One Piece
One Piece (ワンピース Wan Pīsu) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda with an anime adaptation. The series focuses on a ragtag crew of heroic pirates called the Straw Hat Pirates, formed and led by a captain named Monkey D. Luffy. Luffy’s greatest ambition is to obtain the world’s ultimate treasure, One Piece, and become the Pirate King.
English adaptations
Odex English version
In Singapore, the anime is licensed by Odex, which produces its English dub. It contains fewer edits to names and animation with most if not all reference to blood, violence and death being left unedited. However, Luffy and Sanji’s names are pronounced incorrectly; Luffy’s is pronounced similarly to the word “fluffy” (which sounds like “La-fee” as opposed to “Loof-y”), and Sanji’s name is pronounced with the “an” sounding similar to how it would be used in the word “sand” (“San-gee” as opposed to “Sahn-ji”).
4Kids English version
The anime was adapted by 4Kids Entertainment and previously shown on Cartoon Network’s Toonami, and “reruns” are airing on their online broadband service Toonami Jetstream in the United States and on networks in many other English-speaking countries around the world. The 4Kids version debuted in the US on the Fox network as part of the Fox Box block (now called 4Kids TV) on September 18, 2004. This version of the show varied considerably from the original Japanese series. In an attempt to appeal to their target audience, 4Kids edited the series considerably to make it more appropriate for children’s television. 4Kids announced in December 2006 that they had cancelled production of their dub.
As of September 2006, 104 English-dubbed episodes have been produced from the first 143 Japanese episodes of One Piece; and a variety of sources explain that 4Kids had dropped the license afterwards, such as Anime Newtype Magazine. The anime’s naming conventions were used in One Piece-related media in North America, such as the English version of the fighting game One Piece Grand Battle for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube. The TV version of the FUNimation dub continues to use most of these names to date.
FUNimation English version
On April 12, 2007, FUNimation Entertainment announced it had acquired the license of One Piece and is currently producing the English version from episodes 144 onward, which premiered on Cartoon Network on September 29, 2007.
FUNimation will also distribute the series in unedited bilingual DVD box sets, which will retail for US$ 49.98 and contain 13 episodes each. The DVD box sets will also feature unedited video & English audio track. The unedited English language track will restore character and objects renamed in the dub to their original names. These changes were not made in the TV edit to allow continuity in the English broadcast of the TV series.
FUNimation announced that the DVDs will be officially released starting at episode 1 on May 27, 2008. FUNimation has also said that they will release Movie 8 on DVD on February 19, 2008 and in select theatres across America starting February 7 and ending on February 10. They also released an English Version of One Piece Unlimited Adventure (That includes all original playable characters and power ups as the Japanese version) that was released on January 22nd, 2008.
I have decided to add the One Piece Series to my main website! I think I will put the japanese ones with english subtitles for now, because they don’t edit out quite so much…
if it is requested enough, I will try to get videos from the english production too!
Check it out at Cartoonfanz.com!!
