One Piece is the undisputed king of manga in the industry, and its numbers speak for themselves. One Piece is by far the best-selling manga of all time, and no other series even comes close to achieving what it has done over the past 28 years of serialization. While the One Piece manga is great, the series struggles in the anime department, although there has been improvement in recent years.
When it comes to anime, only one series can rightfully be named the king, and that is it Demon Slayera series whose anime and movie success has taken the whole world by storm. Demon Slayer will only continue to grow from here on out, especially as its next two films approach.
One Piece is the king of manga, but the king of anime is Demon Slayer
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Demon Slayer has exceeded all expectations
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It has the two biggest anime movies to date
When it comes to iconic manga series, there can be absolutely no doubt about it One Piece is at the top. For a while now, One Piece has been best selling manga in the worldwith close to 600 million copies in circulation. No other manga series, not even Dragon Ball or Naruto, comes close. This number is not only high because of the length of One Piece story, as the series still has insanely high sales per volume. Fans would be right to call One Piece the King of Mangaor the best manga ever made.
When it comes to anime, however, it's very different. The One Piece anime, which is a weekly series, has struggled over the yearswhich is plagued by terrible pacing and subpar animation. The animation has recently improved since the Wano arc, but there are still some pretty significant falls compared to other series.
Because of all this one cannot really call One Piece the king of anime too. This title belongs to none other than the Demon Slayer. Over the years, Demon Slayer has proven how successful its anime is. The series exploded after its masterful first season, but that was just the beginning.
What really does Demon Slayer stands out among the rest is its monumental cinematic successsomething that is clearly unprecedented. Both its original films, Mugen Train and Infinity Castle, are Japan's number 1 and 2 box office hits. For a series to achieve that is astounding, and will probably never be replicated again.
Will One Piece ever get a movie as big as Demon Slayer?
There is potential, but it might not work out
One Piece doesn't have the biggest movie in Japan, but it still did incredibly well at the box office with its 2022 release, One Piece: The Movie Edit. The film was for a time in the top 5 at the Japanese box office, and it is still in the top 10.
This is very impressive, especially as the movie is non-canonunlike Demon Slayer's films. This has many fans to believe it a true canon One Piece movie could be the breakout the series needs. For example, some fans believe a God Valley movie should really be considered a film project.
In theory this sounds great, but canon films can be quite difficult to pull off One Piece due to it being a weekly series and however long One Piece arcs extend. God Valley will be adapted into the anime soon once the Elbaf arc kicks off, and with it already in the anime, not as many people will be as interested in seeing it on the big screen.
There doesn't seem to be much hope for One Piece to get a major canon film, unfortunately, which means that future One Piece theatrical releases will just have to rely on ideas that Oda discarded for his manga and gave to the producers.
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is out now. Fans who don't want to wait for the movies to release can check out the manga on Manga Plus. Meanwhile, for the anime, the series currently has 4 anime seasons. These anime seasons can all be found on Crunchyroll. However, the rest of the series will be animated into films, which fans will have to wait for the theatrical release to see, depending on their country.
- Release date
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October 20, 1999
- Network
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Fuji TV
- Directors
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Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imamura, Toshihiro Maeya, Yûji Endô, Nozomu Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
- Author
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Jin Tanaka, Akiko Inoue, Junki Takegami, Shinzo Fujita, Shouji Yonemura, Yoshiyuki Suga, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hirohiko Uesaka, Michiru Shimada, Isao Murayama, Takuya Masumoto, Yoichi Takahashi, Momoka Toyoda
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Mayumi Tanaka
Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
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Kazuya Nakai
Roronoa Zoro (voice)
