Warning: Contains spoilers for One Piece Log: Fishman Islan episode #1.In a surprising twist, not only is One Piece’s anime going on hiatus until April 2025, but rather than just going off the air for that time, One Piece will air a remastered version of the Fishman Island arc. The visuals have been redone to be more in line with the modern anime, and the story, itself, will be condensed to just 21 episodes as opposed to the original 58.
With One Piece‘s Fishman Island remaster less than half the length of the original arc, that means the pacing has to be much faster to cover everything in a short amount of time. Only one episode has aired so far, and not only is the pacing as good as people expected it to be, but the pacing of One Piece ’s remaster is so good that it emphasizes just how bad the regular anime’s pacing can be. A lot of that is out of the anime’s control, of course, but the stark contrast between them is still worth thinking about, regardless.
One Piece’s Anime Remaster Proves That One Piece Can Have Good Pacing
One Piece’s Fishman Island remaster promised a version of the anime with better pacing, and it’s already delivering on that front. As opposed to the slow and monotonous pacing that’s often plagued the anime, the remaster does a great job of pacing things out closer to the manga, and it’s to the point that the first episode of One Piece ’s Fishman Island remaster covered what took two episodes in the original anime.
After years of One Piece being a slog to get through more often than not, the anime being redone with proper pacing is nothing but great to see.
Not everything about the pacing is perfect, however. Since the remaster is mostly just editing the original anime as opposed to creating new material, the remaster has to work within the framework of the original anime’s infamously poor pacing, and because of that, the pacing for One Piece ’s Fishman Island remaster, while mostly good, ironically ends up being too fast at times, which does sometimes underscore the improved visuals and overall quality. Those moments are fortunately rare in episode #1, however, and with any luck, the remaster will have more even pacing, going forward.
Why Does One Piece’s Anime Have Such Bad Pacing Compared To Other Anime?
One Piece’s Pacing Issues Explained
When One Piece first started, it was common for popular anime to run for years at a time without any breaks, and to avoid catching up to the original manga and running out of material to adapt, they would often pad things out with filler episodes or, in One Piece’s case, by dragging things out so that barely anything is covered in a single episode. One Piece ’s pacing issues were largely a product of the era it started in, and as it went on, it became too big to justify changing things, completely.
One Piece has been taking measures to improve things, of course. Not only has the anime received a complete visual overhaul since the Wano arc, something that includes using gorgeously animated fight scenes to make filler scenes more palatable, but the anime is on hiatus so the team behind it can have time to keep delivering episodes at a consistent quality. One Piece ’s remaster wouldn’t exist without the production team acknowledging that they needed to change things for the better, and with the quality of the finished product, that was certainly the right decision.
Will One Piece’s Hiatus Help Fix The Anime’s Pacing Issues?
One Piece’s Fishman Island remaster perfectly highlights how lackluster the original anime has often been, and that begs the question of whether things will change, going forward. The anime is currently on hiatus to help maintain consistent quality, and while that’s mostly regarding visuals, One Piece’s six-month long hiatus could allow the anime to adapt the manga at a faster pace for the first time in decades. The fact that the anime will have more material to adapt than usual also helps with that, and for anyone who’s grown frustrated with the anime’s pacing, it would be great to see.
The hiatus having an impact on how the anime is handled is purely hypothetical, of course, and even if the pacing did improve, there will only be so many chapters in the anime’s backlog to adapt, so unfortunately, One Piece having consistently faster pacing after its hiatus is unlikely to happen outside of a few episodes. At the very least, though, the Fishman Island remaster offers a great look into what a version of One Piece with more consistent pacing would have looked like, and hopefully, at least some of that work will make its way into the main series.
One Piece chronicles the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, an easy-going young pirate with the power to stretch like rubber, gained from eating a Devil Fruit. Luffy and his diverse crew sail across the Grand Line in search of the ultimate treasure, the One Piece, to become the Pirate King.
- Cast
- Mayumi Tanaka , Kazuya Nakai , Akemi Okamura , Kappei Yamaguchi , Hiroaki Hirata , Ikue Ôtani , Yuriko Yamaguchi , Kazuki Yao , Chō
- Release Date
- October 20, 1999
- Writers
- Junki Takegami , Shoji Yonemura , Hirohiko Uesaka
- Directors
- Kônosuke Uda , Junji Shimizu , Munehisa Sakai
- Creator(s)
- Eiichiro Oda