typebarmagazine.com

The years 2008 to 2016 are arguably the golden age of this specific brand of anime content, as an enormous wave of abridged shows and videos flooded YouTube during that era of the Internet. If there was a popular anime, then there was likely an abridged version of it somewhere online. Some anime, such as Naruto, Pokémon, My Hero Academia, and Attack on Titan, were so popular that they had multiple abridged series from different content creators. Some YouTubers dedicated their channel to a single anime and maybe had one or two other abridged series as side projects (i.e., LittleKuriboh creating Naruto: The Abridged Comedy Fandub Spoof Series Show in 2009 on his second channel, Ninjabridge, and TeamFourStar launching their Hellsing Ultimate Abridged series in 2010). Others bounced around between different anime and created multiple abridged series, such as Grimmjack, who made abridged videos for shows like Food Wars (2015), Goblin Slayer (2018), My Hero Academia (2019), Demon Slayer (2021), and Chainsaw Man (2023). No matter how you slice it, anime abridged videos were everywhere at the peak of their popularity. For reference, when examining the Abridged Archive, a list on the Internet Archive created by pzykosiz that documents and catalogs almost every piece of anime abridged content (series, movies, one-shots, etc.) ever made, a total of 543 results pop up. According to the Abridged Series Wiki, which is an official partner of the Abridged Archive, the Abridged Archive is “Currently hosting roughly 500 abridgers, 1600 series and 8000 videos, including One Shots, Special Episodes, Abridged Movies & other side videos.” Though, spoilers for later, this ubiquity inevitably led to this genre’s oversaturation and downfall.

Have you ever looked at the map in a video game and thought: wow, I wish this was just the entire game? Or maybe you’ve found yourself playing a board game and thought: there’s not enough pixels in this? You’re in luck.