(I posted this yesterday but fell asleep and never got around to answering a majority of the questions)
I used to work at 4kids, specifically on the edited One Piece Dub.
I will answer any questions you guys may have to the best of my ability for the next hour
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Why is Wan Piss so shit?
I don't know.
Why did you change the intro from this great ass rendition of WE ARE - youtube.com
To the shitty ass pirate rap we ended up getting? I've always liked Russell Velà squez' voice alot.
cringe
why are weebs so smelly?
Ah yes, I remember our version of the original Japanese theme song.
If I remember it right, we tested two versions of the theme song with viewer groups: the rendition using "We Are" and our original theme song (the rap) and children responded more positively to the rap than the original, although it came very close. Fox also liked the rap more as it was shorter and allowed for more commercial time, so we ended up going with that.
Recap, for those anons in the cheap seats, the logic behind Laboon.
Oh well. You tried! Still like WE ARE way more though. Also thanks for answering. I was sure you were lying faggot, but you actually told the truth.
How much of the original Japanese version had aired / printed before 4kids decide to license it? I'm curious to know how much they expected to repaint and replot versus how much more they actually had to alter.
Ah, I actually remember Laboon very well, as it became quite a big deal behind the scenes.
Network censors did not like how violent the Straw Hats were to Laboon. We were aware of a scene where Luffy stabs Laboon with the mast of their ship, which we were going to cut entirely (there were some extreme scenes which we would already note we were cutting when we showed the episode to censors) but they told us that Laboon needed to go completely. Looking back now, yes it would have become a massive problem down the line if we had continued our dub.
I believe Laboon still appears in one of the One Piece games we dubbed, though.
4kids is responsible for One Piece's lack of success in the west. Apologize.
How was the 4Kids dub going to handle the religious aspects of the Skypiea arc? There were lots of mentions of "God" and his "priests" in it, who were the villains of the arc.
Were you really paid per each edit made in an episode?
We were in the middle of figuring out how to handle Skypiea when production was canned, so we didn't have every little detail finalized.
Funimation's TV version included some of the terminology we were going to use for Skypiea, such as the "Sky Knights" instead of "Priest" and stuff.
I was a salaried employee, so I don't know.
Because Oda is a hack
Not OP but I doubt 4kids is the culprit here, it's been over ten years since their dub was cancelled yet One Piece still can't generate Naruto or MHA-tier popularity even though their have been multiple attempts to do so.
Were there any plans to update the opening in order to include Nico Robin?
Not that I know of.
How were you going to handle the Jaya arc? Seeing as it included a few pretty violent beatdowns with Bellamy.
And were there any plans for the Norland flashback in Skypiea, since Norland cuts the head off a giant snake and the flashback generally deals with disease and death.
Stuff like that (how were you going to handle "X" scene) is hard to really say because most of time, we'd cross that bridge when we came to it. We never really planned how we'd dance around fights like that several episodes in advance.