Is ‘One Piece’ Worth Watching?

Allow me to rephrase the question: is Pluto worth exploring even though it would take you 9 years to get there?

Here’s the thing about watching One Piece, it’s gonna take you a looooooooooong time to get to the end. This show has over 1,000 episodes. If you have absolutely no life whatsoever and are not interested in feeling the sun on your face and knowing the touch of a lover, you could finish it in a little less than twenty days. That’s if you watch it without sleeping. You would literally die before you got to the end of the second week.

So you could watch it for an hour a day instead, like a semi-normal person. It would still take you over a year to finish it if you never miss a day. You’d be focused on it the same way old people focus on their heart medication, you miss one day and you’re gonna be in trouble.

But let’s say you have the time. You’re willing to do it. Maybe you’ve watched every episode of Naruto and Bleach, the other two members of the famous “Big Three” of shonen anime. If you have, you should definitely watch it because that means you are dedicated to shonen shit and you might as well round yourself out. One Piece has all the staples of the shonen genre: a plucky young “just like you” male protagonist is exposed to some magical shit (like a nine tailed fox demon or soul eating monsters) and gains some mysterious plot related power and vows to become “The Greatest X That The Y Has Ever Z’d”. He gets a gaggle of other badass character around him, but for plot reasons they will never be as badass as he is. He then gets inexplicably stronger and stronger by just believing he can (and tapping into the never ending reserves of “magical plot shit” power inside himself) and he defeats increasingly powerful foes on his way to attaining the pinnacle of strength that he will doubtlessly reach at the series conclusion.

It’s a tried and true formula, because it works. And One Piece is perhaps the very best example of this formula working well in anime history. The fights (and especially the animation in later episodes) are astounding. The badass gaggle of side characters are some of the most badass in anime. Take Roronoa Zoro, one of the main character Monkey D. Luffy’s most trusted friends. The guy fights with three fucking swords and he holds one in his mouth. That’s just cool. And the series is really good at making you care about this characters. There are some famous tearjerker moments in this anime that have been making adolescent boys and grown men cry for over 20 years. All in all, if you’re a fan of the shonen genre, you might as well check out the show that put the shonen genre on the map in the first place.

HOWEVER.

If you are NOT a fan of filler episodes; if you are NOT a fan of waiting until the animation gets good; if you are NOT a fan of watching a series for OVER A YEAR, then I would NOT recommend watching One Piece. Go outside, kiss somebody, throw ass in the club, or just watch a bangin’ 26 episode anime like Samurai Champloo or something. Make the decision that’s right for you.

(Featured Image: Toei Animation)