One Piece Anime Back on Track

A Full Review of the First Year of Whole Cake Island Arc in

One Piece Anime

Tomorrow_D

June 2018
Table of Contents

1. Preface: A Brief Look Back to the Past ..................................................................... 1

2. General Survey........................................................................................................... 4

3. Detailed Discussion ................................................................................................... 7

3.1 Art and Animation ............................................................................................ 7

3.2 Planning and Directing .................................................................................. 12

3.3 Pacing Control ............................................................................................... 16

4. Production of One Piece Anime ............................................................................... 20

4.1 Long Running Series and Seasonal Series ..................................................... 20

4.2 Stakeholders ................................................................................................... 22

5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 25

References .................................................................................................................... 27
1. Preface: A Brief Look Back to the Past

This article is going to have a full review of the first year of Whole Cake Island (WCI)
arc in One Piece anime, from Episode 783 to Episode 829. However, before eating the
cake, maybe it’d be essential to have a brief review of the previous arcs. The review
isn’t going to cover all the arcs that the anime had, because we want to pay more
attention to the low tide that the anime used to be at.

Many overseas audiences outside of Japan usually praise the overall quality before the
time-skip a lot, as well as believing that Enies Lobby (including Water Seven) and
Marineford arcs were the best arcs among all, and that the quality of the anime fell off
a cliff after the time-skip. However, the quality of the anime undulates from arc to arc,
and the anime used to have three big lows, two of which were – in fact – during Enies
Lobby and Marineford (excluding ASL and 3D2Y) arcs, besides the Fishman Island.

This might sound unbelievable, but during Enies Lobby the production's struggle not
only generated complains and even nitpicks by a lot of local audiencesa, but even faced

a There used to be a general bulletin board and an episode-feedback bulletin board on the official
website of One Piece anime. However, both boards were closed during the Enies Lobby arc because
of nitpicking messages, including personal attacks on some animation directors.

The notice pages after the closing of two bulletin boards were archived by the website Way Back
Machine, and there were some discussions on 5ch about the personal attacks on the feedback board:

• Archived 24 Feb 2007. [Online]. Available:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070224180313/http://member.toei-
anim.co.jp:80/ctr/app/001/showbbs.php?&TVNAME=onepiece&tplname=onepiece&start=0.
[Accessed 3 June 2018].

• Archived 24 Feb 2007. [Online]. Available:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070224175834/http://member.toei-
ani.co.jp:80/ctr/app/001/est_index.php?&TVNAME=onepiece&tplname=onepiece. [Accessed 3
June 2018].

• "ワンピース Part64," Archived 6 Oct 2017. [Online]. Available:

https://2ch.live/cache/view/anime/1170764254/514-. [Accessed 3 June 2018].

Way Back Machine also archived the episode feedback page of Episode 297 with some criticisms

1
the crisis of being cancelled by Fuji Television [1]; all of this unbeknown by many
foreign fans. Although in the end the show was granted the chance to continue its airing
in Kanto's region among other ones in Japan after Episode 278, Fuji Television moved
it from the golden time slot to Sunday morning [1], and the ending themes were also
cut off.

And then the Marineford arc. In the manga, this arc was the most torrential arc before
the time-skip, and at that time Film Strong World also achieved a big commercial
success [2]. However, when this arc was being adapted to anime, the main staff at that
time didn’t find a right orientation, and Fuji Television as well as Toei Animation didn’t
pay enough attention to the show either. As a result, although the manga chapters during
the war were full of action scenes and spread pages, the anime kept the 1 episode : 1
chapter ratio, but wasted many chances of adding enough additional scenes that were
skipped or omitted in manga. This meant that the war in the anime ended up being badly
paced in general. The arc could still have been saved if it had enough good animators
and directors, but sadly the arc only had limited directing and/or sakuga moments
because of the lack of good staff.

On the other hand, however, while the anime failed to do the war right, they managed
to deliver the ASL and 3D2Y arcs faithfully, though it was just a good but transient
moment.

Many overseas audiences tend to give a high evaluation to Enies Lobby and Marineford
arcs, and it is mainly because that a large number of them binge watched these two arcs,
without knowing what happened next at all. Therefore, audiences usually paid more

from audiences:

• "第 297 話 狩人サンジ登場!? 嘘つき狼に贈る挽歌," ワンピを斬る, Archived 18 Feb 2007.

[Online]. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20070218081956/http://member.toei-
anim.co.jp:80/ctr/app/001/est_view.php?STORY_NO=297&TVNAME=onepiece&tplname=onepi
ece_v. [Accessed 3 June 2018].

2
attention to the actual story as well as the shining moments in terms of directing and
animation, and were much easier to get satisfaction and fulfillment. Under these
circumstances, the pacing and quality problems were less noticeable.

The general quality of the regular TV series gradually but wavily recovered in Punk
Hazard arc. In PH arc the general directing level had a noticeable level-up, and there
were a lot of sakuga moments, especially Episode 616 which was one of the best
animated episodes we had in the whole series. Unfortunately, the production schedule
got more rushed from late PH arc, and it caused a negative influence on the anime for
years until recently.

Dressrosa arc kept the trend of quality recovering and delivered many greatly directed
episodes (such as all the episodes directed by Aya Komaki (小牧文)) and many sakuga
moments. But at the same time some episodes especially some important ones were
sadly affected by unavoidable reasons. For instance, there were two 2-hour long
specials and a 2-hour long movie (Film Gold) under production in late 2015 and early
2016, and all these specials and movies took a large number of directors and animators
away from the regular show, causing a huge quality drop. On top of that, Dressrosa is
an arc that had many disputes, and this also influenced the anime negatively. Despite of
these regrets, however, Dressrosa arc still was a huge improvement compared to
Fishman Island, and managed to keep the track of quality recovery as a whole.

In mid and late Dressrosa arc, we had a new Series Director (SD, meaning the show
director) Toshinori Fukasawa ( 深 澤 敏 則 ), a new Toei-Animation-side Producer
Hiroaki Koyama (小山弘起), and a new Production Manager Tomoya Yoshida (吉田
智哉). But just like what Fukasawa mentioned in the interview related to Gear Forth,
these new main staff couldn’t change too many facets in Dressrosa because it was
essential to keep a sense of continuity and consistency during the arc [3]. However, the
anime formally entered a new era from Zou arc, in which the anime staff tried to find a
new orientation. Even the font in the opening animation was changed starting from Zou.

Transformation isn't always easy, and Zou wasn’t an arc that was successful enough.
But more importantly, Zou was an arc where the anime staff really gained a lot of
experience, and these experiences were of a great help for the staff to lift up the anime
up to a higher level, the Whole Cake Island arc.

3
2. General Survey

There was a short filler arc after Zou, but the 4th Series Director Fukasawa didn’t
participate in it, and the SD position was given to Satoshi Ito (伊藤聡伺) temporarily
with the support of Tasuya Nagamine (長峯達也, the director of Film Z) [4]. Therefore,
Fukasawa was able to have more time preparing for the Whole Cake Island arc, and
Satoshi Ito also got the chance to gain more experiences.

Whole Cake Island started from 9th April in 2017. There was no new opening song when
the arc started, but the last part of the opening animation was changed to the WCI
version. Besides, from this arc Keiichi Ichikawa (市川慶一) has become the new chief
animation director (CAD), while Kazuya Hisada (久田和也) is still the character
designer of the show.

At the same time with the beginning of the arc, a 2-hour long special called Episode of
East Blue (broadcasted on 27th Aug.) was also under production, because of which
Takashi Otsuka and Matsuda Midori left the regular series temporarily. Besides,
Masahiro Hosoda (細田雅弘) had become the show director of the first 13 episodes of
YuGiOh VRAINS and left the show after he finished the storyboard of Episode 785.
Hosoda returned to the series again after the directing job of YuGiOh VRAINS was
finished.

To reduce the adverse effects caused by staff leaving, Yusuke Suzuki (鈴木裕介) was
promoted to an episode director, and some other staff including Miho Hirayama (平山
美穂) and Kimitaka Ito (伊藤公崇) also joined the production team. But the anime still
lacked enough animators and directors. So, because of that, as well as some other
reasons, the production schedule was still rushed until recently, and compared to
previous arcs there were much more episodes in which the actual directing wasn’t done
by the storyboard artist of the episode, but by other directors.

On 1st Oct. a 1-hour long special called Luffy VS. Sanji Special (Episode 807-808) was
on air. This new special was directed by Takashi Otsuka, the same director who did the
Episode of East Blue Special. This was a pleasant surprise since in the regular TV series

4
there have been no 1-hour long One Piece specials for more than ten years except for
the three One Piece and Toriko crossovers, where Toriko played a leading role.

And while overseas online video streaming services such as Crunchyroll divided the
Luffy VS. Sanji Special into two episodes, the special was actually treated as a whole
when it was under production, unlike most of 1-hour specials that just simply put two
different episodes together. The Luffy VS. Sanji Special had a cold open when it was
broadcast in Japan.

According to an interview with Ostuka, this special could be treated as “Episode of

Sanji” in some degree, and the special also had the aim to attract more audiences who
basically didn’t watch the anime [5]. The Luffy VS. Sanji Special did have many
similarities to those 2-hour long specials under “episode of” series, such as the majority
recap scenes in the first half. However, while these recaps scenes were able to let new
audiences to understand the story, these scenes were unfriendly to many audiences who
watched the show weekly. What is worse, Fuji Television inserted too many
advertisements while broadcasting, causing the special having breaks for six times,
which made a lot of local audiences angry.

From the Luffy VS. Sanji Special onwards, a new production director called Tetsuji
Akahori (赤堀哲嗣) joined the staff, and is now credited together with Tomoya Yoshida.
More importantly, the schedule problem got gradually fixed to a large extent since the
special, and that is mainly due to more animators and directors joining the production
team, even if some of them just attended the show temporarily for help.

There were also some other major changes in terms of broadcasting formats. The intro
between the opening song and the previous-episode recap was removed from Episode
804. Furthermore, the on air time in Japan was moved to 9:30:00 from Episode 809,
while the anime used to start at 9:31:30. Both of these two changes broke the tradition
that was formed since the anime was moved to Sunday morning more than ten years
ago.

Just like the Luffy VS. Sanji Special, Episode 825 and 827 also had cold opens. While
the cold open in Episode 827 was recap scenes only, the cold open in Episode 825

5
included new scenes. As the episode focusing on the reunion with Luffy and Sanji, there
was also a special opening animation.

The Whole Cake Island arc as of now is the arc that has been advertized the most online,
than any other previous arcs. In this arc, the production team even made several PVs
for some important episodes, which never happened before.

In early 2018, Gz Brain Marketing Section published Japan Anime Annual Report 2018,
a white paper that showed the overall situation of the anime consuming market in 2017.
According to the research data provided in this white paper, One Piece anime in 2017
had more than 6.2 million audiences in Japan. Among all the Japanese local audiences
from 5 years old to 69 years old, more than 92% were above 10 years old, and 70%
above 20 years old (Table 1) [6].

Gender Generation (By Age Group)

Male Female 5-9 10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69
63% 37% 8% 22% 17% 18% 19% 12% 4%

Table 1: Gender and Generation Distribution of One Piece anime in 2017

6
3. Detailed Discussion

This is the most significant part of the article, and we are going to have a detailed
discussion from three aspects.

3.1 Art and Animation

When watching WCI arc, one might find that there was a big upgrade in terms of arts,
and this was the most noticeable change in this arc. And that’s why in this part we’ll
have a talk about the art and animation.

We have already mentioned that Keiichi Ichikawa replaced Kazuya Hisada as the chief
animation director b of the regular TV series from WCI arc, while Hisada kept his
position as the character designer of the series. This news was announced officially in
an interview with some of the main staff which was published one week earlier before
the arc started [7].

This was one of the biggest news since the anime started 19 years ago. Not only does it
mean that the TV series officially has an animator assigned to focus on the CAD
position specially, it also means Ichikawa’s art style has become a new standard.

Ichikawa participated in Episode of Sabo and Heart of Gold as the character designer
and chief animation director. And other than these two specials we can also see his name
in Film Z and Film Gold. After Heart of Gold, Ichikawa joined the regular series during
Zou arc, and was the animation director of Episode 767, in which all the characters
were beautifully drawn. After Ichikawa became the CAD, he mainly pays attentions to
the key scenes such us closeups related to some important characters of the arc,

b
An animation director’s job is to check and correct the layouts and key animations drawn by key
animators, and to make sure the character arts in the episode are consistent and similar to the
character designs. Chief animation director is a higher position than animation director, and a CAD’s
job is to check and correct key scenes that in most cases were checked by AD already, while there’s
possibility that sometimes Ichikawa also corrects key animations directly without AD’s involving,
according to the yellow color of the sheet that Ichikawa used.

7
including Sanji, Luffy, Nami, Reiju and so on, and usually corrects around 30 cuts per
episode on average.

The following images (Figure 1) were respectively the key animation corrected by
Ichikawa [8], and the screenshot from the actual episode [9]. From these images we can
feel the strength from Ichikawa directly.

Figure 1: Ichikawa’s correction and the actual screenshot from Luffy VS. Sanji Special

8
The compilation below (Figure 2) was made by Murad, an enthusiastic One Piece fan
[10].

Figure 2: The compilation made by Murad

Besides Ichikawa, most of regular animation directors such as Yokoyama and Isochi
also had a welcome performance in Whole Cake Island arc. In addition, Takagi also
managed to stably deliver some good looking episodes in this arc, while his episodes
used to vary in terms of quality.

Furthermore, there were three animation directors called Isamu Takara, Shuuichi Ito,
and Midori Matsuda who came to the forefront in this arc, especially the latter two
(since Takara might have already left the show). All these three animators were
promoted to the animation director position around 2 years ago. It’s noteworthy that Ito
applied Ichikawa’s style to his episodes, and on the other hand Matsuda learnt quite a
lot from Masayuki Sato.

9
As one of the most trusted animators by Oda, Sato was the character designer and chief
animation director of Film Strong World, Z and Gold. Besides these three movies, Sato
also participated in Episode of East Blue as the character designer of the special as well
as the animation director of the first part. Midori Matsuda also participated in Film Gold
and East Blue as main staff, and Sato’s style had a huge influence on her. The following
screenshots (Figurer 3) were Matsuda’s work, with a noticeable Film Z/Gold style.

Figure 3: Two screenshots of some works by Matsuda [9]

Animation wise, the first year of this arc had both noticeable strong and weak points.
Just like other 2-hour long specials, the East Blue Special also took many staff away

10
from the regular show, causing the animation during the fight against Cracker to be a
mixed bag, and the fight between Sanji and Judge was affected too. On the other hand,
however, in this arc there were also many nicely animated fighting scenes like Sanji VS.
Luffy, Pedro VS. Tamago and so on. In addition, the musical piece Bloody Party in
Episode 786 had a very high quality in terms of animation.

Above all we must mention that Noburu Koizumi (小泉昇), the former character
designer of the TV anime (from Episode 1 to Episode 424), also returned to the show,
and participated in Episode 808 and 816 as animation director (co-AD with Kenji
Yokoyama (横山健次 ) together in Episode 808) and key animator. In these two
episodes Koizumi delivered a large number of greatly animated scenes. Not only
Koizumi, but old schools like Eisaku Inoue (井上栄作) and Katsumi Ishizuka (石塚勝
海) also returned the show for a few episodes. Koizumi left One Piece again and joined
the Kitaro team after Episode 818, and we still don’t know if other old schools like
Inoue and Ishizuka will continue attending the show, but it’s already a pleasant surprise
to see their names in this arc.

11
3.2 Planning and Directing

As one of the most popular long running series, all the stakeholders including Oda,
Shueisha, Fuji Television, ADK [11], Toei Animation, and Sponsors have a say on One
Piece anime, and we will expound this in Part 4. But these stakeholders don’t make the
anime directly, and the actual making of the show is made by the anime production
team under Toei Animation. In other words, the stakeholders including Toei Animation
are different from the actual production team. It is necessary to differentiate these two
concepts.

Inside the production team, the Toei-Animation-side producer and the series director
(show director) are the leaders, as well as the production manager who is in charge of
staff managements. On the other hand, however, the Toei-side producer and the series
director are also responsible of following the decisions made by stakeholders, so their
authorities are limited largely. Despite this, the general orientation of the show still
depends on the producer and director in many degrees.

Just like the art and animation, the general planning and directing in Whole Cake Island
arc also got upgraded noticeably. In this regard, the focus on Sanji and the musical
scenes throughout the arc are two typical examples.

Obviously, the musical scenes are one of the highlights of this arc. Oda had drawn a lot
of musical scenes in this arc in the manga, and in the anime all these scenes were
adapted to the real musicals, with exclusive musical pieces composed by Kouhei Tanaka
[12] [13] [14]. According to the interview, the series director Fukasawa contacted the
producer Koyama right after he read Chapter 827, and said to Koyama that it’s essential
to put effort on the musical scenes [13].

On the other hand, Whole Cake Island is the arc where Sanji plays a significant role. In
the first year of the arc, there were some Sanji focused episodes that were the top
priority: the cigarette episode (Episode 817), the Luffy and Sanji’s reunion episodes
(Episode 824 and 825), and most importantly – even though it ended up being an
unexpected mixed bag because of the recap scenes in the majority of the first half – the
Luffy VS. Sanji Special.

12
 Figure 4: A screenshot from Episode 817, one of the most important episodes in the arc [9]

Of course, the focus on Sanji wasn’t only limited to those significant episodes. One
thing interesting is that a kind of butterfly was appeared in many Sanji related scenes.
While one might think that it was just random filler when the butterfly first appeared in
Episode 799, if we examine all these scenes together, we will find out that the butterfly
indeed symbolized Sanji’s mother and the freedom. These butterfly scenes showed the
creativity from the anime production team.

13
 Figure 5: Two screenshots of the butterfly scenes in Episode 799 and 819 [9]

Additionally, besides the producer and the series director who grasp the steering wheel
of the show, every episode is under the charge of a different episode director. As a result,
the episode directing (including camera designs, timing controls, BGM placements and
so on) of an episode mainly depends on the episode director (including the storyboard
artist) of the episode. Under this circumstance, the episode directors of the show are of
great importance.

There were some staff changes in terms of episode directors in mid and late Dressrosa
arc. Satoshi Ito became a regular episode director formally from Episode 696, Kentaro
Fujita (藤田健太郎, who might have left the show recently) joined the anime as an
episode director from Episode 700, and Yasunori Koyama (小山保徳) replaced Aya
Komaki after Episode 716, which was the last episode directed by Komaki in Dressrosa.
Moreover, after Otsuka left in early Dressrosa arc, Tatsuya Nagamine joined One Piece
for a while, but then he became the director of Heart of Gold special and left the regular
TV series after he finished the storyboard of Episode 725, though he also delivered
Episode 765 which was Nagamine’s last episode in One Piece anime.

Objectively speaking, Komaki’s leaving in late Dressrosa arc affected the anime quite
a lot, and new directors including Koyama, Fujita and Ito still lacked enough experience

14
at that time. These new directors, However, have improved greatly in past few years,
and they are able to deliver pretty good episodes. What is more, Komaki also returned
to the show in 2017 after a long absence, and this might be one of the best surprises in
Whole Cake Island arc so far.

Figure 6: A screenshot of Episode 824 directed by Komaki [9]

Besides Komaki, Hiroyuki Sato (佐藤宏幸) and Yutaka Nakashima (中島豊), who
used to be in One Piece production team as episode directors years ago, also came back.

The screenshots in this part are some typical examples of well directed moments, but
we should not forget that these examples also had good layouts done by the animators.
That is to say, a good directing also needs a good animator, who is able to deliver upon
the episode director’s ideas and bring them to life.

15
3.3 Pacing Control

Pacing is always the most important aspect the audience cares about, and it’s also what
we’ll focus on in this part.

In recent years, Oda tends to speed up the story progression in order to ensure that he
can finish the whole story. Consequently, when Oda is drawing manga, he has to make
the manga chapters more compacted, and to compress the story as well as omit and skip
many details at the same time. Not only can manga readers notice the change directly,
but Oda himself also confirmed it in an interview published on the first issue of One
Piece Magazine (Figure 7) [15].

Figure 7: An interview with Oda in the first issue of One Piece Magazine

Because of more the compacted layouts and dialogs, the manga chapters in recent years
generally carry much more information than other manga works, and even more than

16
what the One Piece manga used to have. In addition, as a result of many details being
omitted and skipped, the manga nowadays also provides more room for story filling
and extending. The big good news is that all of these are of great help for the pacing
control of the anime apparently.

Speaking of the story filling and extending, some evidences showed that there are
connections between the anime staff and Oda himself. We are going to give some
examples to explain this point.

When Dressrosa arc was about to finish, there were two episodes (Episode 737 and 738)
focused on the Sabo’s back story, and when compared to the manga, the anime extended
this back story by a wide margin. In fact, Oda mentioned in the SBS column that the
anime would show more of Sabo’s story [16], and the official website also published
two pages of the script with Oda’s notes and corrections before the on air of Episode
737 (Figure 8) [17].

Figure 8: A page of the script with Oda’s notes and corrections

Additionally, according to some interviews, the staff confirmed that they contacted Oda
before adding more action scenes from Inuarashi’s Musketeers in the Zou arc [18], and

17
in the WCI arc Oda also shared his design notes and sketches with the anime staff [13].
What is more, among all these inside settings, Oda provided the detailed data of all the
sons and daughters of Big Mom [14]. All of these examples confirmed, that the
connections between the anime staff and Oda are more than what many fans think.

On the other hand, just like what we have mentioned in Part 3.2, the pacing of an
episode also depends on the directing of the episode. Even if the script of an episode is
the same, if it is directed by different episode directors (including storyboard artists),
the camera designs, timing controls, BGM placements and so on will also be different.
All these differences will make the episode have a different pacing.

For instance, Komaki is a director who always pays attentions to BGM placements, and
the music placement in her episodes is always of great help in terms of pacing. The
straw hat scene in Episode 824 was a typical example, in which the appearance of the
straw hat matched perfectly with the transposition of the music. In general, the directing
level in this arc got upgraded significantly, which also help the pacing to a great extent.

Figure 9: The appearance of the straw hat matched perfectly with the transposition of the music [9]

The pacing of the anime gradually recovered from Punk Hazard arc just like other
aspects of the show, and achieved stability generally in Whole Cake Island arc. We
cannot say that the pacing doesn’t have problems after Fishman Island. – Pacing control

18
is and still will be one of the biggest challenges to the anime.

In PH, Dressrosa and Zou arcs, there were 20-30 percent of episodes which had its
pacing out of control totally. While it’s not a high proportion, the absolute amount was
not small. Even though in Whole Cake Island arc there were still some noticeable pacing
issues sometimes, and even a few of episodes that still had serious pacing problems.
We have to attach importance to them, and the show still has room for the anime staff
to solve these problems. In general, however, the anime now has already solved most
of pacing problems for most episodes.

19
4. Production of One Piece Anime

In western online communities there used to be some discussions related to the actual
production of One Piece anime [11]. Unfortunately, these discussions didn’t get enough
attention, and so far there are still a lot of people who have a lot of misunderstandings
about the anime’s production. We have mentioned about the production of One Piece
anime briefly in Part 3.2, and in this part we are going to give a further discussion.

4.1 Long Running Series and Seasonal Series

There are many people who like to compare One Piece with other seasonal series, but
are these comparisons really fair?

While schedule problems have become a common issue in the industry of Japanese
anime, many seasonal series, especially those that are popular among western fans,
usually have a much better production schedule than long running series due to a long
preparation period, and the production teams of seasonal series are able to put all of
their resources to the limited 11-26 episodes. These are the most important reasons why
the quality of many seasonal series is noticeably better than most long running ones.

In One Piece’s case, however, not only has the production schedule always been very
tight (which is partially caused by the small gap between the anime and the manga), but
the production team has to disperse the resources to 2-hour long specials, special
animations (such as the Tokyo One Piece Tower wide-screen special animation released
recently), movies, and copyrighted drawings for endless events and goods. The anime
hardly takes breaks either, and this obviously doesn’t make the situation any better.

Figure 10: Copyrighted drawings by Studio Guts, an outsourcing studio of One Piece anime [19]

20
 Figure 11: A screenshot of the One Piece Tower special animation [20]

Additionally, nowadays One Piece has a large number of characters (as we have
mentioned in Part 3.3) and very complicated detailed settings, and all of these make the
anime much more difficult to make than many of other shows.

But why cannot One Piece become seasonal or at least take more breaks? Is it because
that Toei just wants to make more money and refuse to do so, or because of some other
reasons?

21
4.2 Stakeholders

Many people think that One Piece anime belongs to Toei Animation only and Toei
makes all the decisions and changes to the anime, but that is far from the truth.

To illustrate this issue, we will firstly have a focus on the general production system in
the Japanese anime industry. Basically speaking, there are two different production
modes in the industry: the widely known Production Committee Mode, and the
traditional Advertisement Mode [21] [22]. While the Production Committee Mode is a
very popular production system, the Advertisement Mode is adopted by majority of
long running TV series, such as most of Toei Animation TV shows including One Piece
[23].

No matter which mode a TV anime show uses, the stakeholders in the majority of cases
includes the TV station, the advertisement agency, the animation studio (unless the
studio only takes the charge of the actual making), the sponsors, the publisher, the
original author and so on [22] [24]. But there are also some remarkable differences
between the two modes. Under the Advertisement Mode model, the advertisement
agency pays the money to the TV station after receiving the sponsorship fee from
sponsors, and then the TV station pays the money to the animation studio in charge of
the actual making of the anime. In other words, the budget of the show is basically
provided by TV station (Figure 12) [21].

Sponsors

Advertisement
Agency

TV Station

Animation
Studio

Figure 12: The cash flow under the Advertisement Mode model

22
 Animation Studio

Publisher
Publisher and Original
Author
Profits Original Author

TV Station
TV Station and
Advertisement Agency
Advertisement Agency

Figure 13: An example of profit distribution under the Advertisement Mode model [22]

Then back to the One Piece anime itself. Just like what we have mentioned in Part 3.2,
all the stakeholders including Oda, Shueisha, Fuji Television (the TV station), ADK
(the advertisement agency), Toei Animation, and Sponsors have a say on the anime of
One Piece. – The anime never belonged to Toei Animation only.

All the stakeholders have their own emphasis. Fuji pays attentions to the ratings, and
Shueisha as well as Oda pay attentions to the advertising effects, etc. For instance, Oda
once said in an interview that one of the reasons he attended Strong World is because
he didn’t want the anime to get cancelled due to the poor commercial performance of
the previous few movies, since the manga would also have been affected negatively
once the anime had gotten cancelled [25].

Oda’s words not only showed that he, as a stakeholder of the anime, hopes the anime
to last for long, but also indicated that the anime used to face the crisis of being
cancelled, which we have mentioned in Part 1 already. According to an interview with
Kenji Shimizu, when the anime was in Enies Lobby arc, Fuji Television had two
different options: either move the anime out from the golden timeslot or cancel it.

At the end, the show luckily survived, but the move of timeslot indeed caused some
noticeable negative influences on One Piece anime. The anime used to have many
chances to take breaks when it was in the golden timeslot, but after moving to Sunday

23
mornings in late 2006, the show can no longer take as many breaks as before (Figure
14). That being said, the anime did use to have enough breaks, but the chances were
taken away by Fuji Television.

55

50
50
49 49 49 49
48 48 48 48
45 47
46
45
44 44
40 42

39 39
38
35 37

30
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020

Figure 14: Yearly episode amounts from 1999 to 2018

As a show that is broadcast on television, apparently Fuji Television has the power to
change the timeslot of the show, and this indeed also showed how other stakeholders
impose their influences on One Piece anime. The change of timeslot wasn’t the only
thing that Fuji did to the show, and most importantly, Fuji isn’t the only stakeholder.

According to the words from the current producer Koyama in an interview, before Toei
made the filler arc after Zou arc, they had to get unanimous agreement from all the
stakeholders of One Piece anime. It’s pretty sad to see that the anime staff dancing with
shackles because of these stakeholders.

24
5. Conclusion

It has been 19 years since the first episode of One Piece anime. In these 19 years, the
anime has been both brilliant and low, and even used to face an existential crisis.
However, after a lot of twists and turns, the movies found a new way starting from Film
Strong World, and the TV series finally went back on track after Fishman Island arc.

It’s not easy for the series back on track. Late Dressrosa arc was a typical example. As
we have mentioned above, the specials and movies had a massive negative influence
on the regular TV series. Not only Episode 725 which could have been as epic as
Episode 616 ended up being ruined, but even Episode 733, the climax episode of the
fight against Doflamingo, got heavily rushed. But the anime thankfully got back up
again, and the first year of Whole Cake Island arc has become one of the best arcs in
past ten years.

We cannot say that the anime is great enough. The anime industry in Japan is more and
more strict, and long running series inevitably have a lot of limitations compared to
seasonal works. And while the pacing problem was fixed to a large extent, the problem
still hasn’t been solved thoroughly. And even as the planning became lively and creative,
we still had the Luffy VS Sanji Special which left a big regret to Whole Cake Island arc.

Despite of all of its flaws, the anime in general has still made a great progression in this
arc. And most importantly, from this arc we can feel that the anime staff do have the
will to make the anime better and better.

To finish this off, I would like to use a tweet by an episode director of the anime, Yutaka
Nakashima (Figure 15) [26]. The tweet was posted in the New Year’s Eve. According
to the tweet, he was drawing the storyboard of an episode (Episode 836) and hoped that
in 2018 he could deliver episodes that can make more people happy.

Figure 15: A tweet by Yutaka Nakashima

25
When an episode director was still drawing the storyboard in the New Year’s Eve even
when he could have been enjoying the holiday or at least having a nice sleep, we
couldn’t help but believe that the anime staff does have a deep love for One Piece, and
hope the anime will keep the momentum achieved in the first year of Whole Cake Island
arc, even though the road may still not be flat.

26
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29
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. A copy of this license can be viewed by visiting the webpage
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

It is really hard to express my appreciation to my friends who gave me the support while
writing this article, and I also want to express my gratitude to Brainyz and Ashita for
checking grammar and spelling mistakes.

Tomorrow_D*
June 2018

*
Website Address: http://tomorrowd.com
Twitter Account: @tomorrow_d_ani