Forum - View topicNEWS: 4Kids Cancels One Piece Production
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Viga_of_stars
 Posts: 1240 Location: Washington D.C. in the Anime Atelier |
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from an artist standpoint i understand fully and agree. if they wanna sell the manga up the rating or chuck it. i rather not see it rather than see a wateredown version. a persons art is sacred and should not be touched by hands other than the artist. |
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Viga_of_stars
Posts: 1240 Location: Washington D.C. in the Anime Atelier |
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*applause* |
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Steventheeunuch
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Here is the thing though. Even in Japan, the form of a manga, as it is released in a serial or as a graphic novel, cannot be 100% proven to be the original author's intent, unless it happens to be a fan comic (not nessecerally based on licensed media. Haibane Renmei for example, is a fan comic, simply meaning it's more independantly produced). The reason being is that they have to go through editors, who will advise and alter things so that the finished product is appropriate for their intended market (as to how much they can enforce is a case by case basis. Violence Jack got a lot of flak from editors and such for being far too violent, considering where it was published, but no one really wanted to shoot him down over it). It could be said that an artist, publishing their work through a studio or corporation that activley alters their work from the very beggining or even 'influences' it to be more appealing to a target audience is not, infact, producing art (which is a load of crap TBH). What we see is that it is art, but it's not sacred, and really, you do not need any more justification for editing here than the Japanese take for editing there. It sucks, I know, but I'm being devil's advocate here and saying this because it's how it happens all over the world, in all manners of print media. |
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Crawly
Posts: 204 |
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Ah, okay. But since Toei hasn't done that in the past, there's no reason to think they would now. I obviously don't know the details of the contract they signed, but if Toei was compensated according to the agreement, then I'm fairly certain they can't do anything. 4Kids, unless they're in breach of contract, are the primary license holders for the first 104 episodes of One Piece in North America until 2009. Toei doesn't give a squirrel's nut what they do with it, so long as they get paid what was agreed upon. Toei trying to pull the license without cause would be like you leasing a car and making all the payments, but because you don't drive it, the leasing company comes and tows it away. |
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becharm
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I knew this day would come sooner or later, but it would be best if they make this decide earlier. Just look at how Viz makes Naruto and Bleach popular here in the USA. 4Kids really did rapped that chance from One Piece a long time ago. Hoefully, it will get redub sooner.
Let all send letters/e-mail a fav. dub company of your choice and ask them nicely about leasing the license and redub them. HOWEVER, I THINK IT IS MORE IMPORTANT TO SEND LETTER TO CARTOON NETWORK, BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALSO AIRED ONE PIECE ALL ALONG TOGETHER WITH OTHER SHONEN SHOWS. IF THEY GET ENOUGH REQUEST FROM FANS, MAYBE MIRRACLE WILL HAPPEN. This is the greatest present this Christmas. 
4KIDS better sale the license before they go bankrupt. |
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Ishida-kun
Posts: 8 |
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Looks like Kahn doesn't even have the guts to admit defeat by giving us a press release.
In Stimpy's words "For shame". In Yoichi Hiruma's (from Eyeshield 21) catchphrase "YA-HA!". |
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AirCooledMan_2006
 Posts: 594 Location: Delaware, U.S. |
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And that's why we should write letters to Toei. Better yet, we should suggest that they take a page from Studio Ghibli's book and start instituting a no-edit policy on ALL their properties that see American release. |
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Malintex Terek
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I do not think the disparty of treatment between OP, Naruto, and Bleach was all that noticeable prior to when the anime were licensed; if anything, Naruto and OP had the advantage of being in Shounen Jump while Bleach was released faster, so I suppose those two factors even out. All three were promoted equally. When Naruto premiered, though, VIZ Media devoted a lot less energy to promoting One Piece; it was bad enough they hardly promoted either series prior to Naruto's big debut (since, even in their dying stages, the DBZ and YGO franchsies were heavily promoted by VIZ) but following it OP was basically forgotten. Even when 4Kids had actually started airing the program, there were few ads devoted devoted to the manga by VIZ, and of course there were the controversial changes to the manga that got a lot of people I believe this was the wrong route to go; it's obvious to even the most casual browser that One Piece is a highly unconventional anime, so VIZ Media needed to put its whole marketing might behind promoting the series to actually get people to look past the artwork, outrageous fighting and strange atmosphere to actually get into the themes, which is probably what distinguishes OP from all other shounen in the eyes of nearly all the fans. Even Kounosuke Uda, the director for the OP anime, realized that the series was unusual but recognized its potential and how easily that potential could be lost; he had to rework the anime's opening episodes to a storyelling style the average television viewer would be "accustomed" to. In regard to treatment now, VIZ Media basically neglects the manga; the dialogue is incredibly childish without "pseudo-swears" to make it seem more mature than it really is, not to mention there are numerous translation and spelling errors. Take, for example, the December 2006 issue of Shounen Jump; Monkey D. Luffy's bounty is mocked by several Baroque Works agents as being "300,000,000 berries", which is an error since at that time his bounty was "30,000,000 berries" and was written IN ENGLISH on a wanted poster several chapters before. This indicates that not only do the translators/adaptors/editors neglect to check for consistency, they don't even look at the artwork. Additionally, there is a complete omission of double entendre/puns that Eiichiro Oda puts into his work. If there's potential for a pun, Oda will put one in, and almost everything is a pun in this sense; take Zoro's attack "Onigiri", which could be read as either "demon slash" or "riceball". This hidden cultural meaning isn't even referenced with a footnote in the VIZ manga; instead, many of the references are for trivial stuff, like imbedded sailing nomenclature that wasn't originally in the story or a huge paragraph meant to explain why some fat Manmer had a small manji on his gut.
I do not think any of those titles are aimed at teenagers, they're all geared for the youngest common consumer, a child. The issue with OP is that, like The Rocky and Bullwinkle show, there's a lot of hidden stuff in the manga for adults to enjoy that are not necessarily in Naruto or Bleach. One Piece's major failing is that it has a lot more "intelligent" humour than either Bleach or Naruto yet it has a far more childish art style. Granted, Naruto and Bleach do use cultural legends and stuff, but that's no different from Western comic books using legends; the stuff in Eiichiro Oda's manga is, in almost every instance, fresh/original writing. As my associate Ubiq once pointed out to make, take God Ener's sentence, "Watashi wa kaminari". "Kami" is God, "nari" is the bearng of fruit, and "Kaminari" means thunder; God Ener is a Logia Devil Fruit user who has the power of thunder and lightning. That's an incredible meaning, and given VIZ Media's track record, they would probably only translate that as "I am thunder". In my view, either the triple meaning of that case be footnoted or some type of localization be applied; I suggested a translation of "I'm just JOVIAL", which is a pun toward Jove, the Roman name of Zeus the Greek God of the heavens (who weilded lightning) and sarcastic annoyance, which is typical of Ener. Yet, even something as amateur as that kind of localization is completely avoided, which is a trademark of either no effort, poor writing, or a lack of caring. One Piece deserves better than that.
Naruto in its current form is selling well, breaking all records in fact; as such, the market is receptive to the treatment VIZ is giving Naruto and nothing should be changed. It appeals to people in all demographics and transcends sterotypes about manga, thus promoting Japanese culture (which is unalienable, since Naruto has a Japanese setting). Additionally, Naruto as a manga pretty much *is* uncut, aside from the translation of certain attack names and the artwork sound effect edits. One of my colleagues mentioned on Arlong Park that the a recent Naruto English volume contained Neiji Hyuuga's manji, which was censored in its original Shounen Jump run. However, this "uncensored" treatment isn't exactly working for OP; it's not really uncensored, nor is it it fully localized. Rather, it's in limbo, trying to appeal to all demographics at once yet failing to land a solid footing in any of them. What should happen is VIZ Media produce a manga and then let an audience be attracted to it, not try to pre-emptively appeal to a certain audience. In the case of One Piece, that sort of approach has shown itself to be ineffective, so some active attempt to appeal at a certain demographic must be employed; VIZ should have promoted One Piece as a sort of "no-rules, no-parents do-whatever-the-heck-one-wants" kind of story (think Pleasure Island in Pinocchio) with a fresh mixture of intelligent, crude, and absurd humour. The primary audience in this case would be children, since the children would be attracted to the "bad behaviour" of the main characters (while entertained by the action and "crude" humour), while the adults would read into the story for the deep themes and "intelligent" humour.
Except at the time of DBZ most people didn't know it was butchered, they thought the dub was great; DBZ popularity went down for a bit after FUNimation, who *had* the license all the time (they were just working with the censor-happy Saban) switched to their new style and actors. What benefited FUNimation was that DBZ already had a huge amount of popularity from its Cartoon Network run, and it was at a "climax" of the series, that is, the final fights of the Freezer Saga on Namek. One Piece is a whole different kettle of fish; Arabasta has been finished by 4Kids, thus leaving any new group to either redub one hundred and twenty episodes of the series, risking the ire of people considering the new dub "reruns", and the next arc, Skypiea, is extremely convoluted especially in anime form and weeded out a HUGE number of fans gained from Arabasta in Japan. Couple that with knowledge of 4Kids actually butchering the series and reception is exceptionally poor. Whoever gets the OP license now needs more money than 4Kids to bring it out of the red. The only company I could possibly imagine with that kind of clout is The Walt Disney Company; so, pretty much, OP is done for at least four more years.
I'd love that, I really would, but Toei doesn't seem to like FUNimation anymore, since they negotiated to take away the DVD distributing rights from FUNimation even though FUNimation distributes the DVDs of *all* other 4Kids properties. There's somewhat of a relationship between 4Kids and FUNimation, but that doesn't mean FUNimation would accept buying the license. Remember, they're still reeling from Detective Conan, which is Yomiuri's big cash-cow that lost its cable-television slot due to low ratings and is extremely expensive, rivalling if not equalling One Piece. Licensing Detective Conan is almost certainly the reason FUNimation did not pursue the One Piece license; at the time, they couldn't afford it!
The VIZ Media manga is a mediocre sale, less than other properties like Ranma 1/2 or Inu-Yasha, let alone Naruto or Bleach. It isn't exactly well liked, but it does make sales; it just doesn't make proportional sales to its status in Japan, which essentially means its a failure in the West. Additionally, most of the manga readers are 4Kids anime fans, not the folks like those on the 'net who read the comics from Japan. Cutting off the 4Kids anime would likely result in a drop of interest/sales in the manga. Finally, I do not think there is any evidence to suggest that FUNimation "pesters" 4Kids for uncut DVDs. The uncuts sold well, but not better than the censored DVDs, so 4Kids discontinued them.
So, to clarify, how you're defining "graphic" in this instance is physical violence shown, not necessarily implied or psychological in nature. If that's the case, I'll direct you to this collage I've just made; since I do not own any Bleach volumes or tankobans, panels from that manga are not included: Violence comparison of One Piece and Naruto. Just in case, spoiler[ As you can see from this, the first panel is what I consider the most "graphic" panel in all of One Piece, Zoro's wound from Mihawk. The last panel is the runner up, Luffy's impaling from Croc. In the middle are the various Naruto panels that I thought to be fairly significant; the largest is of course Kakashi v. Haku, which is the goriest image on the entire collage. This is followed by Hayate, who has been cleaved in half, and Dosu, who is much the same. ] Keep in mind that that the the two OP images are the *most* graphic in the entire manga, whereas the ones in Naruto are only for something like the first ten volumes; that's omitting Naruto v. Kabuto (Sannin), the fights in the "Rescue Sasuke Arc", and especially Naruto II (heck, just check out last week's chapter for another impaling). Given these two rare instances in OP, the most common "graphic" violence in the manga are bloody clothes, bloody limbs or light flying blood here and there; no gushing, no pools, few impaled bodies and only a single instance of a limb being ripped off. At its most violent, OP isn't even close to Naruto's wanton violence, let alone Bleach.
This is a different type of "graphic", though; physical violence. The Water 7 arc had relatively little blood, but there were a lot of beatings. Past Luffy v. Croc I there has been little explicit content like an impaling (Lucci did something like this, though, in W7 but it wasn't a killing move), and, as I defined earlier, much of the "graphic" violence were bloody clothes and limbs with some flying blood. Ironically, Chopper, Nami, and Usopp walked away from Skypiea burnt and bruised, not bloody; few people who did not fight Zoro ended up like that. Last edited by Malintex Terek on Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Abarenbo Shogun
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Think about it from a business standpoint: Do you really want to reveal the fact that you just failed royally on a property that you hyped as "The Next Yu-Gi-Oh?" Simply put, the reason why he hasn't sent out a press release (much like how most TV networks don't do when they cancel shows) is he doesn't want it to be obvious to investors and the like. That shows that the company could be showing signs of weakness. That reminds me...maybe one day I should call into Mad Money with Jim Cramer and ask about 4Kids, and say on air the follies of Kahn on why "i'm hesitant on buying that stock." Think kahn might have a heart attack when that airs? |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Frank0115932
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Finally, there is a God!
Al Kahn may had ruined OP, but he also ruined FFO and UM:T, and he also made another mistake by signing MDRM and MMP (2 shows that has some loli) onto its list. In response to the guy who wants to give Jim Cramer info about this (even during the famous "Lightning Round" segment), i should say "go for it" and give a "boo-yah" while you're at it... If you kinda forgot the VM number for Mad Money, here's CNBC's contact us link, since you can also drop a line there: https://register.cnbc.com/email/EmailSupport.jsp. Anyways, if the rights of OP should be bought before 4Kids gets canned and my favorite shows on 4KidsTV become canceled (and the world domination to also begin...) i suggest VIZ or Saban should gain the rights. VIZ is known worldwide for its great dubs, and Saban made Digimon go up in the fanbase for 3 years (and giving MCK some good fixes and fillers, with the main storyline also great, and the voice acting giving the Emeril touch "Bam!"). --The FZ |
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Ishida-kun
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Brothers know Japanese and are One Piece fans. I'm really into BLEACH, Yu Yu Hakusho and Eyeshield 21. |
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Ishida-kun
Posts: 8 |
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I don't think anybody's gonna wanna mess with a Tv flop for a while unless they are really sure they can clean up the mess it left in Toonami viewer's minds. Viz are busy with Naruto,BLEACH,POT and Mar,they likely don't have time or money to gamble on Luffy and the straw hats. FUNimation have been getting a lot of 26 episode crap and really need something with actual depth and length. If they wanna get short series then hurry up and get Ichigo 100%. Also,don't forget that Toei CAN get Ilimatoon to release One Piece uncut like they are with Bobobobobobobo.
The most likely situation is that One Piece should just stay in Japan like Eyeshield 21 and be watched on the net by American's. Like Eyeshield 21 it's got a very unanime feel that the kiddies and newbs just don't click with. Why bring something to America if you "have to" edit the life out of it to where it looks like something a group of 3rd graders made as a homework project. |
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Steventheeunuch
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Yeah i heard HGT was GTRB with MRMRMR and &EWFGJIASF jesus is it so hard to type names of shows PLEASE.
He won't do it and on top of it all no one actually cares about what he says. Do it, though.
This paragraph really summarises why you're honestly not thinking very straight or are several years behind. Viz currently does have home video rights to OP, but it's still sublicensed from 4Kids who, regardless of bankruptcy, will have the show till 2009 (and in a bizzare twist of fate will probably renew the license, just wait for it). Saban doesn't exist anymore since they were incorperated into ABC/Disney/Whatever. And have you looked at Saban's Catalouge for Anime? Sure, it's a tasteful selection, and Samurai Pizza Cats is a noteworthy adaptation, but the rest are basically, sans rap, the same shit that One Piece was- stupidly adapted, badly edited, badly voiced. So you'd want a slightly less retarded, but still retarded, One Piece?
er?
Digimon made Digimon go "up in the fanbase for 3 years etc etc", Saban simply handled it appropriatly. If it were shit on a stick, Saban wouldn't be able to make it go anywhere. This is the problem with 4Kids and One Piece. Yes, 4Kids shot themselves in the foot by doing stupid edits, demeaning their audience and generally doing stupid things like 4Kids.TV instead of CN or whatever. What people don't understand though is that One Piece, from a western market perspective, is an incredibly weird show. It's not like DBZ or Naruto, where the designs are fairly clean-cut and abilities and such fall in to the norm. It's about a rubber boy fighting mutant clowns, gods and walking fish with a chef, a samurai, a walking midget reindeer doctor, Bart Simpson with an elongated nose and a bunch of sluts. It doesn't have that sort of child-epic feel to it, no does it have more 'normal' powers (Shoots fire from his mouth and fires Bees and stuff!). This helped One Piece well, not succeed aswell. One Piece, as well as Gundam Seed and Detective Conan, enjoy/enjoyed massive success in Japan, because Japan has had the luxury and benefit of fourty years of specially tailored cartoons with an evolving, socially-detached fanbase and kids. Gundam Seed was a success because people have had 20 or more years of Gundam, and this was another notch on the belt. Detective Conan has themes that normally do not carry over for the same western market, and unfortunantly you cannot avoid that. And One Piece, well, same reasons I mentioned above. Last edited by Steventheeunuch on Sat Dec 09, 2006 6:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Steventheeunuch
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They would, but it wouldn't nessecerally go as fast as people would want.
Detective Conan is still running. Kodocha is 102 episodes. They haven't done a proper DBZ release. Face it, longer series are pretty expensive to get and to get adequate returns, you need appropriatly expensive advertising, marketting and exposure. No series in Japan ready for licensing will get this much.
No I'd like less shitty harem fanservice schoolgirl pervert crap if that's okay. Toei could, but they probably won't want to, considering not much, if not none, of One Piece has an uncut dub or any uncut materials to work from. Bobobobo bobobo already has, from what I can tell, material to make uncut DVDs. The most likely situation is that One Piece should just stay in Japan like Eyeshield 21 and be watched on the net by American's. Like Eyeshield 21 it's got a very unanime feel that the kiddies and newbs just don't click with. Why bring something to America if you "have to" edit the life out of it to where it looks like something a group of 3rd graders made as a homework project.[/quote] |
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