For real, that YouTube thing has ruined DBZ perception for newer fans, especially the ones that REFUSE to watch the real anime just because is “too long” or “dated” and now are quoting memes from the parody and misunderstanding the characters and story.
Why does this matters?
Because Dragonball was important for me, especially as a Latino, DBZ at it’s prime was a religion in Latin America, still is. And seeing it being butchered by a unfunny parody (yes, I don’t think the show is that funny) and being disregarded as lame or just dumb, especially since the parody gets rid of so much lore and makes the characters dumber for comedy and memes. It feels wrong. The voices say they loved the source material, yet they don’t understand how damaging their edit was. Do you really think all those reactors on YouTube and their fans watched or paid for “the official release” after watching their thing?
Then again it would not be the only time USA ruined dragon ball, their bad dubs and awful music misrepresented the show before the parody, but that’s another story.
You can ignore the content you don’t like. It really doesn’t matter.
I’d love to hear specifics on what characterization you felt that Abridged butchered that the English dub it’s pretty obviously based on didn’t.
Because I watched Z Kai recently (going to use that as a stand in for the original, given that it’s official), and beyond abridged making the characters exaggerated caricatures of themselves, the characterization lost was relatively minor.
Like Goku cares about his family, but fighting comes first, rather than him being a complete idiot in Abridged who had zero care for his family.
Dude, everyone’s a moron in the parody minus piccolo, Tenshinhan and maybe some other minor character. Also they skipped many character traits and lore.
Finally the humour they do is so unfunny most of the time, they use that stupid sitcom cliché of " a character saying something someone else said episodes ago despite not being in presence of said character" too much.
The worst part is that the few people that watches the actual show after this will think “oh there’s no jokes and this character is too serious now, I can’t watch this”… Because they were exposed to the parody.
Upvote for really unpopular opinion.
I think DBA especially nailed Krillin and 18’s romance. It always seemed to be missing credibility in DBZ for me.
But watching DBA before watching the original is stupid. You’re missing half the jokes if you don’t know the original. And I think that includes plain old Dragonball which is still the best series of them all.
People that don’t like the original after watching the parody probably wouldn’t like the original even without watching the parody. The parody just puts a spotlight on aspects of the show that lots of people noticed and they probably already have an opinion about those things in their media.
Don’t put too much stock into other people liking the things you like. They have their own very specific individual tastes and you can be good friends even without agreeing on lots of things.
