This post could get a little long, as I love this show. It may not be the best show in this top 100, but it’s certainly the show I have the most love for in the list.
The anime started airing in 1999, two years after Eiichiro Oda’s manga had begun in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump. Both are still running, with the manga having reached over 430 chapters and the anime at episode 295 at the time of writing.
The story follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a young man who dreams of finding the legendary Pirate King, Gold Roger’s treasure, known to the world as One Piece. It is believed that whoever finds this treasure will become the Pirate King, and Luffy firmly believes it will be him.
Over the course of the series Luffy finds various crewmates to join him on his adventures, Zoro the Swordsman, Usopp the Sharpshooter, Sanji the Cook, Nami the Navigator, Chopper the Doctor, Robin the Archeologist and more. They travel from island to island in their ship, The Going Merry, meeting new adventures and danger at each one.
Of course the key to the series popularity is that the series isn’t actually about finding the treasure, that’s just a MacGuffin. The series is about the journey itself, and the friendship between Luffy and his crewmates.
It can be said that One Piece follows the example of Dragonball, not just for content and theme, but for structure too. Toriyama seemed to realise that with serial adventures, if the story is going to run indefinitely you have structure the series as a continuing series of discrete stories, and Oda got this right from the get go.
It’s not just Dragonball that provides that influence, Oda, through watching Vicky the Viking as a kid, is interested in Norse Sagas too, and these are obviously an influence on the stories and structure of the series. This is most obvious in the Elbaf giants, Dorry and Broggy, and in the story of Norland the Liar.
Much like the Odyssey or the pulp adventures of Flash Gordon, a great deal of the fun of One Piece comes from the travelling from island to island, from land to land, meeting strange and unusual people, monsters and danger.
This use of multiple, frequent plot resolutions is the major strength One Piece has over it’s peers such as Bleach and Naruto. Because it has seperate storylines for each island they visit, it provides the viewer with stories that actually get a satisfying resolution fairly frequently. And arch-villains who get defeated.
Captain Morgan, Buggy The Clown, Captain Kuro, Don Krieg, and Arlong, that’s 5 arch villains and 5 stories told within the first 45 episodes of One Piece. Naruto manages 3 stories, and 3 arch villains, one of whom is still the arch-villain 200 or so episodes later. Bleach has no real story arcs for the first 20 or so episodes, and only 2 arch villains, only one of whom has been defeated (not counting the YYH recycled filler arc). And while the series has a number of characters who appear to being set up as the overall nemeses for the series, they only appear on stage briefly, and for the most part the heroes are unaware of their intentions.
And you know what else is awesome about One Piece? NO TRAINING MONTAGES. Yes there’s the usual escalation of destructive powers shonen series tend to have, but how the characters learnt them is all left off stage. Because that stuff is boring. Who honestly thought we needed all that time devoted to seeing Naruto throw a magic ball of energy or Ichigo use his sword really fast?
In terms of the production quality of the show, overall it’s solid and following the move to widescreen in the last few years the animation has actually improved. Which is impressive for a show lasting this long. It’s chief production strength though is it’s voice cast.
Veteran actress, Mayumi Tanaka plays Luffy. Often cast in young man/boy roles she’s the also the voice of Kuririn from Dragonball, Pazu in Laputa and Ryu from Urusei Yatsura (that last one being a girl who was raised as a boy). Her voice is absolutely perfect for Luffy.
Second in the “can’t imagine anyone else doing the voice” stakes, is Kappei Yamaguchi who plays Usopp. Yamaguchi brings his comedy voice to the table (a variation of it can currently be found in Eyeshield 21 as Monta), and it works wonders. Yamaguchi has a ridiculously long and impressive resume to go into here. I’ll link to one at the end of the article.
The final cast member I want to note is the voice of Tony Tony Chopper, the reindeer doctor. Voiced by Ikue Ohtani, this is again a piece of perfect casting, made more obvious recently when Ohtani was on maternity leave, and Chopper was voiced by Kazue Ikura. She did a decent job, but the difference was noticeable. Ohtani’s most famous role is providing the pika-pikas for Pikachu in Pokemon, but she’s also Gash Bell, Mitsuhiko in Detective Conan and Merle in Escaflowne.
The length of the show has meant voice cast changes like this have been necessary. Akemi Okamura, the voice of Nami, was replaced for a few months by Wakana Yamazaki, who had played Nami’s sister Nojiko earlier in the series. Ginzo Matsuo, the voice of the reoccuring character, Smoker, died in 2001, meaning the role had to be taken by the show’s narrator Mahito Ohba. Likewise Kazuyuki Sogabe, the original voice actor of Ben Beckman passed away in 2000, with his role taken by Aruno Tahara in future appearances.
4kids tried to package/adapt/mangle One Piece for an American audience. Let us not speak of this.