Abridged Series

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About

Abridged Series is a subgenre of video parody that involves narrating the condensed version of a popular media, often poking fun at its faulty or unconventional premise and plotlines. Abridged parodies are especially popular with cartoons and anime series, due to their simplistic and easy-to-dub nature.

History

Precursors

Ever since the 60s, dubbing has been used to realize parodies of video media, aspart of a genre called détournement^[1]. On the Internet, video platforms have displayed such artworks early in their existence, such as the GI Joe PSA parodies. The humorous writing was already present, but most of the time there was no plot continuity, or even a plot of any sort, and the video footage was unedited beside occasional footage recombination.

Origin

Starting July 14th, 2006, Martin Billany (screen-named LittleKuriboh)^[2] released a condensed spoof of the popular anime Yu-Gi-Oh, titled Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series^[3].
The series consisted in parodying the absurdity of the plot of Yu-Gi-Oh while using outside references. His dubbing talent gave great entertainment from an otaku to an audience which, for the most part, was basically unfamiliar with the show itself.

Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series

Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series is a dramatically shortened-down version of the original anime series, cutting each episode down from its original twenty minutes.
The series is focused on making fun of the eccentricities of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s premise, and most prominently the fact that Duel Monsters is a children's card game, yet is played by teenagers and adults alike with unfaltering seriousness and decisive real-life consequences. This leads to frequent commentaries about the role of the game in the series. It also lampoons the changes made to the series in 4Kids TV’s English dub, and greatly exaggerates the characters' personalities from that version, to humorous effects. Moreover, it frequently displays pop-culture references, including some about fellow abridged series later on, and it regularly breaks the fourth wall.

Creation of a Genre

Since Martin Billany's first abridging, many other Youtubers have followed this trend. Many who did so directly credited LittleKuriboh as an inspiration. Most abridged series follow the same format of YGOTAS, making a comedic re-dub of an anime. This choice can be linked to both the popularity and theme diversity of anime series, their over-the-top plots which are prone to parodies, and the relative ease to edit and dub this format compared to filmed artworks ; these latter were only abridged a handful of times. Some anime series among the most popular, such as One Piece, Pokémon or Code Geass, have been parodied multiple times by various abridgers.
Below are a few early key abridgers who began their own shows:

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TeamFourStar

The Youtube collaborative group TeamFourStar^[24] was formed in 2008, primarily by KaiserNeko, Lanipator and takahata101, and has employed voice work from all of the aforementioned Youtubers, who are considered the best and most successful abridgers of 2006-2008. Starting June 6, 2008, the assembly presented Dragon Ball Z Abridged^[25] (or DBZA for short); it can safely be considered the most accomplished (and is probably the most popular) abridged series to date, as it features great humoristic quality, endearing dialogues, memorable voicing from its all-star cast, and KaiserNeko’s skilful editing. The premature end of the series was announced on February 6, 2020^[26] and made official on February 10^[27], before a 4th season could be started.
The team started at about an episode a month, which, for abridging, is a very respectable rate of content ; for their latest episodes, however, mostly due to the amount of work required for each, several months can separate each new release. The abridged series had such an impact on the DBZ fandom, many fans claim to mentally read dialogues of the characters with their abridged voices, even among those of the fans who grew up with the DBZ anime.
In addition to this series, the team has some standard extras like FAQ's, bloopers and con promotions, plus video game-related playlists, including Let’s Plays where the voice actors roleplay as their abridged characters. In addition, they have abridged many Dragon Ball Z movies^[28]. Their main abridged series is completed by DragonBall Z Kai Abridged^[29], an abridged parody of their abridged parody, with one to two episodes released after each season finale as a humorous milestone. Finally, in parallel to their main abridged series, from 2010 to 2018 they completed Hellsing Ultimate Abridged^[30], which up to 2014 was released on takahata101’s channel as a Halloween Special, and they started Attack on Titan Abridged in 2013, as well as Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged^[31] in 2015.
The popularity and the accomplishments of this one team are such that they have their own dedicated wiki^[32].

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Other significant English abridged series

• The early-10’s de facto Prince of Abridging, who has captured the attention of many abridgers and fans, is purpleeyeswtf^[33]. His humor is more akin to a YouTube Poop than the usual abridged series. On June 10, 2010, he submitted the first episode of Code MENT^[34]. After ten more episodes, he started a One Piece parody called None Piece^[35], his true claim to fame. Since starting Code MENT he has only gotten better, and through a little public support from LittleKuriboh, his name splashed onto the Abridging community.
• Friendship is Witchcraft ^[36], by Sherclop Pones^[37], is a parody of the American cartoon My Little Pony : Friendship is Magic. This series, while following most codes of abridging, also takes many liberties with them : only some arbitrarily selected episodes from each season are parodied, the stories are freely rewritten with a grimmer tone, and the character’s personalities are much different from the canon, mainly as a comical effect. It had a huge positive reception from both the abridging community and the brony community.
• Other than Team Four Star, some other Youtubers decided to form alliances in order to create more capable abridging channels. Something Witty Entertainment^[38] and GuttedWrenStudios^[39] are good examples of such teams. The former famously produced Sword Art Online Abridged^[40]. This series gained a massive following, reaching tens of millions of views, with many fans describing it as objectively superior to the canon story.

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The abridging genre gained such a weight in the English Youtube community, a dedicated wiki^[41] was created in April 15, 2009 to document it, with 316 different abridged series inventoried as of January 1st, 2020.

Popular Anglophone abridged series by year of creation

(Due to the grey legal nature of an abridged series [see below: Copyright strike controversies], several accounts have been deleted and even more videos have been removed or blocked, sometimes re-uploaded, making some dates difficult to pinpoint. The chronology below is in an approximate order, and the informations updated for 2020.)

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Abridged Series in Non-Anglophone Fandoms

French Abridged Series

In February 2009, inspired by LittleKuriboh’s example, French Youtuber StateAlchemist^[58] started releasing his own abridged series : Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque : la Série Abrégée^[59] (« Saint Seiya Abridged », or CDZA for short), which follows the Bronze Saints through the Sanctuary arc. Copying YGOTAS’s formula, this series contains many references to the canon lore and its plotholes, as well as cultural references, many of them about French artworks, and a large quantity of puns.

StateAlchemist single-highhandedly completed his series in 2014. Much like YGOTAS with the English audience, CDZA gained an immense popularity among the French audience, and StateAlchemist became one of the most famous French Youtubers from that era, even managing to feature a cameo from Seiya’s French voice actor in a side video^[60].
Also similarly to YGOTAS, though on a smaller scale, CDZA inspired other French Youtubers to start their own abridged series. The most popular instance of it is Death Note la Série Abrégée^[61], by Daigoro, launched in 2011. From this year on, French abridging became popular enough to later warrant the creation of its own dedicated wiki^[62].

Spanish fandom

There is also a Spanish side in the abridging fandom, the main Youtuber representative being Shirogane Aoi^[63] (previously AoiShiro3935), creator of Amnesia la Serie Resumida (reuploaded in 2013), and responsible for multiple Spanish dubs of English abridged series. Fellow Youtuber Cosos de Dichi^[64] dedicates himself to subtitling popular English abridged series.

Fandom in other countries

Canadian Youtuber Ginseng Golems – nintles saw his 2017 Kemono Friends Abridged dubbed in Japanese by Khirio. The Japanese-dubbed video is published on his own channel^[65] since 2018.

Copyright strike controversies

A common issue faced by abridgers is the necessary use of an already existing work, which is almost always protected by a copyright, coupled with the video format, which requires to be hosted on a video platform. Although abridged series are parodies, and thus theoretically protected under the principle of Fair Use^[66], many were blocked by Youtube, sometimes repetitively, under the pretense of copyright laws infringement. Whether or not an abridged series is allowed, however, it cannot be monetized, which is another consequence of the use of copyrighted material.
In addition to the complaints from animation / movie / music studio companies, which can result in immediate copyright strike regardless of Fair Use exceptions, the reliance on bots by Youtube to identify copyrighted artworks in its hosted videos and automatically block them has raised much criticism from the abridging fandom.
It should also be noted that the Japanese legislation on copyrights is quite different from the American legislation used by Youtube, which can lead to puzzling legal situations between the plaintiff anime studio, the platform, and the abridgers.
Some fairly popular series, such as the previously mentioned Soul Eater Parody, Lupin the 3rd TAS, Attack on Titan Abridged and Kampfer TAS, have been deleted for good and are completely unavailable on the Internet as of now. Many others, such as Berserk TAS, Sailor Moon Abridged or Friendship is Witchcraft, had to be re-uploaded to another Youtube channel after being blocked. For the most determined abridgers, it is possible to contest the copyright strike, and this resulted in several suspensions being terminated.

Notable examples

• LittleKuriboh’s videos and channels were blocked or terminated by Youtube for a total of 17 times between 2006 and 2013^[67]. For a long time, he was even excluded from Youtube’s Top Subscribed lists. He responded to this stubbornness through various means, both practical and symbolic ones, including :
  - the creation of a Dailymotion backup channel^[68];
  - the creation of a website (https://yugiohtheabridgedseries.com/, now terminated) to host all the episodes himself;
  - the upload of some YGOTAS episodes on his secondary channel Ninjabridge;
  - the upload of a live performance of the episode 1^[69];
  - the scenario of the third season of YGOTAS: « Yu-Gi-Oh: the Cancelled Series », starring fictional 4Kids TV representatives, here pictured as villains who try to defeat the heroes by cancelling their show.

• DBZA’s entire playlist was blocked two times on Youtube, in December 2015^[70] and April 2017^[71], and the channel TeamFourStar was even outright deleted in February 2016, each time after complaints from Toei Animation. Each time, TeamFourStar contested the copyright strike and succeeded. Many fans criticized the last bans, arguing that nothing could justify them after the first one was overruled. The outrage was especially high for the 2016 ban, which happened in the midst of the Where’s The Fair Use campaign. Some other people argued that by using its channel to promote its Patreon page, TeamFourStar was technically making money off of unauthorized copyrighted material.

• In early 2018, StateAlchemist’s Youtube channel was closed due to an official complaint from Toei Animation. In a video^[71], he explained how this was probably due to the studio’s belief that he was uploading unedited official French-dubbed episodes, and how he had to go to court and demonstrate his videos were a parody in order to get his channel back. Some of his videos had been blocked a first time back in early 2015, after a claim from the same company, for similar reasons^[72].
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Related memes

Forum Weapons

Due to the humorous and straight-to-the-point nature of dialogues in abridged series, they have spawned a large quantity of relevant quotes, punchlines and one-liners, many of which were turned into forum weapons.

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Screw the Rules, I Have Money!

This punchline is associated with Seto Kaiba, who regularly uses it ever since the pilot episode of YGOTAS. It has since then been employed and parodied by many Internet users, as a fiery expression of disregard towards expectations.

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“I need an adult” / “I am an adult”

The whistle-blowing sentence « I need an adult » was coined a long time ago, before even the Internet, but its memetic trend truly took off with its use as a running gag for Son Gohan since the episode 18 of DBZA, “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad Saiyan”; the main input, which popularized this line, is the rebuttal: “I am an adult”.

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Bitches Love Cannons

“Get that bitch a cannon. Bitches love cannons” is a line which was first said by Alucard in Hellsing Ultimate Abridged’s 2nd episode, “Bullets From Your Valentine”, and is associated with Seras Victoria. It became a popular catchphrase across the Internet, similar to other “Bitches Love X” one-liners existing at the time.

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Card Games On Motorcycles!

This line is one of the most famous running gags in YGOTAS. It is a reference to the spin-off anime Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D, which infamously features Duel Monsters battles that double as motorcycle races. Originally used in a trailer^[73] and featured ad nauseam in an April Fools video^[74], LittleKuriboh has since then made it one of his signature jokes.

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« I’m At Soup » / Soup Store

The Soup Store dialogue is a famous scene from the episode 16 of Code MENT, “Mao Dies”, during which Lelouch vi Britannia and Suzaku Kururugi increasingly yell at each other during a phone call, while Suzaku looks for clothes in a Soup store. The sheer surreal humour of the dialogue inspired a quantity of parodic montages featuring various other characters to fit the voice track.

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Sweetie Bot

In Friendship Is Witchcraft, one of the most famous running gags is Sweetie Belle behaving as a robot. This caricature quickly became a fan-favorite character, spawning many fanarts.

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Search Interest

External references

yugioh kuriboh little video games anime card games ftw in british nyeh parody satire dubbing 4kids dragon ball on motorcycles star masakox lanipator kaiserneko takahata101 hbi2k naruto abridged team four video editing