How 4Kids Destroyed One Piece | One Piece Discussion | Grand Line Review
– [Narrator] Alright,
here’s your ultimatum. Subscribe to the Grand Line Review for regular One Piece content uploaded straight into your YouTube feed or be offered a nice room in a dungeon for the rest of your days. Choose wisely. Hello, and welcome to
the Grand Line review, your source for everything One Piece. And today we are going to be examining a dark, dark chapter in the
history of this here series, one that has not been and is very unlikely to ever be erased from One Piece in the English-speaking world, which is the 4Kids Dub. And this isn’t going
to be like most videos that explore the topic of 4Kids. So I’m much less interested
in exactly what 4Kids did and why because there are a
ton of other videos out there that present that topic better
than I probably ever could because it is around a
juicy piece of controversy. We will of course cover it
briefly for the sake of context.
But what I am much more
concerned about within this video are the impacts the 4Kids Dub has had on One Piece going forward, both in terms of the
actual property itself as well as its perception in the greater anime and manga fan base. Because it’s easy to look at things as an isolated examination
of just how royally this company not only screwed up the show but also its entire business however, the ramifications of this Dub go on to very much eclipse its initial involvement with One Piece. I wish there
was a world in which 4Kids was just another bad dub that
everyone could forget about.
But sadly, we happen to live in the darkest possible timeline. In any case, the story all
begins back in the late 1890s, when a man named Jonathan J. 4kids III, decided that he hated
absolutely everything and that he would make
it his life’s mission to make sure that nobody took pleasure from any form of entertainment ever again. And so he founded 4Kids to carry out this multi-generational effort. And from that we skipped June 4th, 2004, where our 4Kids
historians, a lot of fours, that’s probably a bad sign. But this is where our story truly begins with the company announcing that they had acquired the distribution and merchandising license for One Piece in much of the English-speaking Western world such as the United States, Canada, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, and of course my homeland of Australia.
And this is already
quite important to note because whenever I bring
up issues with 4Kids, many people believe it to be
an American exclusive problem and oh how I do wish that was the case. But I assure you, it was not. My very first
personal exposure to One Piece was through the 4Kids Dub
airing on Cartoon Network here in the down underverse, and what would follow was quite possibly the biggest mess of a Dub
that this world has ever seen, which not only did all the
standard stuff you’d think like removing blood references
to smoking and alcohol, anything, absolutely anything that could be viewed
as even my newly sexual like I know, for example, the breasts of Miss Merry Christmas had to be
removed as you can see here, but in any case, that
was all to be expected.
But I think that utter
failure in this respect comes from how they covered
all of this censorship up, I mean, many 4Kids Dubs are
not exactly fondly remembered but they would generally,
I suppose, competent in this censorship effort. However, with One Piece
there was a blatant disregard for, well, anything and everything and that is on full display in this, the most famous of images, where, I legitimately cannot tell if the quote-unquote artist for this piece was feeling not creative at all that day or feeling far too creative. This space honestly belongs in a gallery because it just asks so many
endless questions like that. Either way, though, it
was a big effing mess and stuff like this was very common, throughout the run of One Piece. Furthermore, the 4Kids Dub also went on to well and truly destroyed
One Piece as best it could by embarking on even bigger quests, like removing entire episodes
as well as entire arcs, irrevocably changing
the story as we know it, and needing to improvise
narrative solutions like let’s say we removed the
entirety of Reverse mountain, but how do we replace the Laboon? I don’t know, Iceberg, done.
And an awful lot of
this makes so much sense when you delve into it. There’s a particularly
a good edition of the ANNCast that interviews a
a man by the name of Mark Kirk, who was the Senior VP of
digital media with 4Kids and while he was not present for the acquisition of One Piece, he did give some pretty amazing insight into how this mess was made when he pointed out that
there was very likely no communication whatsoever
between the licensing team and the actual production team. So basically, there was a
group of people at 4Kids who were responsible for
acquiring properties, and another separate branch that had to dub and pump them out and throw them all the licensing branch that acquired One Piece did so as part of a package
deal with other shows, and so very little
attention was paid to it.
And it’s pretty safe to say that licensing did zero research on it
before they bought it and so what happened was
this weird little show that nobody had thought twice about was plunked into the laps
of a production team, who were then tasked with
doing something with it. However, their endeavor was
practically doomed to fail from the beginning because the
The target demographic of 4Kids was young boys between
the ages of seven and 11. And One Piece, whilst also hitting that
younger demographic in Japan had a much more broad appeal, which was reflected in its
material, which as we have said, contains frequent usage of
blood cigarettes, alcohol, guns, cleavage, lots and lots of cleavages, none of which could be shown on television to the 4Kids demographic, but just for some stat contrast here, I would like to bring your
attention to this survey conducted in 2011, which gave
us a great representation of the age of One Piece fans in Japan.
And the results are pretty staggering with 88% of One Piece manga readers being over the age of 19. And not only that, but 32% of them were over the age of 30, and
13% were over the age of 50, which just shows you how insanely generally
popular this series is. And I should point out that yes, this was conducted in 2011, 14 years after the manga
began serialization. So there is a natural
progression of age there because if you started reading in 1997, at the age of say, 15, and you’re still reading in 2011, then that would make you 29,
if maths serves me correctly, which it may not, but even so there’s a Harry Potter factor at play where a whole segment of
fans grew up with the series, but then again, the age
The brackets are just so wide that that does not even begin to account for the fan base as a whole.
But I also just wanted to say that according to these statistics there were more people over
the age of 50 reading One Piece than there were people
under the age of 19. And just think about that for a second. For a Shonen Manga that
is kind of mind-blowing to think about. But let’s get back to 4Kids
and examine their strategy which was to target this series to what we now know would have been one of its least enthusiastic
natural demographics.
One Piece, despite being Shonen series was hitting hard with young adults and even fully evolved final form adults. So in a way, you could say
it was like taking a series along the lines of Game of Thrones and editing it strategically and subtly so that it could be a delightful
20-minute run for children that could play before and after school. And yes, Game of Thrones is
a bit of an extreme example but my point remains that the
poor 4Kids production team had an impossible task to
achieve from the very beginning because One Piece did not naturally resonate with their target audience. Even if it was to be left
completely uncensored and turned into a faithful dub that was somehow allowed
on children’s television, it would have been very, very unlikely to do well with that market because One Piece was not for them.
At the very least it was
structured for the next bracket up being early to middling teens, much like how Dragon Ball
was handled by Funimation, it would also go on to inherit One Piece and so I suppose well, One Piece did relatively well with 4Kids. I mean, it wasn’t completely abysmal with that target audience. Although it was, however,
completely overshadowed by the other properties that were designed
with this audience in mind. And after me 104 episodes, 4Kids pulled the plug on the series, because there was no profit
coming from One Piece, so much so that half of these episodes were never even released on DVD. And so with that, you would think that the nightmare is over
and we can all move on with One Piece-based life but the reality
isn’t quite that simple, because the effect of
this dub sent ripples which you will still see into the future of 2020 or maybe even past that, depending on when you’re viewing this.
But here’s my biggest issue, I mentioned before that my
My first One Piece experience was stumbling upon the 4Kids Dub and I would wager that that would be the large majority of the experiences for people around my age with the series, which means that you have
this entire generation of anime and manga fans to whom this was the value proposition that One Piece presented them with and quite understandably, in the large majority of that generation, the English-speaking West decided to say, no thanks, I’ll take the Ninjas instead. And this is devastating
because someone or something only has one chance to
make a first impression.
And the first impression of One Piece for a whole generation was 4Kids and overcoming that is
a nigh-on impossible task because that bias has been seeded and grown into viewing One Piece as this goofy overrated series that does not deserve
its unfathomable popularity in the rest of the world. And I really cannot emphasize just how important the first impression is because any series will only be given a certain window of
popularity to capitalize on. Take Attack on Titan, for example, when its anime adaptation
was released in 2013. It took complete control of the world. And while it doesn’t enjoy the same sort of global fad
prestige that it once had, it is still renowned as
an incredibly solid series in the English-speaking world because it had that one
window to make an impression and it certainly did just that. The window for One Piece
to make an impression opened and closed with 4Kids destroying any opportunity
One Piece had to achieve that sort of widespread recognition that many of its peers were enjoying, or at the very least, it made
it infinitely more difficult. And we can track this through objective
statistic sales numbers.
So for argument’s sake,
let’s look at 2009. And in Japan, One Piece utterly
dominates the manga charts with close to 15 million
copies sold that year, followed at a great distance by Naruto, having sold close to 7 million, and then Bleach for the
roughly 6.5 million. However, if we then look
to the New York Times bestselling manga data of 2009, it is completely dominated by Naruto, which took the crowning
number one position for 18 weeks followed by Bleach which nine weeks at the top
and where is One Piece? Well, it appears a mere
six times on this list, and four of those six
times have it in 10th place for that particular week at
its highest possible peak, One Piece reaches seventh
a place for two weeks with volumes 22 and 23 respectively.
And what’s also very interesting to note is that One Piece is releasing
volumes like 22 and 23 while Naruto is releasing
volumes in its 40s and even Bleach is publishing
volumes in its 20s. And this shows that manga companies had an impetus to speed
up and focus production on Naruto and Bleach because they were the series that were making money in the West whereas One Piece was an afterthought. I mean, yes, it had its audience, but it would pull disappointing
sales numbers comparatively. The difference between
Japan and in this case, specifically America
could not be more stock. And the reason why One
Piece was an afterthought was that it had not
been able to develop a solid fan base at this time.
Naruto and Bleach both had
very successful English dubs in comparison to that of One Piece, which marketed those series to their intended demographics Which landed and it landed hard, translating into delicious,
cold hard monies, which further translated
into more Naruto and Bleach and far less of One Piece. Now at this time, I should mention, that One Piece had now been
acquired by Funimation, and that they had begun
their version of the dub, which was more faithful to the
series in every possible way and aimed far above the age demographic of seven to 11-year-olds.
However, animation at this point was so far behind the
curb because like I said, they had already missed the
the major window of impression that One Piece had to
land with an audience. And not only that, but Funimation also did not commence dubbing the
series from the beginning, which I understand why
that decision was made, but it left them in an
incredibly unenvious position of needing to begin where 4Kids left off which placed Funimation the
commencement of the Skypiea Arc. So not only did Funimation
have an uphill battle in terms of getting people to just give One Piece another chance, but it had to do so with a slower and much less new fan
friendly arc to get into and that is another poor value proposition that due to the circumstance of 4Kids further stunted the growth of One Piece in the English-speaking West and once again, you can see that reflected in US sales as well.
With the last edition
of The New York Times, bestselling Manga list being 2016 not even featuring One
A piece in the top spot even though it was outselling its nearest competitor
two to one in Japan. With that said by this time, One Piece was starting to properly break through and I think that we in
2020 is finally at a spot that we should have
reached about a decade ago in terms of popularity with the series, and some people will try to argue that it never would have happened because the art style and pacing were too cartoony and slowly for One Piece to have ever
taken off in the West, but that’s just blatantly wrong because we have a slew of
other non-English examples where One Piece did quite phenomenally like Germany and Spain with
their dubs respectively the art style and pacing
didn’t kill their growth. Furthermore, pacing
wasn’t even an issue until much later in One
Piece around marine fitness where it became very, very noticeable.
Everything within the 4Kids jurisdiction was paced brilliantly
outside of pure filler, and I wish that we
still had that pacing today, but that’s a different discussion. My point is that pacing can
never be used as an excuse. But with all of that said,
even though I believe One Piece has finally achieved the kind of recognition it deserves, it does make me wonder how much further we could have
gone with a competent dub. Like if Funimation had to
be in the original dub, I think that One Piece
would have dominated the English-speaking realm just as it did everywhere
else in the world. But finally, the saddest
part in all of this is even though
we can put 4Kids behind us for the most, part they will
always live on in the manga. And Zoro’s name is
still translated as Zolo to this very day. And look, yes, it’s just a
noun, it’s not a big deal. And to be perfectly frank,
because it’s not a big deal, I think that they should
just change it back to Zoro and you know if they’d have done that back when 4Kids had folded, then more than two-thirds of the series would be Zoro right now, instead of being stuck with this awful situation of continuity where, you know, 93 volumes in it’s significantly more difficult to make a name change like that at this late stage in the game.
But every time I read it, it reminds me of the legacy that 4Kids has had on the series that I love most in this world, as well as the irrevocable harm that it has caused One Piece in general. What do you guys think? Please do leave your thoughts
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