Shonen Jump’s One Piece is the most successful manga/anime of all time. From the publication of the first chapter in 1997 until now, the series has been an ongoing phenomenon for multiple generations of fans worldwide.It’s sparked several films, along with merchandise and syndicated translations of both the manga and anime in various countries. One of those countries is the United States, where anime has never been more popular, especially One Piece. But the English adaptation we now know and love was not the first one to invite English-speaking fans on its high seas. No, for 104 episodes One Piece in America was actually a total disaster.
Upon the manga's initial success in Japan, an anime adaptation from Toei Animation shortly followed in 1999. The manga's success continued and first touched Western shores with an English translation in 2002. Naturally, It was only a matter of time until the anime was also adapted to grace American airwaves. Which it was not long thereafter.
The rights to One Piece and its English adaptation were acquired by a company known as 4Kids Entertainment in 2004. 4Kids had seen previous resounding success with its English adaptation and merchandising of the Pokémon anime and undoubtedly saw potential in another series. The English version of One Piece debuted on the FoxBox TV block in 2004, however with some noticeable changes.
The Americanized One Piece was also not only translated and, we’ll call it altered by its voice acting and character interpretations but also heavily censored along with some unexplained edits. Any alcohol consumption, smoking, and blood were edited out. Anything they deemed as too sexually suggestive, such as cleavage or even shots of a woman’s legs or waist, was edited or cut out altogether. Famously, nearly all firearms are altered to look like cork guns, water guns, or something else entirely. Inexplicably, almost all text in English words found on screen such as those on clothing, ships, or a bathroom are outright removed as well. An exhaustive list of every censorship can be found here thanks to RantNavv Talks Anime on YouTube.
If you are familiar with One Piece outside of this version you know that this is not only a strange task, but a labor-intensive and exhausting one as well. One Piece is a show about pirates, a theme that naturally invokes things like alcohol consumption, suggestive situations, and complex government-sanctioned terrorism, also known as privateering.
But why?
Why was it so heavily altered for the American market?
The answer goes back to its airtime TV block. The FoxBlock and 4Kids had a strict TV-Y7 or TV-Y7-FV Rating. 4Kids was actually for kids, specifically focusing on the demographic of ages seven to eleven. Any violence needed to be fantasy violence at most, hence the FV rating. This meant they couldn’t show real human-on-human combat. This is why many youth cartoons featured robots or supernatural enemies. Any weapons resembling real weapons were also not allowed. They were free to use the mediums of magic, lasers, and things of that nature, but anything beyond that would have not been found acceptable by the standards and practices department of the network.
But still, why?
Now the larger question looms, why did they try and make a pirate show for young adults into a children’s show in the first place? One Piece was almost exclusively human-on-human violence, had prolific weaponry, and was well known for voluptuously drawn women. Again, they’re pirates, and “yo ho ho and a carton of milk” doesn’t have much of a ring to it. Did 4Kids not know what they were acquiring when they bought the rights to One Piece? After all, drinking and smoking are seen as early as episode 2.
Effectively, yes. That’s exactly what happened. According to an Anime News Network Podcast with Mark Kirk, former 4Kids Senior VP (though he was not at 4Kids until after One Piece), his unofficial take is that 4Kids hastily acquired the property and in the rush to get the deal done, didn’t do their proper due diligence to review it. 4Kids was relatively new at acquiring and adapting anime. The internal processes of review either didn’t exist or near as makes no difference. They had such an unbelievable success with Pokémon, a show that didn’t require nearly as much adaptive tailoring, that they were most likely too eager to repeat it.
In that haste, they quickly found that their editors had their work cut out for them for the foreseeable future. From Kirk’s account, 4Kids knew they were more or less stuck but they did the best they could with what they had. Once the show reached audiences and negative feedback from the American anime community returned to 4Kids, the company was split into two polarized opinions. Some said it didn’t matter because this was a show for kids and those anime fans complaining didn’t fit into their target demographic. While others said it undoubtedly mattered. It affected the company’s reputation which was being absolutely torn to shreds online.
Both camps had decent points, it’s just that One Piece was the worst show this could have happened to. 4Kids’ censorship and directive choices with other properties have been mocked and ridiculed online but some of those were still successful properties. The prime example of course is Yu-Gi-Oh!, which was the hit they were looking for after Pokémon. Yu-Gi-Oh! generated millions from its trading card game and other merchandising despite some censorship issues similar to One Piece.
However, the hurdles Yu-Gi-Oh! faced were scalable if not negligible compared to those of One Piece. Yu-Gi-Oh! was a show based around card games, not life on the high seas. Even without editing most of the violence was hologram-monster on hologram-monster, with some light kidnapping in between. Yes, they had to turn guns into walkie-talkies on occasion but not every episode. One Piece simply had too much to censor to try and make it work. Yu-Gi-Oh! could withstand the criticism from the anime blogs but still find success in the target demographic of seven to eleven-year-olds. 4Kids earned their lashings online among hardcore anime fans but nine-year-olds asking their parents to buy them Yu-Gi-Oh! booster packs didn’t care.One Piece, on the other hand, had to be altered so much that there was no way it could still find success, it was unrecognizable. It became the extreme example of how 4Kids butchers a series.
Anime was still young
Within the context of early 2000s anime adaptations, it’s also important to note that the industry was not what it is today. The adult market wasn’t what it would become 20 years later. In those days, studios were looking for hits, and for a property to find the outstanding success they were looking for it needed to be a kids’ show. There were the smaller properties that found some popularity in late-night airings such as YuYu Hakusho and Cowboy Bebop but these weren’t hits on the scale of Pokémon or Dragonball, they were cult classics.
Looking at the market in its current state, things appear to be the opposite. There are dozens if not hundreds of niche anime’s out there with good English adaptations. If a show can find a foothold and develop a following, like Black Clover or Chainsaw Man, it’s a success. If it can continue and become a genuine hit, like Attack on Titan, all the better. There are more properties than ever and more outlets than ever for both manga and anime. In the streaming era, it’s about quantity and quality, creating strong fandoms spread across multiple properties. Whereas on cable and network television it was about mass appeal.
It’s easy to look back and ask why couldn’t they just stick to the source material, with anything not just One Piece. But in 2003 no one knew that anime and manga as an industry would cement itself in America the way that it has, nearly, if not overtaking, the American Comic market. From that perspective, it is somewhat understandable why 4Kids functioned the way that it did. They just shouldn’t have tried it with One Piece.
Life after 4kids
But once they bought it they were stuck with it. They made it work as much as they were required to by their commitment and then eventually looked to transition the property. Funimation, now Crunchyroll, acquired One Piece in 2007, much to the celebration of anime fans in the western hemisphere. What's more, Funimation did the service of not only picking up the story where 4Kids left off but also going back and doing a completely new English adaptation. This is the version still found on Netflix and Crunchyroll today.This effectively uncanonized everything 4Kids had done, setting everything right in the universe. The world could now paint over 4Kids One Piece as if it never actually existed, like the Jaws sequels and the Indiana Jones movies beyond the original trilogy, right?
Today, at over 1000 episodes in, the 104 4Kids One Piece episodes are all but forgotten. Some fans are even totally ignorant of them, the world has indeed painted them over and moved on. It’s easy to see how, they cover a mere 10 percent of the show as we know it today. However, even with the travesties that were those 104 episodes, we still need to acknowledge them. We have to give them their due. We can’t just ignore them. Not because they were any good but because they weren’t. Of all the properties to face the struggles that were the 4Kids editing room, only one could have faced that kind of mutilation and still somehow survive. Only one could have been so great as to suffer the censors and still be strong enough to succeed. It’s One Piece.
For another studio to see the potential and promptly fix 4Kids’ mistakes speaks to the quality and proven success of all other iterations of One Piece. For Funimation, the instructions were clear: just don’t mess it up. But it shouldn’t be disregarded the time, effort, and financial investment that took. Granted it didn’t hurt that the property was already a smash hit everywhere else.
Commending One Piece’s tribulations in America isn’t to say that anime as a whole would be better or worse if One Piece hadn’t gone through what it did. It’s simply saying we have to acknowledge that it did happen to One Piece and made its ripples in the market. After One Piece, companies like 4Kids established a better process for finding more suitable properties to adapt for their desired children demographic. They went on to produce a variety of shows such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monsters, and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Companies like Funimation firmly cemented themselves as the studios to take on adaptations and leave them closer to the source material thus leading to the anime giant that is Crunchyroll today. Overall, things were made clear. Anime and its English adaptations couldn’t be taken lightly. They couldn’t try and force things the way 4Kids did with One Piece. If something could work as a kids’ show, cool make it a kids’ show. If not, don’t.
Today and Tomorrow
One Piece is a legacy show, that’s known even to those who have never watched it. Presently, One Piece still maintains a top spot in the shonen anime/manga world. It’s not only one of the most successful animes ever but one of the most successful properties ever. Its main storyline marches onward having just celebrated its 25th anniversary. Mind you that isn’t with spin-offs, isn’t with a sequel series, it’s still the original run. And that is with it weathering the severe blunder that was the 4Kids adaptation.
One Piece is still so successful, still in its eternal prime that the anime is getting a full-blown remake before the original is even completed. Dubbed The One Piece, This Netflix-funded project to be done by WIT Studio will bring One Piece up to modern animation standards starting all the way at the beginning. Having the advantage of 1000s of manga chapters, it will have improved pacing and less filler. This remake isn’t because the first arc of One Piece was bad, but simply because it could stand to benefit from modern animation techniques. The show still has more potential even after all this time. This, once again reflects One Piece as a property, a renowned masterpiece.
This new anime will bring in an entire second multi-generational fanbase. No one saw this coming and it’s another feat that only One Piece could pull off. An anime that saw an American remastering because the first one was so bad, and now a full-on remake because the original was so good all while the original is still not yet completed is unprecedented.
One Piece might be nearing its canonical end, but the impact and legend it carries will not. From its horrific American start, which showed us how not to adapt an anime, to its now resounding success, multiple times over. One Piece has cemented itself as a foundational pillar that led to the anime industry today while continuing to be at its forefront. Like its characters, every struggle it faced only made it stronger on the other side. It’s one of the best stories ever told, just make sure it’s told correctly.
