The main barrier to newcomers getting into One Piece is the sheer volume of material awaiting them. Over 1,150 episodes have been produced since the anime started in 1999, running on a nearly unbroken weekly basis for all that time, until very recently when it broke the practice to take its first long hiatus. I just tell people “you can start anywhere,” which is true — there are occasional references to past adventures that may go over your head, but it’s not that hard to grasp the basic gist.
Even still, part of the reason the live-action series brought a lot of new fans into the fold was because it started the story over and condensed it greatly. Toei Animation is aware of this, and has announced a new series, THE One Piece, that will take the same approach.
The original anime will continue on as it always has. But The One Piece will go back to the beginning and the East Blue Saga, covering the first fifty chapters of the manga up to the point where Luffy meets Sanji. That means it’ll cover even less ground than the first live-action season did, and have less episodes to tell it in — just seven for this first season.
Seven episodes doesn’t sound like a very big season. But the appearance here is a bit deceiving — each of the episodes is over 40 minutes long, double the length of a traditional One Piece episode. It’s really like getting 14 episodes, which is a bit more acceptable. Also, the entire season will be dumped at once, which is blasphemy for JoJo but somehow feels more acceptable for something like this.
The One Piece is directed by Masashi Koizuka (Attack on Titan, Moonrise) with Hideaki Abe (Jujutsu Kaisen) as assistant director and series composition by Taku Kishimoto (Sakamoto Days, Fruits Basket). The series character designers and chief animation directors are Kyoji Asano (Attack on Titan) and Takatoshi Honda (In/Spectre); Yasuhiro Kajino (In/Spectre) handles creature design & image boards; Eri Taguchi (Boruto: Naruto Next Generations) is prop designer; Ken Imaizumi (Boruto: Naruto Next Generations) and Shuhei Fukuda (My Hero Academia: You’re Next) are action animators; Tomonori Kuroda (A Certain Scientific Railgun) is art director; Ryoma Kawamura (One Piece) is animation producer.
The first season of The One Piece will premiere exclusively on Netflix February 2027.
