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10 Years Ago Today, Funimation Began Their Quest to Save One Piece

B

BatDan

Bane? Get them on board, I'll call it in.
As noted by the co-host of the One Piece Podcast, today was when the first Funimation dubbed episode of One PIece aired on Toonami.

Though One Piece would grow to be a massive phenomenon in Japan, it had a very rocky start in America thanks to a *ahem* "dub" by 4Kids Entertainment. Starting in 2004, the New York company released their abysmal attempt to bring One Piece to a Western audience. Full of terrible voice acting, dreadful puns, inconsistent edits, and entire canon episodes skipped that had they continued, it would have lead to some major issues. One Piece became a joke, and fans were mocked.

After two years, Toei was unsatisfied and pulled the license (even though they were the ones that forced it onto them, 4Kids never wanted it, Toei just wanted it on TV and bundled it with Kinnikuman: The Second Generation and Ojamajo Doremi) and handed it off to Funimation.
Then on September 29th 2007, Toonami viewers were in for a surprise when instead of the terrible rap, they were met with an English dub of the third Japanese opening, all new voices, and the original background music. Though some 4Kids terms remained for consistency reasons, it was about as faithful as can be.

Though the TV run didn't last (combination of low ratings and Cartoon Network trying to kill Toonami), the dub was well-received. Funimation went back to the first 143 episodes and redubbed them, and have continued the series since (currently on Fishman Island). With this, the Simulcast, and being the last of the "Big 3" to remain, One Piece is finally starting to get some of the recognition it deserves.
 
TissueBox

TissueBox

Member
I've been loving the passionate support the guys behind it have been showing over the years... poor OP was DOA after that 4Kids mix-up. *shakes head*
 
rackham

rackham

Banned
Garbage art, story and voice acting.
Some anime is just not meant to be taken seriously.

Looking back at kids anime like Yugioh, Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto etc., the premises were all fucking stupid garbage.
 
TissueBox

TissueBox

Member
rackham said:
Garbage art, story and voice acting.
Some anime is just not meant to be taken seriously.

Looking back at kids anime like Yugioh, Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto etc., the premises were all fucking stupid garbage.
Click to expand...

Do you not have the romance within you? *theatric gesticulation*

One Piece is an epic tale with its share of anime trope flaws and fanservice, sure (I went on hiatus for that very reason), but find the will to tolerate that and you will find a rich display of world building, character, and spirit.

Even for the weirdly paced arcs like Fishman Island, the deceptively grey themes resonate years later because of how firmly put together it all is. Was even in the middle of a wrote up in fact. Imo OP is a league above most other shounen by having strong, hardy legs that don't fall to superficialities. I don't know your personal tastes, but calling it pure garbage is something I will deflect on a purely obligatory level.
 
rackham

rackham

Banned
TissueBox said:
Do you not have the romance within you? *theatric gesticulation*

One Piece is an epic tale with its share of anime trope flaws and fanservice, sure (I went on hiatus for that very reason), but find the will to tolerate that and you will find a rich display of world building, character, and spirit.

Even for the weirdly paced arcs like Fishman Island, the deceptively grey themes resonate years later because of how firmly put together it all is. Imo OP is a league above most other shounen. I don't know your personal tastes, but calling it pure garbage is something I will deflect on a purely obligatory level.
Click to expand...

I really don't give a shit a about kid pirates wanting to be pirates and not actually being pirates. same thing with kid ninjas and children's card games
 
I

Imperial Bishop

Banned
rackham said:
Garbage art, story and voice acting.
Some anime is just not meant to be taken seriously.

Looking back at kids anime like Yugioh, Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto etc., the premises were all fucking stupid garbage.
Click to expand...

6e4.png
 
B

Big One

Banned
rackham said:
I really don't give a shit a about kid pirates wanting to be pirates and not actually being pirates. same thing with kid ninjas and children's card games
Click to expand...
The Starwhats are grown adults and they aren't pretend pirates, lol. There's plenty of legit piracy in One Piece, even more-so than contemporary pirate fiction.
 
B

Bossking

Banned
Look, 4kids may have destroyed One Piece in America for years, but fuck man, I legitimately liked that rap opening. It was stupid, cheesy, and it fit One Piece and the pirate theme really well.

Only thing I didn't like was that Nami's only two qualities according to the theme were "girl" and "not shy".
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Maybe it's because I'm far enough removed from the 4Kids dub being the only way to legally access the show in America, but I actually find that old rap to be kind of catchy. The lyrics are atrocious, but it's at least a tier above shit like the DBGT opening.

Everything else about that dub was complete irredeemable balls though (I'll make an exception for Marc Diraison's "Zolo," the only casting I actually preferred over Funimation's, but Sabat is still good). So glad Funimation rescued this show.

Bossking said:
Look, 4kids may have destroyed One Piece in America for years, but fuck man, I legitimately liked that rap opening. It was stupid, cheesy, and it fit One Piece and the pirate theme really well.

Only thing I didn't like was that Nami's only two qualities according to the theme were "girl" and "not shy".
Click to expand...
To be fair, she's also dreamin' and not giving it up.
 
B

BoosterDuck

Banned
rackham said:
Garbage art, story and voice acting.
Some anime is just not meant to be taken seriously.

Looking back at kids anime like Yugioh, Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto etc., the premises were all fucking stupid garbage.
Click to expand...

all those shows had good premises, except for Yugioh which was bad all around and too blatant in its merchandising; the problems were that the creators either took a nosedive in storytelling with Naruto and Bleach or the execs running the show into the dirt with Pokemon
 
C

Compbros

Member
One Piece is a top 5 Funimation dub (along with Yu Yu Hakusho and My Hero) and one of the best dubs I've heard in general. I remember getting goosebumps going from the 4K!ds pirate rap the week before and just hearing that "ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhhh". It was all so perfect. Going back the early skypiea dub isn't great for the straw hats as they're still trying to find their voice and the writers didn't have the characters down but Tatum as Eneru was a Godsend. When he met Robin and she asked who he is and he said "I'm God" I replayed that clip over and over and over.
 
Z

ZPs

Member
To be honest, even if the beginning of the One Piece anime is good in terms of pacing, what it eventually becomes is an absolute disaster. Impel Down with the endless amounts of in-episode filler marked the end of the anime being remotely watchable for me.
 
B

Bossking

Banned
rackham said:
Not taking a flip flop wearing, straw hat wearing child seriously as a pirate. not even sorry.
Click to expand...

You play a game where an 18 year old Starcraft player who enjoys Doritos and Mountain Dew is trained by the military to pilot a mech to take on evil robots, pigmen, and DJs who shoot sound bullets from their boombox gun. Suspend your disbelief a little bit.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
BoosterDuck said:
all those shows had good premises, except for Yugioh which was bad all around and too blatant in its merchandising; the problems were that the creators either took a nosedive in storytelling with Naruto and Bleach or the execs running the show into the dirt with Pokemon
Click to expand...
Yugioh actually started out as a legitimate concept - the first seven volumes of the manga barely focus on the card game at all. Yugi was just this geeky gamer kid who got possessed by a spirit that would murder his bullies. He'd get obsessed with different games every few chapters, and Duel Monsters (and Kaiba) was meant to be just one chapter. He was popular enough that Takahashi did a second Duel Monsters arc in like volume 4, before introducing Pegasus in volume 8 and shifting the focus to Duel Monsters with Kaiba as Yugi's main rival.

The anime skipped the first seven volumes (Toei adapted these in a separate series years before the main Yugioh series began) and changed quite a bit to make the series even more heavily focused on the card game. Even in the last arc where Yugi goes to Egypt to help the pharaoh find his memories, in the manga the whole thing turned out to be a tabletop game being played by Yugi and Bakura while the anime made it more explicitly the origins of the Duel Monsters card game.

Strimei said:
Say what you will about the 4Kids dub, but Zoro being dubbed by Guts himself was great.
Click to expand...
Yup, Diraison was awesome. IIRC he also watched fansubs of the show (so he actually knew what the character was supposed to act like), and he was one of the only actors to actually reach out to the fan base, pretty daring considering how reviled that dub was even then.
 
S

SatoAilDarko

Member
I started actually watching One Piece (I caught maybe 20 minutes total when it was on Saturday morning WB) at the very end of the Baroque Works saga on Toonmai including the filler Rainbow Mist arc that came after.

With Jaya the new Funimation voices came and I remember distinctly connecting several of them to Dragon Ball Z characters like Krillin, Piccolo and Trunks.

I watched until they stopped airing ON Toonami in the Skypeia arc.

Then in Summer 2010 I watched around 200 episodes dubbed episodes on Funimation.com.

I then had to switch to subs since they was a large gap of time between Skype is and Water 7. At Amazon Lily I switched to the manga since the pacing went horrible with filler as they stopped filler arcs being more than three episodes (a change to ruined the anime) so the anime had more episodes than chapters for arcs. One Piece can only get a way with around 1.5 chapters per episode.

I'm a huge dub fan and a collector so Funimation is a huge favorite of mine with their cheap releases and many well-done dubs.

I continue to buy the Collections (bundles of two of the standard releases). Though I don't think I could actually watch most of the post-time skip episodes with all the filler.
 
rackham

rackham

Banned
Bossking said:
You play a game where an 18 year old Starcraft player who enjoys Doritos and Mountain Dew is trained by the military to pilot a mech to take on evil robots, pigmen, and DJs who shoot sound bullets from their boombox gun. Suspend your disbelief a little bit.
Click to expand...

D.va is the bees knees but Ana is my main squeeze
 
Roronoa Zoro

Roronoa Zoro

Gold Member
So is one piece or dragon ball more popular overall? I know one piece has more manga sold (but with more chapters) but I feel like outside Japan dragon ball is more popular and the anime seems much more well known
 
R

Rutger

Banned
Wow, it's been that long huh?

What Funimation did with the dub has been fantastic, I never could have imagined it during the 4kids days.
 
E

Evil Monkey DTT

Banned
Lemongrab said:
So is one piece or dragon ball more popular overall? I know one piece has more manga sold (but with more chapters) but I feel like outside Japan dragon ball is more popular and the anime seems much more well known
Click to expand...
Dragonball is bigger world wide, one piece is more popular in Japan. Personally I'm a bigger one piece fan, the farther you go the better it gets and that's a real rarity when it's been this many years running.
 
T

Toxi

Banned
Ninjimbo said:
Kid pirates? The youngest member in the OP crew is like 19 years old.
Click to expand...
Chopper's 17.

ZPs said:
To be honest, even if the beginning of the One Piece anime is good in terms of pacing, what it eventually becomes is an absolute disaster. Impel Down with the endless amounts of in-episode filler marked the end of the anime being remotely watchable for me.
Click to expand...
Yep. Stick with the manga.
 
C

cHaotix8

Member
Evil Monkey DTT said:
Dragonball is bigger world wide, one piece is more popular in Japan. Personally I'm a bigger one piece fan, the farther you go the better it gets and that's a real rarity when it's been this many years running.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say all that... The series definitely peaked around Marineford, but that's not to say that it's bad. The second half of Dressrosa and the current arc have been like classic arcs, but they're no Water 7.
 
K

Kuroi Gogeta

Member
rackham said:
Garbage art, story and voice acting.
Some anime is just not meant to be taken seriously.

Looking back at kids anime like Yugioh, Pokemon, One Piece, Naruto etc., the premises were all fucking stupid garbage.
Click to expand...

This doesn't change the fact that it IS taken seriously. You're not really explaining why it isn't even a good show. The premise is simple--a man wants to travel, make friends and get an unknown treasure.

Either most critics and the millions of people who watch and critically analyse and enjoy the show are stupid, or you're not being fair to the show. Which one is more likely?
 
C

Compbros

Member
cHaotix8 said:
I wouldn't say all that... The series definitely peaked around Marineford, but that's not to say that it's bad. The second half of Dressrosa and the current arc have been like classic arcs, but they're no Water 7.
Click to expand...

If it peaked around Marineford then wouldn't it be that Water 7 is no Marineford? Dressrosa was long reading it weekly but it's pretty good if you can binge read it (which you can now). Whole Cake has been fantastic from start to finish and Zou was an excellent information arc like Jaya. Punk Hazard gets hate that I still don't understand, the only truly bad arc post Marineford is Fishman Island which was just to show the strength of the Strawhats.


Edit: The Pacing started hitting the skids in Thriller Bark. By Marineford it was fullblown awful.
 
S

sappyday

Member
I remember I got into One Piece around the time the dub was in skypiea. I actually didn't like the dub at the time and so I switched to subs and never went back. Crazy to think they're at fishman island (which feels like it came out recently)
 
C

Choppasmith

Member
I remember browsing the Arlong Park forums. It was about 9PM at night and they posted the news that Funimation got the rights and were making an uncut dub. HOLEEEEE CRAAAAAAP! I was so happy, I stayed up to 5am, reading the news post over and over again imagining what One Piece would sound like properly dubbed.

I had that feeling again watching that first dub episode on Toonami.
Hot DAMN it was perfect. The dub song, all the voice actors, practically uncut.
I think my only nitpick was when Robin was explaining about the shipwreck to the others she sounded a little too nice and friendly. Even rewatching it on DVD,
it still sounds off. Also the DVD in Skypeia has an episode where they accidentally forgot to change the 4Kids' Gravity Blue Riders with the Uncut proper translation Blue Sea Dwellers. Also remember how they used Usopp freaking out to sneak him saying Zoro instead of Zolo.

I REALLY wish they'd release the movies already.

rackham said:
Not taking a flip flop wearing, straw hat wearing child seriously as a pirate. not even sorry.
Click to expand...

giphy.gif
 
P

Piecake

Member
ZPs said:
To be honest, even if the beginning of the One Piece anime is good in terms of pacing, what it eventually becomes is an absolute disaster. Impel Down with the endless amounts of in-episode filler marked the end of the anime being remotely watchable for me.
Click to expand...

Funimations dub faithfully dubs ALL of the anime?

Curious because I might be actually interested in checking it out if the dub actually cut out the filler and improved the pacing.

The bad pacing and filler is the reason why I stopped watching the original.
 
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