Ask John: What is One Piece?

Question:
How long is the One Piece anime series? Is it still going on in Japan? Is it based on manga? Is it kid or adult oriented? In other words, how violent is it? What’s your personal opinion of the show? Anybody have the US distribution rights?

Answer:
The One Piece anime TV series premiered in 1999 and was based on the best selling manga by Eiichiro Oda, published in Shonen Jump magazine. Oda spent time working as an assistant for Rurouni Kenshin creator Nobuhiro Watsuki, but his favorite manga creator, and most obvious influence is Dragonball creator Akira Toriyama. The One Piece manga, and consequently the animation, owes a great deal to Toriyama’s influence, and the similarities between Dragonball and One Piece, including exaggerated facial expressions, an extended, relatively slow story pacing, and wacky, outrageous superhuman martial arts battles are instantly apparent in One Piece. In fact, the One Piece TV series actually took over Dragonball’s time-slot and viewers when Dragonball GT ended.

One Piece is the story of Monkey D. Lufy, or just Lufy, a teen boy who seeks to become the pirate king by discovering the legendary treasure known as “One Piece.” Lufy is unusual for his seemingly ignorant country bumpkin personality that hides remarkably sharp intuition, and his curse as a “rubber human.” As a result of eating the “devil’s fruit” as a child, Lufy’s body has the elasticity of rubber which prevents him from being able to swim, but grants him superhuman fighting powers. Lufy’s simple and blindly optimistic personality gathers a small crew of loyal and equally individual comrades including the swordsman Zorro, Nami the thief and navigator, Usop the liar with a good heart, Sanji the cook and martial artist, Choppa the shape-changing, talking reindeer, and BiBi (or ViVi) the former “princess.” The animation is heavily focused on character development and adventure, often spending as many as a dozen episodes just to introduce one of the main characters.

The One Piece animation is one of the most popular anime series in Japan right now, with its television ratings surpassed only by Inuyasha, Detective Conan and Sazae-san. Like Dragonball, One Piece is a family program with a perfect balance of innocent charm, mature cynicism and exciting action making it entertaining for both children and parents alike. The TV series currently has 105 episodes and 4 short theatrical motion pictures. (And as far as I’m aware, the TV series holds the record for most hour long TV specials or double episodes with 9 hour or more long special episodes so far.) There’s no end to the TV series in sight, so One Piece really looks to be following in the footsteps of Dragonball Z, destined to be a 200+ episode long series.

While I was hesitant to get into One Piece back in 1999, wary of an anime show centered on pirates and uncertain that I’d like the goofy character design, the series quickly grew on me, and is now one of my personal favorites. In fact, I’ve watched the series up to episode 100 so far, virtually entirely in untranslated Japanese. Although no American distribution license for One Piece has been mentioned yet, I seem to recall interviews with FUNimation’s Gen Fukunaga mentioning interest in the series. Sanji is a chain smoker- which is strictly prohibited in American “cartoons” intended for children, but otherwise One Piece could be localized for American release relatively unedited, and its charming characterizations, and sense of fun and adventure make it a prime candidate for massive Dragonball-type success without the fan backlash of cliché or overexposure.