This completely ignores the fact that it's long-standing culture that women like older men. Men like older women, too, it's not even a sex-specific thing. As long as the person in question seems mature, doesn't look too heavily aged, and is some measure of successful, they can be classified as 'sexy'. 17 year olds drooled over Alan Rickman when he was 70, and he didn't even age as gracefully as most of the older sex symbol men these women get paired up to with movies. (Although for some reason he played a 30 year old. Might have been JKR being hot for him too) He just had so much class - and a deep voice - that they didn't care.
They don't really publicize it but it goes like this:
A fan came up to Sabat's autograph table somewhere before s2 started and showed him part of episode one, which Sabat found delightful. He went back and watched the entire series in his hotel room and became an instant fan of it. This isn't an unusual reaction, as a lot of the dub stars enjoyed the idea of poking fun at the old dub. Only notably Sean hated it, and you get three guesses why.
Sabat at some point contacts them, I think via email, and lets them know that he thinks their work is cool.
Takahata101, voice of Nappa and later Cell, attends a panel about Dragonball Kai which Sabat hosts, and his question pokes fun at the similarities between the concept of Kai and Abridged. When Sabat recognizes Takahata (then in full Nappa cosplay) he calls him up to the front of the room and does the "WHAT 9000?!" meme with him. This is notable because Sabat had by this point gotten absolutely sick of fans demanding he repeat it (the one who originally said this line was Brian Drummond, and Sabat didn't understand why he was being asked to say it for a while, then entertained it until he got sick of it after a year or so and started subverting the line whenever asked for it).
Sabat mentions he thinks DBZA is brilliant because it does what 'we all wish we could do but can't' with the original dub. Sean hates it a lot. Sean really hates it when people ask him to quote it.
Around this time TFS is struggling with Youtube and keeps jumping to different places to be hosted, such as TGWTG, and two different websites of their own that don't really work out no matter how hard they try to shill it. They also get big enough that they start getting invited to conventions as guests.
TFS makes a connection with Littlekuriboh, creator of Yugioh Abridged and the one who spawned that entire genre, because his accounts keep getting banned so they host his content on their various sites.
TFS makes AoT Abridged episode 1. The series is immediately cancelled, and I think the episode might even get taken down. It's suggested that Japan side was about to nuke them from orbit if they attempted to continue.
Sabat secretly plays a part in one of DBZA's movies (The Return of Cooler, I believe, same one that got the Borderlands actor) under a screenname. No one knows it's him until TFS hints that people should google his penname.
Teamfourstar relocates a chunk of its members to Texas, and opens up a Patreon to fund an independent studio. When they open it, Sabat attends their housewarming/studio warming party, though he's only referenced in passing.
Sabat plays narrator for Broly movie abridged. Around this time, TFS starts getting lines in localizations of DBZ Xenoverse games (Male voice 8 is Takahata101, and TFS were given complete freedom to write his lines), Kaiserneko gets a brief cameo in Return of F, Kaiser, Takahata, and Lani get three different voices in Xenoverse 2, same rules apply. TFS starts getting hired to do legitimate dubbing for minor projects.
TFS is brought in to redub the parody scene of the Cellgames with the puppets during the World Tournament. Rather than the original jokes which were all about the bad dubbing tropes at the time, the jokes are replaced with Abridged series jokes.
The preview of this episode is released, including a clip from that scene.
Toei comes down with the force of five thousand suns upon Funimation immediately and yanks that episode so fast they can't even redub it, so that section gets released with the original dubbing audio instead of having a new Kai voice track. All mention and reference to that TFS dubbed thing is scrubbed from official record, including all reruns of the original episode's preview.
Somehow that scene gets leaked to the internet anyway, proving that people who originally saw that hadn't gone insane and it wasn't just a myth.
A secondary bit of proof is left over: Lanipator's Krillin voice actually remains in the episode, but only as the 'intro' to the video. Some people think it's because he's not playing the character he does in the abridged version, but I suspect Toei just missed it, because it's an irrelevant line.
Some time after s2, every time DBZA or YGOA gets Toei-nuked, Funimation steps in immediately and fixes it within a day or so. The only exception so far was part 3 (I think) of episode 60(?), the finale of season 3. It's not clear why they had so much trouble with that episode in particular. They've also stated that they would be reamed by Toei if they tried to abridge Super, but they make little clips of it anyway.
Incidentally, they always credit 'Funimation' for protecting them, giving them ins, or providing them various jobs, but it's pretty clear to anyone who pays attention that what happened is Chris Sabat took a liking to DBZA and decided to protect it.
Sean still insists that he doesn't like DBZA because Funimation disapproves of it, despite the fact that it obviously doesn't.
Christians don't have priests, Shane. You dullard.
Death Battle has been garbage and skating by on nostalgia for years now. If they're too stupid to realize what a bad idea it is to release an Edward Elric DB right now, they deserve the crap that's going to rain down on them.
