The most popular manga of all time has hundreds of episodes, but not all anime sagas correspond to the manga. Seasonal guide.
Starting to read the manga or watch the One Piece anime in 2021 is brave. But it is well worth it. More than 1000 chapters in relation to the vignettes and more than 960 episodes in the production for the small screen. However, as is often the case in almost all successful anime with a weekly publication without breaks by seasons, the series usually reaches the rhythm of the manga and… original stories are included as fillers; that is, non-canonical bows.
The filler of One Piece is not as numerous as that of other manga, but it does exist. Is it worth seeing? That depends on each; there are very interesting chapters. Not surprisingly, if you want to see only the sagas and episodes based on the famous manga by Eiichiro Oda, the most successful of all time with more than 480 million volumes sold, we are going to give you a hand and explain which One Piece arcs are Canonical and what sagas are filler. In an appendix at the end of this article we talk more in depth about what stuffing is and why it exists in the manganime industry.
- It may interest you: in what order to see the One Piece movies?
One Piece anime: all canon sagas and all fillers
We begin by answering the question of how to watch the One Piece anime in full with Spanish subtitles in a legal and official way. The answer is Crunchyroll, a paid VOD platform with different subscription modalities. There is an app for PS5 and Xbox Series X | S; all the information on its website.
The One Piece anime begins airing in October 1999, two years after the manga began. The success of Eiichiro Oda’s comic aroused the interest of the main television networks, but Toei Animation is the one who finally got the rights to broadcast them on FNS (Fuji TV). And so they continue, more than twenty years later among the five most watched anime each week.
Put on your straw hat and get on the boat, because this time you do need to get comfortable to enjoy this exciting story. Will Monkey D. Luffy be the next pirate king?
Season 1 – East Blue Saga (Episodes 1-61)
- Filler episodes: from 54 to 60 (The Millennium Dragon arc).
Entrance to the Grand Line
Season 2 – Arabasta Saga (Episodes 62-135)
Filler episodes: 61, 98, 99, 101, 102; 131-135.
Season 3 – Skypiea Saga (Episodes 136-206)
- Filler episodes: 136-143; 196 to 206 (Fortress G-8 arch).
Season 4 – Ennies Lobby / Water Saga 7 (Episodes 207-325)
- Filler episodes: 220-226; 279-283, 291, 292, 303, 317, 318, 319.
Season 5 – Thriller Bark Saga (Episodes 326 to 384)
- Filler Episodes: 326-336 (Ice Hunter); 382-384 (Spa Island).
Season 6 – Marineford Saga (Episodes 385-516)
- Filler episodes: 406-407; 426-429; 457-458; 492 (episode with Toriko).
Time Skip – Arrival in the New World
Season 7 – Kyojin Island Saga (Episodes 517 to 574)
- Filler episodes: 542.
Season 8 – Great Pirate Alliance Saga (Episodes 575 to 746)
- Filler episodes: 575-578; 590; 626-628.
Season 9 – Saga of the Four Emperors (Episodes 747 to ??)
- Filler episodes: 747-750; 775; 780-782; 807; 881; 895-896; 907 (20th anniversary special).
But what is filler and why does it exist?
Many successful animated series based on a manga usually have comics or story arcs that are not told in the original story of the mangaka in question. The reason? Very simple: the producers of the animated series do not want breaks in the weekly broadcast (in case it is weekly) of the episodes. We explain it to you.
There are series like My Hero Academia, to put a popular case of recent times, which is based on seasons. The term of seasons implies waves of chapters, as in a conventional series, where the greatest fidelity to the work is sought without lengthening situations, scenes and dialogues in excess. For a logical reason, it is difficult to adapt 19 pages of a manga chapter (the general average of the weekly episodes of the Weekly Shonen Jump manga) to a chapter of about twenty minutes of the anime.
The series by seasons do not have to worry about this because they are not so much time a year in emission; anime that do meet the rule of about 45 annual episodes are seen in this position.
In other words: series that are not based on seasons tend to catch up with the manga and, therefore, non-canonical original sagas (filler) are included so that the manga takes distance from the anime again. And so on. It is especially dilated in very long comics, like One Piece or Naruto. In the case that concerns us, we are talking about a manga of more than 1000 chapters, about 100 tankobon volumes and more than twenty years in circulation.
