I'm finally taking on One Piece, and you can too
1,122 episodes aren't as scary as they look
You read that right. One Piece, often lauded by internet-famous weebs as one of the greatest pieces of fiction of all time, has 1,122 episodes. And it’s still not over yet. With each episode running about ~23 minutes long, that’s about 430 hours of content. You could watch The Godfather, a notoriously long movie, 143 times in that span. It would take you—without any breaks—eleven full 40-hour workweeks to watch all of One Piece.
In high school, I watched the first 61 episodes, AKA the “East Blue” arc. While slow and jank due to its age (released in 1999), I quite enjoyed it. So much so, that during our senior prank, where we LARP’d on campus for a day, I cosplayed as Roranoa Zoro, the show’s overpowered, three-sword-wielding, green-haired heartthrob. (Seriously, I’m worried my girlfriend might leave me for a body pillow of him one day). Unfortunately, I have no photo evidence so you’ll just have to trust me.
You might think I’m insane for trying to take on this task. Having only watched 61 episodes, I’m a measly 5% (or 7 / 143 The Godfather’s) of the way through. And you might be right!
But here’s the rub—I have a secret weapon that will drastically shorten my arduous journey: One Pace.
What is One Pace, you ask? Well, a legendary syndicate of nerds got together and ruthlessly cut the fat from the show, editing together what they call “The Definitive One Piece Viewing Experience.” In their own words:
One Pace is a fan project that recuts the One Piece anime in an endeavor to bring it more in line with the pacing of the original manga by Eiichiro Oda. The team accomplishes this by removing filler scenes not present in the source material
For the uninitiated, anime is notorious for “filler”—dragging battle scenes on for 10 episodes and adding nonsense slice of life beats to fill up TV slots while they wait for the source material (the manga) to catch up. By cutting all that baloney out, One Pace saves viewers “over 150 hours overall compared to the original anime” (another lovely nerd on Reddit). That saves you from watching over a third of the anime. That’s 50 less viewings of The Godfather!
So, maybe I’m not that crazy. A little, but not too much.
With that, I implore you—don’t miss out on one of the greatest animes of all time just because you’re too intimidated. There’s a better way. Join me, so I have somebody to talk about it with. As the mythical ancient proverb says:
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Luckily for us, we can go fast and far, together. ✊