an individual and I don't really care to get involved in politics these days. I have enough on my plate just looking for things. But I hardly ever cap things anymore. Either I have to deal with purists who want to do the job themselves or those who denigrate the equipment I use. Maybe they are waiting for me to die and hoping that I will all my stuff to them? Who can say? I DO have provisions in my will for what SHOULD happen to some of this stuff but I imagine most of it will be just binned. That's the way of the world though...

As for dubs, I hardly ever watch them. I don't even remember what I recorded from years ago. I can't access my old database as it was DOS based and won't run on modern OSes. And it was incomplete, being only about 500 of 6,000 tapes. And with the stuff out of that video store, that adds another 600 tapes to the pile. There is no end to what people want me to try to find...
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Re: 1989 Harmony Gold dub of Dragon Ball Search

Post by DKop »

_D_ wrote: Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:00 am I see Kanzenshuu finally shut down the DB broadcast audio thread, though the fight rages on in other threads. I give all my old tapes and discs to an individual and I don't really care to get involved in politics these days. I have enough on my plate just looking for things. But I hardly ever cap things anymore. Either I have to deal with purists who want to do the job themselves or those who denigrate the equipment I use. Maybe they are waiting for me to die and hoping that I will all my stuff to them? Who can say? I DO have provisions in my will for what SHOULD happen to some of this stuff but I imagine most of it will be just binned. That's the way of the world though...

As for dubs, I hardly ever watch them. I don't even remember what I recorded from years ago. I can't access my old database as it was DOS based and won't run on modern OSes. And it was incomplete, being only about 500 of 6,000 tapes. And with the stuff out of that video store, that adds another 600 tapes to the pile. There is no end to what people want me to try to find...
Do you have a catalog of what you do have on hand? Im just curious. I haven't been able to capture much of anything since this summer. I still got more Adult Swim/Toonami recordings to go through. I still got a few more things from Sci Fi Ani-Monday block in like 2007 or 2008 to capture at some point.
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