Team Four Star - Creators of a bunch of stuff to make people laugh trying to figure out what to do after a decade of comedically retelling Dragon Ball Z.

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Another thing about TFS
They did original animation for DBZA on occasion

It always looked like shit, like actual bootleg DBZ from Taiwan (and I don't mean Super). I don't understand this because there are a lot of DBZ artists who can nail the old school style perfectly and I wouldn't be surprised if they could translate that into animation. Instead, they went with that ugly shit that always looked wrong and off. Then again, the same can be said about the actual studio behind Super too.


There is literally nothing that makes me cringe harder than abridged series humor, I'm actually shocked to see people in this thread talking positively about it. Like, I can't knock the editing or a lot of the voice acting but the age of abridging put like an standard around dubbing anime that ruined it. I remember back in the day, there were a lot of channels that were just legitimately funny people with little to no production values at all that dubbed over anime and video games just saying whatever bullshit they wanted without really trying to tell some sort of series-long narrative, the entire point was just to make whoever was watching laugh by saying dirty words over cartoons while sort of commentating on what was happening in them or the series itself when it was funny but you weren't married to doing just that or being faithful to the series you're dubbing like you are now.

A popular Example of this would be WeeklyTubeShow's really old dubs, he's actually the only one I can think of who is still around with all of their dubs not taken down from youtube (although he tried to leave but was brought back by some unfunny faggot who declawed him and made him less funny). Alternate Reality DBZ was also pretty great but DBZA fans kept on comparing his series to TFS's and saying theirs was better which pissed him off and made him quit dubbing anime altogether. Another person who used to do this but wiped ALL of their old shit was AntFishTAS, that dude was extremely prolific when it came to dubbing over shit and a good chunk of them were funnier than his abridged stuff but I remember him making a whole lot of rape jokes so it's probably better for him that shit isn't around anymore.

Yeah, this has nothing to do with TFS anymore, I just wanted to remember a pre-LK and TFS internet where everything wasn't ruined by a need to be professional and PC.

Late comment to this, but I agree. I always remember abridging humor as "Lol let's make cartoon characters swear a lot and have sex and completely rewrite them to be mean-spirited dumbasses and assholes" or "let's turn this straightforward anime or cartoon into South Park but without any of South Park's charm."
I think TFS had actual talent, but for the most part, they struck lightning because they were abridging Dragon Ball Z specifically. I'm pretty sure that you could only have a bigger "abridged series" hit if you made Harry Potter Abridged before the troons freaked out about it and if it was actually possible to believably abridge life action stuff. Somebody was going to do "Dragon Ball Z Abridged" at some point and get rich off of it.

Them having halfway decent writing and comedy skills and breaking the rules of abridging shows sealed it.

Episodes 1-9 (before Nappa on Earth) are painfully unfunny
Case in point. At that point in time, it was 100% "Abridged Dragon Ball Z", complete with shitty microphones and phoned-in voice acting.
 
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The first ten episodes are the ones I remember the most fondly. On rewatch, yeah it’s dumb as fuck, but that was what that section of youtube was like back then.
 
Just reminds me that I miss Sailor Moon Abridged so much. That's like super hard to find now, it just got wiped from the Internet due to Toei shenanigans and Megami33 pretty much moving on.
 
Another thing about TFS
They did original animation for DBZA on occasion

It always looked like shit, like actual bootleg DBZ from Taiwan (and I don't mean Super). I don't understand this because there are a lot of DBZ artists who can nail the old school style perfectly and I wouldn't be surprised if they could translate that into animation. Instead, they went with that ugly shit that always looked wrong and off. Then again, the same can be said about the actual studio behind Super too.
It's probably the usual reason behind shitty art - The artist is some fuckbuddy that kissed enough asses to get the job, probably Kaiser's.

Also I still liked the first ten episodes. The series peaked at Frieza and afterwards any momentum was killed by editing hell.
 
Videl was his waifu when he first watched DBZ

Funnily enough I don't know if there's anytime he goes into depth about it, whenever he brings it up it's mostly in passing.

But if I had to guess, that fight gets criticized online for being misogynistic and going too far in terms of how much Videl gets beaten up so I imagine it's probably something along those lines.

There's an annoying trend of western anime viewers to bitch about lack of chicks fighting, only to bitch even louder when the chicks gets the level of brutalizing the male characters routinely get.
Benefit of the doubt on this one, the Videl Spopovich fight was uncharacteristically brutal and realistic, especially at that point in the story.

But the second answer is the correct one and I can use some personal anecdotes to all but prove it.
Libby weebs are exactly the chivalrous simps who want Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman to crush their nuts and get hot and bothered when a stronk womyn puts a dumb man in his place, especially when a girlboss becomes all powerful and stronger than every male in existence (bonus points if she looks good while doing it). But for all that love for stronk independent wymynz who can do everything the mun do but better, they can not tolerate a woman actually being in peril. Some of them will even tell you this. A woman can and should go on adventures and get into fights and do brave things, but if she actually faces any of the consequences of doing that, your story is misogynistic, problematic, and terrible for putting a poor female character through such hardship. Women should never have to face the consequences of their actions unless by the hands of other women.
"Don't you know that women face intense violence in real life?" and "this is triggering to victims of domestic abuse" and "why are women being punished for wanting to fulfill a fantasy?" and "I hate seeing innocent women in pain"

This is not my sperging out either. I have actually unironically heard and seen people of a woke persuasion say things to this effect both in real life and online without any hint of self-awareness (at least conservative fags make sense since they were all raised to believe women aren't meant for combat). For some, it actually does not matter if a female character is an adventurous and brave warrior who is willing to kill opponents and do otherwise "manly" things. If she has a vagina, putting her in peril makes these cucks wither and call bullshit for terrorizing a poor innocent girl who never did nuffin wrong. And again, if the person causing the pain is another woman, then it's different.

I don't know much about MasakoX's own channel but from the sounds of it, he sounds exactly like this one woke bro who all but creamed himself at the idea of Pan becoming a major Z fighter but decided to personally boycott that Dragon Ball Multiverse manga when Pan got her neck snapped in it because he couldn't handle the thought of Pan actually getting seriously hurt or dying in battle.



Oh shit, I almost forgot. Anyone remember that (I want to say Peruvian or Mexican?) feminist who cried misogyny and wanted to get Dragon Ball Super banned when Goku kamehamehad Kefla out of the tournament?
 
Benefit of the doubt on this one, the Videl Spopovich fight was uncharacteristically brutal and realistic, especially at that point in the story.

But the second answer is the correct one and I can use some personal anecdotes to all but prove it.
Libby weebs are exactly the chivalrous simps who want Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman to crush their nuts and get hot and bothered when a stronk womyn puts a dumb man in his place, especially when a girlboss becomes all powerful and stronger than every male in existence (bonus points if she looks good while doing it). But for all that love for stronk independent wymynz who can do everything the mun do but better, they can not tolerate a woman actually being in peril. Some of them will even tell you this. A woman can and should go on adventures and get into fights and do brave things, but if she actually faces any of the consequences of doing that, your story is misogynistic, problematic, and terrible for putting a poor female character through such hardship. Women should never have to face the consequences of their actions unless by the hands of other women.
"Don't you know that women face intense violence in real life?" and "this is triggering to victims of domestic abuse" and "why are women being punished for wanting to fulfill a fantasy?" and "I hate seeing innocent women in pain"

This is not my sperging out either. I have actually unironically heard and seen people of a woke persuasion say things to this effect both in real life and online without any hint of self-awareness (at least conservative fags make sense since they were all raised to believe women aren't meant for combat). For some, it actually does not matter if a female character is an adventurous and brave warrior who is willing to kill opponents and do otherwise "manly" things. If she has a vagina, putting her in peril makes these cucks wither and call bullshit for terrorizing a poor innocent girl who never did nuffin wrong. And again, if the person causing the pain is another woman, then it's different.

I don't know much about MasakoX's own channel but from the sounds of it, he sounds exactly like this one woke bro who all but creamed himself at the idea of Pan becoming a major Z fighter but decided to personally boycott that Dragon Ball Multiverse manga when Pan got her neck snapped in it because he couldn't handle the thought of Pan actually getting seriously hurt or dying in battle.



Oh shit, I almost forgot. Anyone remember that (I want to say Peruvian or Mexican?) feminist who cried misogyny and wanted to get Dragon Ball Super banned when Goku kamehamehad Kefla out of the tournament?
Wait, Masako did what?
 
He’s not saying Masako did that, he’s comparing Masako to another guy who did that and assuming Masako would do the same.
Bro on this old dead Sega forum was exactly the proverbial "yass queen slay" MCU capeshit lover who defended Rey from Mary Sue accusations. Can't even make this shit up. He wasn't a total sperg about it, but I always got that sense from him that he wanted to see girlbosses kick ass but never get their asses kicked in return

And over on Deviant Art I have definitely seen more than a few comments on non-sexual ryona pictures saying "I can't stand seeing a woman get beaten up" Almost always by feminists and troons at that.
I think the running joke we'd have is Dendy trying to kill Pan or shit-talking her about how she's "stealing Gohan from me".
Videl?
And yeah I can see that. I can only imagine how woke they'd write Videl too. I heard Kaiser was going to make her like Batman but I guarantee you he was going to turn her into a yass queen slay girlboss. And Spopovich would probably be a Farmer or incel.

Drunkenly answering my earlier question, TFS was writing the late Cell arc exactly like how MCU capeshit is written. Obscenely meta, obsessed with its own running jokes, awkwardness and cringe passed off as comedy, trying to be tryhard and edgy but too afraid to offend anyone, pop culture references, vaguely calling out real world politics (that "shithole" line and 16's speech was clearly aiming at Trump), faggoty, and trying badly to mix seriousness with insecure quip comedy.

Yeah, that's the best way to put it: TFS's Cell saga is actually the "Modern Woke Reboot" version of DBZ. It was only "good" because it was still DBZ since they didn't have anywhere near the budget to fuck with the actual animation, as hard as Kaiser tried. If they actually had the shot at making their own version of DBZ, I guarantee you it'd be a Californian mess.


How the fuck did they even miss that obvious "Dodge" joke when Cell punches Super Saiyan 2 Gohan? I'll tell you how: people were calling it for years that this was something they should do because it was the perfect send off to that shitty running joke, but Kaiser is a raging contrarian. The kind of man who will create a mystery to solve, then get angry when readers solve it and thus change the entire story to fuck with everyone regardless of if he ruins his own story or not.

DBZA got too successful for its own good and Kaiser went full autist mode. I've seen and even personally met people of that mindset. They unironically view art as a tool and think that anything that isn't intersectional or anticapitalist isn't worth telling, but this goes 10x moreso for anything that develops a wide audience. To them, if you have millions of viewers and can impact culture, you have a moral duty to be a woke leftard or else you're failing some vague social duty. This is why I'm glad they never did the Buu arc because it would have gone full globohomo if it hadn't already.


Fuck me I can already see it: Buu's actually a repressed trans genderqueer since he can morph into anything, and Hercule Satan is lonely since his wife is dead and he's "open minded" and convinces Buu that he's actually trans and that causes Buu to calm down, but Evil White Man shoots a puppy and that causes Buu's homophobic transphobic evil side to be released. Then at the very end, Satan and Buu get married. At some point, there'd have been a dig at J. K. Rowling since they mentioned Videl likes Harry Potter.

Try and tell me that's not what they would have done.
 
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I think TFS had actual talent, but for the most part, they struck lightning because they were abridging Dragon Ball Z specifically. I'm pretty sure that you could only have a bigger "abridged series" hit if you made Harry Potter Abridged before the troons freaked out about it and if it was actually possible to believably abridge life action stuff. Somebody was going to do "Dragon Ball Z Abridged" at some point and get rich off of it.
There's proof of this: DBZA is none of their original works. And I don't mean 'hurr hurr, DBZ existed first.', I mean they *all* did abridged projects before DBZA. Yu Yu Hakusho, Naruto, I remember at the time, DBZA was this legendary super-group of abridgers that were all great on their own.

Imagine the disappointment.

Further proof is the fact that when they butchered the shit out of FF7, they couldn't keep any hype, despite FF7 fans being so thirsty for content at the time, they were tuning into Italian senate hearings.
 
Further proof is the fact that when they butchered the shit out of FF7, they couldn't keep any hype, despite FF7 fans being so thirsty for content at the time, they were tuning into Italian senate hearings.
The first being handled by I think it was Taka, was actually fun. He had solid ideas of what to mock, subvert or make jokes about.

Afterwards, I think it was Kaiser that took over for the proceeding seasons, and it showed.
  • He kept Tifa as a manipulative bitch and had to awkwardly transition her to love interest.
  • Some of the good jokes just got repeated and beat into the ground.
  • Plot was rushed so they could finish before the remake came out, so spots that could have fun jokes were just skipped entirely.
  • Just like the Cell saga, the final seasons were just the plot but "told bette than the original because we know better"
 
The first being handled by I think it was Taka, was actually fun. He had solid ideas of what to mock, subvert or make jokes about.

Afterwards, I think it was Kaiser that took over for the proceeding seasons, and it showed.
  • He kept Tifa as a manipulative bitch and had to awkwardly transition her to love interest.
  • Some of the good jokes just got repeated and beat into the ground.
  • Plot was rushed so they could finish before the remake came out, so spots that could have fun jokes were just skipped entirely.
  • Just like the Cell saga, the final seasons were just the plot but "told bette than the original because we know better"
I could be wrong, but wasnt that the same around like the..ooo..4 final episodes of Hellsing Abridged?
 
I think so, I think Taka only did the first 4 episodes solo, Kaiser helped on 5, then took over for the rest.

Huh, I didn't know that. I always thought that Hellsing Abridged was Taka's baby, maybe burn out was getting to him? It would explain why TFS wrapped up all three of their major series' (DBAZ, FFVIIMA, and HA) roughly within the same year.

I also remember finding it odd how TFS, who at this point had happily taken the idea of Abridging as being " tell an improved version of the source material, but with a few jokes", seemed to treat The Major's final speech to Integra with so little fan fair, reducing it to a weak "lol, why u a cyborg" joke. Which I was kinda disappointed by as The Major's final speech is probably one of the best villain monologues to have ever been written. Considering how TFS has a habit of at least attempting to treat an arc/ series/ whatever's climax with at least some level of respect, I was kinda disappointed with how phoned in it seemed they handle it.

I dunno, didn't mean to rant about that this much, it's just that this would explain why that scene seemed a bit lack luster when Taka has a known love for the series, maybe Kaiser just didn't have the same level as investment?
 
Taka was pretty open that during the heyday of DBZA/HUA, he was a heavy alcoholic and depressive. He likely gave up on his projects over the mess he was making of his life.
I feel like Taka should just stick to voice work. I hear him all the time in Something Witty's stuff, and he's actually pretty good there, and sounds like he's having fun. And since he doesn't write anything, it doesn't have the TFS stink of 'decent one-liners, hare brained literally everything else.'
 
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