Summary
Jump Festa 2024 had a lot to share, from new previews of anticipated works to announcements like theChainsaw Manmovie, but the reveal ofThe One Piecemight have been the wildest. Eiichiro Oda’s worldwide sensation is being remade from the beginning, not by Toei Animation, but by WIT Studio, the makers ofSpy x Family,Great Pretender, andAttack on Titan.
This has already been a pretty huge year for the franchise after a live-action adaptation that - against all odds - was a huge hit, not to mentionthe incredible anime adaptation of the Wano Arc. It truly has felt like the year ofOne Piece, with an overall surge of interest in this story bringing in tons of new fans who finally decided to see what all the hype was about. So, as one might imagine, hearing about a full-fledged remake (a laFullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) almost sounds like a parody headline poking fun at such a successful year. And make no mistake, there’s good reason to be excited and intrigued by this new project, but it’s worth questioning what this means logistically and symbolically given this series and this industry.
One Piece Could Benefit From A Modern Adaptation
Let’s start positively.One Pieceis being remade, albeit with the single laziest additive to the title to distinguish it from the preexistinganime that’s been running since 1999(Darn it, that was too cynical).TheOne Pieceis an opportunity to present this beloved story with a modern production mindset that might appeal to newer audiences while remaining faithful to the source material.
The current anime weighs in at over 1050 episodes and even die-hard fans of this series will often agree that it could stand to be trimmed down. This isn’t even a matter of filler, something that was simply an accepted part of TV shōnen adaptations for the longest time. Believe it or not, despite the length of this series, only about 9% of the show is explicitly filler content. At its core, the anime just has a complicated relationship with pacing.
When any show spans over 20 years, it’s not surprising to see it evolve to reflect changes within the medium. The wayOne Piecelooks and feelsnow, from the outside looking in, is far different from how it looked ten or twenty years ago. Some of this has to do withchanges made to the productionto improve the show at the behest of fans and the creator, but it can also just happen naturally. Metrics by which animation is considered good have evolved over the years.
For instance, the Wano Arc has been heralded for its incredible animation - some cuts of which have been called the best of the year among hardcore enthusiasts. One doesn’t even need to be a fan to look at those clips that have been posted online and understand the hype. It’s just as likely that the people looking at these clips have seriously contemplated starting the series themselves, but that presents another problem.
It’s hard to justify watching a long series if it means having to watch stuff that doesn’t look as good as what piqued your interest in the first place. There are tons of anime fans who will see clips from something likeBleach: Thousand-Year Blood Warand swear they will watch the whole series only to weigh that curiosity against the time commitment.
This is undoubtedly the simplest reason whyThe One Pieceis so intriguing. It takes one of the most legendary manga of all time and attaches one of the industry’s most talented studios to a fresh adaptation that promises to trim the fat, as it were. There’s no guarantee that it will do it perfectly, but it’s safe to assume that this will be a much more tempting offer to the uninitiated than anything that’s come before.
Do Fans Really Need A “Remake” of a Currently Airing Series?
It shouldn’t be controversial to point out just how bizarre it is that this project is happening and one wonders how long this project has been in the works. Was it an idea that had been brewing for some time? Is it primarily the will ofNetflix, eager to capitalize on the successof the live-action series? Some mixture of both? It’s not easy to tell, but it is quite strange that this series is being “remade” when it’s not even done in the first place, be it the mangaorthe current anime.
Say what one will about giving old shows the “Brotherhoodtreatment”, butFullmetal Alchemistwas finished when Bones decided to remake their anime. For that matter, the chief reason for the remake was to account for the original anime’s deviation from the source material, which only occurred because there wasn’t enough of it at the time.
It’s the same story withSoul EaterandTokyo Ghoul, two series whose fanbases constantly yearn for remakes. Audiences want faithful adaptations with the benefit of the complete text from which to draw. Remakes aren’t newand classics likeRurouni KenshinandUruseiYatsuraare being remade right now, but an anime is rarely remade before it’s been fully “made” to begin with.
ToThe One Piece’s credit, though, this might be the perfect time for a remake precisely because of how much of the source material is available and how close the series is to a conclusion. If WIT can create 25-episode seasons every year/ year-and-a-half like Bones does forMy Hero Academia, it might just be looked back on as the ideal way to experience the franchise.
On the other hand, the remake itself isn’t so much the issue as WIT Studio being the ones to take it on, which isn’t to suggest that they aren’t qualified. On the contrary, they have done exemplary work over the past few years,taking on new projects and producing some original works. They have had to work hard to move beyond the label of “the guys who madeAttack on Titan,” and the biggest step they took was to stop working on that series to create new things.
For fans savvy of the ins and outs of the industry, WIT taking onOne Piecefeels like they are shackling themselves to a behemoth that might inhibit their ability to pursue other projects. It comes across as a display of creative bankruptcy in the industry to capitalize on the meteoric growth of this medium and, in this particular instance, theOne Piecebrand. While perhaps not the most popular viewpoint on this topic, it’s not hard to see where its proponents are coming from.
This doesn’t mean the end of WIT Studio by any means. Bones has been animatingMy Hero Academiasince its first season in 2016, butthey haven’t stopped creating other shows since then. Granted, Bones is also a much larger studio that has been around for longer, whereas concerned fans doubt WIT’s production capacity in the face of such a big series.
For plenty of fans, new and old,The One Piecemay very well be a dream come true and few are doubtful of the benefits of such an idea, but it’s hard to shake a certain cynicism about it either. At a time when the creative integrity and working conditions of the anime industry are being talked about more than ever, this remake can feel like a sign of troubled seas ahead.
