After an eight-year wait, Dragon Ball Super’s Galactic Patrol arc is finally getting an anime adaptation. The original anime wrapped in 2018, but the manga continued the story with the Galactic Patrol Prisoner arc, which ended in 2020. Fans have been waiting for the cosmic story to get the anime treatment ever since.
Christopher Sabat, the voice of Vegeta, has been waiting just as long, while delighting fans by reading Vegeta’s lines at conventions. And yet, when Polygon asks the legendary actor about returning for Galactic Patrol, he says he’s ready as ever, but wouldn’t be offended if it’s time to pass the torch, either.
“I mean, I’m here. It would be a shame not to actually continue voicing Super since I’m right here and able to do it, but time will tell,” Sabat says in a conversation timed to the 40th anniversary of Dragon Ball Z (more on that in another article soon). “I’m assuming they would use us. But again, I’m good. I have done this character for 25 years. It’s crazy, and I am super grateful to have been working on it as long as I have. So if there ever comes a time when it changes, I’ll be sad because I would like to see Super through, but I’ll understand.”
In the most recent Dragon Ball anime, Dragon Ball Daima, audiences saw Sabat share the role of Vegeta for the first time in any of the shows, as voice actor Paul Castro Jr. voiced the kid version of the character.
“Hey, someone else had to do all the screaming, you know what I mean,” Sabat says. “And Paul Castro Jr. is excellent. He’s a great Vegeta, and I think he really captured Vegeta’s spirit really well.”
Sabat has voiced the character for a quarter of a century, and although he loves Vegeta, he would bow out gracefully if he felt he was no longer up to the task.
“If it ever came to that, sure,” he says. “I would do everything I could to try and voice him, but look, it hurts a lot more than it ever used to. It doesn’t just hurt my throat. It hurts my back and my shoulders because you tense all your muscles.”
Sean Schemmel, the voice of Goku in the English dub, has voiced the character for almost as long as Sabat and once said he passed out from screaming while recording an intense scene in Dragon Ball GT. In the most recent series, Damia, Schemmel passed out four times during a transformation sequence.
Sabat hasn’t experienced that same issue, but he’s still wary of pushing his body too far.
“It’s physically exhausting to do these long Vegeta sessions,” the voice actor admits. “But until such a point that I literally can’t do it anymore, I will continue to do it as long as they’ll let me.”
