As a huge fan of One Piece manga since the late 90s. Yes, I remembered picking up the last volume of Dragon Ball and I remember picking up my first volume of One Piece. One Piece, by all meant, should be a great manga that can be translate to anime. And yet, I was hugely turned off by the 4kids dub. On the Japanese version, they are fun and all but I can't stand the pacing. I don't watch One Piece anime for a really long time now ever since the sky island arc.

I wished they are redoing the whole series. Chances are, they won't since they already made those movies and they gonna have an Arlong arc special in a couple of weeks. But most of the time, what I heard people who don't know anything about One Piece complained is the shear amounts of episode. I think One Piece make a huge mistake. Naruto has 100+ episode fillers that we can easily skipped, and that wouldn't jeopardize the pacing of the canon stuffs. Bleach has many original filler arcs that we can also skipped and wouldn't jeopardize the pacing of the original story. One Piece, on the other hand, stretched each story arc out so thin.

(Also, you can't really compare Bleach/Naruto's first few episodes with One Piece. One Piece is so much older that the latecomers has the benefits of improved anime techniques).

So here is my comparison on the pacing of the anime taking out the fillers. I only compared ones with similar chapter size (weekly rather than monthly).

1) Death Note- the gold standard- it jammed almost 3 chapters of content into 1 episode.

2) Fairy Tail- I didn't know why I enjoyed fairy tail anime so much until I did this comparison chart. It jammed a little more than 2 chapters per episode. Some arc has way way better pacing than other going as much as more than 3 chapters per episode. Though since the anime caught up to the manga, I don't know how the future pacing going to be.

3) Bleach- taking out the filler arcs- a little more than 2 chapters. The beginning of Bleach and Soul Society arc has especially good pacing. But as you can see for the later stuffs, even with the good ratio, we all know there is very little content per chapter anyway. Quality-wise, I may have rank it just above One Piece, because some of the fights are unoriginal and dragged out way too long in later arcs. I have not watched later Bleach arcs.

Naruto- is tied with Bleach- it has about 1.75 chapters per episode, but naruto chapters has more content. This does not taking into the consideration of the infamous 100+ episodes of fillers.

4) Hitman Reborn- About 1.6 chapters per episodes, when I watched this series, I did skipped out quite a lot of fillers.

5) One Piece- has the most horrid pacing of all anime, I've ever watch. Overall, about 1.35 chapters per episode. But the later stuffs from Enies Lobby up, the ratio went as low as 1 chapter per 1 episode. Imagine that, a chapter you can read in 5 minutes is stretched out to 20 minutes. I meant it is even more horrid considering fight scenes that supposed to take place at fast pace. I think it only going to get worst. I don't watch One Piece lately, I know that the animation has improve like 3x better than before. But >___<

In my heart, One Piece will be the king of weekly shonen jump, but damn, it kinda hard to convert anime fans over to this side.

well they have to make sure they dont catch up to the manga so the pacing is always going to be slow but i think people who have never read the manga will still like the anime but if youve read the manga going back to the slower pace will turn people off for sure i doubt theyll redo the series the best you can hope for are movies of the arcs which theyve already done for 2 of them i think so far

One Piece's anime is fucking atrocious. Aside from the bad padding, censorship, missing details, varying art quality, and lackluster animation, there's also this level of horrendous pacing. (It was decent up until Alabasta and maybe some of Skypiea) But even if the anime were paced properly, the sheer size is inevitably going to turn plenty of people off.

And Toei simply doesn't care; they don't have to try at all. The fanbase is so large and loyal that people will watch regardless of quality. They're also probably partitioning their budget over the thousands of episodes of other shows they've produced or are still producing.

http://apforums.net/showthread.php?t=35519

Some interesting stuff was brought up here. Seems like many people would prefer fillers to pacing because fillers keep the original story in tact. (Seriously, in order to fill out an episode the anime showed Hodi getting attacked by humans. There are no words for how fucking stupid a mistake this is. It proves that they don't care about the story.) Someone also brought up the idea of them making fillers out of cover stories which would be a great and fun to watch.

They should really consider the idea of adopting seasons. That way they wouldn't have to churn out complete shit each week and instead condense the budget over fewer episodes. But no, One Piece is a cash cow and they're gonna milk it, hard. The anime is pretty much unbearable right now and I have no idea why people would confine themselves to it.

You read my mind. This has just crossed my mind lately too. I stopped watching the anime from the Amazon Lily arc, and since I have nothing to do on summer I decided to start watching One Piece again. I just finished the Impel Down arc yesterday. The pacing is soooooo slow that I just went back and re-read the manga for the Impel Down arc once more (and even up to the Marinford arc). There's so much epic things happening, but it's just not happening fast enough. :\

I mean One Piece is amazing. No question asked, it's probably one of the treasure of shonen manga. I don't know what's wrong with the anime, I'm guessing that it's probably because Oda is busy enough with the manga to supervise the anime too.

I have a friend that just continued watching from the Amazon Lily arc too, and I keep urging him because it takes a while to the good part. One Piece is amazing and I want to share the amazement with everyone I know, but it's hard to keep their attention long enough. I'm like "Come on, something awesome is going to happen in episode 451!" and he would be "Calm down, I'm still on 417."

Somehow though, I feel like it can't be helped because One Piece manga chapter is DENSE. Like it's really really loaded with details that's almost like Oda's signature. If you compare the manga side by side, a typical One Piece chapter has more panels than other shonen manga. Shonen mangas like Bleach or Naruto often have cool and large action shots, but One Piece draws the whole action. Maybe it's just me, but when reading a shonen manga chapter I usually spent like 15-20 minutes. One Piece can take a whole 30 mins or more.

To further illustrate my point, here's a side-by-side comparison of 2 page spread from One Piece, Bleach and Fairy Tail. I try to choose a somewhat busy battle spreads for all of them. Bleach has a lot of half page action panels.

(Although none of this is from the latest chapter, you might be watchful of spoilers still)
http://i.imgur.com/uL0go.jpg

So an anime episode may only cover the 1.35 chapter, but that's only because that's one dense chapter. ^_^ So much things are going on in there. That's true though that One Piece doesn't have a lot of filler. Maybe Oda himself hates filler, or maybe it's because they never run out of things to animate.



Last edited by mizunosaki at 4:11 pm, Aug 21 2012

I have red one piece and then the anime comes along and does exactly the same. I have never understood why fillers are so hated. I like them more than the bad conversion of the story. They are atleast new and tell a different/new story.

Last edited by Myuym at 3:47 pm, Aug 21 2012

@mizunosaki

Oda has no control over the anime or movies (bar movie 10) whatsoever. Directors will occasionally come by asking something like "Hey do you need this fruit/power? Because we're gonna use it in the show." But other than that Oda has no input.

When FMA and Hunter X Hunter gets the make over treatment, I was praying real hard, ya know. Since One Piece is among my timeless favorite.

Unrequited- I totally refer more filler arcs, because I could just skipped them.

The sad part, I hate how many people refer Bleach over One Piece because of the anime. URGHHHHHHH.



Last edited by movingstone at 4:13 pm, Aug 21 2012

@Unrequited

I see, that's why there's a disconnect in quality. I think I read somewhere in Oda's SBS corner that he doesn't like to take people's ideas (for fruit powers, monsters, characters etc) because he wants to take pride in a work that's really his, and I really respect him for that. Maybe in return for that autonomous right in the manga, he has no control over the anime.

By the way, I thought they already made fillers based on the cover side stories, like Buggy's adventure to find his lost body parts and things like that.

mizunosaki, my laptop screen is small. I just recently reread the chapters by the page actual size, and I'm like wow I missed alot of details.

Yeah, my reread pace for one piece probably like 10 minutes or more, lot of info in one chapter.

I agree with OP about the incredibly slow pace of One Piece (don't care to read other people posts ). It's like they put anywhere between 0.75 to 1.25 of a chapter in each episode. And about half the episodes are slammed packed full of unnecessary flashbacks like something we saw last episode or from the current episode, as if we forgot what happened 5 minutes ago. Then the repeating flashbacks of hard battles, good times, and meeting friends that occur once or more approx. every 10 episodes. The OP movies (well, most anime movies) are anti-climactic as the fights are so short. Then there's the every annoying 4-6+ minute long intro and recap every episode (which started around the late 300's episodes). In the end, you get about 10 minutes of new material each episode if we're lucky enough that there aren't any pointlessly long flashbacks. Then there are the multiple page stare downs where nothing of importance happens or is said, just shocked faces, angry faces, people cowering, dust, serious faces, and more dust. The only reason I read/watch it anymore is because of it's unorthodox art style and pretty original story. That, and because I'm so far into it that I'd rather stick with it until the end, unlike many other series that've lost their potential and I ultimately dropped.
When it comes to Bleach, they utterly ruined it with the fullbring arc. I wholeheartedly believe that Kubo should have ended the series almost immediately after Aizen died. Now, this new quincy arc seems tantalizing, but the arcs between those two utterly ruined the series as a whole for me. It seem that rather than end on a good note, leaving fans wanting more from him, they kept running with a guaranteed money-maker until all popularity for it crumbles and the series becomes another potentially great series that ran too long. It seems like greed is the only thing keeping Bleach on the air and being published.
Naruto is on the same track. Unless they come up with something really unexpected and exciting, they should end the series after Tobi (95% chance he's Kagami Uchiha, 5% he's Obito, but Obito is very unlikely) is beaten. Well, now Orochimaru and Sasuke teamed up again, so there's that battle to look forward to. After that, it needs to end before they look like their American counterparts only in it for the money by dragging the series out until nobody wants to watch it anymore. ABC's "Lost" is a great example and so is "Two and a Half Men" . Hell, even when they made Dragon Ball GT, that was basically the same concept I'm speaking of.
I may have went a bit off track, but I think you guys got the gist of what I'm saying. I rant too much
Anyways, One Piece is dragged out mostly so they don't have to make so many filler arcs. I'd rather they take breaks for a month or two so they can cram in more material instead of stretching episodes out or making filler arcs. It's all about staying a decent distance away from how far the manga is coming along. Publishers would lose loads of money if the episodes were too close the the manga. Sucks, but that's how they do it.

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-No longer do I quote great scholars, the famous, etc. Kids feigning wisdom ruined it.
--I wont type a post like a college report. If you don't read it just for that reason, you don't have to post why your hoity-toity ass refused to. I swear, so many people on this site are so full of themselves. A lot seem to think they always have an "intelligent and/or logical" point or show signs of a superiority complex. They never admit they're wrong. Maybe partially, but excuses abound! :\
-Stop mailing me about my comments. I don't read them.
/sigrant

I usually wait a few months/years before going on a One Piece anime binge. It's just easier that way. Since we read the manga, we should already know what's going to happen - so it's not like we miss anything by not keeping up to date with the anime.

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Everyday I'm tumblin'

If anything, we should appreciate the fact that One Piece isn't full of nonsense fillers like Bleach and Naruto. Seriously, I've watched One Piece (currently only 400+ episode) and I honestly can't recall a lot of fillers; probably two or three filler episodes at the most. Now, if we compare One Piece fillers to Naruto, I think half of the Naruto tv series ARE fillers. My boyfriend is a big fan of Naruto and I hear "They're doing fillers for now" ALL THE TIME. You seriously want to waste time on junk episodes I don't.

Now, don't get me wrong. I understand what you mean when you say that One Piece stretches its time, from the 5-second read chapters to the 20-minute anime. But like another member also says, it's too prevent fillers and also give it time to catch up with the anime. Oda does a pretty good job of keeping the manga and anime back-to-back to prevent any loss of memory about what has happened.

Trust me, my boyfriend has tried countless times to switch me from One Piece to Naruto. I just scoff at him. One Piece is my TOP#1!! And I find it funny when people tell me they love Naruto.

I don't follow the anime now but the anime stick really close with the manga. The pacing is really slow but you don't get much fillers or like a long 50 episode filler arc. I think its really especially how they animate the fights.
I don't think that One Piece will be remake since it follows the manga already compare to FMA or Dragon Ball.One Piece is among my timeless favorite.