One Piece in Germany

In Germany, the One Piece manga is published by Carlsen Manga and the Anime TV series premiered in 2003 on RTL II. Since then the Anime has also aired on Tele 5 from 2008 and Animax Germany from 2009. The show is currently airing on the MTV-owned TV station, VIVA (as of November 2011).

OVAs, as well as most of the TV series' specials up to the first Boss Luffy specials have been left unnoticed for neither broadcasting nor publishing on DVD. There were early plans for DVD releases of the TV show by polyband, but the plans were dropped while the first DVD was being announced only. From February 2011 onwards the German Anime DVD Publisher, Kazé Germany, has announced to release all ten One Piece movies. In January 2012 Kazé announced that they had acquired the license to release the first 195 episodes on DVD. 400 epsiodes have been aired on German Television as November 2011.

Because Germany is the only country in Central Europe to air One Piece, many Czech and Slovakian fans know characters by their German names.

Germany
One Piece began being published in Germany in the magazine Banzai!" which was a collaboration of Carlsen Manga and Shueisha to publish manga on a monthly base back in 2001. Furthermore, Carlsen began publishing One Piece in Volumes as well.

The television anime series started airing on April 22nd, 2003 on RTL II with a German dub. In 2008, Tele 5 started to air One Piece as well. The pay-television station Animax Germany also began airing the show, however many of the earlier epsiodes that were censored on RTL II and Tele 5 were presented uncut.

However, as of November 2011, all three stations have dropped One Piece because the dub has been put on hiatus at Episode 400 since January of 2011 by PGA Studios (One Piece's dubbing studio). In Septmeber 2011, the MTV-owned channel VIVA acquired the dub rights to epsiodes 1-143 and is currently the only TV station in Germany airing the show. It is unknown currently if VIVA will acquire more episodes.

Alterations and Censorship
From the beginning of the manga publication the German version had some alterations as changed volume covers (almost all into having a blue background and a changed logo), name changes or filling text for shouted attack names, and errors such as wrong bounties. Name changes are also edited onto Wanted posters.

Censorship
While the Manga is left uncensored in both dialogue and images, the TV show is being censored. Unlike the 4Kids TV dub, the RTL II version started with minor cuts to leave out scenes which show humans getting injured by punches, so many episodes weren't censored. The German show never underwent heavy edits like the 4kids version.

As the story continued and the more episodes were licensed the more scenes RTL II felt to be toned down. After the network station licensed Naruto in partnership with Panii, and once the story got to the Water 7 arc, even dialogues were heavily censored. Anything about "sterben" (= dying) and "Tod" (= death) was now people being "verschwunden" (= vanished) or that people "einen auf den Deckel bekommen" (= get a roasting).

When New Episodes of One Piece changed from RTL2 to Tele5 the dub got unaltered again, only scenes which showed human getting hurt/injured were cut out of the episodes.

Name changes
The change of names often occured in the Manga due to both L/R problems and by the transliteration of the Katakana ン which can be interpreted as m instead of a n. Most inconsistencies occur because there have not been any official transliterations from Eiichiro Oda when the Manga was brought to Germany. Since the TV dub is based on the German manga version, most of the name changes are placed in dialogue and episode titles while the scenes showing names on signs and Wanted posters remained unedited here.

The names of many characters eventually differ from their original form either by distinctive spelling in the German manga, or by a complete Name change, or by being pronounced wrong in the German dub version of the TV show.

At times these are mere translations of the Japanese name into English. Yet a number of names can cause confusion, as some of them are extremely different to their Japanese counterparts due to these translations. As a result, there are many German fans who are unable to recognize the characters by their English or even their Japanese names.

However, many errors occured when ranks especially Marine ranks were transfered to German rank terms.

Character Name Changes

 * Note:Several of these names are mere translations of their Japanese meaning (marked "T"). A few others are based on the lack of an l sound in Japanese writing.


 * Monkey D. Luffy is called Monkey D. Ruffy.
 * Roronoa Zoro's name was changed to "Lorenor Zorro".
 * Usopp's name is changed to "Lysop" (the "Ly" being based upon "lie" or the German equivalent "Lüge", to make the meaning of Usopp's name more obvious).
 * Lucky Roo's name is changed to "Lucky Lou".
 * Jango's name is changed to "Jacko".
 * Kuro's is changed to "Captain Black". (T)
 * Don Krieg's name is changed to "Don Creek" (Probably another way to write "Don Kuriku").
 * Zeff's name is changed to "Jeff".
 * Merry's name is changed to "Lämmchen" (German for "little lamb" or "lambkin").
 * Chew is called "Kiss". Since there exists the word "chu" (which is an onomatopoeic kissing-noise and what fans often believe his name is) in Japanese, they most likely translated it as a Japanese name unaware his name was spelt in English as "Chew" by Oda. (T)
 * Hatchan's name is translated to "Octa".
 * Kuroobi is called "Schwarzgurt". (T)
 * Nico Robin as Miss All-Sunday is called "Miss Bloody-Sunday"
 * Portgas D. Ace's name is changed to "Puma D. Ace".
 * Commodore Pudding-Pudding's name is changed to "Puddingknie". ("Pudding" is pudding, "knie" means knee, together they mean an easily frightened person as his legs will wobble) (T)
 * Captain Nezumi's name is changed to "Ratte" (Rat). (T)
 * Hiluruk's name is changed to "Doc Bader". ("Bader" is a medieval term for a barber who acts as an unlearned doctor)
 * Bon Kurei's name is called "Bon Curry" (probably another way to write "Bon Kurei").
 * Pell's name is changed to "Peruh".
 * Eyelashes is called "Wimper".(T)
 * Scissors is called "Schere".(T)
 * Dorry is called "Woogey".
 * Brogy is called "Boogey".
 * Montblanc Noland's name is changed to "Maron Noland".
 * Montblanc Cricket's name is changed to "Maron Cricket".
 * Wiper is called "Viper".
 * Kamakiri is called "Fangschrecke" (German for Mantis). (T)
 * Ohm is called "Aum".
 * Kaku's name is translated to "Ecki". (Ecke means corner) (T)
 * Fukuro is called "Eule" (German for owl) (T)
 * Kokoro's name is translated to "Cocolo".
 * Aokiji's name is translated to "Blaufasan" or "Blauer Fasan" (German for blue pheasant) (T)
 * Kizaru's name is translated to "Gelber Affe" (German for yellow monkey). As of Volume 52, he is called Kizaru. (T)
 * Akainu's name is translated to "Roter Hund" (German for red dog). (T)
 * Tsuru's name is translated to "Kranich" (German for crane). (T)
 * Dracule Mihawk is translated to "Mihawk Dulacre". His epithet is called "Falkenauge" (Hawkeye). (T)
 * Bartholomew Kuma is translated to "Bartholomäus Bär" ("Bär" means bear) (T)
 * Donquixote Doflamingo is translated to Don Quichotte de Flamingo.
 * Clover's name is translated Dr. Kleeblatt (German for clover) (T)
 * Van Augur's name is translated to "Wan Oger".
 * Laffitte's name is translated to "Raffit".
 * Jesus Burgess's name is translated to "Jesus Barges".
 * Sarkies's name is changed to "Cirkies".
 * Peepley Lulu's name is changed to "Louie-Louie".
 * Iceburg's name is changed to "Eisberg" (German for iceberg).
 * Mikazuki's name is changed to "Mondsichel" (German for crescent. Mond = moon, Sichel = sickle). (T)
 * Itomimizu's name is changed to "Wurm" (German for worm).
 * Tamanegi's name is translated to "Zwiebel" (German for onion.) (T)
 * Ninjin's name is translated to "Möhre" (German for carrot). (T)
 * Piiman's name is translated to "Paprika" (German for pepper). (T)
 * Inuppe's name is translated to "Hunduin" (compound of two names "Hund" and "Pinguin" (German for "Dog" and "Penguin")
 * Going Merry's name is changed to "Flying Lamb".
 * Laboon's name is changed to "La Boum"
 * Jean Bart's name is changed to "Janbar"
 * Shiliew's name is translated to "Shiryu", because of his japanese name in katakana.
 * Banchi s name is changed to "Ramirez"

Places

 * Luffy's hometown is called Windmühlendorf instead of Fuusha
 * Nami's hometown is named "Cocos" in this version.
 * The name of Raftel is changed to "Unicon".

Other

 * The name of the Shichibukai is changed to "Die Sieben Samurai der Meere" ("The Seven Samurai of the Sea")
 * The name of "Mantra", a prominent part of the Skypiea Arc, is changed to "Mantora"
 * The Rokushiki techniques are called Formel 6 in the manga. (T)
 * The Geppou technique is translated to the English word "moonwalk". (T)
 * The Galley-La is changed to "Galeera".
 * The Den Den Mushi is called Teleschnecke (Tele as in Telephone and Schnecke is Snail in German), therefore specialized Den Den Mushis are called Abhörschnecke (Black Den Den Mushi)

Translation errors

 * Aokiji was called being a Konteradmiral in the German dub of episode 226 which is the Shōshō rank in the Japanese version.

Anime Soundtrack
All intros (except intro 2, "Believe") were left in and mostly unaltered. However as standard with anime dubbed in Germany, the lyrics were resung by a German voice group (although the first opening "We Are" received completely different music).

Air Times
The One Piece is currently airing on VIVA in primetime on weeknights (as of November 2011).

Trivia

 * The German dub has recieved criticism for some of the following reasons :
 * airing one episode that was originally an hour long in Japan (the Robin backstory episodes).
 * airing only half of the Rainbow mist arc, then ceasing to broadcast the show and re-starting it again, this time, however, without even reaching this arc.
 * One Piece won the Sondermann Prize in 2005, 2008 and 2009 (always in the category "best Manga/Manhwa international").
 * All episodes are broadcasted in 4:3 format, cropping the HD 16:9 episodes to 4:3.
 * Satori, Hotori and Kotori are declared as sisters and also have female voice actors.

Links

 * German page about cuts in the German anime version