The One Piece Remake Might Become The Best Way To Experience Oda's Masterpiece

The One Piece anime remake key art

Despite already having an ongoing anime series, One Piece is getting an anime remake from Studio WIT and Netflix. It’s a weird situation, and it’s easy to get the facts surrounding the recent Jump Festa announcement confused. Is this a full remake of the entire series? Is it a “remake” like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, or a “remake” like Dragon Ball Z Kai? For the answers to all of those questions and more, we’re breaking down what The One Piece is actually is, and why it might end up being the definitive One Piece anime.

First off, the current One Piece anime isn’t going anywhere. Toei Animation’s One Piece is entering the Egghead Island Arc in January and the voice cast for Vegapunk and the satellites were also confirmed during the Jump Festa event.

This new anime series will be a Netflix exclusive titled The One Piece, and so far it’s only confirmed to be covering the Romance Dawn portion of the overall One Piece story. Depending on how they pace the episodes, this early saga could potentially be covered in just 12 short chunks. Sure, the likes of Kuro, Don Krieg, and Buggy might have their story arcs cut short, but save for the latter, these are also the most inconsequential villains in the series.

So if you’re expecting to get weekly fast-paced episodes of The One Piece to catch up to the current story, you’re sadly mistaken. Assuming this series gets continued past Romance Dawn, we can expect to get an arc animated per year at most, which will have you watching The One Piece for more than a decade, even with faster pacing. After all, if they rush the production, it’ll be no better than the weekly series we already have.

But this remake shouldn’t be compared to the likes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood or Dragon Ball Z Kai, either. FMA:B is a true adaptation of the manga source material after the original anime veered into an entirely different direction. Dragon Ball Z Kai, meanwhile, is a complete re-edit and re-dubbing of the original Dragon Ball Z anime footage. The One Piece is going to be an entirely new series promising to faithfully adapt the original manga source material, just as the first anime did, but with sharper pacing and modern animation. It’s more comparable to the Hunter x Hunter 2011 series.

But none of that really sums up why The One Piece could genuinely be the best way to experience the One Piece story. I say this as a huge One Piece fan: the anime is a tough way to experience the story. The Romance Dawn saga is actually pretty well paced and it remains a snappy experience right up to the Drum Island arc. After that point things start to slow down, finally culminating in the Dressrosa arc, which is one of the most painful watching experiences of the series, and does the excellent story a great disservice.

Remember that I said that, at an arc per year, The One Piece would take over a decade to catch up to where the series is now? That’s actually a good thing. One Piece’s manga series is almost definitely going to wrap up and finish entirely before the end of the 2020s, meaning that, by the time The One Piece gets anywhere close to the current point in the story, the original manga and anime series will be well and truly over, allowing Studio WIT to forge ahead and craft a series with a snappier pace that ensures to hit all of the series high points.

One Piece has more than 1,000 anime episodes at this point, and I watched through them more than a decade ago, where there were more than 400 episodes fewer. With every year that passes it becomes tougher and tougher to recommend that anyone actually watches One Piece – I swapped to telling people to read it years ago. But some people won’t – they just won’t – and that’s exactly where Netflix’s The One Piece comes in, giving people a bombastic introduction to the anime, one which might just entice them to continue the story with the original anime series after.

Netflix is doubling down on One Piece in a way I never expected. The live action series was one thing, but the season 2 confirmation was unexpected, and now an original One Piece anime for streaming service? I could never have seen this coming. Someone at Netflix has recognized the massive potential of One Piece, and is trying their best to make it the service’s premier anime IP.

It’s all very exciting, but I haven’t even touched on Studio WIT. Studio WIT is best known now for Spy X Family and the early seasons of Attack on Titan, but we shouldn’t ignore the first season of Vinland Saga or the brilliant Ranking of Kings. These are stellar anime series and should have Studio WIT recognized as one of the best anime production houses in the business. I have no doubt that the team will give The One Piece their all, I just hope Netflix’s budget is up to scratch.