VIZ Media

VIZ Media, LLC, headquartered in San Francisco, California, is a major American anime, manga and Japanese entertainment company formed by the merger of VIZ, LLC, and ShoPro Entertainment. The company is commonly referred to as "Viz", the same name used in previous incarnations of VIZ LLC.

Viz also produces a manga and anime review magazine, Animerica; as well as an English language version of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump (shōnen manga) magazine, and formerly a shōjo manga monthly called Shojo Beat which has recently been discontinued.

It formerly published Animerica Extra, a monthly manga anthology (which was converted to shōjo partway through its run), and PULP magazine, an adult-oriented monthly manga anthology that featured story lines inappropriate for younger readers, though not pornography (see seinen, josei).

It is jointly-owned by Japanese publishers Shogakukan and Shueisha, and licensing house Shogakukan Productions (ShoPro), a Shogakukan subsidiary.

One Piece
Viz's English adaption of the manga is, for the most part, accurate to the original Japanese version. However, they do occasionaly use some of the 4Kids dub names. For example, while they called Zoro by his original name early on, they later changed it to "Zolo" after the 4Kids dub aired. It is unknown why this change was made, but it could have probably been for copyright reasons. Other examples of the 4Kids names being used include Cocoyashi Village to "Coco Village" and Loguetown to "Roguetown". However, names of characters like Smoker and Ace are kept (as opposed to "Chaser" and "Trace").

However, despite the use of some 4Kids names and the usual omitting of swearing, things like violence, alcohol and tobacco usage, Japanese cultural references, religious references, suggestive humor, and death remain intact.