One Piece in the Philippines





Anime
GMA Network, one of the country's three major TV networks, acquired license to dub One Piece episodes in Filipino, the national language of the Philippines. One Piece was dubbed straight from Japanese and not from available English dubs. The first Philippine run of One Piece happened in 2002 and covered up to the whole Baroque Works saga. It was rerun several times since then with each rerun covering the next major arc. Most of these reruns had started from the very first episode.

Like most of other anime showed in the Philippines, One Piece was run 5 episodes a week (Mondays to Fridays). Its latest rerun shows up to the first 12 episodes of Marineford Arc (up to Episode 468). One Piece is normally slotted between 4:30-5:30 PM, making students (elementary to college) able to watch it (Philippine schools normally end classes by 4 PM) but as the newest rerun it is slotted at around 8:00-8:30 AM since the former timeslot is reserved for afternoon television dramas. GMA Network never skipped any single episode One Piece has. It showed all including filler episodes.

One Piece Film: Z was premiered in the Philippines on May 1, 2013 and became the second highest earning film during its first week only after Iron Man 3.

The latest run of new episodes started on March 13, 2014, starting from Episode 417. The Detective Memoirs of Chief Straw Hat Luffy was aired on April 19, 2014 as part of the network's Lenten specials.

One Piece Film: Strong World premiered on television on April 27, 2014, a month after airing Little East Blue Arc, as a six-part, thirty-minute special episodes every Sunday morning in six weeks.

Open Upon the Great Sea! A Father's Huge, HUGE Dream!, billed as One Piece: A Father's Great Big Dream, was aired on June 8 and 15, 2014 as a two-part, thirty minute special episodes. Protect! The Last Great Performance, billed as One Piece: The Last Stand, was aired on June 22 and 29, 2014 with the same airing format with the previously aired special episode.

Popularity
At first, One Piece received poor ratings in the Philippines. This might be because GMA's rival network, ABS-CBN, managed to show other anime like Naruto, Samurai X, Get Backers and Card Captor Sakura which received unparalleled high ratings from viewers. However, GMA continued to rerun it.

The latest rerun of One Piece received high ratings, achieving more than 10% on average compared to 12-15% ratings got by ABS-CBN's.

Trivia

 * 70% of One Piece production and animation was created in Toei Animation Philippines. The rest goes to Toei Japan.
 * Luffy's common way of saying "amazing" when he is amused with something was given more emphasis for Filipino fans using the same meaning in Tagalog (astig!) in a catchy way of saying it.
 * Devil Fruit is dubbed as Sinumpang Prutas which means Cursed Fruit in the English Language.
 * During its first airings, Gomu-Gomu is dubbed to rubber which is Goma in the Philippines, so it is called Goma-Goma (e.g Gomu-Gomu no Pistol is dubbed into Goma-Goma Pistol).
 * Some of the pirate crew names are dubbed inversely because there is no equivalent word for it (e.g. Sun Pirates is dubbed Pirata ng Araw, which is Pirates of the Sun in correct English translation). However, most group or organization names are not translated to English or Filipino language (e.g. Shichibukai and Yonko).
 * During its introduction, Impel Down level names are dubbed as Floor instead of Hell.
 * Bon Kurei's way of referring to Luffy became "Luffy" or "Straw-hat Luffy" instead of "Straw-chan" because there is also no equivalent word for this suffix.
 * Emporio Ivankov is referred to as "Ivan" rather than "Iva".
 * During its first airings, Chopper's voice deepens while he is on his large transformations.
 * Enel and Shiliew's names are pronounced in their Japanese names rather than their English names.