One Piece has announced it’s about to go through a massive schedule change for the first real time in the anime’s 26 year history, but it’s going to be a move that ultimately saves the anime going forward. One Piece has been a pillar of the anime world ever since Eiichiro Oda’s original manga series first came to life, and it currently sits at an impressive 1,000 plus episodes as of the time of this writing. It’s become such a juggernaut that fans on the outside see it as too big of a hill to overcome, but it’s a rewarding journey for those who take it.
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Though it’s also been a tough ride for those behind the scenes of One Piece at Toei Animation as well. It’s undergone some major changes over the decades, but has surprisingly maintained a weekly release schedule all this time. But as the demands of the current production grow in scale, and One Piece’s team itself wants to highlight its biggest moments with more elaborate sequences than ever seen before, One Piece is now moving to a new schedule to help better the end product. It’s the right move going forward as anime demands change.
One Piece’s New Seasonal Schedule Is the Best Move to Save It
One Piece’s anime is already impressive on its own as it has maintained a cinematic level of sequences despite it being a weekly release. But those demands have started to catch up with Toei Animation. Fans not only saw the series going on a six month hiatus in the middle of the Egghead Arc, and when it returned there were still multiple weeks where episodes were not only delayed from their initial broadcast but special recap episodes aired in their place (leading to incredibly negative responses from fans).
But with the announcement that, starting next year, One Piece will only be airing 26 episodes a year as part of a two cour schedule with at least three months of break in between. The team has confirmed that they will be adapting a full chapter per episode, and thus will be improving the pace of the adaptation now that there won’t be any clear danger of catching up with the events of Eiichiro Oda’s ongoing manga release much like there was with the current weekly anime’s schedule.
What Does This Mean for One Piece’s Future?
This move is going to be great for One Piece fans as not only will episodes feel much faster, but they will likely have the cinematic level of quality that fans have come to expect from its biggest scenes. This will hopefully give all those involved more time to bring it all to life, and will likely result in a bigger and brighter future for the anime. But at the same time, it’s all going to technically last for much longer than the weekly release. Even with the faster pace, One Piece might even play out in the same span of time as before.
One Piece: Elbaph Arc will be making its debut in April 2026, and if it indeeds adapt a single chapter per episode, it means that we’ll be about a quarter of the way through the arc when the year comes to an end. This might be how the former weekly schedule might have paced it as well, but it’s just going to feel longer regardless thanks to the longer wait between episodes. It’s going to give Oda enough time to develop the Final Saga of the series for as long as he wants to continue it, but it also means that the One Piece anime is going to be running for a very long time before it ends. Not the worst problem to have though.
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