Guillotine

So… It’s the classic story of one idiot ruining things for everyone else… We all know the story… The kid who winds up causing everyone to have extra homework because he couldn’t shut up in class, or the co-worker who cost everyone at work to lose their internet privileges because he was surfing porn sites… Surely everyone knows this person, and it looks like the infamous fun destroyer has struck yet again.

By know I imagine the anime world is quite aware that a person (or more likely sub human monkey turd would be a more appropriate classification) accessed Funimation’s servers, and discovered the yet unaired episode of One Piece set to be released one hour after the Japanese broadcast, and began merrily distributing it around the internet. Mostly it was treated like a joke by most who said things like: ”it’s not like stuff hasn’t been leaked onto the net early before.” In this case it looks like the worst possible scenario is occurring… Meaning that Toei Animation is not too happy about the situation, and is reacting quite severely. Though who could blame them. No telling how much money they or Fuji Television could lose from advertisers that pull their commercials out of the broadcast slot for that episode.

Funimation has put this statement on their website:

As anime fans know, FUNimation Entertainment and Toei Animation had planned for the first ever online simulcast of the series One Piece tonight at 9:00 pm CDT., just one hour after its premiere on Japan’s Fuji Television. Unfortunately, in the last 24 hours we have determined that the FUNimation servers were compromised, even though we employ strict security standards. An unknown individual accessed and posted episode 403 online and as a direct result of this illegal act, all U.S. and Canadian fans will be deprived of access to this great anime series for the immediate future. We will make every effort to locate and prosecute the perpetrator(s) to the fullest extent of the law and will provide updates regarding this most serious matter.

It also seems that Hulu and Joost have removed One Piece from their sites, and although no reason has been given most are assuming that it is at Toei’s request. So it would appear that through one’s actions an entire series has been pulled from all American sites (at least the legal ones). It is unknown at this time whether Funimation will be able to get things straightened out, or what will become of the One Piece simulcast plans. For that matter we also don’t know what will become of the rest of the Toei titles that Funimation has acquired licenses for if they decide to just pull out of the deal altogether.

Days like this I’m glad I don’t write for a real media company because at least I get to say what I think of this matter. If anyone knows who the idiot who did this is please do us all a favor and turn the schmuck in… Interesting things are happening in the anime world,  and we are starting to get to see episodes of anime the same day they broadcast in Japan… This isn’t the type of stupid stunt that was needed right now to screw all of that up.

And it has not escaped me about the irony of a show about pirates being pirated.

Update: It also seems that Funimation has removed all episodes of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. They have not made a statement on whether this is permanent or whether the episodes have only been removed until they fix their security issues, but it’s yet another example of how much trouble one idiot can cause. All I can say is if this causes them to stop streaming episodes of Phantom I may have to take it upon myself to personally hunt down and rid the world of the individual who caused this mess. I’m already on edge this week after hearing that Anime Network is no longer on Comcast and I won’t get to see the last volume of Princess Resurrection.

Follow up: Just because I sort of left this post hanging for a long time I realized I should update, and state that Funimation’s One Piece simulcast restarted on August 29th, 2009 and as far it goes everything over there seems to be fine. All shows that were put on hold at that time have also been put back on the site, although the video portal site as of now (October 24th, 2009) still has the site maintenance banner at the top.