One Piece

One Piece
"We GO!"
Genre: Adventure Fantasy Running Time: 22-24 minutes Country: Japan Release Date: October 20, 1999 – present Network(s): FNS Network Ten Cartoon Network YTV TV Japan 4Kids Adult Swim Toonami Created by: Eiichiro Oda Distributed by: Madman Entertainment Starring: Colleen Clinkenbeard Mayumi Tanaka Kazuya Nakai Luci Christian Akemi Okamura Kappei Yamaguchi Seasons: 20 Episodes: 1000+

One Piece (stylized as ONE PIECE) is a Japanese anime television series, adapted from the manga of the same name, by Eiichiro Oda. The story follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a boy, whose body gained the properties of rubber, after unintentionally eating a devil fruit. With his crew of pirates, named the straw hat pirates, Luffy explores the grand line, in search of the world's ultimate treasure known as, "one piece", in order to become the next pirate king. Since its premiere in Japan, over 1000 episodes have aired, and has been exported to various countries, around the world.

Why It Will Become the King of the Pirates

1. Amazing animation, during dramatic scenes, and fight scenes.  
2. Incredibly interesting villains. From Big Mom, and her pirate crew, to Kaido, and his pirate crew, to Crocodile and his organization Baroque Works, to Blackbeard and his pirate crew, to all of the marines, especially the admirals and fleet admiral; the list just goes on, and on.
3. Excellent soundtrack.
4. Tons of excellent fight scenes. The fights aren't that interesting early on, as Luffy tended to just one-shot everyone, but later in the story they become much more difficult, much longer, much more interesting and much more epic and with much higher stakes.
5. Unique art style, and character designs.  
6. Outstandingly unique abilities. The devil fruits provide, for lots of creativity, similar to the zanpakuto in Bleach, or ninjutsu in Naruto. There are standard abilities, such as elemental control, but there are non-standard ones, such as turning into rubber. Also, the power system is incredibly well fleshed out and complex, from devil fruits, to haki, etc.
7. Good voice providing, in both Japanese and English, Funimation's dub. As Naoko Takeuchi did with Sailor Moon, the English dub voice actors were handpicked by Eiichiro Oda, the creator of the franchise.
8. Phenomenal world-building, often the thing that fans praise the most. The world of One Piece is unbelievably huge, and vast, with tons of creative creatures, characters, and environments.  
9. The show has some good comedy.  
10. Aside from the anime, the series also has tons of video games, anime movies, specials, and original video animations, so even if you finish the main story, you can still get sucked into other side stories, with these characters.
11. Lots of plot twists that you won't see coming, but are still foreshadowed, sometimes years in advance.  
12. Luffy gets some character development later on, which makes him less naive, although he still resembles the old Luffy.  
13. Lots of dramatic moments that make you feel for the characters, with stand-outs, being Brook, Nami, and Robin.  
14. The story arcs in One Piece also hold lots of variety, from one, involving food, Whole Cake Island, to arcs involving royalty, Alabasta and Dressrosa, to arcs involving samurai and ninja, Wano Kuni.  
15. A perfect blend, of amazing male and female characters, unlike many of its contemporaries.  
16. While it doesn't happen all the time, there are times, when major characters die in the series.  The deaths are good, to give the story a sense of realism given the subject material, while it doesn't happen so often, that it becomes predictable.  
17. Also, when a character dies in this story, they're dead forever.
18. The villains aren't the only good characters; there are also tons of memorable and likable heroes, including Zoro, Nami, Robin, and Red Haired Shanks, among many, many others.
19. Exceptional foreshadowing.
20. The live action Netflix adaptation, enough said.

Bad Qualities

1. Like many long-running anime, the anime version has an insane amount of filler content.  
2. Despite what WIWBTKOTP#1 says, the fights aren't very interesting early on, with Luffy 1-hitting every single one of them; thankfully, they get much better, and have more length, later.
3. The animation isn't usually that great, unless there's a major dramatic scene, or a major fight scene. In fact, the animation quality got a little stiff, during later seasons.
4. Even if you take all filler out, the extreme length of the series, more often than not deters people, from attempting to watch it.  
5. Even episodes that adapt the manga can have filler due to Toei Animation adapting one chapter, per episode.  
6. The original 4Kids dub is infamous for how horrible it is. Thankfully after 104 episodes, 4Kids dropped the licensing once Toei legally allowed them to, and Funimation took over not only undoing the damage 4Kids left upon it but continuing to present after that.  
7. While some of the comedy is good, other comedy can fall flat, especially when the comedy solely revolves around Luffy.    
8. Luffy's idiocy can be annoying and unlikable at times.
9. Only 2 characters have suffered from getting dumbed down. Notable victims of getting dumbed down are Sanji and Chopper as the former went from a really cool guy who had a weakness for women into a perverted guy who always goes blood-losing every time he sees a girl.
10. The animations and many minor male characters may be creepy and very ugly appearances and expressions.

Trivia

• In Japan, this show has consistently been among the top five animated shows in television viewer ratings.
• On International Online Video Platforms, this show got 1.9 million demand expressions, per month, in 2016, making it the year's most popular anime, the most popular animated television series and the fourteenth most popular TV show in the world, according to Business Insider.
• The first episode of this show, earned a viewer rating of 12.4%, behind Pokémon, and ahead of Ojamajo Doremi.
• The very last episode of the 4Kids dub ended right as the Rainbow Mist arc concluded and the Skypeia arc began. This entailed showing a ship from Skypiea about to fall on the Going Merry. Since this is the point where 4Kids lost the localization license to Funimation, the fandom likes to joke that, following the cliffhanger in this particular dub, the Straw Hat Pirates got hit by the falling ship and died.
• When the show's infamous 4Kids dub switched over from 4Kids TV to Toonami's lineup, it brought in favorable ratings for the early teenager demographic. When the 4Kids dub reached its end, Funimation produced the dub and the series became a favorite for Toonami all the way to the end.
  • Adult Swim's Toonami really loved to play Funimation's uncut dub, despite low ratings, starting on episode 207 (the first episode made in HD); it played on the block from 2013 to 2017, and when they were forced to drop it for legal and financial reasons, they made a short send-off music video for it before replacing it with Tokyo Ghoul. When One Piece was put back on the schedule in 2022, in addition to starting at episode 517 (the first post-time skip episode), it was given two slots on the block.
• Despite its popularity, quite a few people affiliated with One Piece grew to resent their time with the franchise for various reasons.
  • According to Mark Kirk, 4Kids' adaptation of the series was the worst thing that ever happened to the company, as they were forced by Toei into accepting the series as part of a package deal with Ultimate Muscle and Magical Do-Re-Mi. The real reason it landed in their hands was because Toei desperately wanted to sell a license for their smash-hit cartoon to anyone who could air it on American TV. Thus, when 4Kids met with Toei, they were also handed the One Piece rights. They never watched a single episode before agreeing to the deal and they became increasingly shocked at what they'd gotten themselves into when the masters rolled in–Toei's infamous executive meddling over the series couldn't have helped. The result of all this was the need for episodes to be severely edited just to be allowed to air on network TV due to strict FCC regulations, which led to quite possibly the most notorious anime Macekre of all time. Unsurprisingly, 4Kids dropped the license as soon as they were legally able to–after adapating season 2 in 2007.
  • Despite enjoying his work on the 4Kids dub, Eric Stuart has publicly admitted that what the company did to the series was terrible.
  • David Moo (the 4Kids voice of Sanji) said in an interview that he supposedly disagreed with the voice direction given to his character.
  • Shawn Conrad (who performed the 4Kids theme rap) was not aware of the series being heavily edited and censored nor did he expect the series to receive popular acclaim. Years later, when he found out that the 4Kids dub was trending and he was contacted and noticed by numerous fans, he deeply regretted not negotiating a better deal for his contribution to the theme song; he only received a small cut of a shared flat fee for his work even though he re-worked the lyrics and performed the song.
  • The Japanese voice actors called Episode 281's "Obahan Time" segment their most embarrassing moment.

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