While fans of One Piece who don't enjoy 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 translation were largely brought about by a desire to target the series toward a younger demographic than 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 Removed All the Guns 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 any realistic depictions of firearms to be shown. While they largely refrained from simply editing the guns out and making it look like the characters are all just pointing at each other, as they did in their Yu-Gi-Oh! dub, the alternative ways they went about censoring the guns in One Piece is equally laughable.
4Kids wasn't in a slump creatively when they censored every appearance of guns in the series, as they came up with an abundance of creative solutions to what they saw as a problem. At certain points, they made edits to the guns to make them appear less realistic, making them look like water pistols or cork guns. In other instances, they replaced the guns entirely with objects like shovels. The most amusing edit of this type comes early in the series, when the gun Helmeppo aims at Koby is replaced by a cartoonish hammer on a spring.
2 The One Piece Rap is Legendary
The first opening theme of One Piece, "We Are," is commonly cited as one of the best anime theme songs of all time, and serves as a leitmotif for the entire series. 4Kids elected to scrap the iconic track instead of simply translating it into English, as Funimation would later do, and to create their own original theme for the series.
In their aim to appeal to the west, 4Kids made the "Pirate Rap" in an effort to fit the music trends of the early 2000s. While the song has its own charm, it's extremely easy to mock, and it pales in comparison to "We Are." Making matters worse, 4Kids did originally create their own cover of "We Are" but chose to go with the "Pirate Rap" instead.
3 Multiple Arcs Were Skipped
While the One Piece anime is filled with original filler, every arc from the manga is crucial to the ongoing narrative. Events that seem unimportant at the time commonly turn out to be vital hundreds of episodes later. This is what makes the choice 4Kids made to skip several arcs of the series such a weird decision.
The Warship Island Arc, Reverse Mountain Arc, and Little Garden Arc were all skipped over in 4Kids' dub of One Piece, along with the anime original 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 merchandisable Tony Tony Chopper faster, the Little Garden Arc was skipped for its unavoidable heavy violence. Skipping Little Garden not only created problems for their dub of the Alabasta Arc — but, had the dub continued on interminably, their erasure of Laboon would have destroyed Brook's eventual motivation for joining the Strawhat Pirates.
4 Nami's Backstory Was Completely Changed
The Strawhat Pirates' navigator, Nami, has one of the saddest backstories in the series. When she was just a little girl, her village was conquered by the Arlong Pirates, and when her adopted mother, Bell-mère, was unable to pay her mandated taxes, she was forced to watch as Arlong shot her dead.
In the 4Kids dub of One Piece, Nami's backstory was changed to remove any mention of death. Instead of killing Bell-mère, Arlong merely locks her in a dungeon. This not only spoils the emotional power of her sacrifice, and takes away the most tragic moment of Nami's life, but it makes viewers question why Nami never goes to rescue her after Luffy defeats Arlong.
5 The Voice Acting and Direction Ranges in Quality
While the 4Kids Dub of One Piece does contain quality performances from some of its talented voice actors, others in the cast deliver baffling performances, while others were very clearly failed by the voice directors. Voice actors like Marc Diraison, who plays Roronoa Zolo, and Jesse Hooker, who plays Portgaz D. Trace, turn in arguably better performances than their Funimation counterparts, but they're the exceptions to the general level of the quality of acting in the dub.
Certain performances, such as Erica Schroeder as Monkey D. Luffy and David Moo as Sanji, simply don't work at all; 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, such as Veronica Taylor as Nico Robin, but were sabotaged by being forced to put on increasingly silly accents.
6 The Music Doesn't Suit the Series at All
Music is an important part of the One Piece anime, setting the tone in more lowkey scenes and getting viewers hyped during big action moments. In the 4Kids dubs, one could be forgiven for thinking that the music tracks were inserted at random.
4Kids is perfectly capable of composing great scores that fit the tone of the scenes they're placed in, as seen in the Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! dubs, but none of this same effort can be seen in their dub of One Piece. The incidental music used is often outright laughable for how poorly it fits, and the biggest action moments frequently fall flat because of how weak the tracks that company them are.
7 4Kids Did Their Best to Westernize One Piece
Across all of their English dubs, one of 4Kids' most consistent focuses is removing all references to Japan and Japanese culture. This Westernization is as prevalent in their dub of One Piece as it is in any of their other dubs.
The most well-known instance of Westernization in 4Kids' One Piece dub is the referral to onigiri as cookies, similar to changes they also made repeatedly in their dub of Pokémon. Other examples of localization in the dub are the removal of all Japanese text, and the changing of the Marines into the Navy.
8 Sanji's Cigarettes Were Replaced with Lollipops
Keeping in mind that 4Kids wanted to target One Piece toward young kids, it's reasonable that they didn't want one of the main heroes of the story, Sanji, constantly smoking cigarettes. However, simply replacing his trademark cigarettes with lollipops was one of the silliest choices they could have made to resolve this issue.
The easiest solution to Sanji's cigarettes would have been to simply give him toothpicks, which would appear far less juvenile for a 19-year-old man to keep in his mouth at nearly all times. 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 Beyond Clear That the Characters Aren't Drinking Alcohol
If there are two things pirates are known to love, it's treasure and alcohol. In their aim to target One Piece toward a young audience, it's understandable that they'd never mention what the many characters in the series are consuming when they drink rum or wine. However, 4Kids took it many steps further than that.
Not only do characters simply refrain from mentioning that they're specifically drinking alcohol, but they regularly announce how much they love the non-alcoholic beverages that 4Kids has them drink instead. Complementing this change is the edits to the coloration of the rum and wine in the series to better present it as water or juice.
10 The Participation of the Characters in the 4Kids National Anthem
While not a part of 4Kids' dub of One Piece proper, the 4Kids National Anthem is still one of the weirdest things to ever be associated with the series. Aired in celebration of the Fourth 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 X, Splinter and Michaelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and others.
Not only is it bizarre that the 4Kids National Anthem exists at all, 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 making them sing in-character is positively grating. This glorified commercial is perhaps the best time capsule fans have of what the culture around children's anime in the West looked like in the mid-late 2000s.
