Cleavage Episode 1 (English Dub) Target 15
Berenice Pretlow
4Kids Entertainment, Inc. was an American film and television production company specializing in the acquisition, production, and licensing of children's entertainment around the world; they were most known for their acquired television programs. On December 21, 2012, 4Kids reorganized themselves under the name of 4Licensing Corporation, which itself became defunct in February 2017. It also expanded to Latin America and Brazil during the end of 1999 and the start of 2000.
Between 2004 and 2007, 4Kids were involved in an English dub and localization of the One Piece anime series which covered the first 143 episodes and influenced the contemporary English manga, video games and merchandise. In 2007, the One Piece license was transferred from 4Kids to Funimation.
Norman J. Grossfeld, the president of 4Kids at the time, was the executive producer of their English version of the series. On August 14, 2004, the first trailers were released.[2] The One Piece anime debuted in America on the FoxBox TV block (later known as 4Kids TV) on September 18, 2004.[3] Cartoon Network announced their acquisition of the series on February 16, 2005.[4] In the UK, Toonami announced that they had acquired the series on November 18, 2004 and began their broadcast on April 23, 2005.[5][6]
In an interview on April 24, 2005 4Kids CEO Al Kahn suggested that One Piece, along with every other 4Kids property, would receive an uncut DVD release, and added that anime fans would "have to accept the fact that it's going to be available in two styles".[7] The American home video rights to the series were sub-licensed to VIZ Media, who began releasing the edited version of the series on DVD in February 2006 with "English TV Version" specified on the DVD covers.[8] Despite Kahn's earlier statements, Viz were unable to release an uncut version as they were not involved with the dub's production.[9]
On March 16, 2006, 4Kids announced plans to concentrate only on their fully-owned properties. A fall of profit was blamed on the shortfall of several of their dubbed licenses such as Pokmon and Yu-Gi-Oh, although One Piece and several other licenses they held were said to offset the results.[12] The company as a result later dropped a few shows including one of their biggest earners, Pokmon. The dubbing of new anime lessened, and 4Kids announced on December 6, 2006 that they had canceled production of their One Piece dub and dropped the license.[13][14] Ultimately, 4kids produced 104 English-dubbed episodes from the first 143 Japanese episodes, being discontinued at the start of the Jaya Arc.[15]
A Funimation representative would later confirmed some of the need for TV censorship when they aired One Piece on TV, stating that toning down the violence and removing cigarette and alcohol consumption was a requirement for the series to be broadcast on Cartoon Network.[15]
Virtually no deaths are shown or mentioned, regardless of their importance to the plot, and the deaths of characters such as Bell-mre and Kuina were written out of the story. Initially the concept of death was never directly referenced at all, although later episodes were more lenient. Because blood was removed, Luffy's third fight against Crocodile fight was written so that Luffy uses his sweat to hit Crocodile rather than his blood.
A lot of dialogue was altered to include humor, often pun-based, even during critical, high-tension scenes in the Japanese version. Some scenes which were silent in Japanese had speech added by 4Kids.
The 4Kids dub skipped twenty episodes in their entirety and, by using footage from multiple Japanese episodes for a single dubbed episode, cut the series down by 39 episodes in total. As a result, the following story arcs were skipped entirely: Buggy's Crew Adventure Chronicles, the Warship Island Arc, the Reverse Mountain Arc, Diary of Koby-Meppo, the Little Garden Arc and the Goat Island Arc. Individual episodes from the Arlong Park, Loguetown and Post-Arabasta arcs were also removed.
In some cases this resulted in plot points significant to later story arcs being removed or altered. The removed Warship Island arc explains why the crew must use Reverse Mountain and the removal of Crocus meant that the first references to Laugh Tale were removed with him. To explain the Log Pose, a new dialogue scene was created using existing animation of the crew talking and footage of Yasopp and Zeff from earlier episodes; in this scene, Usopp finds a Log Pose that Yasopp left to him, reminding Sanji of Zeff's lesson to him about Grand Line navigation.
Mr. 3's later appearance in Arabasta was re-written to not reference the cut Little Garden arc. In the 4Kids version, he claims to have been chasing the Straw Hat Pirates since Roguetown, despite Baroque Works not knowing about the crew in either version until they reach Misty Peak. The Straw Hats also refer to Mr. 3 and his partner Ms. April Fool's as if they've already met them. Nami's sickness is rewritten to be "Grand Line Fever", but 4Kids later contradict this when Kureha asks Nami if she had been walking around on a prehistoric island, the origin of her illness in the Japanese version.
Because the storyline is still ongoing, several changes would become have become issues in future arcs. Laboon's removal leaves Brook without reason to join the crew, cutting Dorry and Brogy removes Oimo and Kashii's reason to side with Usopp in the Enies Lobby Arc, the crew's meeting with Crocus is referenced again in Thriller Bark, Sabaody Archipelago and the Zou arcs, and both Elbaf and Laugh Tale are referenced significantly later in the series.
On September 9, 2004, 4Kids answered the problems of Sanji smoking in the show. This was one of the few announced changes made to the series and the first alteration the company spoke of in regard to the dub.[19] Many firearms were changed to look less realistic, and some were edited into other objects; some Marine guns are turned into water guns while the others are simply colored green. Religious references were also modified: notable examples include Devil Fruits being renamed to "Cursd Fruits", the crosses on Dracule Mihawk's cross dagger and sword which resemble crucifixes being either removed or shortened, Miss Merry Christmas' Christmas tree being recolored purple, and her name being changed to Ms. Groundhog's Day.
A number of animation edits contained inconsistencies. For example, in scenes where Robin's cleavage was originally visible, she would have an undergarment added in some shots but simply have her cleavage lines erased in others within the same scene. When Zoro is crucified in Shells Town, the sky is painted over the top of the cross and this blue area overlaps with Luffy when he moves his head at the end of the shot. In other cases, inappropriate content such as blood was left unaltered for a few moments.
In addition to the censorship, 4Kids made other changes to the series in an effort to appeal to western audiences; Kahn justified these changes as a necessary in order for anime properties such as One Piece to be financially successful.[20]
Many attack names in other non-English languages (i.e., French, Italian, etc.) are given English names which are often loose translations or a different names completely (for example, most of Sanji's attacks, which were originally French cooking terms, are changed to food-based puns). Other names names that were originally English were also altered, including Portgas D. Ace (Portgaz D. Trace) and Edward Newgate (Ward Newgate).
Some names were changed to reflect censorship, like Captain Smoker becoming Captain Chaser alongside references to him smoking being removed. Some names were determined by asking focus groups of children.[21]
Some uncommon romanizations of names were used such as Zoro (Zolo) and Nefertari Vivi/Cobra (Nefeltari). 4Kids referred to the Fish-Men as Mermen, a translation error that also appeared in concurrent fan translations.
The dub's naming conventions were used in One Piece-related media in North America at the time, such as Viz Media's English release of the manga, and the English version of the fighting game One Piece Grand Battle for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube.
The original symphonic score by Kohei Tanaka and Shirō Hamaguchi was replaced with synthesized music composed by John Angier, Louis Cortelezzi, Matt McGuire, Ralph Shuckett and Dan Stein. It was noted that some of the new score were reused from other shows 4Kids had dubbed. The series' opening and closing theme music was replaced with an original theme song produced by 4Kids; an English version of the original theme, "We Are!", was sung by Russ Velasquez and used in an early promo, but did not feature in the final English version.[22]
Music changes such as this were not exclusive to 4Kids, and anime localization would commonly do this both to keep synchronization with the edited visuals and to replicate the musical aesthetic of western productions.[23] Kahn explained that the music in 4Kids dubs was Westernized "so that children in English-speaking countries will understand it" and to appeal more to American audiences.[20] It has also been stated, by a music producer at 4Kids, that producing soundtracks in-house and having their own music published helped the company "stay in business", and was not done for the purposes of reducing licensing costs. When producing music for anime dubs, the Japanese version was explicitly not used as a template.[24]
Many elements of Japanese culture were removed, such as replacing onigiri as chocolate chip cookies. Production staff member Eric Stuart justified similar changes to the Pokemon anime as "[making the series] a universal show, whatever country you were in, [as] more people could relate to doughnuts than sushi."[25] This removal of Japanese culture extended even to English text, to mitigate the risk of accidentally referencing obscure copyrighted media.[21]
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