One Piece (4Kids dub)

One Piece is a Shonen Jump anime animated by Toei Animation. When the show first came to North America, they had 4Kids Entertainment to do the English dub in 2004. It is considered as one of, if not the worst anime dubs to ever exist.

Why This Dub Isn’t in a Piece

 * 1) Out of all of 4Kids' dubs, this one had the most censorship, and it heavily expurgated the dub in the process. This dub includes the kinds of edits you would expect them to make alongside some more confusing edits, such as recoloring guns to make them look more toy-like or outright removing them (in one instance Helmeppo's gun was replaced with a spring-loaded hammer in one episode), changing any instance of alcohol into juice, replacing Asian food with American food, and either replacing or removing tobacco products altogether (most infamously, Sanji's cigarette being replaced with a lollipop).
 * 2) * Many of the edits made to the series ended up making the plot more confusing due to them having to dance around violence and death or skipping entire story arcs, causing plot holes. To wit:
 * 3) ** The Arlong Park Arc is one of the most heavily edited arcs in the series. One of the more infamous instances of censorship found here is where Arlong demands Nami to kill Usopp in order to prove her loyalty to the Fishmen but she instead stabs her own hand to trick Arlong and allow Usopp to escape by faking his death. In the English dub, this scene is changed to have Nami formulate an impossibly convenient plan involving using a rubber knife (which Usopp just happened to have on him) to pretend she stabbed Usopp while he overacted the "injury".
 * 4) ** Another notable instance of censorship, also from Arlong Park, occurs when Bell-Mere (Nami's adoptive mother) is killed by Arlong in a flashback. In the 4Kids dub, she is instead sent to a dungeon and is never mentioned after this arc, even after Arlong's defeat.
 * 5) ** 4Kids swapped Laboon out for an iceberg in order to bypass the Reverse Mountain Arc, which is one of several that they skipped. Several other plot points like the Straw Hats acquiring the Log Pose and Eternal Pose, Nami getting sick, and Mr. 3's presence in Alabasta, are similarly rewritten to accommodate the exclusion of both the Reverse Mountain and Little Garden Arcs.
 * 6) * The point where they replaced Asian food with American food proves that they tried too hard to make it look like an American cartoon. This is also called Americanization, or Cultural Translation according to TV Tropes.
 * 7) Numerous characters are given very stereotypical accents that make them sound annoying and out of place. Sanji's Brooklyn accent being the most notable example, and Dracule Mihawk's French accent is another.
 * 8) Overuse of incredibly awful and cringeworthy puns and dad jokes, even in serious scenes. This makes it seem as if the humor was forced, making the dialogue seem poorly written.
 * 9) * Some notable examples include:
 * 10) ** Usopp: "Check out the map, guys! See this? We can dog-paddle across, but it's so wide we'd start barking!"
 * 11) ** Mr. 1: Your attitude's the pits. Zoro: Cherry, Peach, or Apricot?
 * 12) ** Luffy (trying to outrun the pit of quicksand created by Crocodile's Desert Girasole): It's flushing me down like a big toilet! No no no no no! Crocodile: A desert toilet. A lovely way to describe it, Straw Hat, which makes you desert doo doo.
 * 13) Overuse of needless pop-culture references, just like the ADV dub of Ghost Stories, such as when some characters mention Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean.
 * 14) Numerous unnecessary & some nonsensical name changes. Including, but not limited to:
 * 15) * Zoro - Zolo (most likely a translation error as "ro" and "lo" have a very similar pronouncing in Japanese, though many believe it was due to legal issues with the Johnston McCulley character Zorro, who coincidentally is also a swordsman. This error was also included in the English-translated manga where "Zoro" was called "Zolo" instead.)
 * 16) * Smoker - Chaser
 * 17) * Portgas D. Ace - Portgaz D. Trace
 * 18) * Miss Merry Christmas - Miss Groundhog Day
 * 19) * Whiskey Peak - Misty Peak
 * 20) * Devil Fruit - Cursed Fruit
 * 21) * Marines - Navy
 * 22) * Usopp Pirates - Veggie Pirates
 * 23) * Treasure Island - Golden Island
 * 24) * All Blue - Great Blue
 * 25) * Fishmen - Mermen
 * 26) * Gum-Gum Pistol - Gum-Gum Blast
 * 27) * Collier Shoot - Teriyaki Turn Over Surprise
 * 28) * Gum-Gum Pistol Shotgun - Gum-Gum Quake
 * 29) * Gum-Gum Bazooka - Gum-Gum Double Barrel
 * 30) Awful voice acting, as most of them were seriously miscast and poorly directed.
 * 31) * Even though Luffy's voice in this dub is somewhat closer to his Japanese voice, his voice actress (Erica Schroeder) was poorly directed, resulting in her voice for him sounding annoying and phoned-in, especially during battles when he's doing his Gum-Gum techniques.
 * 32) * Sanji's incredibly deep and nasally voice and his thick Brooklyn accent combined is considered offensive to actual Brooklyn citizens.
 * 33) * Nami's voice is fine, but her performance is so emotionless often. Luckily, it improved in later episodes.
 * 34) * Shanks has a cockney accent for some reason.
 * 35) * The Usopp Pirates (or Veggie Pirates). Carrot, Pepper, and Onion sound like more grown men than children. The same could be said for any of the other child characters.
 * 36) * Dracule Mihawk's French accent is just as idiotic/unnecessary as it sounds.
 * 37) * Both Nico Robin & Alvida are given southern accents just because they're dressed like cowgirls.
 * 38) * Drum Island arc antagonist Wapol has a Russian accent.
 * 39) * Miss Valentine sounds nothing like a grown woman and sounds more like an 8-year-old boy, as her voice actress Amy Palant puts in a performance that almost sounds like her performance as Tails from Sonic X. Also, her laughing is unfaithful to her character.
 * 40) The entire original soundtrack is replaced with 4Kids' own in-house music, as per usual for most of their dubs. Several pieces of music are even recycled from their previous dubs. Most infamously, the "Pirate Rap"  used as the intro is often regarded as one of the worst dubbed anime theme songs ever.
 * 41) * This proves that 4Kids were mostly lazy to make some of their new soundtracks.
 * 42) Entire story arcs were removed, regardless of their importance to the plot. This, unsurprisingly, caused a lot of major dub-induced plot holes later on (and would cause even more had the dub continued). This is likely either due to content or because Toei wanted 4Kids to get to the Drum Island Arc and introduce Chopper, the more marketable of the Straw Hats, sooner. These are:
 * 43) * Buggy's Crew: After the Battle!
 * 44) *Warship Island Arc
 * 45) * Reverse Mountain Arc
 * 46) * Diary of Coby-Meppo
 * 47) * Little Garden Arc
 * 48) * Goat Island Arc
 * 49) Some of the music put into scenes make the scenes look weird, like this scene where Ace (or "Trace", as he's called in this dub) is smiling at Sanji.
 * 50) The dub ended at the 104th episode (known as the 143rd episode in Japan, which is a filler episode), and the last shot of the 4Kids dub involved a ship about to fall on top of the Straw Hat Pirates, with the show ending on a very bitter note that implies that the Straw Hat Pirates died.
 * 51) Rarely, some of the characters got butchered in this dub, one example is Luffy, who got butchered into a somewhat hypocritical Gary-Stu.
 * 52) There is one scene where one of Buggy's crewmates had their skin changed, mostly to avoid types of "racism". Yet in the 2nd half of the Arlong Park Arc, Arlong's crewmates insult humans by calling them "Pewmans", which is very ironic.
 * 53) Wastes the talents of many New York-based voice actors, including Jason Griffith (one of several voice actors who voiced Sonic the Hedgehog over the years, first voicing him in Sonic X), Erica Schroeder, Dan Green (best known as Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh!), and many others.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) While most the voice acting is annoying, there is at least some effort put into a few of the roles.
 * 2) * Marc Diraison's performance as Zoro (Zolo) was great. In fact, some people even wished he would have reprised his role in the Funimation dub instead of having Christopher Sabat take over.
 * 3) * Gol D. Roger also had an awesome voice, courtesy of F.B. Owens.
 * 4) One Piece couldn't be so popular in some countries if this dub never existed.
 * 5) The opening can be fun to listen to for some in a "so bad, it's good" kinda way.
 * 6) Thankfully, 4Kids removed two filler arcs, those being the Warship Island and Goat Island Arcs respectively, making the dub a bit more on track in regards to the canon storyline (rewrites notwithstanding).

Trivia

 * 1) This dub was a result of 4kids being legally forced to dub due to them not checking a package deal.
 * 2) About half of the episodes of this dub were once classified as lost media due to them not getting a DVD release until someone uploaded all of the episodes on a torrent site for anime with the first half being rips from YTV and the other half being rips from Toonami UK.

Videos
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