Forum:Why One Piece is not as very popular as Dragon Ball or Naruto in Western?

As we all known,One Piece is dominant popular in Japan,but not in Western.Is it because of the pirate culture aesthetic fatigue?the ninja culture is more attractive to the Western?Or just because that the the censored manga and anime make it lost cream?

BakaKidd 21:01, July 21, 2010 (UTC) well if you ask me it's not poular because some of the other manga came out before it. so the other manga became more popular. also other manga like death note became popular. you know wat i mean?

Is One Piece still currently the most popular manga/anime series in Japan today? Its been so long since I last checked...

Chopperdude 02:58, July 22, 2010 (UTC)

I believe it is because of the botched dub along with lack of advertising esspecially advertising that is appealing cause everytime i show someone a one piece amv there just like THIS IS WHAT ONE PIECE IS and are generally really shocked at how cool it is Aba1

Kinda agree that the reason that One Piece is as popular in the West as Naruto and others is because of the presentation and distribution by certain companies most notably 4kids. For series like Naruto, they were presented and distributed by companies who saw that such series were much more than simple cartoons. Its just our luck that One Piece was picked up a company who saw only drawings and a cash cow instead of a story. Its really sad and really ironic. Series like Naruto seem more eastern in nature, what with ninjas. One Piece on the other hand, is more western, if not more international, in nature, what with a lot of pirates who are mostly based on European archetype and design.Mugiwara Franky 17:38, July 23, 2010 (UTC)


 * One Piece was a earner for 4Kids, they DID have a nice act of introducing anime to western audiences. However, they seem to have lost the plot, One Piece wasn't their worst victim as it happens, Mew Mew Power (AKA Tokyo Mew Mew) was. And One Piece was a half decent translation at first, it fell apart as time went by. Also, Ninjas sell easy in the west, we have a fasination for martial arts and things like that. Its partly due to our love for martial arts that Jackie Chan's largest amount of fans aren't in Asia, their in the west. One-Winged Hawk 20:22, August 13, 2010 (UTC)

While presumptious, i think there are a number of reasons for the lax relation between western anime watchers and one piece. 1= One piece is a very long series, and many western anime watchers are not dedicated to spending a lot of time trying to catch up on 500+ episodes or 600 manga chapters. They have all probably been introduced to anime through other long series first, and had as such, iether not known about one piece, or decided not to split fandom between two popular and potentially super animes. 2= Not many anime watchers of the western hemisphere are true "otaku." if you know what this means, you probably consider yourself to be a proud otaku. Fandom based in the west is not reliable to truely great anime, but rather what has been going on a long time. In the west it is popular television practice to bleed a series dry in this manor. 3= They are all jerks who don't apreciate the originality and beauty of the relations found in Oda's work. --Jety Lefr - 09:20 PM, July 29, 2010

I think it's because people either watch the English dub (Which they really screwed up by the way) so they thought it was a stupid show, so dont watch that version. Perhaps maybe they were put off by the art style. I really dont see it being a big deal, you shouldn't judge something just by the way it looks. Kinda like saying a game sucks because it doesn't have good graphics is a good point. MegaFan 18:08, August 13, 2010

4Kids ruined it. That's honestly the only reason. SeaTerror 20:23, August 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think its more then that. When One Piece came into the Western scene, there was already a lot of popular shows and the audiences were already focused on Moe and Bishies characters. In fact if I pick up a magazine for anime and flick through the pages, I see more or less the same old, same old character styles repeated throughout them. Adventure series, like One Piece is regarded primary and above all, is actually a old fahsioned series, along with pirates themselves. Pirates were heavy popular in the early- mid 1900s, but as time passes by trends cahnge and sci-fiction, action and fantasy became big favourites. In Japan, however the market is more open for adaption and you'll be suprised what comes popular.


 * And take note also, One Piece was about the only holder of its market at the time of its release and pretty much still is, even Oda noted he felt that there just wasn't enough pirate mangas around. One Piece comes in, fills a hole that was there to be filled and now sits as king of its genre for now. One-Winged Hawk 20:31, August 13, 2010 (UTC)

Not really. It would have been much more popular without 4Kids. The genre has nothing to do with it. Not to mentioned CN's terrible cancellation of the show for no reason. SeaTerror 20:41, August 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * I maintain it wasn't souly 4Kids fault, but the attitude of the watchers. While as a anime fan I was initially put off by the dub, I wasn't completely turned off from wanting more of the series. The series actually introduced more people to One iece then it currently has been left at with Funimation. A worst dub isn't always to blame. One-Winged Hawk 13:50, August 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well i dont think it was the Dub of 4kids alone, it was also what they changed, such as real guns to water guns, sanji's cigarette to a lollypop, changing names and attack names, removing all blood from tragic scenes. Now i can understand why you would remove the blood but if the show is not made to target kids ages 10 or younger perhaps because it was aired on cartoonnetwork or whatever, then they shouldn't dub it, they really ruined the whole concept of One Piece into something meaningless when the actual thing is quite, shocking/bloody/emotional/dramatic and very funny at times lmao, the characters just crack me up. MegaFan 15:05, August 14, 2010
 * Well i dont think it was the Dub of 4kids alone, it was also what they changed, such as real guns to water guns, sanji's cigarette to a lollypop, changing names and attack names, removing all blood from tragic scenes. Now i can understand why you would remove the blood but if the show is not made to target kids ages 10 or younger perhaps because it was aired on cartoonnetwork or whatever, then they shouldn't dub it, they really ruined the whole concept of One Piece into something meaningless when the actual thing is quite, shocking/bloody/emotional/dramatic and very funny at times lmao, the characters just crack me up. MegaFan 15:05, August 14, 2010


 * Again, a lot of what you say is taken from a biased fan point of view, instead of a general observation. While anime fans hated it, the audience 4Kids threw it at loved it because they didn't know much better. To them, there wasn't another version. Also, at the time of the show, the beginning is slow and not much happens on a big scale. Take note, much of 4Kids and what they did were expressed by Funimation, changes had to happen for TV, it was unavoidable. Even for not aimed at 10 year olds, like with Funimation's aim, edits had to be made.


 * How much influence the dub had is debatable, but take note it wasn't until Pirates of the Caribean that piratey things were interesting again to the general audience. I could go on, but for the most part I constantly here less references to the dub being the problem, but for the aspects of ugly character designs, as I said One Piece came out in the era of the Bishie and Moe. That meant it had a heck of a time to get accept and its only been accepted because its uniqueness stands out. One-Winged Hawk 14:14, August 14, 2010 (UTC)

If it got a better dub from the beginning then it would have been more popular. Simple as that. It was entirely 4Kid's fault. There are no ugly character designs. SeaTerror 17:14, August 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * From the view of a One Piece fan, the characters are unique not ugly, from the view of a anime fan, their ugly and theres no way a One Piece fan can tell a general anime fan their not sadly. But honestly, 4kids weren't to blame, half the guys who saw the dub wouldn't have known better. This isn't a battle wyou can win on biasedness alone, because 4Kids weren't the soul blame and thats pretty much it.  One of the reasons for the neutral stance of the wikia in general is so that people don't blame 4Kids entirely for everything, then again we don't praise them either.  Its a double edge sword, you have to have a balanced argument and the ony thing we can add is what the magazines say as critism. And theres an AWFUL lot of propreganda aganst 4Kjids amongst western fans. Some of what is said isn't even true... One-Winged Hawk 22:29, August 14, 2010 (UTC)

As much as it pains me to admit, when One Piece was first introduced by 4kids, I loved it... now I know better. I've read the entire series and a lot of the anime (hulu is godly) and I can say that the Funimation version is far superior. However, I'm not gonna blame 4kids for it entirely... yeah it was really bad in hindsight, but it at least introduced me to it. In all honesty the thing that I think really makes in not as popular is because of its cancellation on Cartoon Network. This was, what, at least 5-6 years ago, maybe even more. Since it wasn't really around anymore, I just lost track of it and picked up on Naruto and Bleach since they were what was on. I just got back in to One Piece maybe 2 years ago when I found Unlimited Adventure at a Game Stop. I was like "hey I remember that!" which then made me look into One Piece more and here we are and One Piece is now one of those things that I just can't go without. Moral of the story: it's not popular because there's no place except the internet and buying the dvds where you can watch One Piece, where DB, Naruto and Bleach are/were on tv for a long time.Galcion 18:26, August 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * ALSO One Piece only gets interesting to the Western audience in a handful of places as a general rule. For instance, skypiea was one of japan most popular arc due to the amount of refs to Japanese folklore.  However to the west, its boring for the most part. We find Water 7 interesting however. One Piece eps that we got from 4Kids were all the start of the show when things were slwo and nothing big had taken off yet.  One-Winged Hawk 22:29, August 14, 2010 (UTC)