The past couple of years have been huge for One Piece fans. The manga is now over 1000 chapters and 100 volumes long. It overtook Batman in terms of comic sales and became the Second Best-Selling Comic of all time, just behind Superman, and that too in addition to the fact that it’s already the highest selling manga of all time.
The One Piece anime also hit the 1000 episodes milestone and there’s been celebrations after celebration.
Even the NETFLIX live action adaption of One Piece is a major topic of discussion worldwide, and while, the Netflix adaptions are usually well liked in the anime community, considering Oda’s involvement in this one. Fans have also started to anticipate and look forward to it!
It’s no secret that One Piece is the behemoth of the Manga medium, and one of the key pillars of the Anime medium. It has experienced nearly unparalleled success, and despite the fact that this is the 25th year of serialization, the author, “Eiichiro Oda,” still continues to keep up the quality of his work, and at the end of the day, regardless of how long the day has been. The fanbase remains satisfied.
Though there is one thing that has always been a problem with regards to One Piece, and it’s the pacing of it’s anime adaption
Let’s talk about that problem and also about how MAPPA, the most active studio of recent times, has decided to add their own touch to the creativity of the series and make a movie of the Wano arc!
Since both the anime and the manga have been running for decades. The longer the time passes, the easier it gets for the anime to catch up to the manga. Sadly, in One Piece’s case where during its beginning, each episode adapted a couple of chapters worth of content. With time, the pacing got worse and worse. The real extent of this became clear in already slow-paced arcs like Skypiea and Thriller Bark.
After the inception of post-Timeskip, the pacing, which was already bad, got substantially worse.
It’s frustrating when an anime isn’t even adapting a full manga chapter per episode.
During the Dressrosa arc, the One Piece anime experience an all time low. The total number of episodes for the arc was actually more than the manga chapters.
But it wasn’t Toei’s fault because One Piece has always been following the weekly release model. They can’t pause the show unless there’s some major mishap, nor can they catch up to the manga because that way there won’t be any content left for them to adapt. Filler content? Well, One Piece barely ever does that. The usual manner is to stretch the manga chapters as much as possible and use filler shots in between.
It’s not that bad if you love the series to death, but for a casual viewer who just wants to experience the story, this gets frustrating and boring really fast.
The One Piece anime ended up abusing the superb, hype induced Reverie arcs by adding flashbacks and flashbacks.
Now, the current Wano arc is in progress.
And honestly. In terms of its visual appeal, and the big moments, the anime has been killing it. But the pacing problem is still there. At this rate, fans have become content with the idea that the pacing will remain super slow until the end of the series. That’s just how it is considering how the anime is always only around 50 chapters before the manga.
Alright now, why are we talking about the pacing problem with the anime adaption?
Well, it’s because, while the One Piece storytelling always continues to deliver, it has become exceedingly difficult for new viewers to join in because the episodes themselves barely ever have more than one thing happening.
Now consider this.
Mappa will be making a movie out of the One Piece Wano arc, meaning there’ll be canon stuff. The fans will be overjoyed to reexperience the arc in a movie format, while new folks will also be able to join in on the One Piece fun because this time. They can just watch the Movie and see if One Piece is actually as good as anyone says or not.
Of course, what I am telling you is from the perspective of a fan. The real story behind it is more centered around what’s profitable.
And with the release of the latest One Piece chapter. Yes, I am talking about One Piece chapter 1044, which shook the community at its very core, took over Twitter before the chapter was even released, YouTube was flooded with spoilers. The excitement and hype factor were quite literally on steroids.
Then when the chapter came out, and everyone started talking about it. The view count on MangaPlus by Shuiesha was in Millions.
Seeing this and seeing the rapid popularity growth of One Piece.
Not to mention the fact that the One Piece anime is on a break because of a recent hacking incident at Toei, and nobody knows when it’ll back.
Studio Mappa, which is known for taking up the big shows, like Attack On Titan and Vinland Saga, as well as adapting other popular manga like Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, and many more. They made a big, almost terrifying announcement.
As for the translation, it can be stated as, “Good News for One Piece fans! We are going to be making a movie of the One Piece Wano arc after it reaches its conclusion in the manga. Stay tunned for more updates.”
Though depending on when the Wano arc ends in the manga, it may take until next April 1st before we get a release date. Until then, let’s keep anticipating, both the story content of the manga, the return of the anime, and the retelling of the Wano arc through Mappa’s movie.
That’s all folks!
Happy April Fools!
