While fans of One piece Those who don't like reading subtitles now have the excellent Funimation Dub to enjoy, it wasn't always like this. When the series was initially brought to the West, it was dubbed by the infamous 4Kids Entertainment.

The 4Kids English dub of One piece is notorious for the strange decisions made to censor the series. The changes made in the translation were largely driven by a desire to target the series to a younger demographic than the one the series was written for; while some of these edits are understandable with this in mind, such as limiting the amount of blood and sexuality, others are just plain weird.

1 4Kids has removed all weapons from One Piece

Guns are a common weapon of choice in One piece, especially in the early arcs of the series that were dubbed by 4Kids. However, 4Kids refused to allow the showing of realistic depictions of firearms. Although they refrained from simply editing the weapons and making it look like the characters are just pointing at each other, as they did in their Yu-Gi-Oh! dub, the alternative ways they censored the guns in One piece is equally ridiculous.

4Kids didn't suffer a creative crisis when they censored all gun appearances in the series, as they came up with plenty of creative solutions to what they saw as a problem. At times, they edited the weapons to make them look less realistic, making them look like water guns or corkscrews. In other cases, they replaced the weapons entirely with objects like shovels. The most amusing edit of this kind occurs early in the series, when the gun Helmeppo points at Koby is replaced with a cartoon hammer on a spring.

2 One Piece Rap is legendary

The first opening theme of One piece, "We Are", is often cited as one of the best anime themes of all time and serves as a leitmotif for the entire series. 4Kids decided to scrap the iconic track instead of simply translating it into English, as Funimation would later do, and create their own original theme for the series.

In its aim to appeal to the West, 4Kids made “Pirate Rap” in an effort to fit in with early 2000s music trends. While the song has its own charm, it is extremely easy to mock and pales in comparison to “We Are.” To make matters worse, 4Kids originally created their own cover of “We Are,” but opted for “Pirate Rap” instead.

3 Several arcs were skipped

While the One piece The anime is filled with original filler, with each arc of the manga being crucial to the ongoing narrative. Events that seem unimportant at the time often become vital hundreds of episodes later. This is what makes 4Kids' choice to skip several arcs of the series such a strange decision.

The Warship Island Arc, Reverse Mountain Arc, and Little Garden Arc were all skipped in the 4Kids dub. One piece, along with the original anime Buffy's Crew Adventure Chronicles, Diary of Koby-Meppo, and Goat Island Arc. While the Warship Island Arc and Reverse Mountain Arc were skipped so the dub could get to the highly marketable Tony Tony Chopper faster, the Little Garden Arc was skipped due to its unavoidable heavy violence. Skipping Little Garden not only created problems for the Alabasta Arc dub—but, if the dub continued interminably, Laboon's erasure would have destroyed Brook's eventual motivation to join the Straw Hat Pirates.

4 Nami's story has been completely changed

The Straw Hat Pirates' navigator, Nami, has one of the saddest stories in the series. When she was just a little girl, her village was conquered by the Arlong Pirates, and when her adoptive mother, Bell-mère, was unable to pay the required taxes, she was forced to watch Arlong shoot her to death.

In the 4Kids dub of One piece, Nami's story has been changed to remove any mention of death.. Instead of killing Bell-mère, Arlong just locks her in a dungeon. Not only does this ruin the emotional power of her sacrifice and take away the most tragic moment in Nami's life, but it makes viewers question why Nami never rescues her after Luffy defeats Arlong.

5 Dubbing and directing vary in quality

While the 4Kids Dub of One piece contains quality performances from some of its talented voice actors, others in the cast give disconcerting performances, while others were clearly overlooked by the voice directors. Voice actors like Marc Diraison, who plays Roronoa Zolo, and Jesse Hooker, who plays Portgaz D. Trace, deliver arguably better performances than their Funimation counterparts, but they are exceptions to the overall level of acting quality in the dub. .

Certain performances, like Erica Schroeder as Monkey D. Luffy and David Moo as Sanji, just don't work; they use voices that are more annoying than anything else and fail to capture the emotion of their most important scenes. Other voice actors were clearly capable of doing a great job, like Veronica Taylor as Nico Robin, but were sabotaged by being forced to use increasingly silly accents.

6 The music doesn't match the series

Music is an important part of One piece anime, setting the tone in more low-key scenes and getting viewers excited during big action moments. In the 4Kids dubs, One could be forgiven for thinking that the musical tracks were inserted randomly.

4Kids is perfectly capable of composing great scores that adapt to the tone of the scenes in which they are inserted, as can be seen in Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! dubs, but none of that same effort can be seen in his dubbing of One piece. The incidental music used is often downright ridiculous due to how inappropriate it is, and the biggest action moments often fall flat due to how weak the tracks accompanying them are.

7 4Kids did their best to westernize One Piece

In all of their English dubs, one of 4Kids' most consistent focuses is to remove all references to Japan and Japanese culture. This Westernization is so prevalent in their English dubs that One piece as in any of his other dubs.

The most famous example of Westernization in 4Kids' One piece dub is the reference to onigiri as cookiessimilar to the changes they also made repeatedly in their dubbing of Pokémon. Other examples of localization in the dub are the removal of all Japanese text and the changing of the Marines to the Navy.

8 Sanji's cigarettes have been replaced with lollipops

Keeping in mind that 4Kids wanted to achieve One piece regarding children, it is reasonable that they would not want one of the main heroes of the story, Sanji, to smoke cigarettes constantly. However, simply replacing their trademark cigarettes with lollipops was one of the dumbest choices they could have made to solve this problem.

The easiest solution for Sanji's cigarettes would have been to simply give him toothpicks, which would have seemed much less juvenile for a 19-year-old man to have in his mouth almost all the time. In the cases of other characters who smoked, such as Smoker and Crocodile, their cigars were completely edited out; this may have also been a more ideal solution for Sanji.

9 4Kids makes it clear that the characters are not drinking alcohol

If there are two things that pirates love, it's treasure and alcohol. In their quest to achieve One piece Aimed at a younger audience, it's understandable that they never mention what the various characters in the series consume when they drink rum or wine. However, 4Kids has gone many steps beyond that.

Not only do the characters avoid mentioning that they are drinking alcohol specifically, but they regularly announce how much they love the non-alcoholic beverages that 4Kids makes them drink. Complementing this change are edits to the coloring of the cachaça and wine in the series to better present it as water or juice.

10 Characters' Participation in the National Anthem 4Kids

Although it is not part of the 4Kids dub One piece appropriate, The 4Kids National Anthem is still one of the weirdest things ever associated with the series. Aired in celebration of the 4th of July, the 4Kids National Anthem played during commercial breaks: Luffy and Usopp, voiced by their 4Kids voice actors, sing the American National Anthem alongside Sonic the Hedgehog and Knuckles the Echidna from Sonic xSplinter and Michaelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesand others.

Not only is it bizarre that the 4Kids National Anthem exists, but the choice to use Luffy and Usopp, specifically, to participate in it is baffling. Not only are their voice actors two of the weakest in the 4Kids dub of One piece, but having them sing in character is positively annoying. This glorified commercial is perhaps the best time capsule fans have of what the culture surrounding children's anime was like in the West in the mid-2000s.