After all the One Piece content I’ve been writing, I couldn’t help but notice something. One piece manga is long. Now, this is something people complain about all the time when you suggest they watch One Piece. Is One Piece finished? Why is One Piece so long? And finally, why must the universe care so little about us? I can’t answer the last one, but I may have an inkling for the answer of the first two.
One piece is primarily as long as it is because Eiichiro Oda got more ideas as he was writing the story, leading to a bigger world, diverse character cast, and thrilling plot lines. Because he did not want to keep these from the readers, he added them into the story. Initially, One Piece was meant to be a story that took place over 5 years. It would have featured the Yonko pirates as the main villains. However, Oda got the idea of the Shichibukai. These are the seven pirate warlords who serve as antagonists for the main character, Luffy, and they expanded the story. Then, he added the 12 supernovas, who further increased the length of the story to over 20 years.
This is best explained through these following topic lines. Let’s get right into it:
- Why Is One Piece so Long?
- How Long Will One Piece continue?
Why Is One Piece so Long?
1. Preparation for Manga by Anime producers
One Piece anime are deliberately made long so that they can give the manga time to get ahead from the main story.
One of the most well known secrets in the anime community is that the anime are filled with fillers. The stories that you read in the manga are different from the final product that you get in the anime. This is because the stories of the manga are made by the author himself, while the anime is an adaptation of the manga. But in most cases, anime are serialized simultaneously with the manga. If you’ve ever heard of Game of Thrones, you know what kind of problems this can lead too.
Usually, the anime catches up to the manga, and they have no more work to adapt. So they create their own story to give the manga time to get ahead. These stories created by anime studios instead of the authors are called fillers. They are terrible and above all, they bloat out the story. That’s what happened to One Piece.
2. Plot Thickening
One Piece’s story plots thicken.
As mentioned earlier, Eiichiro Oda decided to add in more villains, and more worldbuilding. This increases the length of the story, and thus, One Piece becomes longer.
3. Popularity
Finally, One Piece became popular.
If you’ve been watching Disney for the last couple of years, you know that there is an additional law of physics that Newton left out. The higher the popularity of a series, the more useless adaptations, and marketing schemes the owners of that series will create.
One Piece has grown in popularity, and completely blown other comic books out of the water. It beat pretty much every other manga series, even Dragon Ball Z. Then it proceeded to wage war against western comic series like Batman, and Spiderman. And it won these wars. Finally, it is facing it’s last titan, Superman. As soon as it beats Superman, One Piece will be the most selling comic series of all time.
So what do you think the magazine that owns this giant will do? Obviously indulge the creator of the series to pad out the story with as much pointless detours as it sees fit.
How Long will One Piece continue?
One Piece is going to end within the next 5 years. So it will end in either 2027 or 28.
There has been a number of times when Oda predicted One Piece would end. However, this time seems to be real.
In a 2019 interview with Fischer, a comedy group, Oda stated that he wanted to end One Piece in 5 years. He had also mentioned in a 2018 Yomiuri Shimbun interview that One Piece was 80% finished, so these two things align.
Finally, the recent pace with which the manga has been flying is neck breaking. The Wano Arc abandoned a number of plot points, like Zoro’s parentage, and instead flew into the final battle with Kaido. The battle concluded so fast, people could not believe the main villain was actually defeated until many chapters after. And right now, a lot is happening in the One Piece world, still travelling at the same speeds.
In conclusion, observing Oda’s corresponding timelines, and the pace of the story now, we can safely assume that One Piece will probably really end by 2027-28.
What Writers Can Learn From Is The One Piece Manga Over?
There is a lot that can be said about the succcess of One Piece, but one thing that stands out to me is the comparison of One Piece to Batman. One Piece officially outsold every single batman issue that’s been sold. This is crazy to consider, especially looking at the content.
One Piece is this playful story with cartoonish character, and its even written in a different language. Yet it dominates the world, without the additional push of live-action movie adaptations, and the American market. This should teach all writers that the most important thing in a story… is the story. No matter how different, or unique your story idea is, it does not matter. What matters is how congruent, and stable the story is, thematically, and internally. If readers can see this in your story, they will know whey are dealing with someone whose on their way to mastering mastery.