One Piece Animation

One Piece is an anime series from the manga of the same title written by Eiichiro Oda. Produced by Toei Animation, and directed by Konosuke Uda, Munehisa Sakai and Hiroaki Miyamoto, it began broadcasting on Fuji Television on October 20, 1999. One Piece follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a 17-year-old boy, whose body has gained the properties of rubber from accidentally eating a supernatural fruit, and his crew of diverse pirates, named the Straw Hat Pirates. Luffy's greatest ambition is to obtain the world's ultimate treasure, One Piece, and thereby become the next King of the Pirates.^[1] The series uses 36 different pieces of theme music: 18 opening themes and 18 closing themes. Several CDs that contain the theme music and other tracks have been released by Toei Animation. The first DVD compilation was released on February 21, 2001,^[2] with individual volumes releasing monthly. The Singaporean company Odex released part of the series locally in English and Japanese in the form of dual audio Video CDs.^[3]

In 2004, 4Kids Entertainment licensed the series for an English-language broadcast in North America. This dub was heavily edited for content, as well as length, reducing the first 143 episodes to 104, and thus receiving large amounts of controversy and fan backlash.^[4] One Piece made its U.S. premiere on September 18, 2004, on the Foxnetwork's Fox Box programming block, and also began airing on the Cartoon Network's Toonami block in April 2005. In December 2006, 4Kids cancelled production due to financial reasons.^[5]

In April 2007, Funimation Entertainment acquired the license of One Piece from 4Kids and would use their in-house voice cast in preparation for the series' DVD releases.^[6]The Funimation dubbed episodes aired from September 2007 until its cancellation in March 2008.^[7] In Australia, Cartoon Network resumed airing new One Piece episodes in November 2008, starting with episode 170,^[8] lasting until January 2009 following episode 195.^[8] The first unedited, bilingual DVD box set, containing 13 episodes, was released on May 27, 2008.^[9] Similarly sized sets followed with 31 sets released as of July 2015.^[10][11] Episodes had began streaming since August 29, 2009.^[12] Funimation's uncut dub later resumed airing on Adult Swim's revived Toonami block from episode 207 onwards from May 18, 2013.^[13]