The Big Three of anime and manga are Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. These three series are hugely and consistently popular with fans all over the world. One Piece specifically has had an impact and success that's hard to adequately describe.
So, just how big is One Piece?
Although it ultimately comes in part to how exactly you define "comic book," One Piece is a contender for the most popular and successful comic series of all time — that includes both North American comics and Japanese manga. In fact, One Piece holds the Guinness World Record for "Most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author."
One Piece has sold more than 500 million — that's half a billion — copies, and Weekly Shōnen Jump, the magazine that serializes One Piece has sold almost one volume for every person currently living on the planet. There's a bit of important context here. While Superman has sold more issues than One Piece, that's counting every individual issue of every Superman title, while One Piece's numbers are based on collected, compiled volumes.
Regardless of the specific details and exact numbers, the takeaway here is that One Piece is stupendously popular and has been for almost 30 years.
If you've never watched or read One Piece, here's your crash course introduction to the series.
Everything you need to know about One Piece
A major factor in One Piece's huge success is its longevity. The series hasn't just been consistently popular through its entire run, that run has lasted nearly 30 years. The original manga began publication in 1997 and the anime series has been airing since 1999. As of this writing, the manga has produced 1139 chapters and although the anime series is currently on a months-long hiatus currently slated to end in April 2025, that hiatus came after the airing of episode 1122 — surpassing the two other Big Three anime series in both longevity and amount of content put out.
To help contextualize that number: the Pokémon anime has aired 1320 and has been running for about two years longer, The Simpsons — the longest-running American cartoon — has put out 782 episodes since 1989 and WWE RAW — often promoted as "the longest-running weekly episodic program" on TV — has put out 1656 episodes since 1993.
Like most Shōnen-demographic manga and anime series, the stakes and scope of the story in One Piece have grown and expanded as the series has progressed, but the basic premise of protagonist Luffy and his pirate crew seeking the world's most legendary pirate treasure has held. The manga's original publisher Shueisha — which publishes the series on the pages of the magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump — provides the following summary of the series via its Manga Plus website and app:
"As a child, Monkey D. Luffy was inspired to become a pirate by listening to the tales of the buccaneer "Red-Haired" Shanks. But Luffy's life changed when he accidentally ate the Gum-Gum Devil Fruit and gained the power to stretch like rubber...at the cost of never being able to swim again! Years later, still vowing to become the king of the pirates, Luffy sets out on his adventure...one guy alone in a rowboat, in search of the legendary "One Piece," said to be the greatest treasure in the world..."
Why watch One Piece?
Even for an anime series, One Piece has a heavily stylized, cartoonish sense of art direction, with the anime series doing an excellent job of capturing manga creator Eiichiro Oda's original style and bringing it into full color and full motion in animation. One Piece is probably one of the most instantly recognizable anime series ever.
The stylized, exaggerated designs of the characters extend to the nature of powers and fighting styles — with Luffy's Gear 5 powers (seen above) basically weaponizing the physics and logic of a classic Tex Avery cartoon. In fact, Luffy has risen to a power level sufficient that who'd win in a fight between him and Goku is a running debate among anime fans.
One Piece also has the advantage of being one of the most accessible anime series out there, available to stream on Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu. Additionally, the original manga series is published via both the Manga Plus website and app and English-language publisher Viz Media's Shonen Jump website and app.
Fans who are interested in experiencing One Piece without having to commit to watching more than 1000 episodes may be interested in the live-action adaptation on Netflix, or the recent re-cut of the anime's first story arc, known as One Piece Log: Fish-Man Island Saga, both of which condense the storyline into a shorter runtime and smaller episode count.
Netflix is also working on a new anime version of One Piece with WIT Studio, the production studio that brought us the anime adaptation of Spy x Family. The release date for this new anime series, titled The One Piece, has not yet been announced.