The Evolution of Abridged Anime Part 5 - TikTok And The Future

While TikTok is a massive and attractive platform for comedic anime fandubs, it does come with its own difficulties when compared to YouTube. The traditionally episodic abridged series aren’t suited to the platform’s algorithmic nature, which is likely to put those episodes in front of viewers out of order, or long after they were originally posted.

To compensate, creators have evolved their craft to make ongoing series that are closer to what works in syndicated television. Characters simply remain consistent between episodes, while little happens in terms of growth or ongoing storylines. Because of this, modern abridged content tends to have more in common with Eric Fensler’s old G.I Joe PSAs from back in 2003 than, say, Dragon Ball Z Abridged.

This new quirk does come with advantages, though. TikTok videos tend to be about thirty-six to forty-six seconds in length, which results in reduced editing time necessary to put out episodes. This allows creators to better comment on current events as they happen, similar to comedy juggernaut South Park, something older abridged series — that could take “weeks or even months” to edit according to Martin Billany — couldn’t have dreamed of.

Moreover, legal difficulties often faced by abridged series haven’t been seen as often on TikTok. Perhaps the shorter content combined with the requirement to not follow linear storylines, making works less derivative, has made TikTok more confident than YouTube to defend its creators. There’s also the possibility that the format change could have possibly made companies less interested or confident in defending their precious IPs from obvious parodies. 

Because of this, there may be potential for creators on TikTok to even be able to monetize their content. As long as their accounts meet requirements like having at least 10,000 followers and videos with more than 300,000 views in the last thirty days, they can qualify for TikTok’s creativity program. From here, any video that is at least one minute long, has at least 1,000 video views, and doesn’t break TikTok’s copyright policy is able to be monetized. This isn’t an easy task, but is certainly possible for the most popular comedic anime parody creators on the platform. Add to this the new and unfortunate ways companies could pursue copyright claims on YouTube, and TikTok is quickly becoming a uniquely attractive platform to post abridged anime videos.

While things look good on TikTok now, the future is not set in stone. Abridged series, their cousins and offspring, and their historic ancestors will continue to influence the medium as new platforms rise and fall. Even just the progress that has been made since the ‘80s stuns veterans like Dave Merrill, making the question of where the genre will be another forty years from now that much more interesting. “It’s amazing how we’re now in a mash-up culture world where anything and everything can be slammed together to create something new and funny or weird or disturbing, and that this new creation can be in front of millions of eyes in a matter of seconds,” he told us. “The kind of copyright-infringing nonsense that used to take us hours or days can now be accomplished in a matter of minutes, and this is, on the whole, a net positive for civilization. I’m really glad that everybody can now join in on the goofy parody-dub action.”