In spite of A piece seems unlikely to end anytime soon, its original English dub had an ending… and it was extremely dark. This dub was made by 4Kids Entertainment, the same company that localized series like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon. In both other shows, 4Kids’ dub has been criticized for censorship, and One Piece is no exception.
While One Piece may have cartoonish art styles and goofy characters, the series can get pretty dark and violent. This conflicts with 4Kids’ marketing goals for children’s programs, and as a result they have made many changes both small and large. Some small changes are more silly than harmful, such as Sanji’s trademark cigarettes being turned into lollipops. However, some major changes have completely removed important arcs or characters later in the series, such as One Piece’s Laboon the whale. All of this combined with One Piece only becoming more mature as the series progressed leading to 4Kids ending the dub right after Alabasta.
The ending of 4Kids’ dark One Piece dub completely changed the story
Of course, creating a satisfying ending for One Piece in the middle of its story is no small feat, so 4Kids had to get creative. Since there’s really no good way to bring the series to a satisfying happy ending, the dub took a much darker approach. Before the Jaya and Skypiea arcs, the Straw Hats saw a ship falling from the sky near them, which foreshadowed the existence of islands in the sky. The dub ends with the Straw Hats seeing this ship falling, seemingly about to crush them before turning black. Given that this is the final scene in the 4Kids version of One Piece, this seems to imply that the story ends because the Straw Hats are killed by this mysterious falling ship. This is an extremely unsatisfying ending and is actually much darker than anything 4Kids has censored since the original story.
One Piece is a story about chasing dreams no matter how dark things seem. To illustrate this, it often reveals the dark side of society and examines mechanisms of oppression. But despite this, it never gets bogged down in the dark, remaining a deeply positive work highlighted by Luffy’s innocence and optimism throughout One Piece. The ending of the 4Kids dub makes it the opposite. By removing the darkness and previous maturity of the story, it becomes an ostensibly positive story that ultimately contains an incredibly bleak message about how death lies around every corner. .
The misrepresentation of One Piece’s core messages is largely unintentional, caused by the need to end the story unfinished with some kind of ending whatever it is. But intentionally or not, the 4Kids dub’s dark ending is still incredibly disappointing and ironic. Luckily, dub fans now have a much more realistic Funimation dub to watch, A piece Fans can look back on 4Kids’ bleak ending and laugh instead of lamenting.