One Piece: Stampede's Dub Gets Japan's Seal of Approval

One of the all time debates among anime fans is whether to watch anime shows with English subtitles or English dubbed tracks. It's a debate that will forever continue, but what has definitely leveled the playing field over the last few years is just how well produced English dubs are. This is especially true for Funimation's dub for One Piece, and fans recently got another piece of the dub with the theatrical premiere of One Piece: Stampede in the United States. It turns out that the director behind the film, Takashi Otsuka, is a big fan of the film's English dub too!

Otsuka recently took to Twitter to share his experience of watching the film's English dub in Hawaii and remarked just how great of an interpretation Funimation had for the film. He even went as far as asking for a DVD release of the English dub!

Takashi Otsuka, Director of One Piece: Stampede, went to watch the dub in Hawaii and loved it! https://t.co/7nePxVcpWQ

— Toei Animation (@ToeiAnimation) October 31, 2019

Seeing Otsuka's comment has sparked some great support for the English dub cast of One Piece, and Sonny Strait, the voice behind Usopp, took to Twitter to respond to the love for the English dub, "Nice. A little dub love. To be fair, the main English dub cast was chosen by Oda himself. Usopp is the one part where if you say you don't like it I say I don't care because the creator of the series says that's what he hears in his head."

Nice. A little dub love. To be fair, the main English dub cast was chosen by Oda himself. Usopp is the one part where if you say you don’t like it I say I don’t care because the creator of the series says that’s what he hears in his head. https://t.co/FKtyphO2Hv

— Sonny Strait (@sonnystrait) October 31, 2019

Funimation screened One Piece: Stampede in the United States with English subtitles on October 24, 29 and 31, and with an English dub on October 26 and 30. They officially describe the new film as such, "Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat pirate crew are invited to a massive Pirate Festival that brings many of the most iconic characters from throughout the franchise to participate in competition with the Straw Hats to find Roger's treasure. It also pits the Straw Hats against a new enemy named Bullet, a former member of Roger's crew."

The English dubbed release of the film sees many returning cast members from the anime series including Colleen Clinkenbeard, Christopher R. Sabat, Luci Christian, Eric Vale, Sonny Strait, Brina Palencia, Stephanie Young, Patrick Seitz, Ian Sinclair, Mike McFarland, Kyle Hebert, Matthew Mercer, T. Axelrod, Jonathan Brooks, Felecia Angelle, Brad Venable, DC Douglas, and Chris Rager as Blackbeard. This is especially great after getting confirmation that work will be resuming on the English dub for the main series, too.