Due to the high popularity of the One Piece manga, Toei Animation produced an anime television series based on the manga chapters. The series, also titled One Piece, premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on October 20, 1999. Since then, the still ongoing series has aired more than four hundred fifty episodes and it has been exported to various countries around the world.
In 2004, 4Kids Entertainment began production on an English language release of One Piece in North America, and sub-licensed home video distribution with Viz Media. This dub of One Piece was heavily edited for content and length, reducing the first 143 episodes to 104. Sanji's cigarettes, for example, were turned into lollipops, and "the skin of a black pirate was changed to a tan mulatto / white color." An alternate musical score was created, despite 4Kids using an English-dubbed version of the original Japanese opening theme. The series premiered in the United States on September 18, 2004 on the Fox network as part of the Fox Box block, and later aired on the Cartoon Network in the Toonami block in April 2005. However, 4Kids released a statement in December 2006 confirming that they have canceled production of their dubbed version. In July 2010, an interview was conducted between Anime News Network and Mark Kirk, the Vice President of Digital Media for 4Kids Entertainment. In this interview, Kirk explained that 4Kids acquired One Piece as part of a package deal with other animes, and that the company did not actually watch much—if any—of the series before acquiring it. Kirk stated that once it became clear to the company how One Piece would not work with their intended demographic, they decided to edit it into a more kid-friendly show until they had an opportunity to legally drop the license. In his words, the experience "ruined [the] company's reputation." Kirk elaborated that ever since that incident, they have established a more strict set of guidelines, checks, and balances to determine what anime the company acquires.
In April 2007, Funimation Entertainment acquired the license from 4Kids. After producing a new English voice dub, the company released its first unedited, bilingual DVD box set, containing 13 episodes, on May 27, 2008. Similarly sized sets followed with fourteen sets released as of October 26, 2010. The Funimation dubbed episodes premiered on the Cartoon Network on September 29, 2007 and aired until its cancellation on March 22, 2008. The remainder of Funimation's dubbed episodes continued being aired on Australia's Cartoon Network, and then shifted into reruns of the Funimation dub before being replaced by Total Drama Island. Funimation, Toei Animation, Shueisha, and Fuji TV released a statement in May 2009 confirming that they would simulcast stream the series within an hour of the weekly Japanese broadcast. This free, English-subtitled simulcast is available at www.onepieceofficial.com. Originally scheduled to begin on May 30, 2009 with episode 403, a lack of security resulted in a leak of the episode. As a result, Funimation delayed the offer until August 29, 2009 at which point it began with a simulcast of episode #415. One Piece episodes are also available for streaming at Hulu.com, in both subtitled and dubbed formats (with the dub being the unedited dub found on the DVD releases).
