Trivia / Team Four Star

• Channel Hop: Due to underperforming in viewership counts, Final Grantasy VII (Grant’s solo Let's Play of the Final Fantasy VII Remake) moved from TFS Gaming to his personal YouTube channel after about 20-ish episodes.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Takahata101 does not take it well when Attack on Titan Abridged is mentioned in a past Twitch lifestream. This isn't really him disliking the work itself so much as being salty that it got Screwed by the Lawyers and cancelled, and annoyed because people keep twisting the knife by bringing it up even after they've explained this over and over.
  • They get pretty annoyed when people quote memes from their own shows at them. While they have been funny, quoting them when they're say, playing The Jackbox Party Pack is a good way to get them mad, especially because if it's one of the game that's up to the audience vote, it's more or less guaranteed to win because of the shameless pandering.
  • When asked whether they would like to redo the first few episodes of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Lanipator's answer was an immediate, unqualified "Yes." Indeed, they spent an entire video during their "TIBA" event lambasting the poor quality of the first episode.
  • During a marathon stream of Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, they show that they're obviously not proud of how they wrote Rip Van Winkle as a Straw Feminist and a Memelord.
  • Most of the crew regret how far they pushed the jokes about Goku being a terrible father to Gohan as it had a legitimate effect on Goku's perception on the Internet. The Kakarot playthrough includes several extended discussions between the DBZA alumni on it.
  • As has become clear in their streamed marathons of old work such as Dragon Ball Z Abridged and Hellsing Ultimate Abridged, they dislike many of their old jokes and feel they've aged poorly due to either relying on memes that are no longer current or being generally immature and insensitive in light of changing times.
    Lanipator (After the entire couch cringes at a rape joke): The internet was a very different place in 2009.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: At times. Of special note is MasakoX. It's creepy how Masako X can sound like a genuine woman at times. Which is somewhat appropriate considering his online name comes from the Japanese voice actress for Goku, Masako Nozawa.
• Doing It for the Art: Part of the reason it takes so long for a DBZ Abridged episode to come out is because KaiserNeko cleans up and fixes the original animation wherever needed/possible, for, essentially, free.
• Hire the Critic: Kirran and Grant were both big critics of DBZA in the past^note Though Grant has said that it's more about their current style of humor, and that he actually kind of liked them back during Season 1, but they joined the team and will occasionally crack jokes about how they're sell-outs for working for people they hate.
• In Memoriam:
  • During their DBCember 2021 marathon counting down their favorite Sagas, the ending of the Freeza Saga segment was dedicated to Chris Ayres, the English voice of Freeza in Dragon Ball Z Kai and onwards in the franchise, who sadly passed away October 2021. Dragon Ball Super: Broly would mark the last time he portrayed the character.
  • The beginning of the Saiyan Saga segment of that same countdown would pay tribute to Joji Yanami as well, who passed in December 2021. He was the voice of the narrator, King Kai, and other characters in the franchise.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: For a while, their older Let's Plays were unavailable online due to having been removed from Blip. Thankfully, they have since been reuploaded to their gaming channel on YouTube.
  • Unfortunately, the first 8 videos of the Bloodbourne livestreams are cutdown versions of them, unlike their later streams and let's plays, to only what they considered the best bits. While this can be good for the people who like the funny moments, it isn't known if they, or anyone else, have the unedited versions of the streams.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Several TFS members have "graduated" up to professional voice acting, thanks to Funimation being fans of their work (and because many of them live in Texas, which is where Funi is headquartered). Just to name a couple, General Ivan is Gecko Moria in One Piece while Kaiser is Gundam Tanaka in Danganronpa 3 and a Freeza minion in Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'.
    • Kaiser also tried to invoke this; in one of the Bloodborne streams, Lani says that Kaiser told him not to speak ill of Dragon Ball Super for fear that it would ruin their chances of being cast in the inevitable dub. Unfortunately that didn't come to pass, seemingly because of Toei's interference (see below).
  • The best-known example, however, would be Taka being cast as one of the create-a-character voices in Dragon Ball Xenoverse, wherein he essentially plays Abridged Nappa and drops a metric ton of references to DBZA. For the sequel, Lani and Kaiser join him, though they provide more standard lines as opposed to being purely "joke voices" like Taka^note Rather than rewriting every line like they did with Takahata101, KaiserNeko's performance is essentially a very "Zarbon" delivery of the lines while Lanipator gives his best impression of Chris Rager's Mr. Satan/Hercule.
  • Christopher Sabat is a huge fan of Team Four Star and loves working with them, so they're technically Promoted Fanboys of each other. Sabat has even done work for DBZA, performing the country-western version of "Cat Loves Food".
  • This finally reached its peak when the main four (Lani, Kaiser, Taka and Masako) were actually cast in Dragon Ball Z Kai, playing characters in the cheesy "dramatization" of the Cell Games^note Which features many references both to DBZA and popular DBZ memes like "Over 9000". Unfortunately, at the last minute the audio for this scene was swapped with audio from Funimation's dub of DBZ, with many fans speculating that Toei ordered the change (since they're clearly not very fond of TFS). However, the complete clip was leaked online, and Lani is still in the edited version (thanks to the bit at the end where he, in his Krillin voice, advertises Mr. Satan's merchandise).
  • Several members of the team are also fans of RWBY, and some of them got hired by Rooster Teeth. Howard is the most prominent, playing Weiss' brother Whitley, while Kaiser and Lani play minor characters in Volumes 4 and 5. On the flipside, Monty Oum was TFS's first choice to play Future Gohan in History of Trunks Abridged (and he was friends with Lani), but his tragic passing prevented this from happening.
  • Lani is known as a big fan of Toxic Crusaders, as well. He and his TFS colleagues would eventually be hired to voice act in the 2023 video game by Retroware.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
  • 1KidsEntertainment of Pokémon The 'Bridged Series-fame was an occasional collaborator. However, that stopped after Jesse Nowack, his former co-star and fellow TFS member, accused him of years of emotional and financial abuse.
  • Chris Niosi aka Kirbopher used to be a frequent collaborator and friend of the team, and he spoke with them about the callout posts on social media in 2019 regarding emotional abuse he confessed to. TFS gave him a second chance and initially tried to maintain their professional and personal relationships with him in the hopes that he would sincerely work on improving his behavior, but ultimately decided that he could not make good on his promise to do so and disassociated with him. The split was done quietly and Kaiser explained that the decision was made privately to avoid personal and legal liabilities for potential defamation, but he brought it into public knowledge in response to another callout claiming that TFS’s silence on the matter and initial continued association with Kirbopher following the allegations was indicative of knowledge and complicity in Niosi’s abuses and an effort by the team to rehabilitate his public reputation, which Kaiser has categorically denied.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • Toei Animation, the company that owns the rights to the Dragon Ball anime, hates Team Four Star. A couple of times every year, like clockwork, they file copyright claims against DBZ Abridged and get it taken off of YouTube for a week or two until Kaiser can sort out the disputes (they can't actually do anything about the videos on TFS's own website, though). It's not confirmed, but it's strongly suspected that Toei is the reason TFS's performance in Dragon Ball Kai was removed from the Toonami broadcast and replaced with audio from the original DBZ dub. Finally, during a livestream in late October 2017, Lani mentioned that he and the rest of the group wouldn't be working with Funimation for a while because they'd effectively been "graylisted" as a result of Toei pressuring Funi not to hire them, be it for anything produced by Toei or otherwise. Ultimately, constant legal pressure from Toei ended up becoming a major factor in the decision to permanently cease production on DBZA in 2020, alongside burnout among TFS and fear of Seasonal Rot, cancelling a planned fourth season of the show in the process.
    • However, it seems that Toei's graylisting only really affects the most prominent members of the team like Lani, Kaiser, Taka, and maybe Masako (who's from the UK and doesn't do a lot of actual voice work outside of internet projects). Other team members are unaffected, as seen with Chris "General Ivan" Gurrero and Howard "Teh Exorcist" Wang, both of whom were cast in the dub of Dragon Ball Super.
    • It's also suspected that part of the reason Adult Gohan was planned to be recast in Season 4 of DBZA was because TFS didn't want to risk getting Justin Briner on Toei's bad side, especially given that he's currently starring in one of Funi's OTHER big properties. Of course, given that DBZA was ultimately cancelled before Season 4 started production (due to a myriad of personal and legal factors), this ultimately became a moot point.
  • Attack on Titan Abridged was unfortunately struck by this, leaving it with only one episode and a complete script for a second episode before getting cancelled.
  • A bizarre, hilarious, heavily situational (and probably not legally enforceable) variation of this regarding their gaming content that came up during their sixth Fan Mail Friday; due to an astoundingly thorough restraining order filed by a fan with the Superior Court of Texas, Scott “KaiserNeko” Frerichs is legally barred from playing League of Legends, logging into a computer containing League of Legends, entering a building containing such a computer, and coming within 100 ft. of such a building, which he has no problem with.
  • This has led to an amusing Running Gag in their Let’s Plays of the Kingdom Hearts games, which are owned by Disney. Because of Disney's notoriously strict copyright policies, they have taken to not only muting the opening/ending theme songs whenever they play, but putting hilariously non sequitur talking or their own off key singing over the songs.
    • Realistically with this one, though, they only had to do that with the theme songs; 'Simple and Clean' and 'Sanctuary,' and the credits songs.
• Teasing Creator: Videos during the unusually long intermission between seasons 1 and 2 would often tease about season 2, only to change the subject or run out of time. The show’s Schedule Slip was finally addressed in an FAQ special… by Bubbles.
• Vaporware: Team Four Star has a poor track record delivering on announced original content....
  • In 2018, Team Four Star showed a short teaser for a wrestling-themed show filmed with action figures called AWF. They still occasionally mention it on social media when asked about future projects, but nothing more has been shown.
  • The Season 3 finale of DBZA, released in 2018, ended with a teaser card promising a Season 4. Multiple update videos and social media updates throughout 2018 and 2019 made promises about the release window, with the timeline being pushed back every time. In October 2019 an off-hand reference was snuck into an update video that the team was considering making Season 4 with original 3D animation rather than the repurposed anime footage the series was known for. In January 2020, KaiserNeko made a Twitter post that noticeably said that IF Season 4 was made, it would be done with 3D models. After being bombarded with questions by upset fans, the team finally admitted that Season 4 was cancelled in February of 2020, citing a combination of escalating burnout, fear of Seasonal Rot, and mounting legal pressure from Toei Animation.
• What Could Have Been:
  • If their Honorable Mentions discussion is anything to go by, TFS actually intended to lift their GT embargo for DBCember 2018, which was why Grant (a self-proclaimed GT apologist) joined them, but this became a moot point as even with Grant on board they legitimately could not find any fight from GT that they deemed worthy of making the Top 12 list.
  • Both Bojack Unbound and the Buu Saga of DBZA became this after it was announced that both projects were cancelled. After working on Bojack for months the team couldn't make the material usable in any satisfactory way and eventually led to them resenting the project. This was what made them realize they had reached burnout with DBZA as a whole and, after going back and forth on whether they would continue the show in another style, was one of many factors that led to the team deciding to end the series at episode 60 instead of risking potential Seasonal Rot by forcing themselves to make a potentially subpar final season.

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