Censorship in One Piece anime
The story of boy who would one day become king of the pirates began on July 19th, 1997. The release date of “One Piece”, one of the most popular and influencing manga to ever hit the shelves. Japanese manga author and artist Eiichiro Oda is the creator of the One Piece series. Since July 1997, it has been serialized in Shueisha’s Shonen manga publication Weekly Shonen Jump, and as of August 2022, its individual chapters have been collected into 103 tank-bon volumes. Not many years after the release of this popular manga it would be named part of the “Big 3” along with two other popular manga sweeping the nation known as “Bleach” and “Naruto”.
Two years after the release of the One Piece manga, Toei animation released the first episode of the One piece series which is still airing too this day. Just like the manga the anime did not waste anytime to reach the top of the charts of being the most popular in it’s time. The anime had little to no flaws except one major problems to the fans. That was the censorship in the anime compared to the manga.
Censorship changing characters original development?
There are multiple instances in the one piece anime where moments did not match with the manga or did not show the full image of a scene. For example, Anime fans got a very different version of the long told story between Sanji and “Red Foot” Zeff. In the anime, Zeff lost his leg when he swam to the ocean depths to save Sanji but had to cut it off when it got trapped in some chains. While a noble sign of sacrifice, it’s got nothing on the original version. In the manga, Zeff was actually able to save Sanji unharmed. However, after getting stuck on the rock, he let Sanji take all the food. When hunger got to him, he’d actually eat his own leg. It’s a much more visceral look at sacrifice and a much grimmer reason as to why Sanji never wants to waste food. Many people felt like this was a very important moment of the series to better understand the circumstances of characters and how they developed through the series.
While some censorship can be seen as tasteful adaptations of the original material, some just seem overly-corrected, especially considering how some cultural standards have loosened over the years. When the anime first brought the Supernovas to the slave shop, Trafalgar Law simply greeted Eustass Kid with a sly look. However, he had much more attitude in the manga, in which, he actually gives Kid the middle finger. This gave the audience a good understanding of what type of person Trafalgar was and how he would develop and change over time. Since then, Toei has never given Law’s middle finger a chance. So anime only watchers never got to see that side of this character.
How censorship effects the audience
Censoring is because of simulcasts which come from public channels as opposed to paid channels. Some censoring (even on the paid channels) is also because they want you to buy the blu-rays and DVDs. Much in the same way the US censors a lot of sexual imagery, Japan tends to censor violence and (particularly) blood. Due to this, the audience cannot get the full feeling or understanding of a character or event that has happened in the series. For fans of manga, anime, and other Japanese media, pointing and laughing at inaccurate mass media portrayals of Japanese pop culture has been something of a sport for decades. A few weeks ago, however, things took a slightly more serious turn.
