Funimation announced earlier today, through the Unofficial One Piece Podcast’s website, that it has acquired more episodes of the anime series One Piece.
The Unofficial One Piece Podcast had put a countdown on its site earlier this week, and when it reached zero a special episode went up where the hosts interviewed various Funimation people involved in One Piece. The announcement was made by Senior Brand Manager Curtis Shaw at the very beginning of this special episode.
Funimation has acquired the next 58 episodes of One Piece, spanning episodes 206 to 263. It was also mentioned that the episodes would all be in widescreen, unlike the cropped DVD release some of these episodes received in Japan. Funimation will start releasing Season 4 next summer, though a release format hasn’t been finalized yet.
Ep 207 was the first widescreen ep so they won’t all be widescreen…they really should’ve put 206 on the last set though I guess it was a license issue that prevented it.