@ThegreatPirateKing:
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).
Actually no, since K-F uses DVDs as the source material, each DVD comes with a clean opening and closing song, which means they have no credits. K-F simply used those in lieu of the versions with credits.
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 error 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.
Is there really anything wrong with correcting the word "Kingdom" on a sign seen momentarily? I fail to see how this is wrong.
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.
One can easily make the argument that K-F was simply attempting to release a more-accurate adaptation of the manga, while Toei Animation animated coughing up saliva over a more graphic coughing up of blood.
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.
While you have a point in saying that Fan Subs should leave the original material alone, I would hardly compare what K-F did to what 4kids did. K-F attempted to release an episode that was a more accurate adaptation of the manga. 4kids on the other hand chopped up episodes, made edits to further soften the material present in the anime, completely replaced meaningful dialog with utter nonsense, and replaced original music with their own in-house beat bops.
And as far as K-F rereleasing the earlier episodes, I believe that they shouldn't bother, they should respect the fact that a reputable adaptation has been released, and stop distributing episodes available legally for free online, or on DVD shelves.
At this point I expect someone to bring up the fact that due to licensing, the online versions aren't available in some countries, which would be the argument for K-F rereleasing older episodes, and I don't see to big of a problem with that, but if you are in regions of the world where the episodes are available legally for free, you should be encouraged to support those legal versions instead of the pirated versions.