The 4Kids dub of One Piece infamously made many changes to the anime but one change in particular would have caused major issues in later arcs.
The 4Kids dub of One Piece is infamous for its many changes to the series, but one change in particular would have caused major problems for the show in the future if it had continued: the removal of Laboon. This is hardly surprising given how many characters and plot points are interconnected in One Piece. It is interesting to wonder how 4Kids would have “solved” this problem if they had continued dubbing the series.
When 4Kids adapted One Piece for a Western audience, they geared the show towards children, based on its goofy art style. However, as any fan of the show knows, One Piece is filled with violence, blood, and mature subjects, all things that 4Kids didn’t want their audience to see. Thus, the show censored various scenes and even cut entire arcs and characters from the show. This led the dub to be poorly received and so 4Kids ended their adaptation soon after Alabasta, with an incredibly dark ending that killed the Straw Hats. This was probably for the best as it would have been very hard for them to incorporate Brook into the show given one character they wrote out of the series.
4Kids Censoring Laboon from One Piece Would Cause Major Issues
Brook is the Straw Hats’ musician who is introduced in Thriller Bark, an arc that the 4Kids dub didn’t reach. He is an immortal skeleton who watched his original crew die tragically around him in one of One Piece‘s most emotional flashbacks. He also is deeply connected to Laboon, a whale that the Straw Hats meet at the entrance of the Grand Line. Brook’s crew had promised to meet up with Laboon again after they finished their journey through the Grand Line. As the sole surviving member of the crew, Brook’s main dream is to meet up with Laboon again and at least partially fulfill that promise. However, this would be impossible in the 4Kids dub given they cut out Laboon entirely, instead turning him into an iceberg that the Straw Hats break through without much difficulty.
Besides just being a generally poor decision to cut out the great mini-arc that introduces Laboon, this change also would have made it impossible to properly introduce Brook into the story. While Brook may not have as much screen time as many of the other Straw Hats, he is still an essential character, and without his tragic backstory he would likely just be reduced to a bad joke. Thus of all the changes 4Kids made to One Piece, this is the most serious and would have required a lot more changes and retcons to allow the series to continue past Thriller Bark.
Of course, all this is assuming that the 4Kids dub would ever reach this point at all. While 4Kids may have been able to adapt Skypiea without many issues, Water 7 and Enies Lobby both contain large amounts of violence and some incredibly dark moments, which would have likely caused problems for their censors. But ultimately Laboon‘s later impact on the One Piece story shows that even seemingly minor changes to a show can cause major problems later on, making projects like the 4Kids dub doomed to eventual failure.
