If you’re into anime you’ve likely watched – or certainly at least heard of – One Piece. This animated classic is entering its 25th year of airing and has scarcely missed a week since 1999. If, like me, you heard about the show long before you started watching it and have taken your time before diving into the 1100+ episodes, this article is for you! I haven’t finished the show yet, but I have thoughts on why One Piece is so popular. Read on to find out!
Independent, long-term goals
The first episode kicks off with Luffy. He’s a goofy 17-year-old kid with an iconic straw hat and a dream to become King of the Pirates. He accidentally ate a supernatural fruit called a “devil fruit” and has become a rubber man. His incredible stretchiness can be a bit off-putting, but his abilities provide him with amusing and unexpected advantages as he grows stronger and faces his many foes.
At the point in time that the show picks up, there is absolutely no way Luffy can accomplish his goal. Only one other man has held the title of King of the Pirates: the legendary Gol. D. Roger found the “One Piece” and became the pirate king. Luffy, a freshly announced pirate with no ship, crew, money, and minimal fighting experience, has a long way to go before the possibility of becoming King of the Pirates is even a possibility.
However, viewers like myself will be charmed by his incredible enthusiasm and endearing single-minded positivity. He doesn’t pretend to have more than a shoddy plan, and he’s not motivated by greed or pure power. It seems he wants to be king because it’s a lofty challenge, and he thinks the journey will be fun. He doesn’t take anything too seriously (except food) and his casual, carefree commentary is amusing when contrasted with the serious situations he gets into. It’s hard not to get behind him.
His eclectic crew sets sail seeking adventure, each with their own goals in mind as well. His navigator wants to make a map of the world, while the chef wants to discover the elusive All-Blue, a sea rumored to have fish from all four seas, plus some. But many don’t believe it exists. No matter their specific passion, each crewmember, however patchwork it may be, wants to be the best in their field. This draws their group in different directions as they bounce around gaining experience, growing stronger, and making allies and enemies.
Adventure for adventure’s sake
Although he has a grand goal, his methods of accomplishment are winding and unclear. He needs a crew, so he starts there. He’s got specific roles he wants to fill: a doctor, a musician, a shipwright, and the chef and navigator I mentioned previously. His first mission involves bouncing from island to island and a famous floating restaurant staffed by fierce and brilliant ex-pirate chefs. He finds a penny-pinching (yet incredibly wealthy) navigator/cartographer, a lady-loving chef, a powerful ex-pirate hunting swordsman, a fib-telling sniper (who happens to have a charming ship he can offer the team), and a shapeshifting doctor who’s half-human half-reindeer.
From his crew, many of their goals will be accomplished simply through gaining experience and seeing the world. When you want to map the whole world, it doesn’t really matter where you start. If you want to be the best swordsman alive, you’ve got to duel people from all over the planet to be sure you’re the best. See where I’m going with this?
This go-with-the-flow energy allows the group to take on wholly miscellaneous side quests as they see fit, including a particularly enjoyable galavant with the princess-in-hiding of a nation on the brink of collapse. As they journey to help Princess Vivi settle tensions between the rebels and the royal forces (after she convinces navigator Nami that it’s worth it by promising to pay them a billion berries, which is their form of currency) viewers are introduced to different players in the global game, like an elusive global crime syndicate run by one of the seven wildly powerful warlords of the sea. As you can see, there are a lot of pieces in motion in this water world beyond the two main forces of the pirates and the marines who seek to eliminate them. Considering the length of the show, they’ve got plenty of time to get into it without info-dumping on viewers.
Lovable side characters
As I began to mention, the side characters are just as interesting, maybe even more so than the main character Luffy. There are even whole arcs where one or more side characters take the main stage as the MC for a time. Each character on the crew has a developed and complex backstory full of compelling history and strong personal goals and relationships. Their personalities are well-crafted, strong, and relatively solidified when we meet them. That being said, the experiences they share on their journey as a found family still force them to grow and change in powerful ways while remaining true to who they are. Writers and directors have found a great balance between static and dynamic characterization which they can draw out as the show continues.
Aside from being lovable, there is a strong sense of mystery around characters in the crew, and certainly surrounding side characters, before viewers eventually get their backstories. Small comments, references, and behaviors from each member allude to something that has gone on in their past and undoubtedly shaped them. They keep it up for long enough that by the time we see their backstory, we’re itching to know what happened to them before they got so badass. There are also wonderful world-building moments where the crew will say something to each other that they obviously had to learn after meeting, but did not happen on screen, which impresses upon viewers the feeling that there are parts of their lives that we don’t get to see. It’s enjoyable to imagine they share experiences that deepen their connections off-camera.
Minimal romance
Don’t get me wrong. I love a good sappy, shoujo romance. But in terms of longevity, removing romance from the plot lends itself to an extended run time. Romance arcs have a clear progression from the beginning to the middle to the climax and end. By removing that element, producers keep the good vibes going steady and leave the excitement for the adventure and discovery themes of the show. For fans of romance anime, after that part of the story was over, the best part of the show could feel like it had already ended as well. Though this would be similar to having a favorite arc for other reasons, I personally think it keeps the theme consistent throughout the many seasons.
However, this is not to say that no one in the show has ever fallen in love. One of Chef Sanji’s most notable and hilarious traits is the lengths he will go to to do anything for the women on his crew – and quite frankly, women in general. This includes almost being killed in a 1 v. 1 battle because he absolutely refuses to kick a woman.
Although there are rumblings of potential romance and tons of in-depth fan theories (this writer is personally a fan of the non-canon ZoSan ship), One Piece maintains a storyline with romance near the bottom of the priority list for most characters.
A vast and varied world
When you’re on such a lofty adventure with a main long-term goal and minimal short-term ones, you can kind of do whatever you want. Besides running from the Marines and slowly progressing toward their ultimate objectives, Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates accept all sorts of random quests and travel wherever the wind takes them. On their journeys, they explore different continents and islands. As a result, they encounter wildly varied and unique magic systems, creatures, and societies with rich histories and backgrounds.
As the Straw Hats travel the seas they encounter powerful semi-aquatic Fishmen, inventive Skypieans, and giants. Not to mention Devil Fruit users with every kind of ability you can think of. I find the Devil Fruits to be a particularly well-structured magic system that is so solid in its logic that it is compelling enough to leave viewers with no questions that the writers don’t want you to have. Yes, there’s mystery and secrets to the fruits that even the characters don’t know, but the rules are solid. You eat a devil fruit. You gain its specific powers. You lose your ability to swim. And yes, that last part might have you raising your eyebrows if you’ve forgotten that this is the age of pirates, and most people who have eaten these rare fruits find themselves either in the Marines or pirates themselves. So yeah, it’s going to come up that they can’t swim. Like at all.
They are also susceptible to sea prism stones, which share the properties of the ocean and sap Devil Fruit users’ energy and rob them of their abilities. It’s mentioned that this is because the ocean resents Devil Fruit users, but it is unclear if this is character suspicion or canon logic which would imply an interesting sentient element to the oceans that coat this planet.
From rare and powerful Devil Fruits to humanoids to and even rarer magicians, this show truly highlights one of this fantasy lover’s favorite rules: no matter how out-there your magic system may be, if you make rules and stick to them, it’s probably going to work.
Character over title
Something this show does an excellent job of conveying is the fact that just because you assume a certain role in society does not mean that you necessarily adopt the stereotypical traits of said role. The Straw Hats are a prime example. Many non-seafaring citizens fear pirates because many crews are cruel, power-abusing pillagers who skate beneath the law with no regard for the people they harm along their way. And while the Straw Hats certainly break laws with reckless abandon and involve themselves in many battles, their moral compasses generally point north.
On the flip side, there are many marines, even of some of the highest ranks, who do not have the interests of the people they’re supposed to defend in mind at all. Some are morally just, which puts them in honest opposition to many pirates and is the root of their initial misunderstanding with the Straw Hats. But many are prejudiced, power-hungry, elitist bigots who have twisted their authority into something dark and selfish. The show highlights prime examples of both cases along the way as Luffy and his friends make both enemies of pirates and friends of marines.
Age/gender dynamics
For viewers like myself, some anime with otherwise interesting and compelling plots becomes cringeworthy and unwatchable with the way that they sexualize women and young teenage girls. Assuming you’ve watched almost any anime you know what I’m talking about. It’s hard to escape the boobs that make noise for some reason when they walk, ridiculous outfits, and camera shots pointing directly at women’s chests or up-the-skirt angles for no apparent reason. It gets old. And One Piece isn’t totally innocent. There are plenty of short skirts and skimpy tops, but the women on the show are not so overly sexualized and underaged as they are in many other anime.
Something in particular that peeves this writer is when battle scenes come up and the men are decked out in all kinds of armor and the women are in bikinis. Still, One Piece does a pretty fair spread of keeping both men and women clad in whatever they normally wear as they go into battle. Scantily clad women are less irksome when men have on a very similar amount of clothing. It turns it into less of a gender issue and more of a genre convention that however one may feel about it on a larger scale, is at least evenly distributed between men and women.
Apart from relative equality in clothing quantity, the characters on the show are also of varying ages which adds to a complex and interesting dynamic. Most anime protagonists are between the ages of 13 and 16, which becomes extra troublesome considering what we just talked about, so it is refreshing and interesting to watch a show when the youngest characters are at the upper end of that range. Most of the crew is in their late teens, with some members as old as their late forties. While the main characters fall into that teenage age range, there are enough older characters mixed in who have non-creepy or predatory relationships with the younger characters that the dynamics are wholesome and entertaining. Knowing that these are the vibes the members bring keeps this writer from being on edge and overanalyzing interactions to determine if things are about to get weird in that way. I’m sure many other viewers feel the same way.
One Piece is one of the longest-running shows of all time with one of the most loyal fan bases in the anime world. I mean, some people have been watching this show for longer than I’ve been alive. They’ve got to be doing something right. Hopefully, if you haven’t seen the show already, you’ll feel inclined to give Luffy and the Straw Hats a chance to take you on an epic seafaring adventure. Oh, and did I mention that the show is still airing weekly? And there’s even a rumor that we’ll be finding out what the One Piece is soon as the show is anticipated to come to a close in the next year or so.
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