4Kids Entertainment



4Kids Entertainment was a United States film and television production company specializing in the acquisition, production and licensing of children's entertainment around the world. They are most known for their acquired television programs. On December 21, 2012, they changed their names to 4Licensing Corporation.

4Kids Productions
4Kids Productions is a wholly owned subsidiary of 4Kids Entertainment, and is responsible for the production of original or licensed properties owned by the company.

History
On August 6, 2004, 4Kids announced they had acquired the license to domestic distribution over One Piece.

After this, 4Kids set to work on an English version of the series. Norman J. Grossfeld, the president of 4Kids at the time, was the executive producer. On August 14, 2004, the first promotional trailers were released for viewing alongside Mew Mew Power and F-Zero: GP Legend. Their English dub of One Piece debuted on the 4Kids TV block (formally FoxBox) on September 18, 2004. On November 18, 2004, Toonami announced it was allowed the broadcasting rights to air the show in the UK; the series began airing on Saturday, April 23, 2005. The next channel to announce production was Cartoon Network on February 16, 2005.

It was revealed on April 24, 2005 that One Piece, along with many other shows, would receive an uncut DVD release. On September 6, 2005, the DVDs for the series were released with the words "English TV Version" on the box, but Al Kahn had previously stated that things would come in two formats. Later, uncut DVDs were announced by Viz media as a no-go as they were not involved with the series.

On November 11, 2005 One Piece along with another show dubbed by 4Kids, Mew Mew Power, were reported missing from the 4Kids line-up. However, the show was announcement as "not canceled" on November 23, 2005 and was expected to return later on, but 4Kids did not announce when. On December 22, 2005, 4Kids announced the show would return after the holiday season and on January 2, 2006 the series was announced to be continuing on February 11. The dub's naming conventions were used in One Piece-related media in North America, such as the English version of the fighting game One Piece Grand Battle for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube.

Changes
On September 9, 2004 4Kids answered the problems of Sanji smoking in the show. This was one of the few announced changes made to the series and the first alteration 4Kids spoke of in regard to the dub.

One of the more noted changes that was spotted was in episode 5 when 4Kids changed the skin of a character from black to white. This was common practice made by 4Kids to avoid a certain stereotype and was seen in other anime at the time.

The most note worthy problem with the 4Kids dub is that many arcs were cut from the original storyline. These included:


 * Warship Island Arc
 * Reverse Mountain Arc
 * Little Garden Arc

In all cases, the storyline had to be altered resulting in significant problems. At the time, there was no way of knowing which way the mangaka Oda was taking the storyline, therefore many plot holes were later caused in this version. These changes were never given reason for and remains the subject of much speculation amongst fans. While there are also many other complaints on the company in regard to alterations, such as visible alterations, poor translations and low-quality dubbing, this remains the only non-opinion based problem caused by the dub.

Plot Hole Creation: Warship Island
Information left out in the Warship Island arc on entry into the Grand Line created problems in explaining why one cannot just sail into the Grand Line.

Plot Hole Creation: Reverse Mountain
Laboon was removed; had 4Kids continued the series, this would have left Brook without reason to join the crew later on.

Crocus was removed, resulting in the storyline being reworked to fit around his absence. The rework initially included just his Log Pose explanation that he gave the Straw Hats. Crocus, however, was a focused character during the Thriller Bark Arc and Sabaody Archipelago Arc. At the time other storylines that mention his importance to the One Piece world had not been reached in the original Japanese version.

Plot Hole Creation: Little Garden
Because the Little Garden arc was removed, there was no explanation behind much of Mr. 3's later appearance in Alabasta. He was said to have been chasing the Straw Hat Pirates since Rogue Town yet Baroque Works did not know about the crew in the actual storyline until Misty Peak. Mr. 3 and his partner Ms. April Fool's were also spoken about during the explanation about Baroque Works given on the organization as if the crew had met them. This would also create a problem in the Impel Down arc, as Luffy would never have met Mr. 3 previously and thus would not know who he was.

Because the Little Garden Arc was removed, Dorry and Brogy were not part of the storyline. This meant later on another plot hole would have been created for Oimo and Kashi.

Nami has gotten sick due to being bitten by a Kestia in Little Garden but because 4Kids skipped it, they attempt to explain her illness by calling it "Grand Line fever", but 4Kids would later contradict this by letting Kureha ask Nami if she had been walking around on a prehistoric island.

Elbaf also plays a small part on the story, as Usopp wanted to go there, yet 4Kids removed it.

Edits
In producing a version of One Piece for the North American market, 4Kids Entertainment considerably changed the animation. These alterations include:

Cuts and Removals
As of June 2006, the equivalent of 32 episodes of material had been cut from what were originally 102 episodes. Among the removed was the Warship Island Arc, the Reverse Mountain Arc and the entire Little Garden Arc. All removed episodes and arcs were written around, sometimes contradicting the continuity established by the dub.

For example, in order to explain Mr. 3's presence after the Little Garden arc, it was told that he followed the Straw Hats since "Roguetown", when Baroque Works did not even know about them at that point.

Sound
Changes made to the sound track include removing the original symphonic score and replacing it with music produced on a synthesizer and replacing the opening themes(originally a succession of upbeat pop songs) with a "rap" theme (though an English version of the original theme, "We Are" was used in an early promo)

Alterations
Many firearms were changed to look less realistic, and some were edited into other objects. Most often, Marine guns are turned into water guns while the others are simply colored green.

Some dialogue was altered to utilize different types of humor, often pun-based, sometimes even during scenes meant to be entirely serious. Almost all text was removed, and the word "MARINE" on Marines' clothing was replaced with the word "NAVY". All kanji was removed, and all Japanese references were changed to something more "American" (i.e. onigiri was changed to chocolate chip cookies).

The skin color of some characters was changed to avoid potential racial insensitivity.

Renaming
Renaming many locations and attack names. Many attack names in other non-English languages (i.e. French, Italian, etc.) are given English names. These are often not proper translations of the name, and are sometimes different names completely (for example, most of Sanji's attacks, which were originally French cooking terms, are changed to food-based puns).

Altering many character names. Some names that were originally English were changed to apparently make them sound more exotic. Examples include Portgas D. Ace (Portgaz D. Trace) and Edward Newgate (Ward Newgate). In addition to this, several other names are changed for content, like Captain Smoker (Captain Chaser) and possibly Cobra (Nebra), while others use uncommon romanizations of names, like Zoro (Zolo), Nefertari Vivi/Cobra (Nefeltari), and others.

Censorship
As most of their licenses, One Piece was edited to comply with American TV standards.

Alcoholic drinks and guns were often replaced or completely removed, and certain scenes with close-range swords were distanced to make it seem less violent.

4Kids also removed of all religious references; Dracule Mihawk's cross dagger was changed to something else, while Miss Merry Christmas's Christmas tree was colored purple and her name changed to Ms. Groundhog's Day.

Virtually no death scenes are shown, regardless of their importance to the plot. However, death was referred to more often in later episodes. All blood is removed, even when significant to the plot, such as in the third Luffy vs. Crocodile fight. In this fight, it was changed Luffy saying, "I've had plenty of time to work up a nice sweat," implying that he could defeat Crocodile with his sweat.

Overall Dubbing
Despite the numerous edits, One Piece was one of 4Kids' more violent properties. The producers had left in certain unavoidable excesses; blood, appendages being ripped off (such as Shanks' arm and Zeff's leg), and a character being killed by gunfire. Errors were occasionally made in scene edits. Since the dubbed version of the Drum Island arc began, more violence and references to death were included, and no new arcs have been skipped or episodes joined together, save for a few filler episodes.

Criticism
A sticking point for criticism from fans was 4Kids' marketing strategy for the franchise; although the show is enjoyed by a fairly broad audience in Japan and consistently scored high ratings from teens, children, and even adults, 4Kids decided to initially air the show on Saturday mornings and focus solely on the lucrative 6–11 demographic. It formerly aired at night on Cartoon Network and had been receiving much higher ratings from the 9-14 demographic, but the new time-slot has brought question to the necessity of the excessive editing the series continues to receive. Also, the broader potential audience that could be reached through an uncut DVD release is still being ignored completely. Over time, the editing had decreased, perhaps due to the fact that the show was airing on a later time slot, although the production still resembled that of a typical 4Kids localization.

In note of the company itself, 4Kids Entertainment is aimed at children from the age of 8 to mid-teens while One Piece is aimed at teenagers and older in Japan. This meant the show had to comply with rules set for TV of not only the intended age limited, but also the intended time of day the show was aired in and the TV networks own rules and 4Kids own standards of the age group it was aiming for. The problem was because of the age difference and the time of day it aired during, One Piece did not comply with the rules set before it. Therefore, some of their edits were justified.

Cancellation
Following an announcement on March 16, 2006 by 4Kids, the company stated they will concentrate only on producing its own shows. A fall of profit was blamed on the shortfall of several of their dubbed licenses such as Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh, although One Piece and several other licenses they held were said to offset the results. The company as a result later dropped a few shows including one of one of their biggest earners, Pokémon. The dubbing of new anime lessened, and 4Kids announced on December 6, 2006 that they had canceled production of their dub. As of September 2007, 104 English-dubbed episodes have been produced from the first 143 Japanese episodes. 4Kids dropped the license afterward.

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