For anyone that's not familiar with One Piece, FUNimation released a "One Piece 101" video about the main character, Monkey D. Luffy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjFByvEuxGI
[quote name='taylort3']dunno why this series never took off in the states. anybody know if they're planning on dubbing the 300 or so remaining episodes that havent been brought over yet? i would totally buy these if i could expect the rest to be brought over.[/QUOTE]
Why didn't it take off? Cause 4Kids initially dubbed the series and ruined its chances. Most newcomers saw the dub and assumed that's how the show really was. As for fans of the series, it made them steer clear from the dub and resort to piracy (hur). 4Kids basically refused to release an uncut release and stopped dubbing it after several arcs in. Didn't help the edited the living hell out of it.
FUNimation eventually got it and continued where 4Kids left off, ignoring most of the changes 4Kids did (simply for consistency in the edited dub). Unfortunately, Cartoon Network cancelled it in favor of airing more Naruto right before canning Toonami all together.
FUNimation recently announced they have Season 4, which covers the Davy Back Fight all the way to possibly the Enies Lobby arc, if not then up to Water 7
.
[quote name='skiizim']I've never watched the "official releases" so I don't know how they are or if they are edited for content, I really don't buy anime but I watch a lot of fansubs. The best person to ask would be probably be Squarehard, if they ever do release these in Blu-Ray I would wait for that since the show is in HD now.
It's pretty expensive though, $85 for roughly around 1/5 of the current show that looks like it's barely half way done.[/QUOTE]
Don't count on an HD release. Toei's very hesitant about allowing FUNi to release it in HD due to the fact that Japan doesn't even get BD releases of the series, save for the movies. In fact, neither Naruto, Bleach or One Piece have had any of the TV episodes released on BD. The only way to see the episodes in HD is through Japanese HD TV programming.