One Piece’s Anime Needs to Bring Back Its Best Old Trend

by

The animated adaptation of One Piece has been running for over two decades, continually evolving to stay relevant in contemporary times. Except during the Egghead Incident storyline, it’s only had one major break. This prolonged run is made possible because One Piece purposely slows down its narrative pace to an extent where each chapter is transformed into a single episode. Given that the manga periodically takes breaks, usually once a month or more, the anime compensates by airing recap episodes following highly anticipated episodes.

Based on Episode 1141, where the Giants rejoined the Straw Hats, next week’s episode will likely focus on a summary of the Little Garden Arc. For the last few months, Chopper and Carrot have been spearheading the narration of this story. Unfortunately, these recaps are not well-received by fans, with some even showing their disapproval through dislikes numbering in the thousands on Crunchyroll. To address this issue, it might be beneficial to revert to a format that One Piece was known for in the past.

One Piece’s Anime Used to Have the Best Filler Arcs

For a while in the anime industry, long-lasting series were incredibly popular, and many of them incorporated filler arcs as breaks after major storylines concluded. Just like other shows, One Piece wasn’t immune to this trend. However, it’s worth noting that One Piece usually featured shorter filler arcs compared to Naruto and Bleach. Additionally, some of these filler episodes were even engaging, with notable examples being the G-8 Arc and Warship Island Arc that fans particularly enjoyed.

Gradually, Toei Animation started eliminating non-canonical episodes post the time-skip, and the last filler aired before the Dressrosa Arc. Afterward, during anime hiatuses, we mostly witnessed crossovers or promotional films instead. Since fillers are exclusive to the anime and require additional resources for production to keep fans engaged between main episodes, the desire to minimize them is reasonable.

Despite the fact that some people realize that broadcasting episodes weekly while keeping up with the manga is unattainable, there are alternative strategies to employ rather than providing recaps every couple of weeks. The studio merely uses these recaps to fill gaps in their airing schedule, but they don’t offer much value given how frequently they are aired, and people generally dislike watching them. Over the past few months, these recaps have grown so obvious that they significantly disrupt the narrative progression of the story.

Why Doesn’t One Piece Have Fillers Anymore?

These days, filler arcs aren’t prevalent in anime due to the majority of them being seasonal with a restricted number of episodes per season. Typically, there are around 12 or 24 episodes per season, and this count can be lower for exceptional cases. Studios have ample manga content to adapt the stories, so they can easily fill up the limited episode count without resorting to filler arcs. There is often a gap of one or several years between each season, allowing the manga plenty of time to progress its storyline. Series such as Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Fire Force, and numerous others can reach their manga conclusions years before all the stories are adapted. Additionally, it’s expensive for studios with a fixed budget to produce original anime episodes these days.

In contemporary anime series, filler episodes are typically absent due to budget constraints or narrative focus. However, One Piece defies this trend, often revisiting the era of assembling and broadcasting filler arcs after an arc concludes, rather than taking unscheduled breaks. Toei Animation doesn’t need to develop original stories because there is a wealth of canonical material available in the cover stories. Even two decades ago, One Piece adapted Buggy’s cover story, and it would be exciting to witness more adventures involving the secondary characters.

https://comicbook.com/anime/news/most-powerful-one-piece-warlords/embed/#

Read More

2025-08-29 02:41