One Piece Gets FUNi - The Struggle of One Anime Series to Survive in America

Fans of One Piece, the popular Japanese manga and anime series, has had quite a difficult time over the last several years. For those who don't know, One Piece tells the story of Monkey D. Luffy, a young 17 year old boy who wants to become king of the pirates and find the legendary treasure One Piece. Along the way, of course, he encounters obstacle after obstacle, leading to incredible adventure. In Japan, the manga and anime adaptation are some of the most successful of all time. How could things possibly be bad for fans of the series? Would it not be reasonable to assume the series would achieve the same level of success in America?

Unfortunately, for a great while it seemed that it wasn't meant to be. American anime and manga distributor brought the manga to the US to moderate success, though nothing compared to that of the Japanese version. Surely the anime series was soon to be brought overseas, as well. It was, to much horror; children's TV distributor 4Kids Entertainment were the ones who managed to snag the rights to it. This company, well-known for such smash hits as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, was also widely known for making significant changes to the Japanese shows they acquired to make them more kid friendly. While One Piece was considered a kids show by Japanese standards, many things were edited and changed around in the American version, from painting over guns to look like "super soakers" to overhauling the personalities of several characters to skipping entire story arcs. Fans all over the US were enraged at what they considered unfair treatment of their beloved series. As it was, the series lasted for 104 episodes (which actually comprised 143 Japanese episodes) before the show seemingly vanished. The show was taken off of 4Kids programming block, and all traces of the series were removed from their websites. The only trace of the anime series in the US was on Cartoon Network's Toonami action cartoon block, who had picked up the show and seen it though to where 4Kids seemingly stopped dubbing it.

Fans were shocked again later on, but this time in a good way. Anime distributor FUNimation Entertainment, dubbing company of the wildly successful Dragonball series, had picked up the license to One Piece, and would take over the series from where 4Kids left off. The series premiered on Toonami the week after the 4Kids dub was completed to thunderous applause. No more pointless edits, no skipping episodes, dialogue similar to the Japanese version, and original orchestral music. A faithful American adaptation of the One Piece anime series had finally arrived!

The story of One Piece is one of the more interesting in anime history. Whatever one's opinion of either the 4Kids version or FUNimation's version of the series, everyone can agree the story had a happy ending.