doctor said: Digital seems the way to go these days. One Piece is that weird product that had all kinds of problems over state side. I think the mishandling of the series is the reason for why people used other means to watch it. (I didn't to use the very obvious pirate pun). I am glad the Funimation is doing what it can get people coming to their site for their needs.
Personally I'm glad that Funimation licensed One Piece too, but it I don't think bad decisions were purposely made when 4kids had the license to One Piece at the time. True there were some unexpected things in the show that made me give a thumbs down at times, but one thing 4kids positively attempted to do (YES I said positively! That corporation actually has good qualities!), was bring One Piece to the broadest audience for the anime market.
I checked on some of the Shonen Jump volumes I bought from June-December 2006 and I noticed how there were ads for the One Piece video games, dvds, T-Shirts, action figures, plush dolls, even a card game! A CARD GAME!! How many animes ever have a card game merchandised?! Not a lot. Only Yugioh, DBZ, Zatch Bell, Bleach, and Pokemon have premiered card games and they all were highly anticipated hits.
So when One Piece was Televised, automaticaly would there be merchandise. 4kids despite being a corporation tried to bring out the broadest audience for not just One Piece fans, but people who are into pirates, are into anime in general, or never heard of anime but happen to like it's art style.
I just wanted to throw that stuff out there. But yeah I think One Piece having a simulcast was a god decision on Funimations part, now if only fans would just be more appreciative that not only did Funimation bother to license the anime, but have it streamed online around the same time it premieres in Japan. It's sad because 4/5 of the people on this site truly believe anime is free media with a sacred language when it's really an art to be given proper respect, with just different language. Japanese is a cool language, but it's not the first language to ever exist. What happened to Egyptian, hieroglyphics, french, spanish, or Italian ya know? |