OK, before seeing this, I had seen exactly ZERO episodes of the original show. When my sister told me about Abridged the first time, I didn't even know what "abridged" meant. Then she showed me, and my life changed a little. I would go looking for abridged shows left and right, and even though I found a few good ones, none of them compare to DBZA.
Most Abridged shows will have crappy voice acting and direction, even hilarious ones like Yugioh Abridged. And most of them are loaded with jokes that require you to watch the original show. Not DBZA. The jokes in this are largely dependant on the personalities of the abridged versions of the characters, notably Goku's.half-witted innocence, Piccolo's snarkiness and sarcasm, Gohan's nerdiness, Nappa's stupidity, as well as other changes made to the series. Only a handleful of jokes per episode are really references to the old show, but most of it is just hilarious characters dorking around with a faint recreation of the original show's plot.
And on the subject of the editing and voice acting, I have one word: PROS. These guys sound like pros. It's hard to believe they weren't professionals before the show came out, because whatever voices don't sound almost exactly like the originals are not only superbly delivered, lines and all, but fit the character changes. This is especially true for Goku and Frieza. And the editing is superb. The direction and added scenarios and references all feel like they were taken from a good Adult Swim cartoon. This is professional series making.
DBZA covers almost the entire show. Apparently, none of the people behind it wanted to cover the Buu saga. This is probably for the best because what we got was starting to wane a little in quality by the end, but was still very funny. This is an abridged series with imagination, and it's constantly hilarious. I know it's only an abridged YouTube series, but this is one of my favorite shows ever. And, it's the series that actually got me to watch the original in the first place. And lemme tell you, I'm with those who say this new abridged version is better than the cool but filler-riddled original show.
