Warning: Contains spoilers for episode 1 of One Piece Log: Fishman Island.In a surprising turn of events, not only is One pieceThe anime will go on hiatus until April 2025, but instead of just going off the air during that time, One piece will air a remastered version of the Fishman Island arc. The visuals have been reworked to be more in line with modern anime, and the story itself will be condensed into just 21 episodes, as opposed to the original 58.
With One pieceThe Fishman Island remaster is less than half the length of the original arc, which means the pacing has to be much faster to cover everything in a short amount of time. Only one episode has aired so far, and not only is the pacing as good as people expected, but the rhythm of One pieceThe remaster of is so good that it emphasizes how bad the normal anime pacing can be. Much of this is out of the anime’s control, of course, but the stark contrast between them is still worth thinking about anyway.
One Piece anime remaster proves One Piece can be well-paced
One pieceThe Fishman Island remaster promised a better-paced version of the anime, and it’s already delivering on that goal. Unlike the slow, monotonous pacing that often plagues the anime, the remaster does a great job of bringing things closer to the manga, and it gets to the point where the first episode of One pieceThe Fishman Island remaster covered what took two episodes in the original anime.
After years One piece Being a slog most of the time, the anime being remade with proper pacing is great to see.
Not everything about pacing is perfect, however. Since the remaster primarily consists of editing the original anime rather than creating new material, the remaster has to work within the framework of the original anime’s infamously poor pacing, and because of this, the rhythm for One pieceThe Fishman Island remaster, while good, ironically ends up being too fast at timeswhich sometimes highlights the improved visuals and overall quality. Fortunately, these moments are rare in Episode 1, and with any luck, the remaster will be more evenly paced going forward.
Why is the One Piece anime so poorly paced compared to other anime?
One Piece’s Pacing Issues Explained
When One piece began, it was common for popular anime to run for years at a time without interruption, and to avoid keeping up with the original manga and running out of material for adaptation, they would often supplement things with filler episodes or, in One piecethis is the case, dragging things out so that almost nothing is covered in a single episode. One piecepacing problems were largely a product of the era in which it beganand as it progressed it became too big to justify a complete change of things.
One piece has taken steps to improve things, of course. Not only has the anime received a complete visual overhaul since the Wano arc, something that includes using gorgeously animated fight scenes to make filler scenes more palatable, but the anime is on hiatus so the team behind it can have time to continue delivering episodes at a consistent quality. One pieceThe remaster wouldn’t exist without the production team recognizing they needed to change things for the betterand with the quality of the finished product, this was certainly the right decision.
Will One Piece’s hiatus help solve the anime’s pacing issues?
One pieceThe Fishman Island remaster perfectly highlights how lackluster the original anime has often been, and it raises the question of whether things will change in the future. The anime is currently on hiatus to help maintain consistent quality and although this is mainly in regards to the visuals One pieceThe six-month hiatus could allow the anime to adapt the manga at a faster pace for the first time in decades. The fact that the anime has more material to adapt than usual also helps with this, and for those who are frustrated with the pace of the anime, it would be great to see.
The hiatus that has impacted how the anime is handled is purely hypothetical, of course, and even if the pacing has improved, there will only be a few chapters in the anime’s backlog to adapt, so unfortunately, One piece a consistently faster pace after the hiatus is unlikely to happen outside of a few episodes. At the very least, though, the Fishman Island remaster offers a great look at what a port of One piece It would have felt more consistently paced, and hopefully at least some of that work will make it into the main series.