Dragon Ball Z Abridged Team Shares Video Explaining Series’ End

Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball franchise has inspired all sorts of fan art over its long tenure, but one of the biggest spinouts from the fandom was undoubtedly Dragon Ball Z Abridged. Starting out as a fan-based parody dub of anime footage in 2008, this little webseries had since grown into a massive epic with 60 numbered episodes (with some split into multiple parts), specials, and even a few movies. 12 years later, fans were taken by surprised when Team Four Star, the group behind the favorite series, announced that it has officially come to an end.

Scott Frerichs (also known by fans as KaiserNeko) and Nick Landis (also known as Lanipator) of Team Four Star had previously explained their choice to end Dragon Ball Z Abridged with a recent statement, but to help cement it for long time fans, they shared an emotional video in which they revealed their reasons for ending the series.

Noting in the video, there were several complicated reasons that the Team Four Star had to contend with before making this final decision, and didn’t even confirm it for themselves until shortly before making the official statement about its ending. Reasons range from creative burnout (which makes a lot of sense considering they have kept up this same process for nearly 12 years), feeling like the series ended on a high with the end of the Cell saga, and most notably, YouTube’s copyright troubles.

Watching this video, it’s clear that this was a huge and quite emotional farewell for Team Four Star as their series had evolved far beyond anything anyone could have imagined. With its own character arcs, personalities, notable increase in quality over the years, and running jokes, this has been a bittersweet goodbye for both fans and Team Four Star themselves.

But how do you feel about the end of Dragon Ball Z Abridged? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!

The Japanese-language and English dub releases of Dragon Ball Super are now complete and available to stream with FunimationNOW and Crunchyroll. Viz Media is releasing new chapters of the manga at a monthly rate that can be read entirely for free through the Shonen Jump digital library, and Dragon Ball Super’s big movie, Dragon Ball Super: Broly, is now available on Blu-ray and DVD. Fans in Japan are also able to enjoy fresh non-canon adventures from the franchise with new episodes of Super Dragon Ball Heroes‘ promotional anime series.