Dragon Ball Z Abridged

Oh my god I never saw it so I never realized how bad it really was.

God damn that's bad.

Oh my god, this again.

Why was Piccolo called such a thing, anyway? Couldn't anybody learn what he was actually called?

Naming someone after an instrument is dumb.

So we will change it to a colour, that would teach them.

...That's not even an attack!

I still maintain that the Big Green dub is a happy accident. Sometimes "bad" dubs pave the way for good dubs, or aren't actually that bad, or provide years of levity and humor for the fanbase.

Let it be known that I find the Di C Sailor Moon dub and 4Kids One Piece dub to be actually good, and fundamental parts of my anime experience. Both of them have more recent dubs by other companies that lose some of the magic. One Piece in particular has a Funimation dub in which the voice actors just sound the same as they do in everything else. The ridiculous 4Kids voices at least match the tone of the universe.

Eh. The Dic Sailor Moon dub was the first dub, and most people likely wouldn't even know about Sailor Moon if not for it.

The One Piece 4Kids Dub...I think it kinda sunk itself with the hammer gun. In regards to voices, Luffy Nami and Zoro were good I think, but Sanji had a really stupid sounding voice if I recall. That one is far less salvageable.

Plus...that opening theme. Good god, that opening theme.

The hammer gun was idiotic, yes.
Sanji's voice is actually one of the ones I find far better in 4Kids than in Funimation. It had actual personality, and the character himself is obnoxious, so it fit.
The theme was catchy. A downgrade from the original series' themes, yes, and it shouldn't have run as long as it did, but it wasn't bad.

Sanji's voice in the 4Kids dub is one of the worst voices in all of voice acting. He sounds like a young teenager trying to sound suave and tough and overcompensating by being unrealistically deep while his nose is completely stuffed up with a terrible cold, and occasionally a hint of accent comes through, but you can't quite tell if it was deliberate or just the stuffy nose.

Believe it or not, Sanji is supposed to be able to pull off "suave", at least occasionally.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Apr 13th 2019 at 5:46:12 AM

Was, I only read up to Dressrosa but I'm pretty sure he is now stuck to Casanova Wannabe for the rest of his life.

You stopped an arc too short, the next one after that his focused on him and makes him suave again.

And in the arc after that he goes back to being a dumbass.

An invisible dumbass.

Well considering at that point in the series he was a nineteen year old, oversexed, chain-smoking, white-knighting flirt...
Yeah. That would be fitting.

But this is getting further off topic.

young teenager of nineteen years ?

I'm pretty sure your voice has settled in by the time you're nineteen.

Plus nineteen is literally right at the end of your teenage years.

He's also twenty-one at the current point in the story.

Takahata 101 mentioned on twitter that All Might in Something Witty Entertainment's MHAA was going to be his last major abridged role. He clarified he's going to continue doing any character he's voiced previously and who might need reprising, but from now on he's going to be focusing more on original projects.

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 1st 2019 at 3:45:55 PM

Well, I suppose I have to support the production now, gritted teeth and all.

I thought the first episode was good, changed up something pretty big in a way I didn't expect.

Still seems weird to start this up before even finishing SAO Abridged, though.

Yeah I thought the same thing. But hey if the quality's still good I'll check it out. Just hope they aren't biting off more than they can chew.

It just feels like too big of a departure. For me, and I admit this is just my personal taste, an Abridged series usually works best when it can poke fun at the work itself and the world it's structured in, like "But why was he a cyborg" or the running "Burn it" gag in Jo Jo Abridged, or most of the jokes in DBZA. When your basic premise and the story you're telling relies on changing the world so heavily, it just isn't as funny. SAOA can get away with it because, well, SAO is garbage and a lot of the humor from SAOA and the reason that it works, for me, is that said humor is the result of thinking about the setting for more than zero seconds.

The other problem I have with the changes to the setting is that, as abridgers, they're still going to be constrained by a lot of the material provided for, ya know, actually making the show. If it was a fanfic, I wouldn't have any problems with it, because you can do anything you want, but an Abridged series is going to have to hit the same beats as the original, just by necessity, and I do not want to see the Abridged Bakugou beat Izuku in a fight, or win the Sports Festival, or succeed... ever.

Hey, I just watched MHAA because of that post, thanks!

I think I disagree. Like, beyond the fact I found it funny, I mean. Specifically, I do agree that an Abridged series works best when it is poking fun of the source material instead of making fundamental changes, the thing is that I think this is exactly what MHAA is doing.

One key aspect of the original is that the hero profession is a good deal of it show business instead of heroing, and that this is not really a good thing. The very first introduction of heroes involves Mt Lady "kill stealing", one of the bigger heroes is an asshole and the whole reason Deku is chosen as a successor is that he is willing to try to save people at all costs, unlike every other hero in the slug monster scene. However, despite that, the story actually idolizes heroes a fair bit. The most popular hero is a hero for the right reasons and the actual shortcomings of the hero institution is rarely addressed. That is one of my personal critiques of the manga, it provide a scenario with a frankly dysfunctional hero society, but avoids referring it too much. It shows enough of it to make clear there are big problems, but then act like it is not actually that much of a big deal.

And that is what I feel MHAA is addressing. It exaggerates even more the show business aspects of heroes pokes fun of that. (MHAA spoilers) All Might being unpopular is a direct consequence of that change. His character is largely unchanged, which means he doesn't fit the new world anymore. And that might sound like a big change, but it is not really, all it changes is dialogue, as long as he can get a job at the school, the structure of the plot will remain the same. But now he is a constant critic to the world of My Hero Academia and its hero worship.

Edited by Heatth on Jun 1st 2019 at 9:03:34 AM

I feel like your interpretation is actually an unreasonably uncharitable reading of every other hero at the scene in question, and also sort of misses some of the bigger points about the series.

But this isn't exactly the thread for that.

Edited by LSBK on Jun 1st 2019 at 7:11:44 AM

Yeah, that’s like saying police are cowards for not rushing into a building of criminals when they have hostages.

They did run in to try and save Izuku when it looked like he was running to his death.

So... is there anything new regarding this abridged series?

People really value active characters in fiction, no matter the situation.

It's can get really bad.

Progressive.

Nothing that hasn't been said already.

Edited by randomness4 on Jun 1st 2019 at 5:32:48 AM