Sad to see TFS here, though not unexpected. I watched a lot of these guys back before they even became Team Four Star (mainly Yu-Yu Hakisho and Naruto Abridged) and followed them for most of their internet career. It's not much of an exaggeration to say these guys were revered almost like gods by a good portion of the Internet back in the late 2000's- early 2010's, and not without a good reason, they were funny, consistent in their uploads, and even down to Earth. Back in those days I would watch anything they put out almost religiously, but now...
I mean, they DBZ stuff they make is still decent, not as good as it was at their peak, but still watchable, but pretty much everything else is just...I guess the only way to describe it is that their stuff has an air of "Oh, we're Team Four Star, anything we put out will be great".
I've been comparing TFS to Doug for awhile now, I had Metokur's TGWTG series on as background noise this one time and while looking up people who had been apart of channel awesome found out about TFS' affiliation with them and since Metokur's Video on Doug was fresh in my mind, I came up with the comparisons.
Both got big with content that used the works of others: Doug with reviewing movies and TFS abridging DBZ which ended up defining them, but they both got to a point where they wanted to step away from what made them big to pursue dreams of being original content creators as opposed to just taking pre-existing works and reviewing/abridging them.
And I think pretty much everyone would agree that TFS' post DBZA content has been just as much of a failure as Demo Reel was for Doug, and it's just a matter of time to see if they will give in and return to DBZA like Doug returned to the Critic.
Heck there's already the similarity of TFS using DBZA as a comfort blanket via the Shortz just like how Doug used the Nostalgia Critic as a host for his game show in Demo Reel.
It's honestly a fascinating comparison to make and I think both Doug and TFS really encapsulate the transformation of YouTube content creation over time.
Personally I'm on of the belief that returning to DBZA to do the Buu Saga will likely be the tipping point for TFS fully entering lolcow status. The Buu Saga is wipe for potiential when it comes to an abridged series but I don't think modern TFS will do a good job.
As I've stated in this thread before I would expect a similar approach to LittleKuriboh's abridging of the Yu-Gi-Oh Season 4 where LK got way too reliant on making low effort jokes about the Season being dumb and not making sense. Sprinkle in stuff like however dumb way they would approach Spopovich vs Videl due to them not liking it because of "Muh strong female character got beat up", Dende being sassy towards Videl over Gohan, a Goten and Trunks yaoi subplot, Fusion being used as a way to further said gay subplot and likely another one involving Goku and Vegeta.
Then you mix that approach with problems like Kaiser's approach to editing and the fact that it will be a very obvious attempt at milking their old cash cow (I would fully expect them to blitz patreon and merchandising) and you're going to have a product that will be Modern Nostalgia Critic on steroids.
From that you'll probably see a polozariation of the fanbase and between any stuff hat emerges from that and any inevitable drama that occurs behind the scenes there will probably be no shortage of material to laugh at.
What I don't get is why all these big content creator's decide to kill the thing they've been known for making for years practically out of the blue and jump on something completely different without any backup plan encase the new thing fails.
Doug could have started doing some Demo Reels while also doing Nostalgia Critic, either slowing down NC uploads or hiring on some extra help, and once he saw it wasn't going well, can the project, look at what he did wrong, learn from it, then try something else. But instead he cancelled what he was most famous for, and cancelled it hard, tried something new under the pretense that it would at least be just as successful as NC, and ended up making an ass of himself when it flopped. From what I heard Demo Reels failure hit Doug hard, and for the longest time he blamed everyone for not liking it instead of himself for...not making a good show.
But this isn't a Nostalgia Critic thread, the point is it's seems to be the same case with Team Four Star. You should start experimenting with new stuff and she how people react to it before you can your #1 Cash Cow, even if you lost a lot of your passion for it, it still brings in an audience/ Patrons. You don't burn your old house down before moving into your new one and you don't kill off your #1 property before its time unless you know you have something else you can focus on that'll bring in cash. I get that passion and enthusiasm for a project is important in any artistic medium, but passion and enthusiasm alone doesn't put food on the table.
I can't say how much effort they put into understanding & practicing any of the new mediums they're exploring before they tried them, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they pretty muched jumped right into them without much preparation. I wounder if they've forgotten that each one of them had been doing abridging for at least a year or more before forming TFS, and even then it took another year or so of being TFS before they really found their groove. What was considered "quality content" on the Internet ten years ago would probably be considered mediocre or even trash today. Sad as it is to say, you can't just try something you're relatively unskilled in and post it on the Internet expecting to get a following or for people to like it.
Anyways, I've been rambling enough. I'm not sure what the future holds for TFS, if you asked me 5 or so years ago I'd say they'd have a massive chunk of the Internet under their thumb by now, but now...who knows?
