 Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything One Piece, and today it's time to examine a question that every new person interested in One Piece faces at some point in their reading or watching career, which is the age old, is One Piece too long. And I'd really like to discuss this because in the stupid amount of time I've been reading this series weekly, which is something ridiculous like 14 years, prospective fans have always told me that yeah they're kind of interested in picking up One Piece, but they just can't bring themselves to delve into something so long. And for some context, when I first started reading this, the series was approaching you know 400 mighty chapters, which was a staggering amount back in the day, but comparatively it really was much more appealing to dive into something like Naruto which was just over 200 chapters at the time, or Bleach which I think was sitting at around the 150 mark. Kind of funny to think about in retrospect though I guess, because both of those series went on to be massively long stories, however it was hard to deny the criticism of One Piece's length at the time and it's even harder to deny these days as we are currently sitting at over 960 chapters at the time of this recording, and in fact if you're watching this in the near future, we have likely passed the 1000 mark by now. That is an awful lot of time to invest and a very real barrier to entry that we One Piece fans have to deal with when recommending this series to friends or family. And you know what, that barrier only becomes worse when dealing with the anime, which right now is well over 900 episodes long, and that for that is a truly daunting task. I've heard all sorts of stories from people who have marathoned it over literal months, and even that was a huge daily chore, so let me just say, well done to all of you who have managed to do that. But you know what, this also brings up something that I want to address quickly, being that the question of is One Piece too long, has differing answers depending on whether or not you're talking about the anime or the manga. Because when you're talking about the anime, I will flat out say yes, yes it is too long. The anime should be about half the size it is, and the only reason why it's almost as many episodes as we have manga chapters is due to the Toei Fuji TV business model that keeps One Piece running as a weekly series all year round. Which means that the anime gets stuffed and stuffed with filler, and on average it will adapt to maybe a chapter per episode, although often slightly less. But let's not turn this into an anime bashing video if you're an anime only fan, wonderful, I love that you love One Piece, keep doing your thing. But I also think that the much more interesting question lies in the manga, because that is the pure undiluted One Piece, and even in regards to that there is a potential argument to be made that yes, maybe the story, even not being subject to filler is a bit too long. But to really get into that argument, I also think it's necessary to discuss why One Piece is so long. And now cue the smart ass comments of people saying stuff like huh it's long because Oda made it that way, or it's long because Shueisha likes money, both of which are true, but it's not just any series that can survive to the thousand chapter mark. That requires the better part of a quarter of a century's worth of consistent hard work, but more importantly, a consistently growing and retained fan base. I believe that One Piece is allowed to be as long as it has been, because it has a storytelling advantage that almost no other series does, which is that One Piece is not a static narrative. Now what do I mean by that? Well I'm sure there's probably an actual term for it out there that I'm not aware of, but what I mean by a static narrative is a story with a fixed location that the action has to take place around. So to bring Naruto back into things, it would be classified as a static narrative by my definition, because it has the base of Kanoa Village, or in a more modern series my hero academia would be a static narrative, because it is based in and around U.A. High School. That's not to say that action and story doesn't take place outside of those bounds, but when it all comes down to it, the characters always return to their base, kind of like an elastic band being stretched and snapping back into place. One Piece, on the other hand, is a fluid narrative, meaning that characters have no point of return. They simply keep traveling the world, going from island to island, meeting consistently new groups of characters to interact with. And this simple yet effort intensive endeavor is the secret to a whole ton of success that One Piece enjoys. It is almost always providing something new to the audience, and in terms of length of the story, this contributes greatly. Because in a series like Naruto, you have to take the time to establish a location like Kanoa Village, however once you've put that work in, you never need to do that again, whereas One Piece needs to take the time to establish a new location in every single arc it undertakes. In some cases, it's very much like starting an entirely new series with each island that the Straw Hats visit, because you experience radical visual changes and entirely new subset of society, and a whole lot of new ideas to contribute and explore. And that takes time, a lot of time. In fact, in some of the bigger arcs, we can have something like 20 whole chapters dedicated to set up an introduction of the new location and its players. And in doing so, many more side characters or arc specific protagonists and antagonists are introduced, many of whom could have had an entire manga series based on their story alone. Think figures like Trafalgar Law. This guy could have had a whole series based on him striving to exact revenge on Dol Flamingo, or even characters like Princess Vivi. She could have been the protagonist of a Vivi-centric manga that follows her journey to infiltrate and stop Baroque works, throwing her kingdom of alabaster into civil war. So what One Piece is essentially doing is constantly reinventing itself under the umbrella of this grand world, and that's how it's gotten to this stage. That narrative structure plus Etura Oda's never-ending inspiration has pushed the story to this point, and now that we're here, we can ask the question of was a story of this length necessary to portray Oda's original intentions? And to that you can probably argue that no, it wasn't. In fact, it's widely known that Oda's original plan was to finish the entirety of One Piece as a five-year run, and while I don't think that was ever going to happen even if things were streamlined down to the very basics, I do think that One Piece could have theoretically been condensed and still have been a phenomenal product. There are a lot of things in One Piece that aren't narratively speaking absolutely necessary, and this can range from small stuff like Send Your Pink's Flashback to entire story arcs like Thrill of Arc, which was a lot of fun, but in the end it didn't accomplish a whole lot and everything it did accomplish could have been placed elsewhere. And then there are arcs like Long Ring Long Land, which to this day anime watches are shocked to discover that yes it is canon material. I mean well, most of it. The anime kind of heavily butchered it beyond belief, but was even the canon stuff essential for the overall story? Well, barring Alkiji? Definitely not. Plus you can also make the argument that super long arcs like Dressrosa, which do have exceptionally heavy story implications, did not have to be anywhere near as long as they were, and it was very much Oda becoming carried away, which he has stated happens from time to time. However the easy counter argument to all of this is that what all of these features lack in terms of their addition to the story, they more than make up for in how they contribute to the overall worldbuilding of the series, which is arguably the greatest charm that One Piece has to offer. Because the thing is that while delving into stuff like Send Your Pink's backstory or taking a whole ton of time to develop a whole world of characters on Dressrosa, in general yes it does slow down the series, but at the same time it expands it into this wonderful rich world rather than just providing a superficial stage for the protagonist to play against, the latter of which is what I would argue the large majority of Shonen series end up being. In so many other properties when you visit a new location you might meet you know a handful of new characters, each of whom are portrayed as exceptionally simple, with maybe one very easily solved problem. But when we go to a new island in One Piece we are meeting an entirely new society, often with either complex social or political issues that Luffy ends up punching his way through. And you can point to arcs like Wano, Fishman Island, Holkake Island, Dressrosa, pretty much any of the New World Era stuff for this, but it's even evident in the early days of One Piece because take Alabaster for example. The entire premise of that arc was crocodile dividing the country into two factions and implementing a civil war. That is not the sort of thing that is easily written or portrayed and did involve discerning about characters on the side of Nefertari Cobra and the royalty, as well as those aligned with the resistance under Kosa, plus the innocent civilians of Alabaster like Old Man Toto, a large group of new and important villains in the remainder of Baroque Works, and all of this had to be integrated with our relatively large cast of protagonists in the Straw Hats and to top everything off there was also heavy involvement from the Marine faction led by Smoker and Toshiki. And you just don't see that sort of intricacy in most series of this genre, and not that I'm saying that a series necessarily needs that, to me simple ideas are often the best ones after all, but One Piece excels at actually portraying its story as a living breathing world. And that comes with all sorts of complex character motivations and interactions to serve a grander narrative and of course that all takes an awful lot of time to portray. So the new question I have to pose to all of you with that in mind is simply is One Piece worth taking this time? And to that I would answer absolutely 100% yes it is. One Piece is a very simple story when you boil it down to its main purpose. Essentially we're on this journey to see Luffy become the Pirate King, and yeah along the way we've picked up some side goals with other crew members like Zoro wanting to become the world's greatest swordsman, or Sanji's dream to find all blue, etc. That's all fine, it's still fairly simple. But in the end when you think about it, despite Luffy's profound drive to achieve his goal, he's not really in any rush. In fact you can argue that Luffy is entirely on board with this for the adventure, and part of the reason why he chose to become the Pirate King in the first place is because it was the most outrageously difficult thing he could think of at the time, thus leading to the longest and most rewarding possible adventure. I mean in the series Luffy has even been given the outright chance to learn what the One Piece is before the time skip even, and he refused because it's not about the goal, it's about the adventure. And I think that is the mindset that one needs to go into when beginning One Piece, which yes is very difficult because there's no way that a new fan could really know that beforehand, but if you have any friends or family that you are trying to get into the series then that is how I would sell it. Reading One Piece is kind of like embarking on a grand holiday overseas, where you're going to be consistently on the move, hopping from country to country, always taking in new visual stimulus, meeting an incredible new world's worth of people, and best of all, you can just chill and take your time exploring it all. One Piece is not in a rush to get anywhere, and that's kind of admirable for a story in this day and age, because in the modern day story has become such a condensed art form, everything that is included must set up a future plot element or somehow add to the payoff of the story. And there is an awful lot of that in One Piece, but if Oda wants to take the time to showcase a particular location, provide us with certain bits of history, or even just tell a joke, he's going to do it, and it's almost always incredible and adds a huge amount of value to the series. So to answer the overall question, in my opinion, One Piece is not too long, not at all. There are parts of the series that I do wish could have gone a little bit faster, but overall, however long this series ends up being, I feel like I'm always going to want more. Looking at it this way, 1000 chapters is just not enough to explore this world. Give me 2000, maybe even 3000. I will happily take them all. To me, One Piece isn't long enough. Even with the time it takes to set up complex arcs, it always feels like we're speeding towards a conclusion. And look after more than two decades of telling one's story, as an author, maybe that's what I'd be going for as well. Lest I risk the fact that it may not end in my lifetime. But to anyone who ever tells you that this series is too long, just let them know that that's kind of the point. It's an epic adventure, unlike anything they will ever see in any other series, and well worth the time to become invested. And that pretty much does it for this discussion on whether or not One Piece is too long. 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