just a thought: If 4KIDS did not do all these edits… Would One Piece be attracting ratings from smaller kids who watch the show? Little kids can be very picky with shows, so maybe if 4KIDS did not splice eps and stuff, kids would get bored... (Like the Apis arc and some of the fillers)
Just a hunch... Maybe 4KIDS has a room full of 5 year olds who watch an original ep, then they take out what ever the little kids don't like >.>
I'm not saying I agree with that, but it makes me think
As I said... Just a hunch... At first I thought One Piece moved a little too slow myself, but then next thing I know, I've just seen 159 JP eps, and I loved them, fillers and all...
But I don't think little kids would be interested in Usopp trying to build the best fire work or Sanji teaching a kid from the Marines how to cook... They just want action action action... even though a bunch of that action is cut out >.> But you get my point...
Sort of like what Saban did for DBZ's first two seasons: Cut out most of the talking and most of the first two eps to skip directly to the raditz fight...
But then again... Funimation kept some of the rather boring DBZ fillers (Like the Saiyaman saga, or the little ten days while they were waiting for the cell games episodes, etc) and DBZ did just fine, not loosing interest from the little kids...
Maybe if 4KIDS gave the fillers a CHANCE and see how the ratings go, they'd be able to really know if One Piece would loose ratings or not...