One Piece’s anime has been airing for more than 25 years and has gone through several changes over the years to keep up with modern trends. The series has only once taken a long hiatus in the middle of the Egghead Incident Arc, so they won’t catch up with the manga and have enough time to maintain the high-level animation quality. For a series to run for several years while the manga is still ongoing, One Piece had to significantly slow down the pacing to the point of adapting one chapter per episode. Since the manga often goes on hiatus, at least once a month and sometimes even twice, the anime comes up with the recap episodes that often air after hype episodes.
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Since we saw the Giants reuniting with the Straw Hats in the latest Episode 1141, next week will feature a recap highlighting the events of the Little Garden Arc. Tony Tony Chopper and Carrot have been taking the lead for the past few months to retell the story. However, the problem is that no one likes these recaps at all, at least not in this format. Some of these recaps even get thousands of dislikes on Crunchyroll just so fans can express their dissatisfaction. This problem can be fixed by doing something One Piece was the best at in the past.
One Piece’s Anime Used to Have the Best Filler Arcs
A few years ago, long-running series were all the rage in the anime industry, and almost all of them used to have filler arcs to serve as buffers after the ending of major arcs. One Piece was no exception. However, this anime at least used to have considerably shorter filler arcs, especially when you compare them to Naruto and Bleach. Not to mention that some of these fillers were actually pretty interesting, including the fan-favorite G-8 Arc and the Warship Island Arc.
Toei slowly began to phase out the fillers after the time-skip, and the last one we saw was before the Dressrosa Arc. After that, we usually only saw crossovers or film promotions during anime breaks. Since fillers are essentially anime-only content, the studio has to spend extra time and money to keep fans busy with original episodes while they prepare to release new episodes, so the motive to avoid them is understandable.
Although many understand that airing the episodes weekly without catching up to the manga is impossible, there are other ways to go about it, instead of delivering recaps every few weeks. The studio only airs recaps to fill in the broadcast schedule, but they don’t serve any real purpose with how frequently they get aired, and no one even likes watching them. These recaps have become so evident for the past few months that they just completely ruin the flow of the story that was going on.
Why Doesn’t One Piece Have Fillers Anymore?
Filler arcs aren’t common in anime these days, because most of them are seasonal with a limited number of episodes per season. Each season usually has about 12 or 24 episodes, or fewer in the case of excellent recent exceptions, and the studios have more than enough manga content to adapt the stories. There is usually at least one or several years of gap between each season, which gives the manga more than enough time to move the story forward. Series like Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Fire Force, and many more are able to reach their manga endings years before the story is fully adapted. This goes before even mentioning that producing original anime episodes these days can be incredibly expensive for studios that have a fixed budget for each season.
So, modern anime series have neither the requirement nor the budget for filler episodes. Nonetheless, One Piece is an exception to the rule, and it can easily go back to its days of assembling and airing filler arcs after an arc ends, instead of taking several unannounced breaks in between. Toei won’t even have to create original stories since there is an abundance of canon material in the cover stories. One Piece even adapted Buggy’s cover story over two decades ago, and it’s about time we see some more adventures of the minor characters.
Do you think One Piece’s anime could benefit more from filler arcs instead of regular recap episodes? Let us know in the comments below!
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