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Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out

Great characters, an epic storyline, and nearly limitless episodes to binge certainly help.

One Piece Luffy In Gear 5 Form — Image credit: Toei Animation

Features by Trent Cannon, Senior Contributing writer

Published on Fri Oct 25 2024

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25 years is a long time, especially in television, so seeing the One Piece anime reach that milestone this month has been special. 25 years of adventures, of sailing the Grand Line and back, and watching Luffy surprise us with how he never changes (not that we want him to). But what is it that keeps One Piece fans coming back over and over again, for 1100 episodes and counting? Why is this fandom still fascinated with Eiichiro Oda’s world 25 years after it first appeared on our TV screens? This week's Popverse Jump is our attempt to answer that very question.

“The music, the storyline,” explained Angelo from New Jersey when I pressed him on the subject of One Piece’s ability to stay on our screens for two-and-a-half decades on the show floor of NYCC. “Oda has made an amazing world.” More than one person we spoke to talked about the setting of One Piece as being a reason they can’t tear themselves away. The heroes and villains. The bizarre locations (remember when the Straw Hats spent a whole arc in the sky?). The sense that no matter how weird things seem, there is something even weirder just over the horizon and the Straw Hats will face it together, no matter what.

One Piece Zoro — Image credit: Toei Animation

Another word that came up a lot when we talked to One Piece fans was “escape” and how Oda’s work allows them to escape to another world where the sea is endless and bad guys get punched in the face at the end of the story – but also to a place where at least some of our world’s troubles can’t reach them. “I think One Piece broke out to the general public because of Covid,” Steven John Ward, who plays Mihawk in the Netflix live-action One Piece series. “I think people were looking for an elongated escape.”

It doesn’t hurt that Oda has given us some of the most memorable characters in anime history. Not a fan of Monkey D. Luffy? Check out the three-sword-wielding Zoro. Or the adorable but terrifying Tony Tony Chopper. Or the cybernetic strongman Franky. “When you have a generally good storyline with a huge cast of characters, it is generally easier for people to get into because you can identify with one or two characters,” Terry Li, Executive Vice President of Emerging Business at Crunchyroll told us during our sit-down with him at New York Comic Con 2024.

Li also mentioned the scale of the One Piece franchise – the books, the movies, the games – when talking about why fans are still coming back to the series, and that is definitely part of the appeal. We’ve all gotten really into a series only for it to suddenly end and have no more episodes to offer. While the staggering episode count of One Piece might put some people off giving it a shot, it also means that fans will always have more episodes to catch up on. Until this recent hiatus, One Piece was in danger of joining death and taxes as the few constants in our lives.

One Piece Ace Death — Image credit: Toei Animation

But this is an opinion piece and I’m not the kind of coward that would hoist the duty of expressing their opinions online to others, so why do I think One Piece has become one of the biggest shows in anime over the past 25 years? In addition to everything mentioned above, I think a big part of it is how the show can shift from goofy to heartbreaking at the drop of a Straw Hat. The epic fight on Drum Island, culminating in the tears on Chopper's face as he sees his mentor's dream come true always gets to us. Not to mention Ace's death scene - we're still not over it. As Usopp's voice actor Sonny Strait mentioned, One Piece is a clown show that occasionally delivers the most tragic moments you've ever seen.

One Piece will eventually end and leave an undeniable hole in the anime world, but that is a problem for the fandom’s future. Right now, we’re all just enjoying the seemingly endless ride that Oda is taking us on. Whether it is the characters, the epic storyline, or the huge quantity of episodes to binge, it is a ride we’re hoping never ends.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included...