When it comes to censorship in One Piece, the infamous 4Kids dub is likely what comes to mind for most, with its toy guns, finger pistols, and lollipops instead of cigarettes for Sanji. Many would think these days are long behind the series now; however, the anime still tends to tone down the blood and gore in the manga, even as recently as the Whole Cake Island Arc. All that said, a recent episode proved that One Piece’s censorship is actually getting worse, and it’s beginning to make no sense at all.
One Piece’s anime is currently making its way through Bonney and Kuma’s touching backstory, with the flashback as a whole giving fans an all-new perspective on the father-daughter duo. As part of this flashback, fans got to see Bonney as a spunky kid in Episode 1132, though the anime oddly censored one very specific scene of young Bonney flipping off the other children who’d been teasing her about her condition, turning the middle finger gesture into a plain fist instead. The reasoning behind leaving out this gesture is quite confusing, especially if the animators thought it inappropriate for a child, especially when the anime has sexualized that very child at the beginning of the Egghead Arc.
One Piece’s Censorship Is Completely Nonsensical & Bonney Proves It
At the beginning of the Elbaf Arc when Luffy and Bonney first washed up on Egghead, the anime included a scene of the group changing their clothes, with especially provocative shots of Bonney a she changed. Admittedly, the shot of her from the back as she wrings out her clothes is taken straight from the manga, though the anime did pad out the scene with an original frontal shot as she puts her top back on, which, in retrospect, has not aged very well since the series revealed Bonney’s real age. The fact that the anime wasn’t afraid to portray Bonney so provocatively despite being only twelve years old in reality, but drew the line at having her flip someone off, makes absolutely no sense.
Surprisingly, this isn’t even the first time the anime has censored the gesture, with the other famous instance being when the Straw Hats first met Law at the auction house on Sabaody. This was well over 500 episodes ago, and yet, One Piece‘s censorship is still just as present. What makes the situation all the more frustrating is that when the anime recently shifted to a late-night time slot, one of the main reasons for the timeslot change was so the anime could better cater to One Piece’s mature audience that has grown up with the series over the years. As the series heads deeper into the Final Saga, there’s no doubt that the series’ fights will only get more gruesome, and it’s hard to say whether the anime will faithfully adapt the manga without needless censorship.
One Piece can be streamed on Crunchyroll and Netflix.
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