Resurfaced One Piece Clip Shows How Hilariously 4Kids’ Dub Ended

The English licensing and production process might be more well known now thanks to the Internet, but for many years English dubs of anime were produced far more notoriously. 4Kids was at the forefront of this process, for better or worse, and while the company helped introduced English language fans to anime properties like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, they earned just as much of a negative reputation for how much they censored and altered anime like One Piece. But if you weren’t paying close attention to its Toonami run back then, 4Kids’ dub came to an end without much explanation.

4Kids’ original One Piece dub came to an end without fanfare, and was quickly replaced by Funimation’s English dub production in the same time slot. So fans watching from week to week were suddenly surprised to hear different voices behind some of their favorite characters. But seeing the 4Kids’ dub’s final moments are a lot more hilariously awkward than that.

The One Piece 4kids no Context account on Twitter (a hilarious collection of clips run by @rsdream12 on Twitter) shared a brutal reminder of how the original, and controversial dub came to an end with the implication that the Straw Hats had died thanks to a mysterious ship falling out of the sky.

Fans of the franchise know that this is the start of the Skypiea arc of the anime as Luffy and the others investigate a mysterious island in the sky, but as the 4Kids dub never made it to this point in the series before losing the license the scene has a funny new layer of ironic flavor. Fans had suspected that the first few lines of the Funimation dub referenced the older work back then, but it’s hard to prove at this point.

Now it’s hard to make such a dramatic shift between companies without everyone knowing long before it actually happens, but seeing this shift happen in real time certainly was a shocker. One Piece remains one of the biggest series in the world to this day, but it’s still fun to remember how shaky of a start it got in the United States!

What did you think of 4Kids’ English dub run of One Piece? Remember that hilarious theme song? Did you manage to catch the dub shift in real time on Toonami? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!