Dragon Ball Z Abridged

There is no intellectual property I am more familiar with than Dragon Ball. I have seen every episode of DB, DBZ, (with 3 different English dubs and music) DB Super, GT, all the movies as well as most the video games. This nerd flex is just to give you the idea that I know my Dragon Ball stuff, and that I do support the official release.

I have watched through Dragon Ball Abridged in its entirety 6 times. I enjoyed their humor, writing and voice acting more each time I watched it. I have watched it by myself, with fans of the show and with people that don't typically like anime. All of them enjoyed it. I know one family that bought the blu rays of DBZ Kai but couldn't get into it so they just watched this abridged show instead. I highly recommend the show if you're a DB fan, but if not, I still think you will get a lot out of the show.

What makes this show work is that those involved are clearly passionate about what they do. The jokes made about the series are done out of a place of love. What makes so many modern spoof movies so bad is the fact they are written out of a place of contempt and not respect. DBZ abridged respects the original characters and story. They do justice to all the big legendary moments that the series is known for. Their jokes are never at the detriment to the dramatic flow of the scene.

If you are beginning the show, and the first season is not grabbing you, give them time to find their stride. The first season the microphone quality, editing and jokes are still a work in progress. Stay with it, and the show more than makes up for it. My niece even prefers Nick Landis's Vegeta's voice over that of Chris Sabat.

Another reason why their comedy works where other spoofs fail, is how they handle the characters. The characters may at times be exaggerated versions of their manga counterparts, but they are all faithful to their original portrayal. Except for Mr. Popo and Super Kami Guru, but we can all agree that they are superior versions in this show.

It is some of the very best that the internet has to offer. It is a quality dub in its own right. I have found that their quotes have seamlessly slinked their way into my brain. If you stopped watching the show after the first season, you get right back up there and you eat that horse!

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.

As a kid DBZ is really fun and exciting. I could watch it over and over and over again and never get bored. However if you try to revisit it as an adult, you'll probably find it boring, slow and overall, pretty dumb.

With Dragon Ball Z Abridged you can revisit the best parts of the TV show (Saiyans, Freeza, Androids and Cell sagas) avoiding the incredibly slow pace, and childish / mostly nonsense dialogues, it turns the whole TV show into a comedy that is incredibly well thought out.

I'm really impressed at the amount of work that must have been put into this.

Kudos to TeamFourStar for such a great job.

On YouTube, I was laughing so hard on every episode, because of all lines and scenes I was looking at, it got me into a comedy laugh launch! I'm like "What kinda funniness is that" and I was laughing every time! Great animation parody, TeamFourStar, keep going!

Dragon ball z is one of the most popular anime's ever created and yet this fan based YouTube parody series improves on the original content in so many ways in terms of comedic effect but also adds causes for fighting. overall 10/10