Forum - View topicHow To Conquer One Piece
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HeartPirateHomeGirl
 Posts: 1 |
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I always knew about OP for years, but didn't care to watch until recently. After having watched a lot of long anime staples such as Bleach and Inuyasha, my sister and I knew we needed to look into One Piece.
We studied abroad in Japan fall 2014 and OP had maybe 650 episodes? Very daunting but when in Japan and surrounded by One Piece everywhere, you think 'now or never'. (Trust me, Japan is such a treat when you are a OP fan.) So on top of school and exploring Japan, we barreled through every episode up to the time skip. We watched some short shows in between bigger arcs as a break- it really helps. But we did average 10-15 episodes a day haha. But that's because we literally could not help falling in love with it- always needing to know what happened next. I personally never skip fillers and I love backstory, but I admit there are many episodes/small arcs people can skip if they get impatient more quickly as some drag on or are unnecessary. We spread post time skip arcs over this past spring semester at school and finally caught up to Dressrosa. It was a loooong journey but SO rewarding. One Piece is my favorite show ever and I'm obsessed. I take great pride in having caught up and now watch weekly episodes as they stream. This journey is NOT for the feint of heart, and will not be loved by everyone. But all the fans I talk to are simply in love with it. Also, I watched in dub up to Thriller Bark (because that's all there was) and watched the rest in Japanese. So half and half. LOVE both casts and recommend that people watch a little of each. Although after listening to Japanese seiyuus for so long, it's hard to go back to FUNi cast. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18226 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I've watched a few episodes of OP here and there (mostly because it happened to be on while I was waiting for what came after it to come up on Toonami/Adult Swim) but could never get up the enthusiasm to keep watching it. The story moves so painfully slowly that it makes other long-running shonen series look speedy by comparison, but the bigger problem is that I absolutely despise the art style. In fact, there's only a handful of anime titles I've ever sampled/seen whose visual styles I dislike even more. (Okay, it's at least better than Shin-chan, but in my book that's not saying much.) Now, I'm not saying that the art is bad, per se, but it doesn't work for me at all.
That being said, this is still a great article. I'll keep it in mind if I ever do change my mind about not putting up with the artwork. |
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Pipoko
Posts: 165 |
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I feel like if I wouldn't have gotten to start the series as a kid about 10-12 years ago, with an episode (or more) per day running on German TV, I wouldn't even bother with it now or would just very easily drop it. The beginning of the series has really slow pacing up to the Arlong arc and I don't think I could go through particularly the Kuro arc without just losing interest.
I'm glad I got to see it as a kid. It's not the best written and it certainly is formulaic, but it is the series that has offered me entertainment for the longest out of all of the series I've watched/read and I find the fact that it has entertained me for 10+ years in various degrees at all incredible. You could consider it to have a slow start in terms of anime and manga, but that really is nothing compared to what happens with the anime starting Enies Lobby, somewhere in the 250s. Since that it has gone a chapter per episode and it could be incredibly obnoxious pacing - much more than anything in the early arcs. Since then the anime especially has slowly gotten worse in every aspect. You could still kind of argue for the animation quality up to the final arcs of the first half, but by the end of Fishman Island I dropped the anime version because starting with that arc it started to just look really ugly. It was frustrating because you can't expect great animation from a long runner every episode, but prior to those final arcs of the first half, especially prior to Enies Lobby you could tell they did their best with the limited resources they had. All effort is gone from the anime at this point - before they found ways to extend the material in interesting ways or even had some very well-written filler. But now the budget is really poorly distributed and the padding unimaginitive. I tried sitting through some episodes of Dressrosa and couldn't. It's just frustrating that the anime version has gotten so bad - doesn't help that it actually once was pretty decent despite all the limitations it had. So, I'm a manga-only follower now, though it hasn't had a truly great arc after the end of the first half - Fishman Island and Punk Hazard had some highlights, but as a whole were relatively average and while Dressrosa is the best of the recent arcs so far, it still has it's flaws, I don't think I've actively really straight-up hated any of the arcs yet - there are weaker and stronger ones and the weakest are mostly just average, rather than mind-blowingly the worst thing ever which is pretty incredible for a series that at this point is almost 800 chapters long. |
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maCSlate
 Posts: 10 |
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I started watching in 2003 when it was first broadcast in germany.
Haven't watched an episode in 2 years though. Been meaning to catch up, so thanks for reminding me. Going to plow through an arc now! 
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Juno016
 Posts: 2395 |
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For me, the best introduction for some of my reluctant friends has been "Episode of Nami". Arlong Park is the first arc to get me attached to the storytelling, and its biggest problem was when it extended fights by introducing new problems without focusing on the characters (and with such a good character arc going down, that can be a turn-off). "Episode of Nami" skips or speeds through most of the pointless fights, focusing mostly on the ones that were relevant to the characters' developments. At 2 hours long, it covers the entire arc without missing anything relevant, turning the entire arc into a giant TV special movie with a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. And anyone who knows the arc knows what I mean when I say it's potentially the first part of the series to make people cry. The first of many well-written character plots, that is.
Another semi-spoilerific thing to do would be to watch dnubspro's "One Piece in 6 Minutes" or "One Piece in 10 Minutes" videos. The nice thing is that the series is long enough that it's easy to forget the details of the video and remember only the experience of watching it. You don't know all of the characters, so you can still experience a good number of things from the video in the show and be surprised. But if you've got a photographic memory or like the video so much, you watch it over and over, it can spoil stuff for you, too. Either way, the videos are both really nice summaries for the series that capture the emotion and draw of the characters and story almost perfectly without giving away every surprise the series has to offer (mainly because they're too short to include all important, meaningful, or emotional events). I've got a few people interested through them. |
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FireballDragon
 Posts: 684 |
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...Funny story: I was talking to a classmate of mine about One Piece, and he said that he thought it had already ended with Luffy throwing the One Piece back into the ocean. I told him otherwise, and he said he heard that from a friend.
Later on, we were discussing the differences between the American and Japanese dubs, and he actually said, I kid you not: "What's a dub?" He was actually one of the ones who saw the 4Kids version, and never saw the Japanese version. I actually had to tell him that Zoro's name is Zoro. Poor guy... |
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#828759
Posts: 2 |
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I first got into one piece when it priemered back on again on Toonami 1 or 2 years ago. At that time they decided to start with Long Ring Long Land Arc/Davy Back Fight Arc. I wasn't really planing on watching it because mainly because of the art I found that at the time it look kinda of childish. But foutunatly I found myself very interested and Watching it every Saturday nights on Toonami. I decided that I wanted to watch all the episodes to catch up with it on tv. I bought all the dvds and all the manga and it didn't take me long at all because I LOVED it and was basically marathoning it (which happens to a lot of people lol). I fell in love with all the characters and their stories. I also eventually feel in love with the art as its unique and you don't see that often with anime nowadays. I'm glad that I took a chance with one piece, and I could've gotten into sooner if I hadn't judge a book by its cover because it's AMAZING thing!
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jr240483
 Posts: 4385 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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not quite. the first two eps of the lost island arc are technically psuedo filler arcs cause it did showed the calm belt which was in the manga. also ep 68 and 69 are also in the psudeo filler category cause it featured coby and helmeppo's training from garp which was mentioned in the chapter intro of the mangas. so while some can be skipped, skipping those two isnt recomended.
I'm afraid that wasnt their choice to make. otherwise they would have had another "hollywood copyright lawsuit" to deal with. just like with the mess that occurred for the detective conan manga. viz had to change the name of that manga to "case closed" to please those dumbasses that control the copyright name for the conan the barbarian movies when they went into lawsuit mode. and its the same for this situation cause they used the original name instead of the crappy 4kids name, then its a safe bet that the license holders for the zorro franchise would be screaming class action lawsuit on them as well. so you cant blame viz for using those outdated terminology and using name from the bad 4kids days i'm afraid. |
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Videogamep
 Posts: 564 Location: CA |
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I wonder why Funimation hasn't gotten in any trouble for it, then? They've been using Zoro ever since they acquired it back in 2008 and they haven't been sued over it. |
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rabrek
 Posts: 188 |
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Ugh. The Don Krieg arc... Time dilated, and I feared it would never end. damn you, Krieg! (shakes fist) |
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stilldemented
 Posts: 232 |
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The first episode of One Piece I seen involved Zoro vs. Mihawk during the Baratie arc on the old 4kids dub. I lost interest soon after that episode as Mihawk leaves the scene and I wasn't invested enough in the other cast members to really care.
Flashforward to college where I'd do just about anything to procrastinate on my homework and One Piece is the only one of the Big Three that I'm not all that familiar with....well here we go! It took me a long while to get interested in it to be honest. Longer than what most people are willing to give it. I read the first 200 chapters or so mainly because it was just something to do. I started liking it once Robin joined as I thought the crew's dynamic started cementing itself into place. She's still my favorite character in the series. I would say that latching onto a character definitely aids in pushing you through the series cause I started marathon sessions pretty soon after that. The rest is history. I liked One Piece. When getting people into the series, I'd probably throw people in at Skypeia since it's a stand alone segment of the story while still providing great fights. You get a pretty good feel for the main cast and then get surprised when these goofy characters you've been watching flip and show why they are considered dangerous pirates that have bounties on their heads. It's a fun little series. |
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Hameyadea
 Posts: 3679 |
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Exactly. I can't recall the last time I checked the Time Remaining on the player/stream service, or was preoccupied with checking e-mails/SNS messages/anything similar. Even the "last few" episodes (I use that term loosely here, by that I mean the last 40-or-so episodes), where some users on variuos sites and forums were vocal about how "these episodes drag on" or "riddled with so much anime-original scenes, they're barely watchable", I can't see from where they are coming from; the series has good BGM, which "recently" (again, used loosely here  ) got updated, good vocal acting, mostly-good animation (and even the show's "bad animation" isn't all that bad, IMO), and good pacing.
One Piece is one of the very few shows that I can remember where anime-original content was created, placed, and paced in such a way that doesn't hurt the adaptation (yes, as always there are exceptions, but they are rare). I like this show, and I like its current pace and style. |
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bobob101
 Posts: 201 |
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So years ago when there was only 500+ episodes I marathoned One Piece. As a sort of automatic buffer system, I was watching it on good old Megavideo, so every 72 minutes I HAD to stop watching. That was a good way to keep my sanity. Today I will revisit an arc or two, but only in manga form. There is just too much recap in One Piece episodes for me to truly enjoy the anime.
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Hameyadea
Posts: 3679 |
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I remember mining their system 
Their site/players counted the actual time the player ran, so I opened multiple windows (tabs were still new and buggy back then, if they even existed on the browser), let the players stream in advance, and enjoy a total runtime of nearly 4 hours out of their "only 72". Today, sites like FUNimation, CrunchyRoll, Viewster, Daisuki, and more are available, with ever-increasing backlog and content, so the need for MegaVideo-esque places has decreased. Last edited by Hameyadea on Wed Jun 24, 2015 4:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5120 |
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*stops rolling on the ground and wipes his eyes* Ah, dear me; you certainly have a good sense of humor! |
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