@midod:
What does Fairy Tail have to do with One Piece’s releases? I’m pretty sure Funimation is capable of dubbing both series at the same time. The fact that they have released a similar number of One Piece episodes as they have Fairy Tail episodes since Fary Tail began being released (as was earlier pointed out) is proof of that. One Piece is one of many shows they are dubbing; they’re not going to shift all their focus to One Piece, nor is all their focus on Fairy Tail.
And stop talking about how Fairy Tail is closer to catching up; One Piece is almost 700 episodes at this point, Fairy Tail is only in the early 200s, OF COURSE THEY WILL CATCH UP TO FAIRY TAIL SOONER! When One Piece started being dubbed there were already over 300 episodes of One Piece, and since they had to redub the first two seasons they, of course, fell behind. Fairy Tail didn’t even have 100 episodes out when it was first licensed, so it was much easier to catch up to. Outside of the breaks after season 3 and season 5 both series have been releasing at a similar pace (in that they’ve released a similar amount of episodes in a similar time frame); One Piece is just longer so of course it will take longer.
There are a lot of factors that go into dubbing (working on the schedules of not only the writers and directors but the many actors as well), so it’s not like they can just speed it up the same way Viz did for the manga. They are dubbing other series as well, not just Fairy Tail. They’re not going to drop everything just to speed up One Piece, especially if it’s not their most popular show (and even if it was they probably still wouldn’t do that). We should really stop trying to make this a competition between Fairy Tail and One Piece.
So in other words f**king 4Kids and possibly Toei screwed us in the end (when it comes to not being behind… and it's success as well)
If it wasn't for them, FUNimation would've gotten the series first and possibly be way more caught up to the Japanese version. I'm happy they saved the license in the end, but due to 4Kids f**king everything up (including it's popularity, which still haunts it to this day) FUNi had to go back and redub everything... which I'm glad they did, but made us stay even more behind. Then of course there were the breaks that didn't help any.
And for a series as long as OP... these setbacks really weren't needed...