this got copyright claimed so there are going to be ads on it. i get no money from them and i have no idea how many there are. if U can think of any way to BLOCK these ORIGINal ads, you're welcome to try
Say what you will about the 4Kids version, the fact that their censorship meant Smoker just emitted smoke from his mouth rather than from cigars was extremely badass.
Maybe it's just me but I actually prefer Smoker's 4Kids name Chaser. Chaser just hits different somehow. Ace however not so much. Trace is kinda lame lol
Fun fact: Zoro is voiced in the 4kids dub by Marc Diraison, who you may know as the man that voiced Guts in the original Berserk anime and the golden age movies. So no wonder he can pull off a good scream.
I watched the 4kids version in cartoon network when i was younger and i swear to god it took me a whole decade to find out nami didn't actually stab ussop with a rubber knife
Took me years to discover Sanji was not, in fact, sucking a lollypop. Not gonna lie... was sorta disappointed too. Something about this clean suit wearing, wannabe Lythereo, short fuse tough guy that could kill a man with his kicks, ALSO having a major sweet tooth, struck me as charming.
This actually makes a lot of sense. 1: one piece is a big talking point right now 2: one piece has one of the most notorious 'so bad its good' dubs in anime history which is right up Lukes alley
I am convinced that 4Kids One Piece is the worst dub of all time not just because it's bad, but because it managed to absolutely ruin one of the greatest animes out there. It's sort of like the ATLA movie in the sense that there are worse live action adaptations, but none that take a masterwork and destroy it completely.
@@samt3412hell no that's the biggest crock of shit I've read. No the 4kids dub wasnt bad, david moo played a bad ass sanji, oh my gosh the censored a damn cigarette, and guns ohhhhh my gosh stop the presses. The only real issue with it was the HORRIBLE scheduled time and re runs. Had to wake up at like 6 or 6:30 in the morning to watch it and around the alabasta arc they played re-runs of everything prior so I could never watch everything in chronological order. That's the only issue And no I dont want to hear krillen usopp or piccolo zoro that's lame
@@allworksnewI do. Zoro and Usopp's dub VA's are fucking incredible for the funimation. I can't imagine anyone else playing them. Even Oda was the one who chose them personally. And Sanji is the best of them all way better than 4kids.
The 4Kids Dub is such a low hanging fruit to take easy shots at, I respect anyone genuinely trying to look at it from a constructive perspective and see what real merits and weaknesses the series had.
"BOY HOWDY I WANNA LIVE!" Alright. I'm convinced. We need to get the gang back together and have them do all the iconic scenes throughout One Piece. I wanna hear Akainu send Ace to the dungeon. Luffy giving Saint Charlos a good talking to after he rudely pointed at Hacchan. Aussie Shanks stopping the war.
God it would actually be so dark cause the only way I can see them justify the celestial dragons literally having and taking slaves is to make it seem like the slaves are working consentually 💀💀💀
The scene where Smoker gives the girl money is worse in the 4Kids dub, but not because of the performance or localization. It's because of the music. The original was purely silent, giving off an air of mystery to Smoker, showing that he's a good enough guy to help a little girl out and not get mad about the ice cream, while still making him come off as an intimidating wildcard. With 4Kids, it just has happy music, making him come off as a much friendlier guy than he's supposed to. That's an issue 4Kids has had with almost everything they've worked on- Their music is used to represent the actions that are currently happening on-screen, regardless of what the scene is trying to communicate as a whole.
This isn't the first video essay he's done though, check out his playlist "The Voice Actor's Copybook". Most are a couple of years old, but the one on AI was from the start of this year.
I'd reccommend watching some of his other videos with simular structure to this like his one about how the voice acting in titanfall 2 is absolutely amazing
Sam O'Nella, Brewstew, the Spanish Inquisition, Luke Correia: The Four Horsemen of people nobody expects and comes out of nowhere EDIT: guys, I said FOUR horsemen, not endless list of RUclipsrs that upload once in a blue moon
4Kids actually was what made me a One Piece fan thanks to the effort given by the VAs. Yeah, i drifted off on and off based on availability and other factors, but i cannot deny that 4kids was a lot more of a solid start than people gave it credit for - and i've actually been collecting the 4kids DVDs thanks to that. Only Vol 11 evades me.
As somebody that sometimes struggles to focus on long stretches of speech, I appreciate the subtitles, albeit the timing on much of them were fucked up as hell, glad they were there and mostly accurate regardless. Also I have never interacted with anything one piece in any way, nor am I a voice actor, but this was still insanely interesting to watch, thank you.
Thanks for bringing the issue with the subtitles up. There were some late additions to the script, so the copy that got added as the subtitle file didn't reflect the actual spoken lines. The RUclips auto-sync for captions really didn't like that, along with some of the transition gaps where nothing is spoken, so more than a handful of lines got tossed out of place. Most of it should be fixed now. Appreciate you letting me know!
@@LukeCorreia I appreciate you fixing them, just for the sake of anybody watching the video in the future, really appreciate anybody that goes out of their way to make accurate captions on videos, especially because most people unfortunately don't.
I really wish RUclips hadn't removed caption editing just because some people were trolling on them. I would have loved to fix at least a bit of the timings.
About the whole "anime being seen as cartoons" thing, I watched The End of Evangelion when I was little, because I found the DVD in my uncle's room, no box, and thought, "Hey, a new cartoon." I was never the same since. Good video, by the way, Luke. This was a really informative video about One Piece's licensing issues in the United States.
My personal grievance with the 4Kids dub is the direction they gave David Moo, Sanji’s actor. He is a PHENOMENAL actor, his Xellos performance in Slayers is stupendous but his most famous role is this nose-plugged Brooklyn-adjacent food-pun slinging embarrassment. A lot of the cast did astonishingly well despite it all and the lesson I want for those watching this video is when you see a ‘bad’ performance, think critically about it. Was it the script? An off-kilter delivery? If that kind of strange delivery is happening across multiple characters it’s probably a directing choice, not an acting choice. I still talk up Smoker as having two powers. Smoke Logia and Pants that Eat Ice Cream.
@@dwainsimmons3447 I would hope my phrasing made it clear I'm not a fan of 4Kids version of Sanji, it's merely that I don't blame Moo because even if the accent and voice were his idea the fault still lies with the director giving it the OK.
@@00Clankno that's 1 if not the main reason why sanji is my favorite to this day. I mean how many Brooklynish cooks do you find in a pirate world? None, it made him unique to me and i didnt care to think about logistics. Maybe it's because I liked the voice of Joey wheeler as well but whatever.
I personally loved 4Kids Buggy. Mainly because the actor did a good job and because they did something no other dubbing company has done. Whenever he got pissed, they distorted his voice. It sounded amazing.
The one thing I enjoyed with 4kids was Gol Rogers voice. It sounded so threatening, like an actual legendary pirate. Granted it probably doesnt fit with his character as we currently know him as but to me it was better than Funimations generic pirate voice.
Honestly I prefer Marc's performance, and by a lot. Obviously in a perfect world, his voice matched with the uncensored version of the show, but that doesn't really matter cuz it ain't ever coming true 😂
I could now care less what Chris Sabat or the cast at modern day Funimation voices. I’d pick 4Kids anytime, anywhere since not only they had iconic voice actors, but more importantly, the casts were drama proof and they know how to keep their reputation stabled to avoid tainting their name or studio’s brand.
Honestly, with 4Kids voice directing being what it is, your examples really are what they would have gone for, or damn near close to it. The real question is how the hell they would have tackled Brooke's whole ordeal. "And that's why I'm wearing a skeleton costume now. Shame all my crewmates are in an internal slumber."
As someone who has always fought in the defense of the 4kids Dub thank you for making this video. It sums up my thoughts in a well thought out way and will be an easy point of reference from now on if I want to point someone to why I liked the VA work in 4kids rather than simply trying to explain "they had better energy"
This was really well put together! I'm a zoomer but my elder siblings made me watch alot of 4kids stuff when I was younger or just whatever anime we could find on dvds. And honestly I thought the voice actors were phenomenal in what they did!
Came expecting a funny dub, stayed for an analysis for a show I don't watch, was pleasantly surprised by the heartwarming message at the end. Good job man.
I never had that much of a hate for 4kids. There were genuinely talented people behind it, and arguably part of what got a good number of people into anime in the first place.
Another recommendation for the ‘nani’ to ‘luffy’ line could be ‘what the!’ Since it’s the same syllables as both and can keep a similar energy to both the original and the 4kids version
great video, mr. Correia! i really liked the end about putting in effort to be great despite terrible circumstances, scripts, and direction. Gives me hope that inspiring voice actors will keep that to heart!
I'm loving this video so far. So many video essays on youtube start off by giving a long introduction to a series that doesn't need one, taking too long explaining what the subject is, rather than the actual meat of the video. Or they somehow manage to make the opening of the video sound like filler (how does that happen?). Meanwhile here, we just get a dude with a really good voice and a really, REALLY well paced and engaging script. Loving it.
I'm a little disappointed that there wasn't anything about the Funimation part of the story other than "They wanted it" and "They got it eventually" Funimation's One Piece is a very interesting situation because there have been multiple credible sources talking about the fact that the cast is literally finalized by the series' creator which is something I've never seen from another anime
Same since I just feel like 4KIDS has been covered to death, but I 100% get a content creator wanting a video to be more focused on a singular topic - would have had to add another extra 30 min at least and way more research haha But yeah, there is a lot of interesting stuff there - from how different the initial test pilot during the bidding war was compared to when Funi actually licensed it in 2007. There's the very unique casting situation where the director sent in lists & auditions of anywhere from up to a dozen actors each for the JP team (Toei, Oda, producers) to choose Straw Hats from and respond with notes. Colleen was told to sound gruffer for Luffy, Stephanie's note for Robin was to "sound sexier" which Funi took to mean lower-pitcher while Toei meant higher and resulted in a conversation about differing conventions as to what constitutes as "sexier" lmao. Later on Brook was also given specific notes, etc... They also had to work initially on a video game, the Alabasta special, and Skypiea before going back to Ep 1. Not to mention the insane oversight Toei has over the dub to this day with not only casting main arc characters but scripts. Pretty much every writer and director who has worked on One Piece said working on it is a completely different ballpark compared to almost anything else in their catalog, and it could really be its own video.
okay that fucking conclusion really like. touched me. like a good kind of heartbreak. i'm not a va, i'm a visual artist and even just getting "hey, you tried, and thats wonderful" is just. gdi who put these TEARS ON MY FACE
I believe there were some interviews with the CEO at the time, Al Kahn, and he basically stated that, for most of the anime they acquired, they would do very minimal research on the story and content in the series and mainly focus on how popular they were in Japan since they (4Kids) may be able to make it popular in the States. This would lead to a few instances (including One Piece) where they would acquire a popular Japanese anime series, based on ratings and popularity alone, and wouldn’t bother watching a single episode until it was time to begin production on the dub. Before One Piece, there were Shaman King and Ultimate Muscle. Shaman King was actually considered relatively benign in Japan since the animation studio, Xebec, had toned down a lot of the graphic content and violence in comparison to the original manga series. So, it’s likely that 4Kids felt that they were able to dub Shaman King while making edits and censoring parts that were absolutely necessary to broadcast it over public satellite TV for kids. Something shocking about this dub is that 4Kids actually fought against the censors since they wanted Shaman King to appeal to the slightly older crowd and they did allow some mature content to stay in, but at the cost of most episodes only being broadcasted once. Ultimate Muscle was another case of 4Kids going by popularity since a tiny amount of research will show that the Japanese version (Kinnikuman Nisei or Musclemen: The Second Generation) first appeared in comic form in Weekly Playboy Magazine in Japan; which, while it wasn’t P**n, it did have tons of raunchy jokes and toilet humor. Of course, 4Kids saw its popularity and dubbed the anime. It was more censored than Shaman King, but a lot of the edits in their dub fit with the show and they would even add some of their own toilet humor to keep in line with the show’s tone. Then there’s One Piece which, as usual, 4Kids saw it was popular and also saw that FUNimation were in a bidding war with Saban Entertainment/Ocean Productions for the license; FUNimation had made a prototype website to show Toei as well as a few pilot episodes, but inevitably 4Kids got the license for God knows what reason (likely due to their track record with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters). Some sources say that, while Al Kahn and the licensing team were in Japan picking up One Piece, the rest of the crew had some of their employees watch a few episodes, they realized it was too mature for their audience, and tried to get Al Kahn to back out. He said no and thus we have the 4Kids dub of today. Not sure if that’s true, but we’ll likely never know.
Add in the fact that the Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters anime was toned down from the manga where Dark Yugi pretty much acted like a heroic & more fair version of Jigsaw. The guy straight up sets multiple people on fire in the manga and some of the shadow games sound like they came right out of a Saw movie. Hell, even the Season 0 anime had to tone down Dark Yugi’s Penalty Games, the manga was that dark. With that context in mind, it’s easy to see why Al Kahn thought that the dark content would’ve been cut out of the One Piece anime already. Most of the heavy lifting in terms of censorship was already done by the animation studios during the initial production process and the series 4Kids licensed were all adapted from Shonen Jump series. Sure Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Ultimate Muscle were all produced by different studios but there was some common threads present across all three series. They were meant for an older audience but there were ways 4Kids could still keep the tone without cutting too much (like the above mentioned toilet humor in Ultimate Muscle and Shaman King being less censored compared to other 4Kids productions). Did those edits do more harm than good? Yes, the Americanization of art is bad for artists around the world and there’s a reason why it’s usually frowned upon. However the edits made didn’t take up a large chunk of the big picture and were similar enough to the original. Think of it like taking a different route to get to the same destination. Different means to the same end. One Piece is a completely different beast than those shows and tactics that worked for 4Kids’ other dubs did not work for One Piece. It’s a story packed where every single detail counts and builds up to something later. It’s like a giant house of cards, take one card out and the whole structure collapses. The exclusion of several arcs and characters in their dub would’ve had adverse effects on later plot points if they continued to dub One Piece (I.E. Brook joining the Straw Hats). I want to clarify that I’m not defending 4Kids, just building off of your initial comment. Your comment is the most likely scenario for why 4Kids picked up One Piece
@@sadfalcon9623 I finally took the time to sit down and read your reply; I’m not trying to say you yammered on and on, so I hope you’re not angry with me for what I just said; I’m just super busy working and taking care of younger siblings that I don’t often have the time to read longer responses. With that being said, basically everything you added to my original post was very well said. Yes, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters, Shaman King, and even Ultimate Muscle to an extent all had a lot of their original manga content toned down or even removed altogether to some extent in the original Japanese anime series. And yes, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Season 0 (just called Yu-Gi-Oh! In Japan) had quite a bit of its manga content toned down and/or removed as well. As someone who read the original manga while watching 4Kids’s Duel Monsters dub, then proceeded to watch Season 0 many years later, I can say that the Season 0 anime is quite tame in comparison to its manga counterpart as well as other anime series in similar genres. Much like modern day USA, Japan have obviously adjusted their TV standards and practices over the years and that’s led to a lot of anime being even more censored for TV, but the animation studios will usually release an uncensored version for home video (Blue-Ray, DVD) and streaming services if they put them on there. However, despite Japan’s standards for TV being more lenient back in the 90s, certain things were still considered too taboo and had to be toned down or cut altogether, especially if a manga artist wanted to target the anime series towards older kids and younger teens (think 9 years old to 14 or 15 years old for the age groups). This led to quite a few manga series intended for older teens and young adults being heavily toned down in their anime counterparts. Looking at Duel Monsters, the anime series by Studio Gallop was definitely toned down way more than the Season 0 anime, and that likely had to do with the manga artist, Kazuki Takahashi (God rest his soul), wanting to make the Duel Monsters game in the new manga and anime series playable in real life for all audiences. Thus, while the manga series for DM would continue focusing more on the story aspect and continue with the darker tone along with Dark Yugi (AKA Yami Yugi or Atem) still coming off as a morally ambiguous character rather than someone who does everything by the books and for the right reasons. While Dark Yugi definitely wasn’t a villain in either Season 0 nor Duel Monsters, the fact he would often hurt or even kill cheating opponents in the manga made him out to be more of an anti-hero; and there were even some instances of Dark Yugi almost hurting or killing normal Yugi’s own friends and family. This did carry over to the DM anime in Duelist Kingdom with Kaiba Seto threatening to jump off of the castle if Yugi won, then Dark Yugi proceeding to attack before normal Yugi makes him stop, but after this there isn’t another instance like this. The Waking the Dragons arc technically shouldn’t count since that’s anime exclusive filler to my knowledge. To sum up what I said here: in the DM anime, Dark Yugi is basically a light hearted good guy who basically does everything by the books (minus the Kaiba moment in the DK arc) and doesn’t hurt people unless it’s necessary. In both manga series, he’s morally ambiguous, will hurt and/or kill people if they hurt him or his friends, or if they cheat in one of his Penalty/Dark Games. I’m not going to bring up Ultimate Muscle’s anime counterpart since a lot of the raunchy humor was kept in-tact in the original, but I will say that, to my knowledge, the anime and original manga series that started in a Japanese Playboy magazine are quite different with the manga series having way more adult jokes and situations than the anime. Thankfully, outside of some visual changes for Westernization and scenes considered too violent, most of the visuals were left in-tact by 4Kids and they would essentially make their own raunchy/toilet jokes that were more kid friendly in place of the adult ones, so the over all tone was left. With Shaman King, the manga was a lot more graphic than the anime to the point where Viz Media, the ones originally responsible for the English manga, had to tone down some of it although not as bad as 4Kids would at times. However, 4Kids would duke it out with the networks and the FCC to try and keep as much in as possible; there are still stances of blood being shown on-screen, death references were toned down but still left in with them being changed to “the land of the no longer living” instead of the Shadow Realm or a dungeon, a lot of the more violent but not bloody scenes during fights were kept, and there was even an episode where Ryu (Rio in the dub) was possessed by a spirit who threatened to kill Rio by using his own sword on himself; thus a reference to a character taking their own life was left in even if the dialog was altered. And we already know what likely happened with One Piece’s case, so I’ll wrap this up by saying that 4Kids very clearly focused more on popularity with most of their dubs rather than content and keeping the original stories in-tact. It worked well with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, but that’s only because the video games and cards games were already targeted towards kids and young teens, even if their manga series were darker. So, 4Kids didn’t have to change too much outside of what was required by the FCC and the networks.
Excellent video! Just wanted to add since I didn’t see it in the comments that there are 5 4Kids actors who have gone on to be part of the Funimation dub. Mike Pollock (best known as Dr. Eggman, was also an announcer on 4Kids One Piece going over Chopper’s different forms) played Donquixote Homing and Erica Schroeder (4Kids Luffy) plays Miss Bukkin.
Just reminds me how the new transformers movie is pretty mid but Peter Cullen acting his soul out in the final minutes made for one of the franchises best scenes ever
I will say forever that Marc Diraison was an excellent voice for Zoro. I wish he had been given a chance to do some of his dramatic scenes justice. The whole cast was able to put in better performances in the video games too. Grand Adventure in particular. "BOY HOWDY I WANNA LIVE" just about killed me. Thank you for that. You didn't mention them but are you aware that there were at least 3 pilot dubs of One Piece when companies were fighting for it? FUNimation made one with Eric Vale as Luffy (can you imagine) and Ocean Group did some as well. Ocean Group One Piece sure would have been interesting. I wonder if it was Viz Media who was involved with that attempt. Toei didn't trick 4Kids into anything but their hands are far from clean because ultimately they made the choice to sell some of the distribution rights to 4Kids and like DiC with Sailor Moon and later Saint Seiya and Saban with Digimon, its evident that Toei only cared if the shows turned a profit. Sometimes it worked out and other times it failed miserably. Excellent point about Viz Media getting the home video rights being such a bad deal for 4Kids. It's kind of amusing to see Viz continue to do that sort of thing with Crunchyroll's Jujutsu Kaisen. 4Kids almost entirely distributed DVDs through FUNimation so you gotta wonder if FUNimation's own interest in One Piece played a part in Viz getting the deal. I think Toei also had something to do with that decision and obivously Shueisha did. But Shaman King and Yu-Gi-Oh both had DVDs from FUNimation despite also being Shonen Jump series.
The time before nyaa was truly a dark time. And somehow we've returned to a dark, post-nyaa time, where despite the ease and availability of *ahem* alternative sources for chinese cartoons, today's youths don't know how to, uh, access free cartoons
You take as long as you need to take, and you should switch your Patreon to monthly. I don't care how long the videos take, but I love supporting your content in general. I imagine the rest of us feel the same.
Thank you so much for the shout out! Awesome video, this was an incredible dive into this situation. I'm currently doing a sub/dub comparison of the 4Kids dub of One Piece, and it's a trial to say the least. The 4Kids dub definitely has its goofy and nostalgic charms to it, and I did enjoy it when it aired, but talk about a mess in more ways than one.
23:01 - Make that 4 actually as Bella Hudson (Erica Shoreder who voiced 4Kids Luffy) returned and voiced Miss Buckin in the Funi dub. And while Veronica Taylor hasn’t returned to One Piece, Funi did bring her for one of their other anime dubs which was DBS. I still think there was a missed opportunity to bring back the 4Kids voice actors as the Fake Strawhats at the start of the post timeskip (even though I know David Moo and Kerry Williams don’t do voice acting anymore).
I've never come across your channel or content before, but this was such an enlightening video that was also passionate AND compassionate. Instant subbing with the bell turned on.
Ocean Group was also involved but they might have been hired by Funimation for an alternate plan if dubbing in-house wasn't viable. The two of them produced an episode presumably as proof of concept before Toei sold the license to 4kids, each using a different cast. Eric Vale and Andrew Chandler respectively voiced Luffy and Zoro in Funimation's episode. Only a bit of audio was recorded from someone who was allowed to view them while visiting Funimation at the time but you can find clips matched with its respective footage.
I must have hazy memories of watching the 4Kids version when I was a kid. Because I can remembered clear as day in 2010-2011, I decided to pick up ONE PIECE, because I finally had found the show I was looking for way back in the earlier 2000s. But the moment I started watching the Funimation Dub, I was shocked at the violence and swears. I literally thought that just because it was cartoon animated, it must have been for kids. It was also around the time when I was starting to get into Anime too. So that’s my experience transitioning from 4Kids to Funimation I guess 😅
Was not expecting to watch a One Piece video from this channel haha. The quality of the video and the effort you put into it are superb. Its kinda funny how just a couple hours ago i was watching a compilation of outtakes from the 97 Berserk anime where the VAs where having so much fun (Sean Schemmel is there too lmao). In the Berserk community the opening song became a meme with the whole "put your grasses on" lyric 😂 honestly the song aint even that bad but its hilarious how it became a staple in the community.
I remember people saying the early Funimation dubs tried to skirt away for more outlandish voices due to the shadow of 4Kids' unique picks for voices and being compared to that. The first group of characters to really get away with goofier voices being The Foxy Pirates.
Maybe this is a hot take but I feel 4Kids' One Piece casting was utterly brilliant, I love the overly cartoony voices and even alot of the direction, I feel it still works in the dramatic moments, I especially love Sanji and Shank's voices
It's interesting you'd call the 4kids Smoker/Chaser read tonally inconsistent. The scene settup is that this is a big, scary marine. He's imposing, he's surrounded by smoke (without censorship, he's chain smoking stogies). We've seen the marines to range from "blissfully naive" to "actively unlawfully tyranical" fro mthe show so far, and the ones who fall into the latter category are built like Smoker -- who's design is also ripped from a number of "yakuza" tropes (down to his weapon, which amounts to a medieval baseball bat). The pay off here is that we see Smoker ISN'T entirely what he appears to be. The assumption based on appearance is that this guy would threaten this little girl, or her father, for ruining his pants. Smoker isn't UNAWARE of himself, he KNOWS he's intimidating, he DELIBERATELY cultivates that image. Him telling the girl it's not her fault and paying to replace her ice cream shows that, while he WILL be quite an intimidating guy to lawbreakers, he's good to the common person, he's NOT a bad guy. Funimation has him claim responsibility for the loss of icecream in a fairly clunky but faithfully translated line read. 4kids has him comforting the girl for, from her point of view, is a tragedy. So, which is more tonally inconsistent? Smoker calling his pants silly in an attempt to take responsibility for this girl's spilt icecream which he follows up on by giving her the money to replace it, or, Smoker getting down to her level and telling her there's nothing to worry about which he demonstrates further by giving her money to replace it? The tone of the scene is to establish Smoker is a good guy. Not just a "good guy" in that he's not maliciously evil, but that he's a "good" guy, a good person. You're right in that it's a toss up, but I don't 4kidn's take was "tonally inconsistent" -- not in that case anyhow.
i like the direction you took for this video, its really interesting topic and good advice for aspiring voice actors along with fun for fans of one piece
The funny voice does some explaining This is the equivalent of gianni explaining the entire doom lore while saying some goofy shit in between And I love it
Another obvious example of an excellent performance elevating a bad work is the 1994 Street Fighter movie. The movie itself is utterly forgettable, but Raul Julia's performance as M. Bison is so passionate and over-the-top that it has achieved legendary immortality. He put his all into it because, since he was battling with cancer, he knew it would be his last role and his kids really liked Street Fighter, so he wanted to leave them something great to remember him by. The passion and devotion he gave to what by all rights should have been a one-note bad guy has raised both him and the character in people's esteem.
I remember back in the day people gave David Moo (4Kids Sanji VA, also Xellos from SLAYERS) so much shit for his Sanji performance that a year or two after One Piece got licensed by Funimation he ended up quitting Voice Acting. Last I heard he runs a pretty successful bar in Queens.
hate how they wasted Marc Diraison as Zoro. He was so good as Guts in Berserk and he absolutely had the chops to do Zoro justice but was done dirty by 4Kids’ horrible script and direction (also if you know how Berserk 97 ends, you’ll know how Diraison knew how to realistically scream for his life)
For perspective on how long one piece is, the anime is 1000 episodes long and still going. The Simpson is planning to meet its 800 episode mark sometime this year after running for almost ten years longer. There are more episodes of one piece than the Simpsons.
"If you entrust the means of production to a group with interests diametrically opposed to your own, it will come back and bite you in your ass" No truer words have been spoken.
18:17 I think one character in another series that the graph about annoying characters made me think of is Monokuma from Danganronpa (this will be mildly-spoilery). In a nutshell, the game's main antagonist tries to go for a feeling of being powerful, disrespectful, funny, and annoying. Especially for the other characters in the story. And that's a unique vibe among villains because most try to be powerful, scary, imposing, and fall to their own poetic hubris. What makes Danganronpa's main villain interesting to think about in the context of a character that is trying to be annoying is that they have two different modes the writing switches between. As Monokuma, they're basically written as the form of the character you encounter as a main character for the entire game. So the spotlight and focus is only on him for short periods of time, but he manages to be a consistently disrespectful force. He's pretty entertaining and funny, and just the right amount of hateable. Also he has Hanna-Barbera cartoon sound effects whenever he shows up. Then, once you uncover the person under the mask, who is controlling Monokuma. So, with a character who you've only really been seeing snippets of their personality through the game (in a nutshell, non-diagetic sketches told through Monokuma to the player end up giving a sneak peek into how they see the world), and they basically ramp it up to eleven once the spotlight is on them, and go into absolute overdrive. Like I'm watching a character who was already incredibly disrespectful, annoying, funny, and powerful start exponentially increasing all of those attributes at once. And, unlike Monokuma, you're with them for one LONG scene rather than at regular intervals in shorter scenes. Their bit changes to reflect this. So, this character is REALLY goofy and REALLY enjoyable and fun to watch, but giving them a lot of screen-time makes them out to be crazy annoying. The thing that's so risky with their character is how, if the scene is poorly paced, then the character would be incredibly aggravating and wear out their welcome. But when I played, the character only stopped being enjoyable and started getting aggravating the second that the scene was about to wrap up. Which is honestly a sign to me that tells that they annoying-ness of the character was directly controlling the pace of the scene. And it proved to be a constant in the VN endings. It's GREAT in these scenes because they end the second that everything gets old. Like, I consciously said "can you fuck off???" and then the main villain IMMEDIATELY fucked off, with perfect comedic timing. And legit, if they didn't start to get grating the moment then they did, then I might have been kinda sad for a character that I feel better not being sad for, rather than just appreciating that the game had just given me a scene that I really liked and found funny. So I think the concept shown in the graph of annoying characters losing their enjoyment over time is interesting because I've literally watched scenes that hinge around that premise. And, combined with all the other strengths in those games finales, it made for a trilogy of video game stories with REALLY memorable and unique endings. Yes I did just want to put a big wall of text around a scene I like. Also hey, if you want another genuine lesson from the video, it's about how legit that visualisation of the annoyingly goofy characters-to-enjoyment ratio is.
As someone who barely ever watches anime and only knows One Piece because of the 4kids theme, this was a very entertaining video to watch, love your voice acting shitposts but I hope you do more videos like this Luke.
I first watched 'One Piece' with my son on Cartoon Network but when I started buying the DVDs and heard the Japanese voice actors, I couldn't listen to the English anymore. Recently, I tried again and couldn't do it. I'm glad the 4Kids were able to introduce us to 'One Piece' and it's fun making comparisons to current adaptations. I thought you did a very good job on this video too! Keep up the good work!
Wonderful how they made Sanji sound like Joey Wheeler's alcoholic uncle thus adding to the Brooklyn Cinematic Universe. And let's give a big shout out to how the 4kids dub ended with the Straw Hats basically being killed by a falling ship. Also shout out to Zoro's 4kids VA being the voice of Guts. and don't believe the liars, it was totally Sonic who gave Luffy his iconic hat.
this got copyright claimed so there are going to be ads on it. i get no money from them and i have no idea how many there are. if U can think of any way to BLOCK these ORIGINal ads, you're welcome to try
i gUess i will BLOCK the ORIGINal ads
yoU know, i have been well versed in the art of BLOCKing those ORIGINal ads for years.
Hmmm wonder if there was a way to SPONSOR a form of BLOCKing those should any ORIGINal attempt fails or is too much effort
This REally makes you think about some adVANCED ad blocking strategies
Have you tried wizard posts?
LUKE CORREIA IS REEAAAALLL!!!!!!
BLUD IS HERE 🗣️🗣️🔊🔊🔥🔥🔥🔥
Can we get much higher?~
The LUKE
THE LUKE IS REEEEEEEEAAAALLL
CAN WE GET MUCH HIGHER
The real one piece was the Luke Correia videos
yai yo yai yo
Yo yai yo yai
yo yai yo yaoi
Yaoi
DREAMIN'
yaoi
Say what you will about the 4Kids version, the fact that their censorship meant Smoker just emitted smoke from his mouth rather than from cigars was extremely badass.
Agreed 😂😂😂
Maybe it's just me but I actually prefer Smoker's 4Kids name Chaser.
Chaser just hits different somehow.
Ace however not so much.
Trace is kinda lame lol
@@nickel7o740”Trace Heat-Fist” is way less epic than “Fire-Fist Ace”
@@nickel7o740The arch-nemesis of trans people
@@nickel7o740he’s called ‘white chaser’, isn’t he? Likely why they picked it over a smoke related name
18:53 "Boy Howdy, I wanna live!" absolutely killed me lmao
Unironically, I'd love this
Me irl:💀💀💀
I literally laughed out loud! I don't normally do that sitting alone watching a video
That part ripped my soul straight from my body
Dang bro same
Fun fact: Zoro is voiced in the 4kids dub by Marc Diraison, who you may know as the man that voiced Guts in the original Berserk anime and the golden age movies. So no wonder he can pull off a good scream.
Makes sense. He was a fantastic Guts, so it stands to reason.
Ah,Classic Guts.
12:23
I now cant unhear Guts screaming "LUFFY!!" instead of griffith in unbridled rage.
No way. This definitely wasn't what I was expecting your comeback to look like, but I am all here for it!
I didnt even notice this was luke correia until about 13 minutes in and checked the comments lol
Me too
@@jc_art_ The incredible voice acting at 18:50 would probably have given it away lmao
Ye of little faith
This goes hard
I watched the 4kids version in cartoon network when i was younger and i swear to god it took me a whole decade to find out nami didn't actually stab ussop with a rubber knife
Took me years to discover Sanji was not, in fact, sucking a lollypop.
Not gonna lie... was sorta disappointed too. Something about this clean suit wearing, wannabe Lythereo, short fuse tough guy that could kill a man with his kicks, ALSO having a major sweet tooth, struck me as charming.
@@BIGBLUBLURthe lollipop was indeed just as cool as the cigarette.
@@allworksnewno
@@NRC613 it's just a cigarette it dont even matter
I wonder if Sora's lollypop from Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V was a reference to Sanji?
This actually makes a lot of sense.
1: one piece is a big talking point right now
2: one piece has one of the most notorious 'so bad its good' dubs in anime history which is right up Lukes alley
I am convinced that 4Kids One Piece is the worst dub of all time not just because it's bad, but because it managed to absolutely ruin one of the greatest animes out there. It's sort of like the ATLA movie in the sense that there are worse live action adaptations, but none that take a masterwork and destroy it completely.
Please, I'm begging you to clarify that you meant the 4Kids dub and not the Funimation dub, which is the current one
@@royolaniye6643 I think you can use some brain power to understand the content of the video and link it to my comment
@@samt3412hell no that's the biggest crock of shit I've read. No the 4kids dub wasnt bad, david moo played a bad ass sanji, oh my gosh the censored a damn cigarette, and guns ohhhhh my gosh stop the presses.
The only real issue with it was the HORRIBLE scheduled time and re runs. Had to wake up at like 6 or 6:30 in the morning to watch it and around the alabasta arc they played re-runs of everything prior so I could never watch everything in chronological order. That's the only issue
And no I dont want to hear krillen usopp or piccolo zoro that's lame
@@allworksnewI do. Zoro and Usopp's dub VA's are fucking incredible for the funimation. I can't imagine anyone else playing them. Even Oda was the one who chose them personally. And Sanji is the best of them all way better than 4kids.
The 4Kids Dub is such a low hanging fruit to take easy shots at, I respect anyone genuinely trying to look at it from a constructive perspective and see what real merits and weaknesses the series had.
"BOY HOWDY I WANNA LIVE!" Alright. I'm convinced. We need to get the gang back together and have them do all the iconic scenes throughout One Piece. I wanna hear Akainu send Ace to the dungeon. Luffy giving Saint Charlos a good talking to after he rudely pointed at Hacchan. Aussie Shanks stopping the war.
"rudely pointed at" 💀💀💀💀
''The One Piece is real'' Whitebeard yelled after getting all that ketchup spilled over him, what a goofball grandpa
Akainu be like: Ace I am ending you to a dungeon. Ace: I no how can I ever escape!
God it would actually be so dark cause the only way I can see them justify the celestial dragons literally having and taking slaves is to make it seem like the slaves are working consentually 💀💀💀
i need a situation where i can finally say "BOY HOWDY I WANNA LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE"
Getting your first footjob under the table at Applebee’s?
God I forgot about how Robin got turned into a cowgirl.
The scene where Smoker gives the girl money is worse in the 4Kids dub, but not because of the performance or localization. It's because of the music. The original was purely silent, giving off an air of mystery to Smoker, showing that he's a good enough guy to help a little girl out and not get mad about the ice cream, while still making him come off as an intimidating wildcard. With 4Kids, it just has happy music, making him come off as a much friendlier guy than he's supposed to. That's an issue 4Kids has had with almost everything they've worked on- Their music is used to represent the actions that are currently happening on-screen, regardless of what the scene is trying to communicate as a whole.
I dont think i ever could have in the history of the universe thought that luke would come back this way
you
the soup lore runs deep
I never knew I wanted a video essay from this man until I got it, great work man! :p
This isn't the first video essay he's done though, check out his playlist "The Voice Actor's Copybook". Most are a couple of years old, but the one on AI was from the start of this year.
I'd reccommend watching some of his other videos with simular structure to this like his one about how the voice acting in titanfall 2 is absolutely amazing
I think I just learned something about voice acting. A voice actor's job is to have fun on the job, even when nobody else is.
But at the same time, you also need to treat it with respect and care.
And the fun being had should be *in* the job, not at the job's expense.
@@SobiTheRobot you need to have to respect and care about the audience too.
Depends how much the director allows you to have fun and isn't a tyrannical ass
@@islandboy9381 correct
"I wanna leave, pardner! Let's ride off into the sunset together and have a rootin' tootin' good time!"
-4kids Robin, probably.
Sam O'Nella, Brewstew, the Spanish Inquisition, Luke Correia: The Four Horsemen of people nobody expects and comes out of nowhere
EDIT: guys, I said FOUR horsemen, not endless list of RUclipsrs that upload once in a blue moon
you forgot Oversimplified and Bill Wurtz
Casually explained
don’t forget GradeAUnderA. Although he hasn’t come back yet.
What about ProZD or Gianna Matragrano?
@@F1areon I said *four* horsemen
4Kids actually was what made me a One Piece fan thanks to the effort given by the VAs. Yeah, i drifted off on and off based on availability and other factors, but i cannot deny that 4kids was a lot more of a solid start than people gave it credit for - and i've actually been collecting the 4kids DVDs thanks to that. Only Vol 11 evades me.
I think it could have been better if the voice direction was consistent.
Same and 1 of the only animes to have a rap theme song besides dragonball gt
@@allworksnewand Initial D
As somebody that sometimes struggles to focus on long stretches of speech, I appreciate the subtitles, albeit the timing on much of them were fucked up as hell, glad they were there and mostly accurate regardless.
Also I have never interacted with anything one piece in any way, nor am I a voice actor, but this was still insanely interesting to watch, thank you.
Thanks for bringing the issue with the subtitles up. There were some late additions to the script, so the copy that got added as the subtitle file didn't reflect the actual spoken lines. The RUclips auto-sync for captions really didn't like that, along with some of the transition gaps where nothing is spoken, so more than a handful of lines got tossed out of place. Most of it should be fixed now. Appreciate you letting me know!
@@LukeCorreia I appreciate you fixing them, just for the sake of anybody watching the video in the future, really appreciate anybody that goes out of their way to make accurate captions on videos, especially because most people unfortunately don't.
Same here! I need subtitles for most things and struggle when there aren't... rewinding videos is a daily occurrence : )
Why is there a Canadian English, is it more polite?
I really wish RUclips hadn't removed caption editing just because some people were trolling on them. I would have loved to fix at least a bit of the timings.
About the whole "anime being seen as cartoons" thing, I watched The End of Evangelion when I was little, because I found the DVD in my uncle's room, no box, and thought, "Hey, a new cartoon." I was never the same since.
Good video, by the way, Luke. This was a really informative video about One Piece's licensing issues in the United States.
Why's he looking at her sleeping like that? What's that on his hand?
@@bobbodaskank I didn't ask those or any other questions when I watched. I just watched, shocked beyond belief, wondering what the hell I was seeing.
it's a miracle you survived that
@@albumorienteddungeons343 On God.
Could have been worse.... could have found a copy of Berserk and thought "hey new comic" and it was the eclipse scenes
My personal grievance with the 4Kids dub is the direction they gave David Moo, Sanji’s actor. He is a PHENOMENAL actor, his Xellos performance in Slayers is stupendous but his most famous role is this nose-plugged Brooklyn-adjacent food-pun slinging embarrassment.
A lot of the cast did astonishingly well despite it all and the lesson I want for those watching this video is when you see a ‘bad’ performance, think critically about it. Was it the script? An off-kilter delivery? If that kind of strange delivery is happening across multiple characters it’s probably a directing choice, not an acting choice.
I still talk up Smoker as having two powers. Smoke Logia and Pants that Eat Ice Cream.
David Moo was also good as Panik in Yugioh.
Xellos and Panik worked, but Sanji didn’t work.
@@dwainsimmons3447 I would hope my phrasing made it clear I'm not a fan of 4Kids version of Sanji, it's merely that I don't blame Moo because even if the accent and voice were his idea the fault still lies with the director giving it the OK.
@@00Clankno that's 1 if not the main reason why sanji is my favorite to this day. I mean how many Brooklynish cooks do you find in a pirate world? None, it made him unique to me and i didnt care to think about logistics. Maybe it's because I liked the voice of Joey wheeler as well but whatever.
@@allworksnew Cool to hear some folks did like it.
I personally loved 4Kids Buggy. Mainly because the actor did a good job and because they did something no other dubbing company has done. Whenever he got pissed, they distorted his voice. It sounded amazing.
What about dic/Cloverway dub of sailor moon?
Contrarian take
The one thing I enjoyed with 4kids was Gol Rogers voice.
It sounded so threatening, like an actual legendary pirate.
Granted it probably doesnt fit with his character as we currently know him as but to me it was better than Funimations generic pirate voice.
Almost 30 minutes!? Man, we really let him cook something so grand!
call that slow cooking: satisfying despite the wait
Grand? The grand line?!?! One piece!!!
14:46 Chris Sabat might voice Vegeta, but keep in mind, 4Kids's Zoro is voiced by Marc Diraison, aka Guts
Honestly I prefer Marc's performance, and by a lot. Obviously in a perfect world, his voice matched with the uncensored version of the show, but that doesn't really matter cuz it ain't ever coming true 😂
I could now care less what Chris Sabat or the cast at modern day Funimation voices. I’d pick 4Kids anytime, anywhere since not only they had iconic voice actors, but more importantly, the casts were drama proof and they know how to keep their reputation stabled to avoid tainting their name or studio’s brand.
I dislike both dubs overall, but Marc is the one shining star of greatness.
@@sonicexereaper6814I disagree.
Luke disappearing for two months only to drop a 27 minute video about One Piece wasn't what I was anticipating this evening. Can't wait though!
Honestly, with 4Kids voice directing being what it is, your examples really are what they would have gone for, or damn near close to it. The real question is how the hell they would have tackled Brooke's whole ordeal. "And that's why I'm wearing a skeleton costume now. Shame all my crewmates are in an internal slumber."
not to mention they skipped laboon and reverse mountain iirc lmao
ivankov 💀
As someone who has always fought in the defense of the 4kids Dub thank you for making this video. It sums up my thoughts in a well thought out way and will be an easy point of reference from now on if I want to point someone to why I liked the VA work in 4kids rather than simply trying to explain "they had better energy"
This was really well put together! I'm a zoomer but my elder siblings made me watch alot of 4kids stuff when I was younger or just whatever anime we could find on dvds. And honestly I thought the voice actors were phenomenal in what they did!
Going from 4KIDS to the Live Action today is so hilarious
Luke coming back with a One Piece video essay was not the return I expected but I am pleasantly surprised
Came expecting a funny dub, stayed for an analysis for a show I don't watch, was pleasantly surprised by the heartwarming message at the end. Good job man.
Can we also appreciate the masterpiece that is the 4kids dub opening.
🔥🔥🔥
🤩🎉🤮👍
I never had that much of a hate for 4kids. There were genuinely talented people behind it, and arguably part of what got a good number of people into anime in the first place.
I don’t think that it was all worth it.
@@dwainsimmons3447 To each their own I guess
They were good at comedy! ...Drama less so.
@@SobiTheRobot saban did it better
Luke Correia you have no idea how much respect i have for you because you made a video about one piece
Another recommendation for the ‘nani’ to ‘luffy’ line could be ‘what the!’ Since it’s the same syllables as both and can keep a similar energy to both the original and the 4kids version
great video, mr. Correia! i really liked the end about putting in effort to be great despite terrible circumstances, scripts, and direction. Gives me hope that inspiring voice actors will keep that to heart!
I'm loving this video so far. So many video essays on youtube start off by giving a long introduction to a series that doesn't need one, taking too long explaining what the subject is, rather than the actual meat of the video. Or they somehow manage to make the opening of the video sound like filler (how does that happen?). Meanwhile here, we just get a dude with a really good voice and a really, REALLY well paced and engaging script. Loving it.
I'm a little disappointed that there wasn't anything about the Funimation part of the story other than "They wanted it" and "They got it eventually"
Funimation's One Piece is a very interesting situation because there have been multiple credible sources talking about the fact that the cast is literally finalized by the series' creator which is something I've never seen from another anime
They made a test dub back in 2004.
Same since I just feel like 4KIDS has been covered to death, but I 100% get a content creator wanting a video to be more focused on a singular topic - would have had to add another extra 30 min at least and way more research haha
But yeah, there is a lot of interesting stuff there - from how different the initial test pilot during the bidding war was compared to when Funi actually licensed it in 2007. There's the very unique casting situation where the director sent in lists & auditions of anywhere from up to a dozen actors each for the JP team (Toei, Oda, producers) to choose Straw Hats from and respond with notes. Colleen was told to sound gruffer for Luffy, Stephanie's note for Robin was to "sound sexier" which Funi took to mean lower-pitcher while Toei meant higher and resulted in a conversation about differing conventions as to what constitutes as "sexier" lmao. Later on Brook was also given specific notes, etc... They also had to work initially on a video game, the Alabasta special, and Skypiea before going back to Ep 1. Not to mention the insane oversight Toei has over the dub to this day with not only casting main arc characters but scripts.
Pretty much every writer and director who has worked on One Piece said working on it is a completely different ballpark compared to almost anything else in their catalog, and it could really be its own video.
okay that fucking conclusion really like. touched me. like a good kind of heartbreak. i'm not a va, i'm a visual artist and even just getting "hey, you tried, and thats wonderful" is just. gdi who put these TEARS ON MY FACE
I believe there were some interviews with the CEO at the time, Al Kahn, and he basically stated that, for most of the anime they acquired, they would do very minimal research on the story and content in the series and mainly focus on how popular they were in Japan since they (4Kids) may be able to make it popular in the States. This would lead to a few instances (including One Piece) where they would acquire a popular Japanese anime series, based on ratings and popularity alone, and wouldn’t bother watching a single episode until it was time to begin production on the dub. Before One Piece, there were Shaman King and Ultimate Muscle. Shaman King was actually considered relatively benign in Japan since the animation studio, Xebec, had toned down a lot of the graphic content and violence in comparison to the original manga series. So, it’s likely that 4Kids felt that they were able to dub Shaman King while making edits and censoring parts that were absolutely necessary to broadcast it over public satellite TV for kids. Something shocking about this dub is that 4Kids actually fought against the censors since they wanted Shaman King to appeal to the slightly older crowd and they did allow some mature content to stay in, but at the cost of most episodes only being broadcasted once.
Ultimate Muscle was another case of 4Kids going by popularity since a tiny amount of research will show that the Japanese version (Kinnikuman Nisei or Musclemen: The Second Generation) first appeared in comic form in Weekly Playboy Magazine in Japan; which, while it wasn’t P**n, it did have tons of raunchy jokes and toilet humor. Of course, 4Kids saw its popularity and dubbed the anime. It was more censored than Shaman King, but a lot of the edits in their dub fit with the show and they would even add some of their own toilet humor to keep in line with the show’s tone.
Then there’s One Piece which, as usual, 4Kids saw it was popular and also saw that FUNimation were in a bidding war with Saban Entertainment/Ocean Productions for the license; FUNimation had made a prototype website to show Toei as well as a few pilot episodes, but inevitably 4Kids got the license for God knows what reason (likely due to their track record with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters). Some sources say that, while Al Kahn and the licensing team were in Japan picking up One Piece, the rest of the crew had some of their employees watch a few episodes, they realized it was too mature for their audience, and tried to get Al Kahn to back out. He said no and thus we have the 4Kids dub of today. Not sure if that’s true, but we’ll likely never know.
Add in the fact that the Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters anime was toned down from the manga where Dark Yugi pretty much acted like a heroic & more fair version of Jigsaw. The guy straight up sets multiple people on fire in the manga and some of the shadow games sound like they came right out of a Saw movie. Hell, even the Season 0 anime had to tone down Dark Yugi’s Penalty Games, the manga was that dark.
With that context in mind, it’s easy to see why Al Kahn thought that the dark content would’ve been cut out of the One Piece anime already. Most of the heavy lifting in terms of censorship was already done by the animation studios during the initial production process and the series 4Kids licensed were all adapted from Shonen Jump series. Sure Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Ultimate Muscle were all produced by different studios but there was some common threads present across all three series. They were meant for an older audience but there were ways 4Kids could still keep the tone without cutting too much (like the above mentioned toilet humor in Ultimate Muscle and Shaman King being less censored compared to other 4Kids productions). Did those edits do more harm than good? Yes, the Americanization of art is bad for artists around the world and there’s a reason why it’s usually frowned upon. However the edits made didn’t take up a large chunk of the big picture and were similar enough to the original. Think of it like taking a different route to get to the same destination. Different means to the same end.
One Piece is a completely different beast than those shows and tactics that worked for 4Kids’ other dubs did not work for One Piece. It’s a story packed where every single detail counts and builds up to something later. It’s like a giant house of cards, take one card out and the whole structure collapses. The exclusion of several arcs and characters in their dub would’ve had adverse effects on later plot points if they continued to dub One Piece (I.E. Brook joining the Straw Hats).
I want to clarify that I’m not defending 4Kids, just building off of your initial comment. Your comment is the most likely scenario for why 4Kids picked up One Piece
@@sadfalcon9623 I finally took the time to sit down and read your reply; I’m not trying to say you yammered on and on, so I hope you’re not angry with me for what I just said; I’m just super busy working and taking care of younger siblings that I don’t often have the time to read longer responses.
With that being said, basically everything you added to my original post was very well said. Yes, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters, Shaman King, and even Ultimate Muscle to an extent all had a lot of their original manga content toned down or even removed altogether to some extent in the original Japanese anime series. And yes, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Season 0 (just called Yu-Gi-Oh! In Japan) had quite a bit of its manga content toned down and/or removed as well. As someone who read the original manga while watching 4Kids’s Duel Monsters dub, then proceeded to watch Season 0 many years later, I can say that the Season 0 anime is quite tame in comparison to its manga counterpart as well as other anime series in similar genres. Much like modern day USA, Japan have obviously adjusted their TV standards and practices over the years and that’s led to a lot of anime being even more censored for TV, but the animation studios will usually release an uncensored version for home video (Blue-Ray, DVD) and streaming services if they put them on there. However, despite Japan’s standards for TV being more lenient back in the 90s, certain things were still considered too taboo and had to be toned down or cut altogether, especially if a manga artist wanted to target the anime series towards older kids and younger teens (think 9 years old to 14 or 15 years old for the age groups). This led to quite a few manga series intended for older teens and young adults being heavily toned down in their anime counterparts.
Looking at Duel Monsters, the anime series by Studio Gallop was definitely toned down way more than the Season 0 anime, and that likely had to do with the manga artist, Kazuki Takahashi (God rest his soul), wanting to make the Duel Monsters game in the new manga and anime series playable in real life for all audiences. Thus, while the manga series for DM would continue focusing more on the story aspect and continue with the darker tone along with Dark Yugi (AKA Yami Yugi or Atem) still coming off as a morally ambiguous character rather than someone who does everything by the books and for the right reasons. While Dark Yugi definitely wasn’t a villain in either Season 0 nor Duel Monsters, the fact he would often hurt or even kill cheating opponents in the manga made him out to be more of an anti-hero; and there were even some instances of Dark Yugi almost hurting or killing normal Yugi’s own friends and family. This did carry over to the DM anime in Duelist Kingdom with Kaiba Seto threatening to jump off of the castle if Yugi won, then Dark Yugi proceeding to attack before normal Yugi makes him stop, but after this there isn’t another instance like this. The Waking the Dragons arc technically shouldn’t count since that’s anime exclusive filler to my knowledge. To sum up what I said here: in the DM anime, Dark Yugi is basically a light hearted good guy who basically does everything by the books (minus the Kaiba moment in the DK arc) and doesn’t hurt people unless it’s necessary. In both manga series, he’s morally ambiguous, will hurt and/or kill people if they hurt him or his friends, or if they cheat in one of his Penalty/Dark Games.
I’m not going to bring up Ultimate Muscle’s anime counterpart since a lot of the raunchy humor was kept in-tact in the original, but I will say that, to my knowledge, the anime and original manga series that started in a Japanese Playboy magazine are quite different with the manga series having way more adult jokes and situations than the anime. Thankfully, outside of some visual changes for Westernization and scenes considered too violent, most of the visuals were left in-tact by 4Kids and they would essentially make their own raunchy/toilet jokes that were more kid friendly in place of the adult ones, so the over all tone was left.
With Shaman King, the manga was a lot more graphic than the anime to the point where Viz Media, the ones originally responsible for the English manga, had to tone down some of it although not as bad as 4Kids would at times. However, 4Kids would duke it out with the networks and the FCC to try and keep as much in as possible; there are still stances of blood being shown on-screen, death references were toned down but still left in with them being changed to “the land of the no longer living” instead of the Shadow Realm or a dungeon, a lot of the more violent but not bloody scenes during fights were kept, and there was even an episode where Ryu (Rio in the dub) was possessed by a spirit who threatened to kill Rio by using his own sword on himself; thus a reference to a character taking their own life was left in even if the dialog was altered.
And we already know what likely happened with One Piece’s case, so I’ll wrap this up by saying that 4Kids very clearly focused more on popularity with most of their dubs rather than content and keeping the original stories in-tact. It worked well with Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, but that’s only because the video games and cards games were already targeted towards kids and young teens, even if their manga series were darker. So, 4Kids didn’t have to change too much outside of what was required by the FCC and the networks.
Excellent video! Just wanted to add since I didn’t see it in the comments that there are 5 4Kids actors who have gone on to be part of the Funimation dub. Mike Pollock (best known as Dr. Eggman, was also an announcer on 4Kids One Piece going over Chopper’s different forms) played Donquixote Homing and Erica Schroeder (4Kids Luffy) plays Miss Bukkin.
Mike Pollock is a legend. I'm glad he's still Eggman despite SEGA trying to replace him _twice_
@@ShadowEclipse777 yep
@@ShadowEclipse777In fact, he’s the *only* Sonic X VA to still voice in the games, which’s entirely wild to think about.
@@ShadowEclipse777Nope that’s not true. When the 4Kids Sonic voice cast got replaced, they didn’t replace Mike Pollock because he was simply that good
Dan Green as Yugi/Yami/Atem and Eric Stuart as Kaiba honestly made Yugioh!
Just reminds me how the new transformers movie is pretty mid but Peter Cullen acting his soul out in the final minutes made for one of the franchises best scenes ever
I will say forever that Marc Diraison was an excellent voice for Zoro. I wish he had been given a chance to do some of his dramatic scenes justice. The whole cast was able to put in better performances in the video games too. Grand Adventure in particular.
"BOY HOWDY I WANNA LIVE" just about killed me. Thank you for that.
You didn't mention them but are you aware that there were at least 3 pilot dubs of One Piece when companies were fighting for it? FUNimation made one with Eric Vale as Luffy (can you imagine) and Ocean Group did some as well. Ocean Group One Piece sure would have been interesting. I wonder if it was Viz Media who was involved with that attempt.
Toei didn't trick 4Kids into anything but their hands are far from clean because ultimately they made the choice to sell some of the distribution rights to 4Kids and like DiC with Sailor Moon and later Saint Seiya and Saban with Digimon, its evident that Toei only cared if the shows turned a profit. Sometimes it worked out and other times it failed miserably.
Excellent point about Viz Media getting the home video rights being such a bad deal for 4Kids. It's kind of amusing to see Viz continue to do that sort of thing with Crunchyroll's Jujutsu Kaisen. 4Kids almost entirely distributed DVDs through FUNimation so you gotta wonder if FUNimation's own interest in One Piece played a part in Viz getting the deal. I think Toei also had something to do with that decision and obivously Shueisha did. But Shaman King and Yu-Gi-Oh both had DVDs from FUNimation despite also being Shonen Jump series.
Was not expecting a Luke Correria video essay lmao
He's made several. They're all outstanding
Yeah. I though the guy is just posting funny voiceover meme but this suprised me
@@aggressiveavocado went and watched one of the other ones and yeah, this is true!
The time before nyaa was truly a dark time.
And somehow we've returned to a dark, post-nyaa time, where despite the ease and availability of *ahem* alternative sources for chinese cartoons, today's youths don't know how to, uh, access free cartoons
I love this new form of content! Your editing style is very engaging without being overwhelming
You take as long as you need to take, and you should switch your Patreon to monthly. I don't care how long the videos take, but I love supporting your content in general. I imagine the rest of us feel the same.
Thank you so much for the shout out! Awesome video, this was an incredible dive into this situation. I'm currently doing a sub/dub comparison of the 4Kids dub of One Piece, and it's a trial to say the least. The 4Kids dub definitely has its goofy and nostalgic charms to it, and I did enjoy it when it aired, but talk about a mess in more ways than one.
YOOO LUKE IS BAC-…28 minutes?…YOOOOO
This was so unexpected but an absolute joy. The perfect person to talk about the va aspect of the show.
23:01 - Make that 4 actually as Bella Hudson (Erica Shoreder who voiced 4Kids Luffy) returned and voiced Miss Buckin in the Funi dub. And while Veronica Taylor hasn’t returned to One Piece, Funi did bring her for one of their other anime dubs which was DBS. I still think there was a missed opportunity to bring back the 4Kids voice actors as the Fake Strawhats at the start of the post timeskip (even though I know David Moo and Kerry Williams don’t do voice acting anymore).
They should have brought in PurpleEyesWTF to voice the fake strawhats
I've never come across your channel or content before, but this was such an enlightening video that was also passionate AND compassionate. Instant subbing with the bell turned on.
HELL YEAH you have the perfect voice for video essays I LOVE THISS
Every time Luke Posts one of these long videos i get suprised that the funny voice man can do more than a silly scottish accent. Great stuff :)
glad to see the comeback is in this format; I've always liked these videos.
Ocean Group was also involved but they might have been hired by Funimation for an alternate plan if dubbing in-house wasn't viable. The two of them produced an episode presumably as proof of concept before Toei sold the license to 4kids, each using a different cast. Eric Vale and Andrew Chandler respectively voiced Luffy and Zoro in Funimation's episode. Only a bit of audio was recorded from someone who was allowed to view them while visiting Funimation at the time but you can find clips matched with its respective footage.
The video I never expected from this channel, but I am absolutely loving this. It's amazing. Im learning so much stuff.
Now I wish 4kids went on longer so we go BY HOWDY I WANNA LIVE!
A 30 minute long video? Yes please
I must have hazy memories of watching the 4Kids version when I was a kid. Because I can remembered clear as day in 2010-2011, I decided to pick up ONE PIECE, because I finally had found the show I was looking for way back in the earlier 2000s.
But the moment I started watching the Funimation Dub, I was shocked at the violence and swears. I literally thought that just because it was cartoon animated, it must have been for kids. It was also around the time when I was starting to get into Anime too.
So that’s my experience transitioning from 4Kids to Funimation I guess 😅
Was not expecting to watch a One Piece video from this channel haha. The quality of the video and the effort you put into it are superb. Its kinda funny how just a couple hours ago i was watching a compilation of outtakes from the 97 Berserk anime where the VAs where having so much fun (Sean Schemmel is there too lmao). In the Berserk community the opening song became a meme with the whole "put your grasses on" lyric 😂 honestly the song aint even that bad but its hilarious how it became a staple in the community.
I’m beginning to notice an accent in Luke’s voice and now I’m imagining Solid Snake telling about this
This channel is turning from 4 second shitposts into 30 minute video essays and I am ready
This video was so professionally well done kudos to you 👏🏾
Was not expecting a video like this from you, great work!
I remember people saying the early Funimation dubs tried to skirt away for more outlandish voices due to the shadow of 4Kids' unique picks for voices and being compared to that. The first group of characters to really get away with goofier voices being The Foxy Pirates.
Fefefefefe
best part about the zoro moment is that its literally Guts's 97 bersek voice actor playing zoro
I knew as soon as I heard the Pirate Warriors soundtrack that you were completely serious about this.
OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOOOOD
THE WRITING
THE FLOW
THE FINAL MESSAGE
ITS ALL SO GOOOOOOD
Maybe this is a hot take but I feel 4Kids' One Piece casting was utterly brilliant, I love the overly cartoony voices and even alot of the direction, I feel it still works in the dramatic moments, I especially love Sanji and Shank's voices
Funimation Sanji is just boring imho
It's interesting you'd call the 4kids Smoker/Chaser read tonally inconsistent.
The scene settup is that this is a big, scary marine. He's imposing, he's surrounded by smoke (without censorship, he's chain smoking stogies). We've seen the marines to range from "blissfully naive" to "actively unlawfully tyranical" fro mthe show so far, and the ones who fall into the latter category are built like Smoker -- who's design is also ripped from a number of "yakuza" tropes (down to his weapon, which amounts to a medieval baseball bat).
The pay off here is that we see Smoker ISN'T entirely what he appears to be. The assumption based on appearance is that this guy would threaten this little girl, or her father, for ruining his pants. Smoker isn't UNAWARE of himself, he KNOWS he's intimidating, he DELIBERATELY cultivates that image. Him telling the girl it's not her fault and paying to replace her ice cream shows that, while he WILL be quite an intimidating guy to lawbreakers, he's good to the common person, he's NOT a bad guy.
Funimation has him claim responsibility for the loss of icecream in a fairly clunky but faithfully translated line read.
4kids has him comforting the girl for, from her point of view, is a tragedy.
So, which is more tonally inconsistent? Smoker calling his pants silly in an attempt to take responsibility for this girl's spilt icecream which he follows up on by giving her the money to replace it, or, Smoker getting down to her level and telling her there's nothing to worry about which he demonstrates further by giving her money to replace it?
The tone of the scene is to establish Smoker is a good guy. Not just a "good guy" in that he's not maliciously evil, but that he's a "good" guy, a good person.
You're right in that it's a toss up, but I don't 4kidn's take was "tonally inconsistent" -- not in that case anyhow.
i like the direction you took for this video, its really interesting topic and good advice for aspiring voice actors along with fun for fans of one piece
The way you did the imitation of robin and Sanji had me laughing pretty good
Yoooo 30 minutes of Luke Correia content all in one piece! We eating good today.
The funny voice does some explaining
This is the equivalent of gianni explaining the entire doom lore while saying some goofy shit in between
And I love it
Another obvious example of an excellent performance elevating a bad work is the 1994 Street Fighter movie. The movie itself is utterly forgettable, but Raul Julia's performance as M. Bison is so passionate and over-the-top that it has achieved legendary immortality. He put his all into it because, since he was battling with cancer, he knew it would be his last role and his kids really liked Street Fighter, so he wanted to leave them something great to remember him by. The passion and devotion he gave to what by all rights should have been a one-note bad guy has raised both him and the character in people's esteem.
I remember back in the day people gave David Moo (4Kids Sanji VA, also Xellos from SLAYERS) so much shit for his Sanji performance that a year or two after One Piece got licensed by Funimation he ended up quitting Voice Acting. Last I heard he runs a pretty successful bar in Queens.
He was awesome as Panik in Yugioh.
@@dwainsimmons3447wait he was Panik? I genuinely didnt know that til now
@@smarshallmaverick Correct
@@smarshallmaverickI feel like I was the only one who liked the sanjis voice
Perfect timing, I just read up to [SPOILIOPS ALERT]
Kaido's defeat.
i was expecting this to be a 10 second meme and oh boy was i in for a surprise
Outside your odd dubbing preferences, this a well-done video.
I agree
I love how he says that he planned it from the start….
"Boy, howdy i wanna live" is something i would love to see on tv
I may be late to the party, but the memes revived this series. Without it, The One Piece 4Kids dub would remain lost forever.
hate how they wasted Marc Diraison as Zoro. He was so good as Guts in Berserk and he absolutely had the chops to do Zoro justice but was done dirty by 4Kids’ horrible script and direction (also if you know how Berserk 97 ends, you’ll know how Diraison knew how to realistically scream for his life)
And also David Moo and everyone else was wasted on this poor dub of One Piece by 4kids.
23:02 make that 4 people. Erica Schroeder (4kids Luffy) voiced Miss Bakkin in the Funimation Dub Crunchyroll Dub of One Piece.
i do hope we never have to deal with hack dubs like 4kids' again, but their yu gi oh dub forever holds a special place in my heart.
For perspective on how long one piece is, the anime is 1000 episodes long and still going. The Simpson is planning to meet its 800 episode mark sometime this year after running for almost ten years longer. There are more episodes of one piece than the Simpsons.
You're back and its about One Piece, this is the best day ever.
"If you entrust the means of production to a group with interests diametrically opposed to your own, it will come back and bite you in your ass"
No truer words have been spoken.
Wasn’t expecting a dissection of voice work but honestly this was interesting and wouldn’t mind watching more stuff like this
You know the irony of all this? One piece had more viewers on Fox 4kids block than it did on toonami.
I don’t think so
Thanks Luke for another wonderful documentary/analysis video. My S.O. and I enjoy setting some time aside to watch them over food and coffee
18:17 I think one character in another series that the graph about annoying characters made me think of is Monokuma from Danganronpa (this will be mildly-spoilery).
In a nutshell, the game's main antagonist tries to go for a feeling of being powerful, disrespectful, funny, and annoying. Especially for the other characters in the story.
And that's a unique vibe among villains because most try to be powerful, scary, imposing, and fall to their own poetic hubris.
What makes Danganronpa's main villain interesting to think about in the context of a character that is trying to be annoying is that they have two different modes the writing switches between.
As Monokuma, they're basically written as the form of the character you encounter as a main character for the entire game. So the spotlight and focus is only on him for short periods of time, but he manages to be a consistently disrespectful force. He's pretty entertaining and funny, and just the right amount of hateable. Also he has Hanna-Barbera cartoon sound effects whenever he shows up.
Then, once you uncover the person under the mask, who is controlling Monokuma. So, with a character who you've only really been seeing snippets of their personality through the game (in a nutshell, non-diagetic sketches told through Monokuma to the player end up giving a sneak peek into how they see the world), and they basically ramp it up to eleven once the spotlight is on them, and go into absolute overdrive. Like I'm watching a character who was already incredibly disrespectful, annoying, funny, and powerful start exponentially increasing all of those attributes at once.
And, unlike Monokuma, you're with them for one LONG scene rather than at regular intervals in shorter scenes. Their bit changes to reflect this. So, this character is REALLY goofy and REALLY enjoyable and fun to watch, but giving them a lot of screen-time makes them out to be crazy annoying.
The thing that's so risky with their character is how, if the scene is poorly paced, then the character would be incredibly aggravating and wear out their welcome. But when I played, the character only stopped being enjoyable and started getting aggravating the second that the scene was about to wrap up. Which is honestly a sign to me that tells that they annoying-ness of the character was directly controlling the pace of the scene.
And it proved to be a constant in the VN endings.
It's GREAT in these scenes because they end the second that everything gets old. Like, I consciously said "can you fuck off???" and then the main villain IMMEDIATELY fucked off, with perfect comedic timing. And legit, if they didn't start to get grating the moment then they did, then I might have been kinda sad for a character that I feel better not being sad for, rather than just appreciating that the game had just given me a scene that I really liked and found funny.
So I think the concept shown in the graph of annoying characters losing their enjoyment over time is interesting because I've literally watched scenes that hinge around that premise. And, combined with all the other strengths in those games finales, it made for a trilogy of video game stories with REALLY memorable and unique endings.
Yes I did just want to put a big wall of text around a scene I like.
Also hey, if you want another genuine lesson from the video, it's about how legit that visualisation of the annoyingly goofy characters-to-enjoyment ratio is.
As someone who barely ever watches anime and only knows One Piece because of the 4kids theme, this was a very entertaining video to watch, love your voice acting shitposts but I hope you do more videos like this Luke.
I will give 4kids some credit so that dope theme song they made for One Piece
I first watched 'One Piece' with my son on Cartoon Network but when I started buying the DVDs and heard the Japanese voice actors, I couldn't listen to the English anymore. Recently, I tried again and couldn't do it. I'm glad the 4Kids were able to introduce us to 'One Piece' and it's fun making comparisons to current adaptations. I thought you did a very good job on this video too! Keep up the good work!
Slight correction: Sony bought Funimation first, and they acquired crunchyroll under Funimation and merged the companies.
I want the lollipops back, but leave the smoke too. These are smokipops, infused with real cherry wood smoke. Very high class.
Wonderful how they made Sanji sound like Joey Wheeler's alcoholic uncle thus adding to the Brooklyn Cinematic Universe.
And let's give a big shout out to how the 4kids dub ended with the Straw Hats basically being killed by a falling ship.
Also shout out to Zoro's 4kids VA being the voice of Guts.
and don't believe the liars, it was totally Sonic who gave Luffy his iconic hat.
That was shanks that gave luffy his straw hat.
@@dwainsimmons3447No, sonic gave luffy his strawhat.