One Piece More: Welcoming the New Guys

What am I doing? Oh yeah....Umm...

Things have been really busy this week in both real life and on the blog side. I have been slowly  recovering from AKon and getting over my con hangover. Getting back into the step of a normal life (Whatever normal means) that doesn't involve me getting angry with many horribly design streets. Then on blog side, things been going normally except that there is the job of doing the Akon con report which has been really fun so far. Though at the same time there are many things coming on the horizon which one of them will be revealed in this post!

-Mikey-san

New Bloggers 
by The One Piece at a Time Crew 

This blog is constantly growing and I am amazed at how fast it is growing. When I first started this blog, I wanted to cover everything that is One Piece but I soon found out that the series itself is so big. So to help out in covering every piece of One Piece, I decided that I was going to need more hands. That was why I made out the call to anybody who wants to help out. A few good people came up and I am happy to introduce two new bloggers that will being joining the One Piece at a Time crew! Sora Tayuya and Super Neku!

Both are young bloggers that I think will help this blog grow and be able to help a lot. They are both really talented and I am sure they have things that will make this blog better. May it be better grammar (then myself) or new material which are both welcomed here. You've seen a taste of what they can do this week as they filled in as guest bloggers for the Anime and Manga post  but I let them introduce themselves now.

SuperNeku: Hello everyone its nice to meet you all! I shall be the official "first mate" here at One Piece at a Time, hoping to achieve my dream of spreading the word of how One Piece is probably one of the best series ever, particularly to anime fans living in the UK. How did I exactly get into this series? It just sort of happened. Basically I remember the craptastic 4Kids dub of the show airing on Cartoon Network and thinking "Wow. This makes no sense. It sucks" and all that. But after maturing a little and also partly due to its large fanbase on the internet I eventually checked out a random episode in Japanese and realized that (of course I didn't really get it since it was at the end of the Water 7 arc) I really liked, so I did the unthinkable: I marathoned the entire series (yes even the filler) all the way up to the Saobody arc (which was the latest arc in the anime at the time). I really regretted missing out on something so good for so many years, but now I can enjoy the series the way that I should've...right? Almost. We here in the UK get the low end of the stick. We get the manga and some of the videogames yes, but we are entirely ignored in terms of the anime. Its fantastic that the US is getting the series the way that it was intended, but we want a "piece of the pie" so to say. But since presumably Toei is quite stingy about the UK (we don't even have any of the friggin Dragonball series on DVD minus the AWFUL, AWFUL dubbed movies a few years ago) some fans have to resort to importing the Funimation DVDs from America. I'll probably end up doing that when Season 3 First Voyage comes out but I want to support my own country. Well anyway, this was longer than intended, but thanks for reading and I hope I can become a great asset to One Piece at a Time.

Sora: Sup, I'm Sora, right out of the USA. I suppose I will tell of how I got into One Piece, even if it is a bit random. I am a sucker for old fashioned cartoons, and so I was just flipping channels and I got to Cartoon Network a few years ago. I swear that I saw the first One Piece episode on CN, and since back then it was 4Kids and I was clueless, I thought it looked funny and cool and decided to watch it. Basically, I actually liked 4Kids for a number of years. Weird, huh?

Honestly, One Piece is THE anime which opened my eyes to every anime online, real manga, and Japan. Ha, I was so lame back then (I think it was like 6 years ago) that I didn't even know that One Piece was anime, or even what anime was! This just proves how far someone can come in a measly 5 or 6 years. Well, I made a habit of watching the series weekly on Saturday nights, it still is a tradition for me today! When Toonami killed it in the middle of the Skypia Arc, I almost died. That is how I discovered that I could find it online, thank goodness.

Well, since that fateful YouTube day, a lot has changed. I was in dire need of my routine, so faithfully I only watched 1 per week, every Saturday. That changed this last summer, summer of '09. I was sooooo incredibly bored with nothing to do that summer, that I broke down and went on a One Piece binge during the last two weeks of July and first week of August. I went from the beginning of the Water 7 arc around Episode 250 straight through to Episode 512, the newest episode of the time. 3 weeks. I was still unsatisfied (although a little amazed at myself). Now I was obsessed with Ace's predicament. So, I found where the manga was and where it about equaled the anime as to where I was and read starting from when Luffy first learned of Ace's capture. And so ends my amazing (-ly long) story about OnePiece and its pure epicness to me.

Oh, and I have seen EVERY episode, just because I am a lover of knowledge, which is also why I am technically the crew "Historian" here. I need to know all of (or at least have heard before) the details all the time to be satisfied. Ok, now I am done. Really.

Mikey-san: So here are our new crew members! This blog is growing and I am hoping with both Sora and SuperNeku that we will be able to cover more. Maybe there will be reviews in the future? Recaps of the One Piece fandom? News? I think so. Maybe. haha

The Industry Strikes Back 
by The One Piece at a Time Crew 

Mikey-san: The big news this week was that Japanese publishing and American licensing companies have gotten together to combat manga scanlations site by forming a coalition. This little coalition has some big names on both sides of the ocean. Some people on the Japan side include Kodansha and Shueisha while on the American side there are names like Viz, TokyoPop, and Yen Press.

It is nice to see that the Japanese companies are teaming up with the American companies to combat scanlations sites. This just proves that the Japanese companies are realizing that scanlations are hurting them in not just the American side but their own side too. The issue that I have is how they are going about in combating the scanlation sites. It seems like they want to take legal actions as in suing the pants off these people. Now that sounds good and all but does this type of thing actually work? The music industry tried this type of action before and the idea was to scare off people from downloading music illegally but as we can see now that it isn't working.

The thing is if they do get rid of the bigger name scanlation sites then what is stopping another person from coming along and start up a new scanlation site. If I wanted to, I could create a scanlation site right now by taking all the scans that have been done so far and put them on a site. The people who made the scans may get upset but at least their stuff will be out there for people to see. In reality there are tons of scanlation sites and if one leaves then another one will pop up to fill the void. You kill one site and ten more will come out to take its place.

Personality, and I am sure tons of people have said this already, I think the best way to combat scanlations is that these companies need to provide their own scans of the chapters from Japan. To have a simulcast of the chapters similar to what Funimation and Crunchyroll are doing. It is clear that everybody is reading the Japanese manga and the American manga so why fight it? So far agreeing to most of the things we want has gotten them good stuff. Surely a better product will be made if they do this. Still at the same time they should conduct legal action against these scanlation sites. That way it will prevent them from just stealing the simlu-scans that they provide. This may take a lot of work to do with doing lawsuits on one side and providing a good quality simlu-scan but it could work. Heck, that would make our job here much easier and I would be willing to pay for them if they charge.

Recently there has been news about this thing called OpenManga that I will call the manga version of CrunchyRoll. Apparently these guys ran a site that provided raws and scanlations of manga but now they are going to take down all of their stuff and then reformat to become this thing called OpenManga where they would allow people to view and upload manga via permission from the artist and make money via merchandise. This sounds good but I am wondering what they mean. They mention nothing about who they contacted. I am seeing this as two ways. They are working together with the coalition to where they would be providing the simu-scans where the coalition would handle the legal stuff. The other way is that these guys got scared stiff and are trying avoid being hurt. Either way I won't believe anything till I see a finish product and if that finish product includes a legal way to view One Piece from Japan then that is alright with me.

Still bring on the simlu-scans! We already got a simlucast so how about we get the best of both worlds here.

SuperNeku: Hoo boy this was BOUND to happen eventually. My basic thoughts on this are I'm not for piracy, these people are doing the sensible thing since scanlations are pretty much stealing and losing them money, BUT I think that there should be an alternative in coinciding with simulcasts. Lets think about this, ever since anime such as One Piece, Bleach and Naruto got simulcasted by Funimation, Viz Anime and Crunchyroll, the fansubbing for those series has dropped drastically (although they still exist which is pointless since the translation will be less accurate and people are more likely to go to the original source than some random crappy, low quality translation) also, its free as opposed to donating to some fansubbers.

But not ALL territories are available to some of these simulcasts so naturally people living in these territories are going to most likely, go to fansubbing website. Thats still a problem that some fans from all over the world can't enjoy a show straight from the source, I know its all financial problems and stuff like that but I still think that the companies that make these animations needs to find a way to provide these countries with a reliable, legal source. They MIGHT gain interest if that certain series gains sales from manga and/or merchandise if available but its still not that likely. My point is, we need an alternative source if scanlations are going to be taken down (it shouldn't be too impossible as Shonen Jump has a chapter or two from some series on their website) in order to gain manga/anime fans into a series or satisfying their needs for an accurate translation. Thats my two cents on this subject.

Sora: Hmm...well, for a while now I've been really irritated by fan-subbers, mainly for the reason that all of the sites that fan-sub are full of viruses. The other reason is because of my little pet-peeve: I have an issue with getting..."faulty" knowledge. When I learn something, I Learn it. I absolutely hate when I find out that something I have learned is false or wrong. It irks me terribly. And most of the manga fan-subbed isn't properly translated, so it really irritates me.

Of course, for a lot of people who cannot afford to buy all of the volumes (...like me...) reading the books or part of them at least online is very efficient and helpful. I think that if those companies would like to boost their popularity and sales, that they should definitely get some sort of legal manga scans out there. At least few pages of each book, if only to entice more people to get the books.

Especially for anime: they need to keep constantly on charge of their legal subs, or else the public will grow restless and just take the easy/lazy way and watch fan-subbed episodes, no matter how bad they are. There are plenty of free sites out there that are easy to get to, and if they are not careful, the animation companies will continue to loose even more business to the fan-subbers. Making sure that subs are easy and free for as many countries as possible is a top priority right now for them.
That is basically what I think about it.

Sources: 
Anime News Network
About.com: Manga
Publishers Weekly
MangaHelpers/OpenManga
Anime News Network

An Overall View On Fullmetal Alchemist
by SuperNeku 

I know this has NOTHING to do with One Piece but a LOT of people love this series so I thought I'd bring it up. After a little over 100 chapters spanning over almost 10 years since it was first published, Fullmetal Alchemist has finally ended. I won't spoil the ending for fans out there, all I will say is this: FANTASTIC. Its strange too, its only been a few years since English speaking audiences were exposed to this series and its done. Of course the anime Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (which is excellent btw! :3) is still airing in Japan and the series is only just being released in the English dubbed language by Funimation and Adult Swim. Heck I never really got into this until I read the manga (the first anime series was okay but the second half got kinda weird and stupid, stick to Brotherhood and the manga for future reference). I'm glad that it wasn't dragged out for too long compared to a lot of other shonen series, the original story is strong, the character's emotions, appearance and relationships develop very nicely over the entire span of the series and the artwork just gets better and better. So to series creator and artist Hiromu Arakawa, thank you for providing so many people all over the world with such a fantastic series and I hope to see your latest work soon.

You can buy the manga from Viz Media here

You can buy Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Vol 1 on Bluray and DVD here and here

You can watch the latest Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (English subbed) here

One Piece Junk I Own

by Mikey-san

Haven't done one of these things in a long while but since I showed off this little girl a lot during my Akon trip I though she deserve a proper introduction.

The above is a nice little Nami plushie that I got about two and a half years ago at OniCon. She is a cute little thing and a fun plushie to play with. The bag that has her jolly roger on is removable when you untie the ropes to allow you can see her bottom half. If you look carefully here then you can see her legs. One of my favorite One Piece plushies since she is the only normal one that I have. A little idea that I was playing around with before Akon was to see if I can make a mini dress of Nami's Strong World outfit so we would be matching but then I realize that I didn't have enough time and it would be a bit creepy. haha

So as one week ends, another one begins. There are going to be some big things coming to the blog as now Sora and SuperNeku has now join the crew here. You all got a little taste of what they can do from the anime and manga post that each did and you know things will only get better from here. Then you know that Mikey got some cool things up his sleeves as in contests. So stay on the look out for that!

Still if you haven't checked out my first part of my recap of AKon then feel free to check it out here. This is what I think will be the first of a three part series of the convention since so much happen at AKon! I am currently working on the second part so keep an eye out for that one. Still if you want to check out how much One Piece was at AKon then that is the post you want since I posted all the One Piece cosplay pictures there.

Everybody enjoy your weekend and make sure to have fun doing whatever you do to have fun! Keep an eye out for the Anime post covering the latest in the anime and don't forget to watch the new One Piece episode at OnePieceOfficial.com!