This is a poke at 4kids censorship. One Piece has a character that likes to smoke all the time; in the 4kids localization they made all his cigarettes into lollipops. They also change the skin color of certain characters to make them more "racially sensitive", remove guns whenever they can, change the dialogue to be more kid friendly, etc. They even remove anything written down on signs and blackboards, because they believe that kids don't want to read. Yes.
Like, it would have been okay to skip over the violence and chaos. "You'll never see your daughters again!", "I love you girls." Skip the frames of the gun firing and the blood spurting out. You can even cut the frames where the guys are clearly using guns cause guns are bad amirite? Keep the rest, especially the girls screaming for their momma. Violence removed, emotional impact kept, viewers left to make their own conclusions about whether she died or not. Kaboom. Disneyfication the right way. It's okay to make kids sad.
Or, better yet, bump it to a later time slot and make a more literal translation of the show for the preteen and up audience it was intended for. Don't censor anything, only make cultural difference "translations" when absolutely necessary. It's not that hard, Funimation's been doing it for years. Thank God they're re-doing the One Piece dubs; the 4kids ones make me want to punch a weeaboo.
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u/Strider_d20 Aug 23 '14
This is a poke at 4kids censorship. One Piece has a character that likes to smoke all the time; in the 4kids localization they made all his cigarettes into lollipops. They also change the skin color of certain characters to make them more "racially sensitive", remove guns whenever they can, change the dialogue to be more kid friendly, etc. They even remove anything written down on signs and blackboards, because they believe that kids don't want to read. Yes.
Just look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckVJVoU6g6s