Team Four Star's influence on Dragon Ball's revival

[Michsi]

Please try to add substance to your posts rather than rely on the quote feature to circumvent the minimum-character requirement for posts. We want to hear your own thoughts, not just regurgitations or blanket agreements.

Genuine question: where does everyone run into these fabled insufferable fanboys? My only real experience with this is inappropriate fan Q&As at conventions, which has already been mentioned, and I attribute more to social anxiety and awareness than anything, like, nefarious. I just don’t hang out anywhere else, especially online, where this is a problem. What exactly are y’all doing that you can’t seem to escape them? Genuine question; I just don’t have this problem.

(Any why would/should/could you hold this against the original group or product itself? I feel like I’ve run into similar issues with people complaining about Kanzenshuu as some vague, unknown, monolithic, hive mind entity by people who don’t know the site and don’t know what it is we do or stand for, so I’m curious from that perspective of management and “brand identity” and such.)

At one point in every DB related post on the net? Like, you'd find a random clip of Piccolo and there'd be fifteen comments in a row with nothing but "Dodge!". It's not as common anymore, but a couple of years ago you'd just see quotes like this everywhere. It was harmless mostly, but if you weren't a fan of TFS I could see why this would start grating on your nerves.

I personally don't hold it against them, but that was part of TFS influence on the fandom.

I'm with EX, I keep hearing about these mythical groups of TFS fanboys that have the wrong idea about the franchise because of DBZA, but i've yet to actually encounter a single one.

Comments like the ones you mentioned are shallow yeah, but that does not automatically mean the people posting them aren't familiar with DBZ as a whole, all that proves is they like TFS and nothing else.

As people have already mentioned, they where everywhere at one point. I am genuinely surprised there are people in the fandom that have never seen them. 3-4 years ago you'd open the thread of a tweet from any DB official account and it would be inundated with quotes from DBZA. I'm pretty sure I saw them in Japanese Tweets as well. I didn't say they weren't familiar with the DB outside of TFS ( though I've seen plenty admit to not being interested in DB in general or had only liked it as kids) just that you encountered them everywhere.

[VegettoEX]

There’s clearly just a big gap in engagement behavior. Not better or worse; just different. I don’t seek out clips to watch, I don’t watch any YouTube commentators, and I especially don’t read the comments about anything anywhere (other than the material I work on here for the website, like podcasts and news updates).

My sole areas of online social engagement are this forum and occasionally answering questions on the /r/dbz subreddit, which I know is heavily moderated and pruned (presumably knocking out some of that extraneous nonsense?). I guess there’s also Twitter for myself and the website, but I/we don’t ever experience anything like that at all.

But yeah. I’ve just never run into what y’all are describing. I guess I’d encourage you to not read comments...?!

[MasenkoHA]

But yeah. I’ve just never run into what y’all are describing. I guess I’d encourage you to not read comments...?!

You ever try looking away from a trainwreck? That’s what it’s like trying to avoid reading youtube comments

[Dbzfan94]

But yeah. I’ve just never run into what y’all are describing. I guess I’d encourage you to not read comments...?!

You ever try looking away from a trainwreck? That’s what it’s like trying to avoid reading youtube comments

Exactly. Also, sometimes theres legitimately good conversations there (sometimes) but theres always those other people screwing it up

[MuscleRobo]

The weirdest thing to me is Team Four Star was able to turn that sub par product into a career while Little Kuriboh's YuGiOh never had that level of success despite being a much better product made in no where near as complicated a manner. Maybe it's just right place, right time and right property. I used to think Japan ignored world wide fan bases but with the (two!) new Saint Seiya manga, one of which focuses on the characters mostly popular overseas, and the return of Broly does make me wonder if shouting on Twitter or certain merchandise sales does get them to notice things. So maybe in a roundabout way Team Four Star could have effected fandom which effected Dragon Ball releases. I didn't get that far to understand what might have been an influence and it'd be hard to measure anyways.

[SHINOBI-03]

The weirdest thing to me is Team Four Star was able to turn that sub par product into a career while Little Kuriboh's YuGiOh never had that level of success despite being a much better product made in no where near as complicated a manner. Maybe it's just right place, right time and right property. I used to think Japan ignored world wide fan bases but with the (two!) new Saint Seiya manga, one of which focuses on the characters mostly popular overseas, and the return of Broly does make me wonder if shouting on Twitter or certain merchandise sales does get them to notice things. So maybe in a roundabout way Team Four Star could have effected fandom which effected Dragon Ball releases. I didn't get that far to understand what might have been an influence and it'd be hard to measure anyways.

I think what made Team Four Star and their works more popular is because it was a team of multiple talents and each of them had their creative input in making their project delivered better. Little Kuriboh (and for its time every Abdriger) was a solo maker doing his thing at his own pace and voice 99% of the character on his own.

[10gigtriforce]

The weirdest thing to me is Team Four Star was able to turn that sub par product into a career while Little Kuriboh's YuGiOh never had that level of success despite being a much better product made in no where near as complicated a manner. Maybe it's just right place, right time and right property. I used to think Japan ignored world wide fan bases but with the (two!) new Saint Seiya manga, one of which focuses on the characters mostly popular overseas, and the return of Broly does make me wonder if shouting on Twitter or certain merchandise sales does get them to notice things. So maybe in a roundabout way Team Four Star could have effected fandom which effected Dragon Ball releases. I didn't get that far to understand what might have been an influence and it'd be hard to measure anyways.

to be fair LK has nearly died multiple times since TFS took the stage. hes more concerned about staying alive than running a business

[ABED]

These people sound as insufferable as the release the Snyder Cut douchebags. I swear, every single damn reply to a tweet from HBO Max's twitter feed is "release the snyder cut." At least DBZA is a real thing, as dumb as it may be.

[MasenkoHA]

The weirdest thing to me is Team Four Star was able to turn that sub par product into a career while Little Kuriboh's YuGiOh never had that level of success despite being a much better product made in no where near as complicated a manner. Maybe it's just right place, right time and right property. I used to think Japan ignored world wide fan bases but with the (two!) new Saint Seiya manga, one of which focuses on the characters mostly popular overseas, and the return of Broly does make me wonder if shouting on Twitter or certain merchandise sales does get them to notice things. So maybe in a roundabout way Team Four Star could have effected fandom which effected Dragon Ball releases. I didn't get that far to understand what might have been an influence and it'd be hard to measure anyways.

I can understand not liking DBZA but thinking yugioh abridged is better is odd. Like yugiog abridge entire humor is: References!!! Tfs at least mostly left that after about 5 episodes. Also the audio quality for DBZA improved a lot faster than it did for YGOTAS.

[WittyUsername]

These people sound as insufferable as the release the Snyder Cut douchebags. I swear, every single damn reply to a tweet from HBO Max's twitter feed is "release the snyder cut." At least DBZA is a real thing, as dumb as it may be.

Technically, the Snyder Cut is also a real thing. It’s just not a finished cut of the movie.

[Planetnamek]

These people sound as insufferable as the release the Snyder Cut douchebags. I swear, every single damn reply to a tweet from HBO Max's twitter feed is "release the snyder cut." At least DBZA is a real thing, as dumb as it may be.

Snyder himself did sort of confirm on social media somewhat recently that there may in fact be an actual directors cut of Justice League out there and that WB might actually release it. If that is true then i'm happy, but yeah some of his fans can unfortunately be quite obnoxious at times, it's hard to admit to unironically liking Snyder's films(and Suicide Squad to a lesser extent) without people assuming you're one of those hashtag warriors.

[ABED]

Not for a second do I actually believe it's anywhere close to releasable. It's not a finished thing is all I'm getting at. If WB releases it ever and that's a BIG if, it won't be for decades. It would be admitting they screwed up.

[VegettoEX]

Once again, this thread’s subject matter is TeamFourStar and its impact on fandom and the Dragon Ball franchise.

[ABED]

Anyway, that sort of spamming I see from both groups is obnoxious and I don't see what the point is. Like I don't get why repeating jokes like that is so funny to them. Eddie Murphy has that great bit in one of his stand up specials about people repeating his bits at home. Needless to say, he doesn't put them in the kindest light.

[WittyUsername]

Back in 2011/2012, I was extremely annoyed with seeing people quote TFS on pretty much anything Dragon Ball related on YouTube, but it didn’t bother me as much in the later years. I don’t know if that’s because I just got over it, or if I just wasn’t paying as much attention.

[Forte224]

I don’t think it had an impact on Dragon Ball’s revival at all. It produced a lot of uninspired memes, and of course FUNimation jumped at the chance to include strange nods to it in their official dubs, but otherwise it’s yet another fan project that gets way too much of a pass simply because it’s a fan project. It’s similar to those terrible live action Dragon Ball YouTube videos that are embarrassing to watch and don’t match the show’s tone at all, but everyone in the comments is screaming “OH WOW THEY SHOULD HIRE YOU!!!”

Granted, I did find their humor legitimately funny from Namek up until 17 and 18 were awoken. At that point the humor changed, it felt like they were getting full of themselves, and their later reanimated scenes like in The World’s Strongest solidified that for me and I stopped watching.

They had a good run, so hopefully fans can just leave it at that. And hopefully one day every single comment section of every single Dragon Ball forum/YouTube video will not be filled with recycled TFS quotes. A man can dream.

[Planetnamek]

I don’t think it had an impact on Dragon Ball’s revival at all. It produced a lot of uninspired memes, and of course FUNimation jumped at the chance to include strange nods to it in their official dubs, but otherwise it’s yet another fan project that gets way too much of a pass simply because it’s a fan project. It’s similar to those terrible live action Dragon Ball YouTube videos that are embarrassing to watch and don’t match the show’s tone at all, but everyone in the comments is screaming “OH WOW THEY SHOULD HIRE YOU!!!”

Granted, I did find their humor legitimately funny from Namek up until 17 and 18 were awoken. At that point the humor changed, it felt like they were getting full of themselves, and their later reanimated scenes like in The World’s Strongest solidified that for me and I stopped watching.

They had a good run, so hopefully fans can just leave it at that. And hopefully one day every single comment section of every single Dragon Ball forum/YouTube video will not be filled with recycled TFS quotes. A man can dream.

I never felt like they were full of themselves at all and i'm not too bothered by people quoting it.

[eledoremassis02]

I usually (99.9%) of the time ignore all TFS related threads but since this popped up I guess I'll leave my input.

I do feel they've kept Dragon Ball (for better or worse) in the public eye. I work at a very transient area and around 2015/16 I constantly heard people talk about DBA and Naruto Aberidged more than I thought I'd ever hear and it's defintly gotten a legit status amungst many fans.

There was aslo talk (in non-related threads) about people introduced to DBZ Thru DBA and even prefered it as the best version, which leads to the youtube videos (that I dont watch but always are suggestes) TFS vs Ocean vs Funi.

I used to enjoy them, but I dropped them quickly when I realized a lot of their jokes were just rehashed from the series itself (saibamen as strong as raditz! *and it was early on but I didnt care to watch it, later in Namek their goku just got so annoying to me) It was very much a "Dragon ball in heinsight'' kind of thing. And over time it really startrd to irk me because I couldnt talk about Dragon Ball (a franchise I love) withought it becoming a TFS' greatest hits conversion (somthing I dont particularly care for). I cant even watch the series at home withought a relative shouting TFS lines every episode.

However, I do think they're talented and am glad to see them branch off and do feel toei jipped them unfairly in DBkai because them doing the Cell recap film would have been perfect! But I'm also glad they're not doing Buu because I can watch it and talk about the actual product.

At the end of the day people can like what they like, its become my brothers default way of watching DBZ and thats fine. I just dont personally understand it. Its a parody but there is defintly a group that considers it a legitimate dub and not a parody.

[MasenkoHA]

I do feel they've kept Dragon Ball (for better or worse) in the public eye.

The season sets were released more or less the same time DBZA came out. The last 3 Dragon Ball movies received a theatrical release. The recut series aired on a major network’s children’s programming block (Kidswb) and then made its “grand return to Toonami” the new revival series came out and was getting attention on any geek site. DBZA did nothing to keep it in the public eye because it hasn’t been allowed to leave the public eye
.

I used to enjoy them, but I dropped them quickly when I realized a lot of their jokes were just rehashed from the series itself (saibamen as strong as raditz!

It’t not a rehashed joke. In the actual series it was a plot point (The Z Warriors have to fight mooks as strong as Raditz) and to show how far the Z warriors have come that they can fight on par or better than creatures as strong as the guy the two strongest fighters in the world had a problem with 2 to 1 a year ago.

The Abridged series turned it into a joke (that the villains could grow mooks as strong as Raditz haha he was so weak)

[Rory]

I never felt like they were full of themselves at all and i'm not too bothered by people quoting it.

You don't need to constantly defend their honour my dude. And if you do, at least articulate why you feel the way you feel, seeing you chime in with "nu-uh!" is a little disheartening.

Spoiler:

For the record I totally agree, the slow and steady change from parody to borderline fandub/re-write did come off as slightly arrogant and at many times cringe-worthy. Kind of like Tom Hullet's whole "I love Silent Hill 2 so much I'm gonna re-write the script!" situation.