I was introduced to One Piece via the 4Kids Entertainment dub that aired on Fox and Cartoon Network. It was terrible... all the voice actors from Pokemon struggling their way through a show that didn't involve... well... pokemon. The show was badly edited, both for violence and content, and the dialog writers didn't seem to understand that an english-speaking audience is able to appreciate a moment of silence or a dramatic stir of music... instead, the dialog chatters endlessly and shrilly, often giving bad jokes to Lufy and Usuop instead of real dialog about what's actually going on. All in all, Greg Ayres summed it up best when he called it "One Piece... Of Shit" last year at Teko.
It's been a great source of discontent amongst anime fans trying to go legit that One Piece's handling has been so poor. There've been many long and heated discussions amongst the fans who've seen the original Japanese One Piece as to what can be done... the usual scenario is that fans WANT a series to be brought to the US, and that one's easy to have a plan of action on. Petitions, letter writing campaigns, vocal support... but what do you do when a company IS bringing your favorite anime to the US but butchering it horribly.
Well, apparently we have an answer.
So... please, if you like One Piece... heck, even if you don't, but have been hurt by a bad dub in the past... I beg you to tune in. Especially those of us who have Neilsen boxes in our houses (glares at Impy). Also, I'm going to write Cartoon Network and Funimation and thank then for not being horrible people... invite you all to join me.Wikipedia wrote:On April 12, 2007, FUNimation Entertainment announced it acquired the license of One Piece and is currently producing the English version from episodes 144 onward, which will premiere on Cartoon Network on September 29th (as recently announced on Toei's website [3]), in an edited version.[6] [4] FUNimation will also distribute the series in unedited bilingual DVD box sets, retailing for US$49.98 and containing 13 episodes each. At Anime Expo 2007, Funimation announced that the DVDs will be officially released starting at episode 144 in 2008.
[EDIT] I just noticed... Greg Ayres is booked to be a voice actor for One Piece! He's going to be Cabaji the Acrobat, one of the Clown Pirate crew. For those of you who've met Greg or know of him... this is both hilarious and creepy. [/EDIT]