Noticing that fans over here dislike the fact that Kaizoku Fansubs edited the 116th episode of One Piece, I posted this over at K-F.
"For many years now, we as fans have watched the 200+ episodes of Kaizoku Fansubs, well, fansubs of the anime series of One Piece. They have given us much enjoyment, making us care and love a series about the adventure of a loveable group of pirates. However, the group who brought us so much fun aren’t actually all that fun themselves. In revelation of the upcoming Season 2 Fifth Voyage box set to be released by American licensing group FUNimation, they need to come clear on some well hidden facts about their Alabasta releases.
They edited the episodes themselves.
Now we all know that they have made edits to the video selection in the past, so that the opening and ending video sequences would be free of their Japanese credits (although why this is also disgraceful will be touched upon later). The edits they have made, while possibly having done other episodes in the series, are most notable in the final 20 episodes of the Alabasta arc. The first edit is correcting “Arabasta King Dom” to “Arabasta Kingdom” (snapshot below). While this doesn’t affect releases too much, it’s a simple little era that didn’t need to really be corrected and if you look closely at the cap, you’ll notice the letter ‘s’ has been stretched and the part after ‘Dom’ has been poorly edited so that it’s actually quite comparable when looking at the two releases.
However, the one that caused this whole debate is on episode 116, during the Bon Clay vs. Sanji fight. After Sanji and Mr.2 perform a barrage of kicks against each other, they cough up blood… only if you following the Kaizoku Fansubs release. In the original TV Broadcast/DVD release, the two characters actually cough up spit and saliva. After Sanji performs a devastating kick to Mr.2’s face, the same edit happens again. You may argue that this was done for consistency, since they had bled earlier in the fight but after they cough up ‘blood’ and stand up in your fansubbed version, notice that a drop of spit is still hanging out of their months. You call that consistency? Also, notice in the screen caps I have made below that in one frame when Mr.2 was spinning around that the ‘blood’ wasn’t blurred, like everything else in the screenshot. Considering that was just a repeat spinning shot of the character flying through the air, surely that would have either happened every time this one frame came up? For you see, it leads to the only possible conclusion that these episodes have been edited by non other than Kaizoku Fansubs themselves.
Now dear viewer, you may wonder why I am making such a compliant against this fantastic group of individuals? “Isn’t adding more blood a good thing?” you say, with your bloodlust ever increasing while watching this heart thumping fights. No my friend, it is not the blood itself, rather the principal. A fansub is supposed to be what it says on the tin, a ‘fan sub’, NOT a ‘fan edit’. This is going against the principals of what a fansub is aiming for and by adding blood, you’ve done, although arguably a more violent kind, EXACTLY what the company we all used to hate, 4kids did.
To me, a fan of the original, it doesn’t matter how you back up your reasons, you made an edit to the source material, something which no other group has done. Fans will gather up in groups and complain to FUNimation, saying they’ve edited the episodes down and therefore, not purchase the legal and amazing release.
But of course, you would enjoy that. For some strange reason, you seem hell-bent on re-releasing the first 10 episodes of One Piece despite them not only being able to purchase for a minimum of $20 these days but are also available for free on FUNimation’s own website. Mato is an excellent translator who, just like you, has done his own fan translations of material, the notable Mother 3 for example, which everyone who has played it has enjoyed. Now I understand that Dythim has gone back and re-translated the first 10 episodes, which is somewhat understandable since they were taken from the Hong Kong bootlegs. You can tell it's taken from this release due to the logo in the top righthand corner at the start of episodes 1 and 10 and from the darker colour palete, which was due to the way it was re-encoded for those DVDs. This by the way fans is also a reason why the episode previews aren’t included in your fan subbed release because they didn’t have access to them. These releases only included previews for episodes 10, 19 and 27. Other fansubs, which started later didn’t have this problem and thus included them. However, as stated before the legal and perfectly fine release has been out for over 18 months now so why do you need to re-release these episodes in this format now? It just seems silly, espeically when fans want the newer episodes more than something that's already released many times around the world now.
To get back to the main point however, you also edited the end of episode 128 to include Family. I am more loose on this one since it may have aired on TV but only in Japan, since I can’t find it on any other international or DVD release of the series. Speaking of songs, why is it on your openings and endings, you never type up the Japanese credits for the actors or the ACTUAL staff who made this possible, rather than just yourselves? It seems somewhat disrespectful, especially when you went out of your way to edit those out of the episodes and used clean ones instead. These credits were typed up for the CD Releases so why not for the episodes themselves?
This isn’t even going into the issue of using words like ‘Nakama’, ‘Oi’ and ‘Yosh’, which can all be easily translated into English ‘Comrade’, ‘Hey’ and ‘Alright’. These are words I have heard used in many other anime series and they NOT been given the exculsive name treatment there. An example of a word that is actually used within a certain untranslated context is Rurouni Kenshin's 'oro', which while it could of been translated from Italian to 'gold', wouldn't have worked since it was used as Kenshin's way of questioning the events that happen around him. Now to be fair to a user of K-F forums, 'Oi' is an english slang word used to call someone over. However, I am still unsure that this is also an AMERICAN word, since it doesn't appear in the Singapore Dub and don't think the FUNimation Dub either. The term translation means ‘to translate’ something which you seemed to somewhat have forgotten during your experience of the show.
Now to state an important point, I do NOT hate this group entirely. Their translations are still, apart from the weeabooisms, top notch these days and they did release the OVA, something which I believed they were involved in getting the file for. They have also been the longest running fan group for One Piece and I have to respect their dedication to the cause. However, their recent suggestions and through the revelation of the edits made to episode 116, I am a little disgusted with what they done.
Now to make a perfectly sane suggestion, I believe that they should still keep their older episode up online but only until the episodes get a domestic release in America. Some fans may want to get a look and what is coming soon and I believe Kaizoku can still be useful in that way. There isn't any reason to have the first 103 episodes avialable online, especially to even think of re-doing the first ten. FUNimation has not stopped you from subbing and I believe they may understand that you were once a great part to our community.
I remember once when you said you stop subbing once someone licensed the series and treated it right. I guess that this was all just a lie since you are still continuing on. But hey, what should expect? You are called KAIZOKU FANSUBS after all!
Images referenced in the above paragraphs posted below:
Spinning Mr.2
The unblurred blood
Arabasta King Dom vs. Kingdom"
Since posting this, I have learned that people at Kaizoku miss the point of your agruement entirly, say you hate something when you've said many times you don't and call you an awful troll. Yes because insulting me will win you marks.
If you want the shorter version, all I want K-F to do is admit that they edited the episode since FUNi will be releasing it correctly uncut soon and I didn't want a war to start over something so pointless. People at K-F don't realise that.
So I want your opinion on the matter. Do you think its wrong of a fansub group to edit an episode, which is something no other group has done to the actual episode in this manor. You can even call me 'a troll for hating fansubs' if you want (I don't hate fansubs, I just wanted something to be corrected), just please post your own opinion here or there. Thank you for your time.
