What Are The One Piece Movies You Still Can’t Watch?

With One Piece continuing to dominate as a global brand, fans are still surprised that a portion of the One Piece animated movies aren’t available in the United States. Crunchyroll announced the inclusion of three One Piece films on its platform: One Piece – Episode of Arabasta: The Desert Princess and the Pirates, One Piece Film: Strong World, and One Piece Film: Z. These are some of the few One Piece movies released legally in the United States and have an English dub. While the majority of the modern One Piece theatrical films have found their way outside Japan, the early motion pictures have not become legally available in the United States.

Film licensing rights are vastly different than anime or TV show rights. This is why the One Piece anime can get licensed onto multiple streaming platforms, but the films cannot. Furthermore, the One Piece media empire has its hands on several deals, including exclusive partnerships with Crunchyroll and Netflix. It becomes complicated to decide which films to license to whom. The question then becomes which One Piece films are still unavailable to watch?

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All The One Piece Films You Still Can’t Watch

Altogether, eight of the fifteen One Piece films aren’t available to watch legally in the United States. These titles include the first seven and the eleventh One Piece motion picture.

• One Piece: The Movie: The first One Piece movie that even predates Sanji. In this film, the Straw Hat crew races against a gold-obsessed pirate to find an ancient treasure.
• Clockwork Island Adventure: The crew must traverse an odd mechanical island to rescue Nami from being the bride of the island’s maniacal ruler.
• Chopper’s Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals: The first film featuring Chopper, who finds himself ruling over an island of strange animals.
• Dead End Adventure: The Straw Hats join an underground ship race where they encounter a powerful pirate who used to be a Marine.
• The Cursed Holy Sword: A Zoro-starring film where the swordsman seemingly betrays his crew to help an old friend.
• Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island: The crew head to a resort island where they encounter many strange happenings, leading to a dark confrontation with the island’s baron.
• The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle: The Straw Hats arrive on an island filled with weird mechanical inventions, encountering some oddball pirates.
• One Piece 3D: Straw Hat Chase: A 3D-animated short where Luffy and crew chase after his Straw Hat.

Funimation would begin dubbing and distributing the One Piece films with movie 7, Episode of Arabasta: The Desert Princess and the Pirates. Except for One Piece 3D, every following One Piece movie would become available in the US. Crunchyroll would inherit the film rights of the films dubbed and licensed by Funimation after the two companies merged. Interestingly, Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in Winter, Miracle Sakura, the eighth film in the franchise, wasn’t available for the longest time in the United States. It was recently added to Netflix, but only in its native Japanese subtitles.

Although it is confusing why no company has licensed the earlier One Piece films at this point, the cost to license these films is likely too steep to justify bringing them overseas. The reception of the early films is notably mixed, possibly explaining why no corporation has bothered owning the rights. However, there are some standout titles among the movies, specifically Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island. At some point, these One Piece features will likely find their way to the US through legal means, but it will probably take some time.