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Funimation to Relaunch One Piece Simulcast on August 29
posted on by Egan Loo
The North American anime distributor Funimation has announced at 1:00 p.m. EDT that it will relaunch its online streaming of The One Piece anime series on Saturday, August 29 with episode 415. The anime adapts Eiichiro Oda's manga about a young rubber-bodied pirate captain and his motley crew's search for the legendary One Piece treasure. The anime is currently in the Amazon Lily Saga story arc. Funimation will stream episode 415 in the United States and Canada at 9:00 p.m. CDT (10:00 p.m. EDT) — one hour after the Japanese broadcast — and future episodes will follow every week at the same time. Starting this Friday, Funimation will stream three episodes every day from the Sabaody Archipelago Saga story arc's episode 391 to episode 414.
The announcement is being made on Funimation's onepieceofficial.com, and funimation.com websites, and is also promoted on Viz's One Piece website.
Funimation had planned to start online simulcast streaming of One Piece on May 30. At the time, the company was aiming to make One Piece episode 403 available within one hour of the Japanese broadcast. However the simulcast was quickly canceled after episode 403 was leaked and distributed online illegally more than a day before the Japanese broadcast.
Update: More background and story information added, and the simulcast's start date fixed. Thanks, Megiddo.
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