Netflix’s One Piece Has Been Viewed 18.5 Million Times

Oliver Brandt
·2 min read

One Piece Koby Garp

Netflix’s live-action One Piece got off to a cracking start, with the first few episodes showing a world of adventure and a joyous cast — though there were stumbles here and there throughout the eight-episode first season. It seems like it’s been a hit with viewers, too, according to new data from Netflix that shows it’s one of the biggest shows of the year.

Netflix says that the first season of One Piece garnered over 18.5 million views in its first five days on the streaming platform, amassing over 140 million hours viewed. On average, that means that each episode has been watched about 2 million times — although in reality it’s more likely that the earlier episodes had far more views than the later episodes.

What exactly a “view” counts as is anyone’s guess, but viewing hours is a pretty decent metric to compare things by. According to IGN, the live-action Cowboy Bebop – which was not received well – was watched for 21.6 million hours in its first four days, and even the third season of The Witcher only got 73 million hours.

By all accounts then, the live-action One Piece has been a hit, and its early review scores seem to reflect that, at least to some degree. The show has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 84% for critic reviews, and a 96% on audience ratings, while on Metacritic it’s sitting a little lower, with a metascore of 67/100.

It’s not hard to see why it would be popular though. One Piece is the highest-selling manga of all time by a pretty considerable margin, and has been running continuously for over 20 years. Something that lasts that long usually doesn’t get there by phoning it in.

It’s also got a fantastic cast, with all of the main One Piece cast offering up fantastic performances and endearing fans the world over. In particular is a strong performance from Morgan Davies, who portrays fledgling Marine recruit Koby, and Taz Skylar, playing the romantic chef Sanji, both of whom have been the center of attention on social media.