When it comes to comedy, there are few things I enjoy more than a good parody. And when it comes to parody, there are few mediums out there that lend themselves so easily to being lampooned as anime.
Bearing this in mind, recently a friend of mine introduced me to Dragonball Z: Abridged on YouTube.
At first when Dragonball Z: Abridged was being described to me, I thought my friend was actually describing Dragonball Z: Kai, a heavily edited and altogether better paced cut of the Dragonball Z anime. Oh boy, was I ever wrong.
Dragonball Z: Abridged is a parody of Akira Toriyama‘s legendary anime redubbed and cut together by the YouTube channel TeamFourStar.
TeamFourStar create various parody videos based around the Dragonball Z anime and its characters. Since joining YouTube in 2008, TeamFourStar have amassed close to 745 million views and have around 2,750,000 subscribers.
Dragonball Z: Abridged, while following the same basic plot as the original, is definitely not the Dragonball Z you remember.
Without giving too much away, Goku is an even better fool than before and Yamcha is an even bigger laughing stock, if that was possible.
The ridiculous names of the characters’ flashy moves or actions that they take are relentlessly lampooned. And Mr Po Po is now the most feared being in the universe. One word of warning though, the anime is now definitely NSFW.
So for all the Dragonball Z fans out there, if you fancy experiencing the iconic anime from a fresh new perspective, check out TeamFourStar and Dragonball Z: Abridged on YouTube.
