Like most people who watched the live-action Netflix adaptation of One Piece's East Blue arc and thought "You know, this was not as bad as I thought it was going to be," and watched the infamous 4Kids dub of One Piece back in childhood, I decided to check up on the anime version for the first time in a while. Naturally, I prefer the ADHD, almost "Looney Tunes"-esque insanity of the animated version better, particularly in the latest arc (Egghead Arc), and I've rediscovered my love of this understandably-popular anime as of late:

Speaking of 4Kid's attempt at sabotaging One Piece's North American success back when I was a kid, I recognize Tony Tony Chopper the quickest out of all the Straw Hat Pirates simply because, for reasons I may never fully understand, Cartoon Network's anime bloc, Toonami, kept showing the same episode of One Piece every Saturday night at 10:30 pm for like 3 or 4 years straight.

Specifically, it was the episode where Nami falls ill while the Straw Hats go to this snowy island or something (somewhere within the Alabasta arc, basically), and Luffy is looking for a doctor and finds one in the form of Chopper and I guess some elderly woman dressed like a 13-year-old at Hot Topic, or something. It was a good introduction to Chopper's character, don't get me wrong, but it was immensely disappointing tuning into Cartoon Network/Toonami every Saturday during the mid-2000's in hopes of at least seeing a re-run of a different 4Kids One Piece episode, only to see that same exact episode AGAIN up until I finished middle school and outgrew children's networks like Cartoon Network in general. No wonder I fell off of One Piece until the Netflix live-action adaptation my mom made me watch re-introduced me to the series.

By the way, my mom actually prefers the live action version, possibly because she finds the constant screaming and shouting in the anime version (and in Japanese animation in general) annoying and the live action version of Nami is probably less likely to give young girls body dysmorphia, compared to how her literal hourglass curves are drawn even in the otherwise-P.C. (politically-correct) 4Kids dub. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Hopefully the Alabasta arc in the live action version will do sweet little Chopper justice and not turn him into some CG affront to God and Creation--not TOO stylized like Toothless in the upcoming How to Train Your Dragon remake, but also not whatever Sonic was going to look like in the first Paramount Sonic movie, before they wisely changed his look.