News: FUNimation Entertainment Acquires ONE PIECE – SEASON FOUR

Flower Mound, Texas (October 28, 2011) – FUNimation® Entertainment today announced it has acquired the U.S. home video rights to Season Four of the action adventure anime series—ONE PIECE. 

Season Four opens with episode 206 in classic 4:3 format, episodes 207-263 will be featured in HD 16:9 and contains the Water 7 Saga. 

This extremely popular series is based on the manga by Oda Eiichiro and follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his band of Straw Hat Pirates. The series is currently into its 520^thepisode. Fans can watch the simulcast episodes Saturdays at 10:00 pm EST on www.onepieceoffical.com. 

FUNimation Entertainment will release the DVD in summer 2012.

Original News Post found at Funimation.com 

After so long with no news on the status of One Piece in the states, this is great to hear. So much time has passed since the last set of season there was released, with no news about season four that a lot of people were worried One Piece was going the way of Case Closed.

For those not familiar with the episode numbers, this season will cover all the way up to the beginning of Enies Lobby. Which either means that it is almost definite that there will be a season five, or the FUNimation Dub will end at a very unfortunate place.

I'm not entirely up to date on all the DVDs, but this gives me time to pick up all the released sets before the summer of next year.