Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Back in in My Day, We Had Abridged Series
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2998 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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To be fair, LittleKuriboh has also stated that he mostly got out of professional VA because of how immensely clique-based, egocentric, & emotionally manipulative some of the actors apparently have become, so much so that it simply turned him off from doing doing "proper" voice acting on the regular, mainly for the sake of his own mental health (& likely because he feels he'd be blacklisted by some due to him not taking their crap). It is a shame that he came across that side of the industry too often, because the guy absolutely is a good actor & deserves to be given more chances to show his talents. It's kind of what made Anime Midstream & Sound Cadence's dub for B't X neat, to some added extent, because aside from just being an excellent dub in & of itself they literally used the fact that TeamFourStar were cast in some roles (though only "Takahata101" Curtis Arnott was given an major, multi-episode role as Misslim) as part of its advertising, coyly stating that they were people "internet savvy fans" would know, which I thought was really neat. Meanwhile, I remember reading once that Toei was allegedly not pleased when FUNimation cast TeamFourStar in Dragon Ball Super's dub, despite them literally only being cameo casted as a bunch of fakes during what was obviously a parodic recreation of a prior battle, even in the original Japanese. As for Abridged Series, in general, it's been a long time since I really watched any, though the only one I really kept up with in any way was for Yu-Gi-Oh!, as I felt it was the only one that really felt like it hit the perfect balance of silly jokes with earnest love & respect for the source material. Similar to all of the "caustic critics" that appeared in the wake of the AVGN & Nostalgia Critic, I felt that many other Abridged Series took the concept & focused way too much on jokes & poking fun at the source, often at the expense of the source, instead of cleverly weaving jokes & respect together, similar to how Nerd & Critic clones focused too much on the anger, swearing, & nitpicking, while missing the fact that the stuff they were imitating were (mostly) just exaggerating things for comedic effect. I'm sure there are others that did it well, I believe Gantz & Hellsing Abridged were two good examples, but for most others I got disinterested really fast. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2559 Location: Online Terminal |
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I tend to be turned off to the concept of Abridged series because I don't find their general brand of humor to be any good, but I think that's the problem any comedy has to deal with. It needs to be funny and of a good enough quality that also doesn't overstay its welcome (there's a reason it's called Abridged, yeah?)
That being said, there's definitely a place for it. Otherwise, things like Bad Lip Reading wouldn't be mainstays on the normie internet. |
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Alpha0727
Posts: 1 |
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[quote="Lord Geo"]
It was DragonBall Z Kai and you can still find the clip of it on YouTube. |
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Tamer Sakura
Posts: 43 |
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Ah, abridged series. The reason why so many people think Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds is bad or fall into the "Goku is a bad dad" pit because they only know these series from the wildly inaccurate parodies. I don't miss those days. And evidently not many people do given how often these creators spent apologizing and walking back all the work they did that got them famous in the first place and disowning it whether it's all those disclaimers on YGO abridged or Team Fourstar guys talking over and trying to drown out the jokes they made in their commentary tracks. At least Ghost Stories and Shin-chan's dubs still stand behind their old work.
As far as internet creator success Smiling Friends seems to be the golden standard, especially with all the cameos they've had on it from Doug Walker to even the much-wanted Chris Chan cameo that ultimately never happened (sadly) Best to go the original route unless you end up like SML or SMG64 and get sued and have to rebrand if you want to start selling merchandise. |
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Triltaison
 Posts: 941 |
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I don't keep up with any if they're still happening, but I remember enjoying abridged series versions for Sailor Moon, One Piece, DBZ, and Yu-Gi-Oh as they released. I watched them with my college pals. If ever I feel like reliving the fun, I still occasionally watch DBZ Kai Abridged and the 6th episode of YGOTAS. Those still make me laugh.
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 3030 |
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Thanks for reminding me of abridged series, it's been so long with the flood of streaming content I lost sight of some of that fun. And now it's largely gone...
 I'll give a shout out to TokuTenchi and her Wedding Peach Abridged...lots of laughs but that one is gone. Still, she has gone to a better place (ie. a real life, married with kids). I think the last time I watched was 2016(?), how time has flown...
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 864 |
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Along those lines, I feel like Abridged Series were/are the anime equivalent of what Let's Plays are for video games. Presenting something that a viewer familiar with the source material can laugh at while still being entertaining for someone who's never interacted with that source. And yes, I definitely think it helps people get into those source materials. I do agree with the article that I feel like it's sad that basically every creator these days has to toss in with some brand or another*. I mean I get it, gotta get that bread and apparently Youtube doesn't pay nearly what it used to (though I don't know what that "used to" ever was) but it makes it feel like nothing's a real labor of love anymore, even if it is still obviously a labor of love. *It especially doesn't help that a lot of the time those brands turn out to be some kind of grift. |
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Purple Tentacle
Posts: 44 |
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Based Toei saving the day and getting that cut and re-done. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1762 |
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I have some nostalgia towards Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged, I also used to watch it regularly around my last days of high school in back in 2010 and 2011, back in those days I also watched a lot of the content from That Guy with the Glasses and I think that's where I discovered YGO Abridged, since by that point I already had a good proficiency with the English language after years of studying I didn't need any subtitles, all the content from that era did introduce me to series and movies that I have never heard before, so in a sense it did leave a sort of impact.
In retrospective, a lot of the humor of that era didn't age as well as I remember, but I don't believe it deserves all of the harsh criticism it receives from some content creators from places like YouTube. Now that I think about it, it surprised me that there weren't any big attempts in Latin America in doing abridged series of popular anime like Saint Seiya. I do remember some fandubs of the Dragon Ball Z Abridged series. |
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MiniMarps
 Posts: 187 |
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A lot of my favorite mangaka in the 2020s, before they were famous mangaka in the 2020s, they were fans in the 2010s posting their fan art on sites like Pixiv. The guys behind some of the more high-profile abridged series, I can see them in sort of the same light, because really, what is parody if not a form of fan art?
The difference is that from that starting point, there seems to be considerably less room for upward mobility in the West than there is in Japan. Like if TeamFourStar, for example, was based in Japan instead of the US, posting their videos on Niconico instead of YouTube, I kinda feel like the sky's the limit in terms of what that group could've evolved into. But here, no matter what else they try to do now, they'll always just be "the guys who made those Dragon Ball parodies on YouTube." And again, as a fan of a lot of now-professional creators who started out as fan artists, I can't help but feel like that's a little bit wasteful. |
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pip25
Posts: 268 |
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I think abridged series were a product of their time. It was much easier to get yourself a good microphone and perform than produce video content of the same caliber. This, however, has subtly changed over the years. Even DBZ Abridged, one of the later examples, illustrates this well: not only was the video quality and the editing great, but they've increasingly added small modifications or effects that weren't in the original footage at all.
Nowadays? I see people releasing fully animated original content, and that is not a polite phrase for a PowerPoint presentation. People have better tools and options, and they're making use of them. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 2701 |
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While I liked the the original Yugioh abridged, I can't say the same for TeamFourStar considering how far their comedy goes: suicide jokes, unprotected sex, etc. Apparently, they are also hated by the fanbase for making popular the gag that Goku is a bad father though Super was also responsible for expanding on that like when the guy forgot he had a grandaughter.
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 936 |
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Goku forgetting was purely a translation thing (influenced no doubt by TFS). In Japanese he was just making a joke about bread |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 15208 |
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Is Solo/Sister Leveling considered abridged, in a way
That one exploded just a few months ago |
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Nev999
Posts: 186 |
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The YGO abridged series is what got me into anime in a roundabout way--I probably would have gotten into it some other way, but that still makes it important to me. I was watching it, watched the "Season Zero' parody and was interested in what the original was like, only watched a few episodes, I wasn't interested enough in the plot to watch the whole thing, but was like "you know i kinda enjoyed that, reading the subtitles was a really interesting experience too, I should get around to checking out anime I've been hearing about" and went on to watch Death Note, Sailor Moon, Utena, etc. So it will always hold a special place in my heart for kickstarting an alarming obsession.
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