2If you're a bored teenager with a tediously slow Internet connection and a barely existent social life, like me, then you probably know the YouTube homepage like the back of your hand. You're aware of all the wacky random YouTube fads, which shall remain nameless (Charlie the Unicorn, Coach Heinz, Potter Puppet Pals, Dark Knight Interrogation Spoof, etc). Don't deny it. You've bookmarked all of them. But there is one youtube consistency that's become painfully obvious and I'm talking knife through your spleen obvious: Abridged Series. They're everywhere! Every imaginable children's anime cartoon has had its guts ripped out, stepped on and dubbed over by some faceless YouTube member, available across the globe to anyone with an Internet connection. Yes, it seems there's an unlimited amount of people out there with nothing better to do then abuse innocent children's anime cartoons. But hey, I'm not complaining. I myself am a fan of three of the top players in the abridged world. (Drum roll please) Coming in at number one we have: Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series. Yu Gi Oh follows a group of teenagers living in…Japan? America? It's never really clear. At the center of this group is Yu Gi Moto, a 3-foot tall midget who has a haircut that makes Russell Brand's look low maintenance. Yu Gi and his inappropriately voiced band of loyal idiots enjoy spending every minute of spare time playing a ridiculously complicated children's card game which is somehow connected to a war waged thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt and the monsters used to fight back then (I swear they just pull these plotlines out of a hat). Yu Gi's archrival is Seto Kaiba, a child billionaire who –when he isn't rescuing his younger brother Mokuba from the 500 or so people constantly trying to abduct him over the course of the season- is challenging Yu Gi to children's card games in an attempt to inflate his already humongous ego.
Second place goes to Pokemon: The Abridged Series. Surprisingly even though Pokemon was a show and franchise that people actually gave a crap about, the abridged series seems to get a lot less attention then its rival, Yu Gi Oh. Anyways, this parody focuses on Ash Ketchum, a young wannabe Pokemon trainer with the mental capacity of a Golden Retriever. When Ash's alcoholic mother kicks him out of the house/enthusiastically encourages him to start his Pokemon journey, Ash ventures out to Professor Oak's lab to get his first Pokemon, but upon finding out that the 3 starter Pokemon have been stolen, Ash is saddled with the useless but outspoken Pikachu, who can talk (pretty offensively) unbeknownst to Ash. Third and final place goes to Sailor Moon: The Abridged Series, which is basically the chic flick of the abridged world. Sailor Moon is centered about a chubby, mentally challenged blond bulimic named Serena who, upon meeting a talking cat with a British accent named Luna (I swear I'm not making this up) discovers she has super powers and can turn into the superhero Sailor Moon and help save her local community from the dark forces that threaten it. Along the way she discovers the other Sailor Scouts: Mercury, a notorious low talker, Mars who redefines the word emo and Jupiter who subtly alludes to having previously switched genders (a note: because the sailor scouts are named after the planets this would logically mean that there are 9 of them, but logic is never really a factor in this series, like most other successful TV shows). The sailor scouts band together to fight against the Evil Queen of the Negaverse who appears to be a paraplegic as all she does in the first season is sit behind her crystal ball and order her ever-ineffective lieutenants to harvest energy from humans for some vaguely established greater purpose. Sailor Moon's love interest is the hero Tuxedo Mask, a man who announces his arrival by throwing flowers around that somehow disarm the villains he's confronting. Through all the plot holes, pop culture references, shameless teasing and censored profanity, The Abridged Series phenomenon s a shining example of how people who have way too much time on their hands benefit everyone.