Don’t Give It Up

 It's Vanilla Rice!

Don’t give it up, Luffy. Don’t give it up Zolo. Don’t give it up Nami. Don’t give it up, give it up, give it up, give it up…

It has been five long, tiring years since our beloved One Piece was tragically taken from a loving home and places into the incapable hands of “NoFUNimation” Entertainment. Our beloved franchise was once the cornerstone of Saturday mornings, has been run off of television entirely. This is no doubt, because of all of its new owner’s disrespectful changes.  We will never end our crusade to bring back One Piece, with its original voices. We can never give it up.

Perhaps the most depressing loss in the change of ownership was the change of the theme song. 4Kids’ iconic theme song punched you in your face and told you everything One Piece was all about:  Pirates, samurai, treasure hunting, and never giving up on your dreams. What we got in its place was a shallow and generic pop song which makes frequent mentions of the ocean, and sand, but fails anywhere in its lyrics to tell the kids that they’re watching a show about pirates. A television song’s opening theme is meant to represent the series as a whole. It should be an iconic song that can withstand hundreds of episodes, and not changed every time the studio records something an actor sang in the shower.

That voice actor was probably hired off the street. The new cast members were absolutely disgraceful, and did not even attempt to imitate the established character voices and accents that are intrinsic to what these characters are and what they represent. Zolo went from a young swordsman to sounding like a 40 year old man with lung cancer, perhaps to tie in with Sanji’s new addiction. Luffy loses his trademark laugh, and apparently catches a cold that never goes away. Chopper still sounds as cute as ever… Even when he transforms into his larger, more masculine forms! The utter laziness of the direction and new voice talent is astounding.

If the property had been treated with love and respect for the original vision, One Piece could have survived a mass shift in voice cast, like Pokemon has managed to. Unfortunately, NoFUNimation decided to rebrand the show to an older audience. A Saturday morning cartoon was edited, with the intent of making the family friendly show darker, gritty and adult oriented. Hammers became guns. Water pistols were modified to resemble realistic guns. Additional frames of needless violence were added into the animation. For such a heartless attempt at One Piece, a huge amount of effort was placed into all of the wrong places.

The most spectacular editing labor was most certainly the one that was needed in every single episode. Sanji, the lollipop loving member of the Strawhat crew, was retconned into the token smoker. His previous character is unrecognizable in the newer versions of the series. Though we have never heard any official confirmation of this rumor, the innumerable evidence available suggests that Funimation signed a contract with R.J. Reynolds, producer of Camel Cigarettes, in order to foster a new generation of smokers.

With Funimation having long since re-edited the original 4Kids episodes of One Piece to match their new bastardization of the series, it seems like hope it all but lost, but it’s important for us to remember what Funimation does not want us to. As the One Piece rap instructs us, “Never give it up.” Do your best to inform any ignorant viewers what really happened with the change in ownership. Write polite letters to Funimation and Toei, telling the owners that we would One Piece to bring back the original dub voice cast, and its former glory.