Warning: SPOILERS for episode #1049 of One Piece.The One Piece anime is attracting a lot of attention and praise for the incredible quality of its animation. However, the unique style of that animation also means that the weekly anime series produced by Toei is becoming something very different from its source material.
Fans of the One Piece anime are being rewarded for the long periods of waiting they had to endure. One Piece‘s current Wano Kuni series is being praised as one of the best in the long history of the anime adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s best-selling manga. Toei’s anime has begun to shine especially since the beginning of the assault on Onigashima, which contains a sequence of exciting battles and one-on-one fights between Luffy’s Straw Hats and Kaido’s Beasts Pirates. These scenes have given Toei’s team, which includes legendary anime director Megumi Ishitani, the chance to showcase a flashy, colorful, and bombastic style of animation that keeps improving each week.
The One Piece Anime Has Created Something Visually Very Different From The Manga
While each new episode of One Piece gives fans the chance to praise its animation, episode #1049, “Luffy Soars! Revenge Against the King of the Beasts“, contains all the elements that are making the series’ animation style and quality the talk of the community. In the episode, Luffy rides on the back of Momonosuke (who has recently aged to adulthood thanks to the powers of Shinobu’s Devil Fruit) to reach the roof of Onigashima, where Kaido is being stalled by Yamato. While still in the sky, Luffy transforms into his Gear Fourth Snakeman form, and launches a powerful attack against Kaido, knocking him down. The whole sequence is incredibly epic, but it also highlights how different the One Piece anime has become from the manga.
In the anime, Luffy and Yamato hit Kaido at the same time with their attacks, just like in the manga. However, the way these attacks look is completely different. While Luffy’s Jet Culverin is more or less still a punch thrown with Snakeman’s powers, Yamato’s White Snake Dash (Shinsoku Hakujaku) becomes something straight out of Dragon Ball. In the manga, White Snake Dash is “simply” a rush-and-swing performed with Yamato’s club, Takeru, imbued with the powerful Conqueror’s Haki. In the anime, Yamato’s body is surrounded by a stream of white energy that takes the form of a giant snake, before he releases an energy blast toward Kaido. Yamato’s whole body is surrounded by a Dragon Ball-like energy aura that is supposed to be Haki but looks very different from how this is portrayed in the manga.
Overall, the One Piece anime takes a bombastic Dragon Ball-style approach to its fights that, while highlighting their epic tones, loses a lot of realism in the process. It’s not that One Piece is a realistic manga, but it always had an element of grittiness in its fights that makes them look more crude and genuine compared to other shonen like Dragon Ball. In the One Piece manga, fighters are still mostly punching each other, while in the anime they are surrounded by colored streams of energy, auras, and other elements that are visually compelling but also very far from the style of the manga. In these moments, the style of the animation gets more deformed too, as is evident during Luffy’s arrival in episode #1049 or during his previous fight against Kaido.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that the One Piece anime is worse than the manga. It is clear, however, that the anime is pursuing a clear artistic vision that, rather than simply reproducing Eiichiro Oda’s style, has created something completely different. It’s up to One Piece fans to decide if this experiment is successful and, judging from the outpour of positive reactions, they are very pleased with the results.
One Piece Wano Kuni is streaming on Crunchyroll.
