One Piece Confirms It’s Going to Fix the Anime’s Biggest Problem With New Schedule

Videos by ComicBook.com

There have been some hiccups in the last few years, however, as One Piece has not only gotten more demanding when it comes to its content but the team behind it all is shooting to even grander heights to really flesh out certain sequences. Following a six month delay (the first in franchise’s history), One Piece will be ending the Egghead Arc later this year. But moving into 2026 and beyond, One Piece will be moving to a seasonal schedule and having a much tighter adaptation overall. That means no more filler or breaks if all goes well.

What’s One Piece’s Current Biggest Problem?

Toei Animation

The biggest problem with One Piece’s anime adaptation as it exists now is that pacing. Episodes will adapt part of a chapter, and extend some moments further than they were seen in the manga. It’s been this way since the very beginning of the series as its weekly release schedule meant that not only did the team need to provide a brand new episode every week, but they needed to do so in a manner that didn’t quickly catch up with Eiichiro Oda’s latest manga events. There needed to be space between each of the releases.

This has resulted in many stall tactics over the years. Whether it be brand new arcs or moments that were never seen in the manga, special recap episodes to help buy the staff time to work on what’s next, and in the most extreme case, the recent six month hiatus One Piece had to go on for the Egghead Arc. While One Piece has continued to deliver some supreme episodes even under this demanding schedule, it’s just something that is no longer sustainable after all this time. It was time for the anime to evolve for current industry demands.

The team behind One Piece has announced that they will be now shifting over to a new seasonal release schedule with 26 episodes per year planned from now on. There will be two cours of episodes, and that lines up with many other anime currently running. This has been the main course of action for many of Shonen Jump’s biggest franchises in the last decade, and One Piece itself seems to be undergoing this new format for the better of its staff. The months in between will give the team time to catch up much like the six month hiatus seen earlier this year.

This New Schedule Will Fix One Piece’s Pacing

Courtesy of Toei Animation

It’s also been confirmed that One Piece’s new schedule won’t be slouching either. Along with the announcement that the anime would only be airing for two cours a year from now on, series producer Ryuta Koike confirmed that this was all a strategic decision by the team to “support the advancement and evolution” of the anime heading into the future. So while there will be fewer episodes a year compared to before, the amount of pages each episode would adapt is changing too.

The anime’s traditional pacing meant that 11 or 12 episodes of the series would be adapting around 4 to 5 volumes of the manga. But underneath the new two cour schedule in the future, the anime team promises to “incorporate more content, tempo, and pacing of the manga” while still being sure to deliver the kind of awesome animation and work we’ve been seeing with the anime’s modern era. It had been tough for the team on its current weekly schedule, but it’s going to be far more manageable as the franchise prepares for this new era.

It’s still hard to gauge exactly what One Piece’s anime will look like with this new output schedule and pacing. The anime has been running for 26 years at this point, so it’s sort of impossible to imagine what this team will do differently. But there are easy guesses to make for each episode. Rather than a potential 10-15 minutes of new material outlined by previous episode recaps, credits themes, and other materials, it’s just all going to be straight action. Even better than the anime won’t have to come up with new ways to stall for time either as there’s no longer a danger of catching up to current events.

This is a change for the better, but what do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!