@Moriah:

In the case of Gundam NT and Fate/Stay Night those two movies were released directly by the companies that made them, which is why they were released so fast in the US. In the case of Gundam NT, Bandai Visual commissioned the dub themselves and it was released on Blu-Ray as an import, no US based distributor has the license to it (making it difficult to find it for a reasonable price on Blu-Ray).

RightStuf is the official distributor for all things Gundam and it WILL eventually get a commercial release since the did the same thing with both Unicorn and The Origin where they released and import version before they later on released an affordable collection. Give it time.

If there is announcement for Stampede (as well as more episodes for the main series) it will likely be in October to coincide with the 20th anniversary. Which maybe part Toei's doing, since Funimation is hyping the 20th anniversary on their site, as well as Toei's history of being more hands on with their properties when dealing with foreign distributors.

It will be great IF that happens then, all I'm saying instead of putting my expectations into milestones lets just see what happens when 2020 roles around. They ran out of TV Specials, Stampede would have to be announced and this is the point where something has to give.

@Captain:

I dont care about Stampede either but its the 255% surefire way to know that Funi cares about One Piece and more importantly that they are both willing and able to work on NEW stuff.

It's not about if "they care" it's more about how movie acquisitions have changed in the last 2-3 years and there's a faster turnaround overall (across all NA companies) to get a theatrical showing and commercial release of a movie. For example earlier this year I was able to to see Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Modest Heroes (the Ghibli spin-off Studio Ponac), Fate Stay Night and Gundam NT ALL within the first two months of this year. NA anime companies are more invested in releasing the movie versions of their properties within a year window of the Japanese release and that window has been getting shorter. With One Piece Stampede getting clearance in other countries it's going to be VERY telling if it doesn't get a NA release. It's not about the quality of the movie, or if people are interested but it IS the newest One Piece hype property in Japan and if Funimation doesn't act on it then it's given us a very clear statement on the status of the property in Western shores overall.

I would say if they don't license Stampede for a 2020 release like they did the previous movies that is a HUGE red flag.

@Miss:

These kinds of episodes are always bittersweet. Sweet cause they're great, bitter cause it makes you realize what this anime could be like if even half of their episodes were of this same quality.

If I'm being honest this is why I've gotten away from episode to episode discussions. Despite the anime's overall improved quality since Zou there is still this stigma that One Piece has to match (what I feel is) the unrealistic expectations of some people on this board. It just get's very nitpicky and while I agree with what is said I also look at what's going on with other shows to understand what's going with One Piece.

The thing is One Piece is one of the few shows still airing week to week with very few breaks. The anime industry and a LOT of TV anime Shonen adaptations have shifted to a "per cour" style now where instead of depending on getting a timeslot and just staying there they now take "breaks" and adapt the anime a few arcs at a time. It seems to be a fallout from the Naruto/Bleach years where "anime original" content had to be created not to overtake the manga resulting in some inconsistent quality. While I've heard and read that the anime original content actually either maintained or even improved ratings due to it not being a retread of the manga material there has definitely been this huge shift in the anime TV industry to air things in a more "seasonal" manner recently.

Now the elephant in the room is Boruto and Pokemon Sun & Moon.
Boruto has seen a huge uptick in the anime's quality since toward the tail end of Shippuden where there is a lot more consistency in the animation and storytelling quality. Even with Pokemon the animation team has gotten better since the animation shift in Black & White occurred and since XY you've had a lot of TV quality episodes that rival the stuff we get in movies.

That being said, I feel like the animation and directing has been A LOT more consistent since Zou started and this seems like a new "phase" for the anime but it honestly feels like you have a few consistent watchers on this board expecting TV Special/Movie quality on a weekly show with a company that tends to spread itself very thin in terms of animation distribution but in the last possibly 4 years or so has actually either met or gone beyond fan's expectations with a lot of their IPs. It just seems a bit tiring to me to think the anime has to be at a 9 or 10 all the time when not every single chapter needs that kind of work.

@G1Ravage:

In that case, the next collection after that (24) would cover everything to the end of Fishman Island, and the Straw Hats' ascent into the New World. At which point the collections would have caught up with the individual releases.

I know I said this during the break between seasons 8 and 9, but I get the feeling this is the end of the voyages. Perhaps they're using this break in voyage releases to dub much further ahead, and the collections (with roughly 24 episodes) will be the new standard of release.

@Sano:

The only problem it wouldn't make sense to release a 11 episode collection Since the next collection would cover the final volume of Season 9 and the first volume of Season 10.

Actually to some degree this makes sense…you're still getting the amount of episodes you would have if you bought the Season releases BUT from 25 on it would be double the episodes. It's also logically since the Season Sets are only available for a limited time and then are completely phased out with the Collection releases which honestly seemed a bit redundant in the first place.

@Riddler:

You mean skipping the opening in the Funi Dub, too? True that would avoid the licensing issue (if that is in fact the problem), but I feel like Funimation is a lot more adamant about keeping all of the original openings for the dub than the producers of the German dub ever were. Hands Up isn't the first opening that has been skipped for us, after all; Believe, Share the World and Fight Together were left out for no good reason, too.

What I'm saying is: I agree that it is not a hard issue to solve if the people in charge are rather lenient about licensing all openings anyway, but as I said, I think Funimation would definitely prefer to not skip one.

We keeping assuming the specific problem is Hands Up. Honestly since the Crunchyroll stream was (more or less) eventually able to clear it for streaming right I can't imagine it being THAT much of a problem for Funimation. Of more of the mind that Funimation is in another renegotiation period for One Piece's contract in general. They seem to have this every few years after releasing a set of episodes. The current division with this pattern was
1. Seasons 1-3, Wii game and Movie 8
2. Seasons 4-5 and Movie 10
3. Seasons 6-8 and Movie 12
4. Season 9, Movie 13 and Film Gold
I'm not to sure about the last two but it seems Funi's current pattern is to release an "arc" of episodes along with a movie before we have a brief break in the release schedule.

I swear even though it's only been a few chapters the content has reached the same epic level I haven't felt since Water Seven/EniesLobby and Marineford.

@G1Ravage:

! I don't recall Pudding having any lines at all. She gets screen time, but just looks disturbed at her mother's eating habits. I'm sure FUNi will do a proper casting for Big Mom, so that the voice is the same when we eventually get around to her again.

! Also Funi's not obligated to change the voice actor just because the seiyuu changed. They didn't do that with either Smoker or Jimbei's voices when the originals passed away. Even though by sheer coincidence they have to do this with Sengoku (both the Japanese seiyuu and English VA passed after Marineford)

@TheGreatCaptainUsopp:

The version of Memories used in 808 is a new version sung by the same singer that was released in 2016 because she returned to sing the ending song for Heart of Gold. They won't dub it though because Avex forbids the dubbing of the OPs, EDs and insert songs

Actually the Insert Songs have all been fair game if it's in media res. Since they stopped dubbing the OP/ED they have still dubbed the Sogeking Song, Bink's Sake and New World and they dubbed all the musical numbers from Film Gold. Basically it seems character songs are unaffected by this.

@Robby:

I had completely forgotten that.

Guess thats what happens when it takes them a year to put out like, 12 episodes.

–- Update From New Post Merge ---

If they don't get renewed for a sixth season (and there reeeeeally should have been an announcement on that by now) then there's 13 episodes left.

Seasons 4 and 5 were announced in March 2016... and that was actually just the announcement of the splitting of the former season 3... and we knew about THAT season as far back as July 2015.

If that's really all that's left... and they don't do any more filler with the townspeople... that is time to wrap the big plot threads up and give some quick resolutions... but its basically 5 normal episodes of any other show and its nowhere near enough time to cover everything.

Also, Adventure Time only has like 8 episodes left and thats REALLY not enough time for it to wrap up. Ice King resolution and one last showdown with the Lich are about all it has time for though its given sorta closure to a lot of things.

Also I did an estimate on how many episodes of SU we get each year. Not counting the first year we've had less episodes than 2014 when it was on a more consistent schedule.

2013- 8 episodes
2014- 28 episodes
2015- 38 episodes
2016- 40 episodes
2017- 25 episodes
2018- 2