News

Funimation does not have One Piece License

Following reports that FUNimation had lost The One Piece license, ANN contacted them today to find out whether they had in fact lost the license or not. The surprise, was an explanation that they had in fact never licensed One Piece and that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

At Anime Expo New York in 2002 Gen Fukunaga discussed "Great Anime coming to America" and mentioned One Piece as one such title that was coming to America. Many of the journalists present, including but not limited to Anime News Network's own reporters, misconstrued this as an announcement that it was FUNimation that was bringing One Piece to America, in other words, that they had licensed the title.

We were informed today that the license for One Piece has not been awarded and that FUNimation "Remains one of the top companies in negotiations for the property."

In 2003 ANN implemented a policy of showing all our convention reports to the companies before posting them, but at the time of AX 2002 this policy was not in place.