One of the biggest anime of all time, One Piece, just ended its long-running season 1 streak with the closure of the Egghead arc. It went out with a bang, answering year-long questions that followers of the show had.
Originally, the creator of the source material wanted the series to last only five years, which he said back in 2006. I can clearly see how off the mark he was, as this is not the end of One Piece. But with how things are developing, as fans, we can be certain now that the story is on its last legs.
The anime is going to move to seasonal releases. So the next time we see the Straw Hat pirate crew, it will be adapting the Elbaph arc from the source material. In a way, the joke in the community currently is that the show finally ended season 1 after over 1000 episodes.
One Piece has too many episodes
But this also brings us to the discussion of why anime fans get discouraged from watching One Piece. Sitting through over 1000 episodes or reading a manga that has over 1000 chapters is not really a task most people can be up to, especially in a generation when there’s a multitude of media to consume for a lifetime.
People would prefer bite-sized experiences that conclude shortly. This is also the reason why the fandom around following actual fantasy novels is dwindling. Even the One Piece IP holders are looking for avenues to bring new people.
Thus, we see now that a new version of the anime is at work under WIT animation studios. It seeks to greatly reduce the number of episodes the original show has without losing its charm. For those that are still uninitiated in this journey: One Piece is set in a fictional pirate fantasy universe.
The world is vast and mostly covered in ocean, with varying countries and races. Incredible power systems, real-world references to autocratic world governments, fantastical mysteries, and whimsical characters.
The story of how One Piece was created
Our story follows the Straw Hat pirate crew and mainly the captain, Monkey D. Luffy, who is our main character. Throughout the show, we see the Strawhats travel across seas, overcoming various obstacles, befriending and recruiting new crewmates.
One Piece is one of the longest-running manga of all time, and I cannot say enough times how consistent it has been in maintaining its quality. Eiichiro Oda, the creator of the manga, started getting it published around 1997, which is just a few years after Dragon Ball ended its legendary run.
Oda himself has confirmed that Akira Toriyama’s work was a big inspiration for One Piece. But even beyond that, Eiichiro Oda was heavily inspired by the animated show Vicky the Viking from the 1970s.
It was a show based on a novel written by Swedish author Runer Jonsson. Most don’t know about this cartoon show, but it had an impeccable influence on the world of One Piece.
Decades of unanswered questions
Eiichiro Oda took the sea-faring life of Vikings and the whimsy of cartoons to create a medium that has become one of the most praised works of high fantasy in modern fiction. These facts remain prevalent even in the most recent episodes of the anime and chapters of the manga.
It brings us to the answer of why Egghead is such an important and rewarding arc after a journey of thousands of episodes. For those who will continue to read forward, be warned that I will be going into the nitty-gritty details of one of the recent chapters in the story.
So if you don’t want spoilers, it’s better to come back and read this later. For those who are fully caught up in the anime and are of the exact opposite thought process to the uninitiated, which is: Why are there not more episodes? Well, it’s time to talk about why exactly I feel this way.
Since the late 90s, Eiichiro Oda has been drip-feeding us information about the world of One Piece with unanswered questions that go beyond just figuring out what the actual treasure, One Piece, is.
I have been questioning: Why does the World Government protect the Celestial Dragons who look down on other races and are pro slavery? Why does it keep happening even though there are clearly characters in the marine who are morally good people in the world?
What is the mystery behind the five elders? Who is Doctor Vegapunk? What is the mystery behind the Devil Fruits? Did the world of One Piece really have ancient races and gods that existed among the living?
Post time-skip, we started getting answers
I was baffled to find out that decades after the manga started publishing, the story of One Piece had only completed its first half after the Marineford War arc. While most fans in 2005 were still theorizing how the story would end, and none of them had any idea about haki systems or emperors.
Eiichiro Oda, after a time-skip, doubled down on the world-building with advanced power systems, fully exploring the concepts of haki and threats that go beyond just the regular warlords. Since then, I have been riding the high for a decade, with bits and snippets of new lore pieces that gave shape to more mysteries surrounding the world of One Piece.
I got proper ideas about what the poneglyphs are, that there was a time which was erased and no one knows about, and more on the mysterious individual named Joyboy. But these newfound clues also raised new questions, adding to the mysteries of One Piece immensely.
For the first time, the fanbase had new materials to craft theories out of. This fact lends to the genius of Eiichiro Oda because he was connecting plot points from decade-old arcs in the anime with new information.
Wano was the tipping point for new revelations
Moving to the Wano arc, things started exploding when I got more answers. Starting with a major flashback of Gold D. Roger and his crew. I got to know the man who kick-started the worst generation of pirate age.
Wano made us understand that Gold D. Roger had a clear idea about what he was doing when he said those words during his execution. I also got an actual flashback sequence that depicted the moment he found the One Piece, and clearly set things in motion.
The next major set piece in Wano was the revelation that there are other special kinds of devil fruit powers, and that Luffy is somehow the inheritor of one of the most important powers in existence. His awakening as Nika, the Sun God, once again linked us to old thread points with the sky people worshipping gods in the Skypiea arc.
If Wano and every previous arc were significant for their revelations, then this is the point when we properly moved on to the Egghead arc. This demonstrated Eiichiro Oda’s prowess in using these new concepts to breathe life into emotional storytelling.
I was not ready for the backstory of Barthelomew Kuma
At this point, I realized that Eiichiro Oda wants to elevate the concept of Luffy’s Sun God Nika form beyond just another shounen anime power-up. He finds the most unconventional yet impressive means to do this through the backstory of Barthelomew Kuma and Dr.Vegapunk.
Kuma is a character from an extinct race of slaves who gave his life to protect the future of his daughter. Everyone got to experience the tear-jerker that was his life story. But it also set into motion the idea of Luffy’s new form being that of a liberator, the one who will bring joy and destroy the oppressors.
I had the idea that Dr. Vegapunk would be this genius mad scientist character who is a puppet of the world government. But Oda would not settle for simple cliches. What I got was the complete opposite: an old soul who fights oppression.
The world government in One Piece fights to suppress history in information by terrorizing and even causing genocidal activities. Thus, the reason why I had to search for so many years for answers to missing years, which the show calls ‘void century.’
I was completely wrong about Dr. Vegapunk
Dr. Vegapunk is the person who had all my answers, and he made sure to let the world know about these missing 800 years, the ancient weapons, the fact that the world was different back in the day, and sea levels had risen, the revelation about Joyboy, the first pirate.
This character, whom I had been waiting to meet for thousands of chapters, decades of years in my life, went on to answer all the year-long questions I had, at the expense of his own life.
I felt as if I was one of the residents in the world of One Piece, experiencing its history and secrets just like all the other characters were as they stared at the transponder snails. Just when I thought it was done, Eiichiro Oda wasn’t done.
He gave me one last insane sequence to send off the Egghead arc, not just metaphorically but quite literally. Because I got to experience a fraction of Joyboy’s observation haki, that set standards for where the scaling of the One Piece power system is heading.
Eagerly looking forward to the new season
To end the explosiveness on a treat, Oda also teased Joyboy in a flashback from the missing century. The following was just a small section of things that stood out to me from the Egghead arc, but there were several other important developments that I missed out on, since all of that would make for a completely new topic.
I got to actually see the five elders in action for the first time since they were revealed decades ago. Their presence was able to set the standards for where the finale of One Piece is headed. Raising new questions about their abilities, which will probably get answered in the Elbaph arc.
For now, I am more than satisfied with all that I experience and am eagerly waiting for when the anime eventually returns to surpass itself with further spectacle.
