One Piece gets a second chance
By Cokomon • Apr 13th, 2007 • Category: Anime, EntertainmentAfter butchering the American release of hit anime series One Piece, 4Kids Entertainment decided to drop the show after 104 episodes (dropping 39 episodes dues to censoring reasons). However, hope is on the horizon for fans of the Straw Hat Pirates. Funimation has just picked up the rights to produce the show in the U.S. Funimation plans to continues where 4kids left off, picking up at episode 144 of the Japanese series and moving onward from there. Fortunately for fans, Funimation plans to handle the series a lot better than 4Kids entertainment.
Fans of the original Japanese version have loathed the Cartoon Network cut that exists, largely because of its banal hip-hop intro song, censorship of violent imagery and other aspects of the show (cigarettes to lollypops), all done to make it more palatable to a younger audience.
Funimation plans on eventually doing away with this. They plan to redub all of the original 143 episodes that 4Kids mangled and release everything uncensored to DVD. However, the Cartoon Network airing of the show will retain some censorship, but not to the degree of 4Kids’ meddling. DVD box sets are planned to be released, with 13 episodes per box.
For more information of what made the 4Kids version of the show so bad, please refer to this.
Source: animeOnline.com
Cokomon
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Wow, this is good news for One Piece. It sounds really expensive to re-dub all those episodes, but it’s true there’s no choice. If Funimation wants to release One Piece as a real anime, they will have to start a episode one since it’s a very linear series. More so than any I can think of.
I’m quite worried the One Pieces good name has already been soiled though. Will all who dismissed it as a childish pokemon-esque series recognize its reinvention?