One Piece is an emotional and action-packed pirate adventure that’s become one of the most iconic anime in the world. The amount of content surrounding One Piece can be a bit overwhelming for new fans, including the manga, anime episodes, and movies. But how and when did it all begin?
The most popular piece of One Piece media is most definitely the anime. It can be a bit confusing because of all of the arcs and episodes and seasons. But let’s start from the beginning with the first-ever One Piece episode.
The first One Piece episode aired on October 20, 1999 on Fuji Television. Titled “I’m Luffy! The Man Who Will Become the Pirate King,” this episode starts on a cruise ship – and inside a barrel, more specifically. When one of Alvida’s pirates goes to open the barrel, a boy emerges and accidentally hits him. That boy is Monkey D. Luffy.
Alvida ends up confronting the boy, but Luffy escapes. He uses his Devil Fruit power, the power of rubber, to knock down Alvida’s entire crew and escape on a “borrowed” boat with Alvida’s chore boy, Koby. With Koby along for the ride, Luffy sets out to find the Marines and ask to join their crew.
I’m Luffy! The Man Who Will Become The Pirate King!
From its humble start in 1999, and first being brought to the United States in 2004, One Piece has become one of the longest-running anime series ever. It now has over 1,000 episodes. There are currently 1,028 episodes as of this writing, with the popular anime series continuing to expand well over the mark of 1,000 episodes.
One Piece can be broken into 10 main story arcs, each of which has a smaller story arc contained within:
There are 47 arcs within these larger sagas, including non-canonical story arcs. While it may seem a bit confusing at first, breaking the anime up into these segments like this makes it easier to start following the adventure of the Straw Hat crew. You don’t necessarily have to watch more than 1,000 episodes to get into it, you can just pick one particular saga or arc and watch that.
One Piece is still going right now. Creator Eiichiro Oda said in 2002 that the anime would probably end around 2022. In 2014, he predicted it would more likely end around 2024. Then in 2020, Oda estimated that One Piece could end in 2024 or 2025.
For now, it’s not exactly known when One Piece will truly end, but fans know that the end is coming eventually. They’ll just have to enjoy the popular anime while it lasts.
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