'One Piece' Dropped The Ball On A Joke With Its Latest Episode

Sometimes an anime adaptation of a series will lack some of the punch of a moment in the original [...]

By Nick Valdez

Sometimes an anime adaptation of a series will lack some of the punch of a moment in the original manga, but it often makes up for it in other areas. Even then, some rough moments still make it through but the impact is lost in translation.

The newest example comes from the latest episode of One Piece, where a joke from Eiichiro Oda's original manga just did not translate as well into animation.

Although fans have been enjoying seeing One Piece's Whole Cake Island arc in animation, Toei Animation can't quite nail down everything from the original chapters. Case in point is where Luffy and Sanji talk to the rest of the Straw Hats in the mirror world.

Luffy tells them that Sanji will come back to the Straw Hats after they break up Big Mom's wedding plans, and after some back and forth with Sanji, Nami says she'll never forgive him. Naturally, this pierces Sanji to the core. And while Nami is animated effectively, the anime loses the punch of the manga's original joke.

In the manga version of these events, Nami's "I'll never forgive you" word bubble pierces Sanji in the next panel. In the anime, it is instead an obnoxious orange arrow that goes straight through Sanji in the same manner. In the anime, it just doesn't feel natural and therefore takes fans out of the moment.

It's just less humorous overall.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best selling manga series worldwide with 430 million copies sold worldwide.

Eiichiro Oda also revealed some upcoming news for One Piece's future at Jump Festa 2018. Not only will the manga see Wano sooner rather than later, the next villain of the series is "one of the legends which lurks in the One Piece world. The greatest enemy ever for Straw Hats will hinder their way...Can you believe Marineford Summit War will look 'cute' compared to that?"

One Piece is currently in the middle of the "Whole Cake Island" arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll and FunimationNOW.

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