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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 obviously 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
who 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 within this video
are the impacts of 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 their entire business
however, the ramifications of this Dub
go on to very much eclipse
its initial involvement to One Piece.
In fact, I really 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,
where 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 absolutely assure you, it was not.
In fact, 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
apparently they 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 efforts.
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,
all 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.
In fact, there's a particularly good edition of the
ANNCast that interviews 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
who actually 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 really 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 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 cleavage,
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 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 statistical
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 what One Piece was
did not actually 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 actually designed with this audience in mind.
And after me at 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 lives
but the reality really isn't quite that simple,
because the effect of this dub sent ripples
which you will still see
all the way 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 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 really 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 actually track this
through an objective statistic being 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 great distance by Naruto,
having sold close to 7 million
and then Bleach for the roughly 6.5 million.
However, if we then look at 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 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 because 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 actually 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 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 Piece in the top spot
despite the fact that 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 are 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 slowy
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.
And 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 really 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 really 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 despite the fact that 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 each and 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?
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But for now, this has been the Grand Line Review
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