One Piece has a fan in me
by ABDALLAH MBAJJA · The ObserverOne Piece has undergone a drastic evolution, one that fans observed as early as January but which I only noticed recently.
The last time we discussed One Piece, I had just abandoned the show. I bear part of the blame. I binged over 200 episodes within two months; so, naturally, I was more than a little burnt out. But you have to ask: why was that binge necessary?
Because One Piece has the worst pacing in all of animation. Fans of the franchise frequently commend the anime because it has no filler. However, the consequence of running continuously for over two decades without relying on filler is that it is severely padded. Most episodes have roughly five minutes of actual content.
90 per cent of an average episode’s runtime is consumed by the opening and closing themes, lengthy flashbacks, and pointless scenes. So obviously, the anime is only tolerable when you binge it five to ten episodes at a time. This allows you to skip all the padding to reach the forty or so minutes of noteworthy material.
Somehow, I lost track of time. What should have been a two or three-month gap between binges turned into years. Before long, I was hundreds of episodes behind. But even if I had kept abreast of the show, I would have abandoned it all the same. The Wano arc was too long and broad.
You could feel the anime groaning and sagging under the weight of the many stories and characters it tried to juggle. It finally lost me at the 70 per cent mark. Oda kept frustrating me by failing to kill certain side characters at key moments. A large cast is beneficial because it gives you characters you can kill when it matters without derailing your story.
The most prominent culprits are that silly girl who got poisoned and the nine Samurai during the Kaido fight. Even more tiresome were the pointless conflicts happening across the island. Only four of those fights mattered. So, imagine how infuriating it was to veer away from those crucial clashes to pick up with Jimbei, Ussop, useless Yamato, and every other member of a supporting cast that Oda should have shrunk before the arc’s climax began.
By the time I jumped ship, you could not have paid me to watch One Piece again. So, imagine my surprise when I tuned in a year later out of curiosity only to encounter the significant changes I mentioned above.
I was skeptical at first. Yes, Zoro VS King was pretty good. But One Piece will bless you with decent animation every once in a while before returning to the slop Toei animation has been feeding us for decades. But in this case, the quality of the art and animation persisted. The pacing was still horrible and I skipped a lot of the garbage the anime threw at me in the final stages of Wano.
Nonetheless, the show was not as much of a slog as I remembered. And then it happened. Wano ended, Egghead began, and the high-quality art and animation continued. Some episodes were flat-out amazing. It confused me.
Even more mind-boggling was the pacing, which improved dramatically. By the time the Egghead arc slipped into second gear, One Piece had made a fan out of me. Again. Episode 1112 was the biggest turning point. It featured a moment so epic that I nearly exploded with excitement.
Yes, I’m talking about the Shanks/Kid scene. I didn’t think it could get any better. But it did. Garp/Koby/Aokiji left my jaw on the floor. And that was before the show ended the Blackbeard/Law conflict with a conclusion that shook me to my core. So now, I have to say it. One Piece is IT; the best anime to come out of 2024, so far.