One Piece was originally a huge flop in America. What happened to change the tides and turn the series into one of anime’s biggest worldwide hits?
There is no doubt that One Piece is one of the hottest anime in America. What may be hard to believe is that One Piece wasn’t always the hit in America that it is now. In fact, when the series first landed on our shores, it was an outright flop, and people who had seen it had nothing nice to say about it.
There were tough seas to traverse, bad first impressions to overcome, and a partnership with a company that just wouldn’t give up on them. This is a journey that began all the way back in 2002 when a little magazine named Shonen Jump was about to hit the shores of American bookstores.
Shonen Jump Launches in America
Since the mid-eighties, Viz was always trying to make a go of breaking into the comic book and magazine business. While previous manga anthologies had failed, Viz realized that the market was changing to where family-friendly titles were starting to gain huge audiences. They decided to make a deal where they would bring the popular Weekly Shounen Jump magazine over to America as Shonen Jump. They would launch it with five series: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z, Sand Land, Yu Yu Hakusho, and the final launch title would be a little pirate series known simply as One Piece.
When Shonen Jump hit the newsstands Viz prominently marketed the fact that the magazine had Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragon Ball Z, as the former was one of the hottest series on Kids WB while the latter was still a favorite on Toonami. Yet at the back of the magazine was One Piece, and its unique art style and witty sense of humor was already catching the eye of readers. Other series would join the magazine in the coming weeks, yet readers couldn’t stop talking about the series with a rubber man whose goal was to become the King of the Pirates. It was a niche title, but it had the potential to become something beloved by millions.
Early Years With 4Kids
When Americans got a hold of the manga, they immediately wanted to know if an anime was on the horizon. Sure enough, there was one on the horizon, and with the manga catching on fast with readers, there was a bidding war over who would bring the show to the states. Viz was the first one to jump into the bidding war, however soon other parties like Funimation joined the bidding war. However, there was one other company that had its eyes on the series, and they had more money to outbid any of their competitors.
4Kids was a unique name in the anime scene. They made a name for themselves when their dubs of Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were brought statewide and became a massive multi-million dollar success stories. For such a company, One Piece would make for a fine treasure. There was only one problem: as their name implied, 4Kids primary audience was kids, and as such, they had a habit of editing and censoring the anime they brought over. They were so extreme with some of their changes that it was a known fact that a 4Kids anime was a butchered anime.
To the dismay of many fans, the rumors of 4Kids aggressively bidding for One Piece turned out to be true, as an announcement was made that the company had acquired the series for dubbing and distribution. Many fans were skeptical that 4Kids would handle the show with care. Their fears were soon confirmed.
The One Piece Anime Lands in America with a Thud
4Kids adaptation of One Piece premiered on the FoxBox in 2004. Fans of the manga tuned in to check out the show and watched in horror as they were treated to what has been come to be known as the Pirate Rap. If you haven’t heard it, to say that it is widely considered one of the worst opening theme songs of all time is an understatement.
When the theme song ended, viewers were treated to the kind of dub they were afraid they’d get: replaced background music, terrible voice acting, and strange name changes (Zoro became Zolo).
Fan response to the series’ first localized episode wasn’t great. When it got to episodes where guns were replaced with poppers and cigarettes were turned into lollipops, the writing was on the wall. Bad writing and censorship had ruined the show, and fans abandoned it in droves. What made the situation worse was the fact that kids also hated what they saw, and decided to drop the series as well.
What’s more, the reputation of the show seeped into the manga, with viewers having no interest in seeking out the far superior source material. With no future in sight, 4Kids let the license lapse, and the series ended in 2006 with 104 episodes produced with 39 episodes worth of content on the cutting room floor.
Funimation Enters the Picture
On April 17, 2007, Funimation licensed the series and began production on a new dub. With 4Kids dropping the license they picked it up and set out to give the series another shot. On September 29, 2007, a less edited One Piece premiered on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block. Gone were the music replacements and most of the edits. Instead of the infamous Pirate Rap there was a faithful dub of the third Japanese opening Hikari E.
The new actors were much better fits for their roles and the script was faithful to the source material. The problem was it was coming out a year after the 4Kids dub ended, and that version did a lot of damage to the One Piece brand. General audiences didn’t know that this version of One Piece was different from what premiered a few years prior. The show was on Cartoon Network less than a year before they dropped it, as it was feared that 4Kids had forever tarnished the One Piece name.
Simulcasts Save the Day
If there was a huge advantage One Piece had it was that the strength of the series outside of America meant that even without the west’s help the series was a juggernaut worldwide success. In May 2009, Funimation, Toei Animation, Shueisha, and Fuji TV announced that One Piece would be simulcast in America within one hour of its airing in Japan. Suddenly, fans of One Piece who were behind on the story in Shonen Jump could skip ahead to where the series currently was online. Tons of One Piece fans who hadn’t watched the anime in years now had a reason to tune into the show online.
It was during this period that fans started to realize that Funimation was giving fans the One Piece they should have received years ago. As the series became more exciting and word-of-mouth grew, the world started to forget about the 4Kids dub. After a few years, the stains of the 4Kids dub were washed away, and audiences generally liked what they saw from then on.
One Piece Today
Today One Piece is one of the most popular series in America. The anime has more than 1,000 episodes and is still going strong while the manga is finally charting a course towards its highly anticipated ending. Had One Piece only lasted a few years who knows what would have happened in America? One Piece came to America with a lot of promise and whose ship was almost sunk by a company that did not understand what they had and did not have respect for anime as an art form.
Thankfully the show continued and was picked up by people who did understand what made the series special, and it now has one of the biggest followings of any other anime in America. Thank goodness for second chances.
0 Comments