Reviews WebVideo / Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series

I'm inclined to agree. Some think that it's better than what came after it because it was "real abridging of the series", but really it was little more than amateurish voice acting and jokes that usually amounted to "Lol, they settle things with a children's card game."

Seinfeld Is Unfunny. Season 1 was the first anime abridging ever done, back then he was just some guy with a microphone making fun of the plot holes, errors, idiocies, 4Kids influence, etc. of the show and most characters were just flandarised versions of the originals. In the laters seasons the formula is different and just doesn't focus on that as to not go stale, to the point that it seems more like an alternate universe. Duke's sexy back tune whenever he talks, the big five being 4Kids, Odion's love for carebears, etc. are original implementations. All these ideas old and new keep reshaping the way online abridging is done and as a result to keep thins fresh. LK has to keep evolving the formula. After the success of the first series, which lead to merchendise sells, he had a better income to work with and increase the quality of the videos. Also I don't get it that much, most abridge series even famous ones like yu yu hakusho and naruto abridged have the same quality of season 1, you're saying an improvement is a nessecity.

^ Correction: Odion loves the Gummi Bears, not the Care Bears.

I'm inclined to disagree. This is poorly thought out and the reviewer only watched six episodes. You can't get an entire season a C unless you've seen and study the elements of the entire season.

I think 6 is a large amount. As I've said before, if you make it so that you won't accept negative reviews on long series from people who don't watch it all, then you're creating a positive review bias, because frankly, people who think it's crud won't want to carry on watching it. Otherwise it would be impossible to find a negative review of lost, because if you don't like it, trying to force someone to watch 100+ hours of it is wasting their life.

And negative reviews are important, so all we can require is that they tell us exactly how much they watched, so they aren't deceiving us and we've got to keep in mind that it might get better.

Kirby not only told us exactly how much he watched, but he even warned us himself that it might get better.

What can you ask of him? That he must sit through several hours worth of a series he doesn't enjoy terribly? That he isn't allowed to hold an opinion of it?

It's not perfect but few things are, at least it's not like the games industry where they quite often review something positively or negatively without playing the whole thing or even telling us that they have

Seconding qtjinla15's thoughts.

I'm just saying you can't say the entire season is bad without watching the entire season.

It does make it tricky to have a negative opinion about the entire series of anything though. I would be happy to agree with you except that there's an implication that this review would be less worthwhile than a review of the whole season and that in turn leads to this horrible bias where we only have good reviews of things and the best way to become critically acclaimed is just to make your work really really long.

I feel if someone ragequits Lord of the Rings then their (objectively wrong :D) negative opinion of LOTOR should still have the same weight as someone who read them all the way through and gives a positive*

^You'd rather have people give inaccurate information rather than no information?

I'm just saying a fair and factual review for a whole season requires watching a whole season. You're assuming I'm assuming he'll give a positive review after seeing the whole season. I'm just saying if you're critiquing season 1 you should watch the entire season and assess its strengths and weaknesses. That includes the source/unabridged material to make sure he actually understands what he's critiquing, why the jokes are funny, and a handling on the characters.

No I'm not assuming that, my point is that if people don't like something then they aren't going to devote hours and hours of his life to watching it. If he's got a negative opinion then he really isn't going to spend the next what, 10 hours of his life watching the rest of it. This will go for most people with a negative opinion.

So what I'm saying is, I feel it's valid for someone to express a negative opinion without watching the entire thing provided they say that. And that's exactly what he's done. He even reminded us to keep in mind that it could get better.

@eveil but the point is, it's lose lose, reviews that require consumption of the whole thing are just as inaccurate (not in specifics but cumulation) because no-one is going to watch 5,6,7 seasons of lost, for a total of 140 hours of their life to turn around and say they hated every minute. So either we have reviews like this or we have to keep in mind that there is a huge positive bias towards long running series. If you prefer that, then fair enough, but I think it's better to have possibly inaccurate negative reviews than unrepresentative reviews.

Then judge it based on the number of possible reviews. You don't go to places like Gamespot just to read peoples' first impressions.

Sorry I didn't quite follow that one?

EDIT: I'd also add a collorary that this is pretty dependent on the length of a work. If someone didn't watch all of a film or finish Portal then yeah there are issues with the review

EDIT EDIT: Actually scratch that, if someone walks out of a film half way through watching it, then that's a big thing and something major as clearly gone wrong with the very beginning of the film. So they've got a very worthwhile opinion worth sharing

An opinion is not the same as a review. You can have a valid opinion without watching an entire movie. You can't write a valid review of the entire movie without watching it.

Okay in many ways I agree with that, but it really only works in a situation where someone is in the role of a reviewer. If you're being paid to write a review, or running a site based on reviews there is no-way that you should only consume half the content. You're being paid to review something, not have fun.

But this site isn't that. In fact I will make it stronger. A negative review where they've seen the whole thing is actually suspect.

The best example is me and Mass Effect 2. I have documented my opinion on this site strongly, that I hate that game. Yet I've played the game more often than the majority of players. I've seen more of the game than the majority of the players.

Rather than strengthening my review, it weakens it. If I hated the game so much, why do I keep on playing it? I have no reason to because I was not playing it with the purpose of reviewing it. In fact somewhere deep down, I must enjoy that game and my review is useless.

Whereas this review is clearly expressing a genuine view of the person who wrote it.

I'll qualify again. There is a threshold you've got to cross before it becomes a review. Otherwise as you rightly said, it's just a first opinion. There is something wrong with the first Deus Ex game that makes me unwilling to force myself to play past the first level, but I can't write a review of that because I just haven't seen enough of the game.

But this person has seen 7 episodes of a 22 episode series. They've watched a third of it, invested a good portion of their time. They have eaten have the meal and found that they didn't like it.

If TV Tropes was Gamespot I could agree with you more, but it isn't and since there doesn't seem to be a solution that would stop the ridiculous positive bias I think having reviews like this is much much more useful than not having them. 'Too boring to watch all of them' is very useful information that i can use to judge the quality of a work and would use to form an opinion as to whether I should watch the work. If you're denying their right to be on this site you're denying me the information. Whereas in reflection, I'm causing no damage to you, because as I've stated it's a requirement that they state how much of it they've watched. The only damage to you is that there will be reviews that you don't find useful or maybe opinions you disagree with will exist.

This is actually not the best place to say that (among other similar things you said), given that these are "abridged" episodes (which are almost always less than 6 minutes long, the first 6 being even less than 5 minutes long) so season 1 as a whole is probably an hour an a half long. The first 6 episodes are exactly 27:59 minutes long in total, slightly more than a single episode of an animated series and half or less than a single episode of many live action series.

Okay in many ways I agree with that, but it really only works in a situation where someone is in the role of a reviewer. If you're being paid to write a review, or running a site based on reviews there is no-way that you should only consume half the content. You're being paid to review something, not have fun.

If the reviewer didn't attempt to rate the entire season based on 30 minutes, complete with a letter grade, then there wouldn't be a fuss here. Especially with this series, which was the first of its kind (I think), and is constantly changing its formula. The reviewer stated that he only watched 6-7 episodes, but that just leads to the question of why you would try to make a review of an entire season based on that.

But this site isn't that. In fact I will make it stronger. A negative review where they've seen the whole thing is actually suspect.

You're kind of implying that all non-paid negative reviews will either be based off of an incomplete viewing of the game, or inaccurate, and that the reviewer actually enjoys them.

The only damage to you is that there will be reviews that you don't find useful or maybe opinions you disagree with will exist.

I suppose if you don't care about the overall quality of the "reviews" on here, it doesn't really matter.

Oh, and it could turn away potential fans from a series they would have otherwise enjoyed.

@ Marcell, I stand corrected, I've grown used to the luxuries of the longer series. He's still managed a fair chunk of it and maybe 1 hour spent of something with no use but to make you slightly more bored than before isn't the best use of an hour but I do take your point.

@Eveil, your last point is good, I didn't think of that. However he did say that he only watched 7 episodes, and he said that it could well get better after that, for someone to miss all that and take notice of the grade is probably not terribly likely.

I guess calling his review '7 episodes of season 1' would have been more accurate, but its clunky sounding and he's been lambasted a lot if people are really only taking issue with the title.

And I stand by my middle point (for _long_ works) I chose voluntarily to spend what 60 hours of my life on Mass Effect 2,yet my review suggests it's absolutely horrible. A middling review of a long standing series would be fine, one which said the end was bad or the start was bad would be fine, yet if someone said they'd chosen to watch every series of scrubs yet the whole thing was horrible I would consider that review suspect. Wouldn't you? You may well have even said things like to people for

Admitting that you reviewed an entire season after watching only 1/3 of it doesn't really make the review that much better.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's like watching only half a movie and saying the whole thing is terrible. Or saying the Hero is terribly bland, after only watching a third of the movie and not waiting to see if there is character development. If the dude couldn't devote the full 97 minutes to the abridge series I'm less likely to take his review seriously.

All his complaints are a bit unfair. This was the first of his kind and Little Kuriboh's first attempt. It wasn't like he had the support of a study or a ton of money. It takes time and effort to get into the role of a series and find a tone for professionals, let alone one guy. Not to mention one always have to worry about using the wrong background music because Youtube will ban you in a second, usually without just cause or consideration.

Not to mention the review is so short and just says, this is average. He hardly goes into why each thing he brought up was average or put any references or forethought between the abridge series and the regular series.

I'm currently rewatching YGOTAS, and I have to admit, Season 1 was kind of hard to get through... but episode 7 or thereabouts is actually where it started to pick up for me. The writing got snappier, LK started settling into the voices. I'd say it reaches "good" near the end of Season 1, "great" halfway through Season 2, and only gets better from there.

And there you go. The voice acting and stuff really does pick up around midway.

I'm not a huge fan of YGOTAS (I think it's alright, but not something I would follow/get excited about watching), but I'm not sure if a review based on a fraction of a season is completely valid — the review would have been better if the reviewer had watched most of the season, as it would have only amounted to an hour or so. However, I do believe that you don't have to consume the entire product in order to form an opinion about it. But like someone above pointed out, opinions and reviews are separate things.

I'll also say that posting a negative review about a work should not be seen as inappropriate — some of the posters here seem to believe (maybe I'm just misinterpreting) that posting a negative review is not okay, as it might turn away potential viewers. I think that negative reviews without weight are not cool to post, but I believe that negative reviews are an important part of criticism.

I also don't support the idea that Little Kuriboh should be given a pass just because YGOTAS is "the first of its kind" and that he wasn't sure what he was doing when he started making the series. If the beginning of a series is weak, it is weak — while we can be aware of the limitations of the creator, we can't push the flaws under the rug. I think it's totally fair to criticize the weaknesses of a work (although it is better to critique). I don't want to write a lot more because most of what I want to say has already been said, but I will say that it's important to look at the things you enjoy critically: no matter how much you enjoy a creative work, you should always be able (and prepared) to criticize the things that aren't so great. If anything, I think that can strengthen your enjoyment of that work, as you're able to think critically and at the same time come to the conclusion that, while the series might be flawed, you can still enjoy it as a whole. If you can't tell, I was not particularly impressed by the first season, but it did get better over time, and I think that the series as it is now is quite good, even if I don't actively watch it. I will still say that the beginning of the series was... pretty bad, though, and I believe that it is important to remember that.

yes, you are. The big majority of the reviews on tv tropes are negative to begin with, the complains are not because review is negative but about how much those negative points hold water.

again, read more carefully, the complain started because he compared the first of it's kind to it's future development. In the beggining it was a simple satire, background music, special effects etc. that he mentioned weren't things that were even thought of yet, that's like complaining about 7th generation competitive games (fighting, racing, sports, etc.) for not having online availability with is almost a must today or old cars having roll up windows or mp3 avaliability. They're accessories that were later implemented and made popular, they're not as important as the reviewer is trying to make them be. The core of the abridged series is it's humor.