The One Piece Is Born from Eiichiro Oda's Biggest Regret

Eiichiro Oda looked at his own anime and decided it wasn't good enough.

That's the real story behind THE ONE PIECE, the upcoming remake from WIT Studio and Netflix. Not the character design sheets that dropped this week. Not the "cutting-edge visual technology" that Netflix keeps mentioning without explaining.

The story is that the creator of the most successful manga in history watched his own adaptation and felt something he described, through WIT Studio president George Wada, as "a bit of regret."

Oda's concern was specific. One Piece has been running since 1999. Over 1,100 episodes.

The early animation, the pacing, the filler arcs that stretched single manga chapters into three-episode slogs. All of it made sense at the time. Weekly anime had to keep pace with weekly manga, and stretching was how you did it.

But Oda realized something that most creators in his position never admit: younger audiences, raised on seasonal anime with tight pacing and modern production values, look at those early episodes and bounce.

The door to his own story was rusting shut for an entire generation. So he asked WIT Studio to build a new one.

The Original Sin of Weekly Anime

If you've tried getting someone into One Piece, you know the problem.

The pitch is always some version of: "Trust me, it gets really good. You just have to get through the first hundred episodes."

That's not a pitch. That's a warning.

The East Blue Saga, the story THE ONE PIECE will adapt first, took Toei Animation over 60 episodes to cover. Sixty-one episodes for what the manga tells in roughly 100 chapters.

The padding is everywhere. Reaction shots that linger for ten seconds too long. Flashbacks to things that happened in the same episode.

Walking. So much walking.

None of this was Toei's fault, exactly. Weekly anime production in the early 2000s operated under brutal constraints.

You couldn't take breaks. You couldn't go seasonal. You aired every single week and you filled every single minute, even if it meant stretching a five-page fight across half an episode.

The result is an anime that, at its best, delivers moments like Luffy putting his hat on Nami's head in Arlong Park, scenes that earn every second of screen time. And at its worst, feels like watching someone read a book to you at quarter speed.

Oda knows this. He lived through it. And now, with the leverage that comes from creating the best-selling manga of all time, he's doing something about it.

WIT Studio Is Not a Random Pick

The studio behind this remake matters more than most people realize.

WIT Studio produced the first three seasons of Attack on Titan, the first season of Vinland Saga, and co-produced Spy x Family alongside CloverWorks. Each of those projects shares a quality that the original One Piece anime lacks: pacing discipline.

Attack on Titan's first season covered roughly the same amount of manga content in 25 episodes that Toei would have stretched across 60. Every scene had a reason to exist. Nothing overstayed.

George Wada, WIT's president, has been explicit about what this means for THE ONE PIECE. In a March 2026 interview, he confirmed "tight pacing" and said there would be no "unnecessary stretching."

The goal, he said, is to present what Oda wants to express in the most effective way possible, using modern techniques adapted to today's audience.

Director Masashi Koizuka and character designers Kyoji Asano and Takatoshi Honda are handling the production. The concept art released so far shows a style that's faithful to Oda's designs but cleaner, more angular, with a modern sensibility that feels closer to WIT's recent work than to Toei's rounder aesthetic.

No release date yet. No animated footage beyond concept art and design sheets emerging since One Piece Day 2024. In anime terms: it's coming, but don't hold your breath for this year.

The Fullmetal Alchemist Precedent

This has happened before, and it worked.

In 2003, Studio Bones adapted Fullmetal Alchemist into an anime while the manga was still running. They ran out of source material and invented their own ending. Fans liked it well enough.

Then in 2009, they did it again. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood started from scratch, followed the manga faithfully, and became one of the highest-rated anime of all time.

It sat at number one on MyAnimeList for years. The original 2003 version is now mostly a curiosity.

THE ONE PIECE is attempting the same thing, but at a scale that makes Brotherhood look modest. The One Piece manga is over 1,100 chapters and still running. Brotherhood adapted 27 volumes.

Even if WIT only covers the East Blue Saga initially, the ambition to eventually tell the whole story is enormous. Wada has been clear that the project begins with East Blue, though the scale of the investment suggests the ambition doesn't stop there.

He also mentioned competing with Disney and Hollywood, which is either supreme confidence or supreme ambition. Possibly both.

Three One Pieces at Once

Here's the part that doesn't get talked about enough.

Right now, in April 2026, there are functionally three separate One Piece adaptations running simultaneously. The original Toei anime just shifted to a seasonal format, airing a maximum of 26 episodes per year starting this month.

Netflix's live-action adaptation released its second season in March. And THE ONE PIECE is in active production at WIT.

On top of that, One Piece: Heroines, a spinoff anime special, arrives July 5 on Fuji TV. A LEGO animated special starring Usopp premieres September 29 on Netflix, and a third season of the live-action series, One Piece: The Battle of Alabasta, is confirmed for 2027.

No other franchise in entertainment is running parallel adaptations across this many formats, studios, and platforms simultaneously.

This is Oda's legacy play. He's 51 years old. One Piece is entering its final saga after nearly three decades.

Rather than let the franchise coast on what already exists, he's ensuring that every possible audience, in every possible format, has a door into the story. The remake is the most important door, because it's the one that says: even if you tried One Piece before and it didn't click, this version is built for you.

Why I'm Paying Attention

I've been a One Piece fan for years. I watched the original anime, pushed through the pacing, and came out the other side understanding why people call it the greatest story in manga.

I also know, from personal experience, how hard it is to get anyone else on board. I've made the "just get through the first hundred episodes" pitch. I've seen the look on people's faces when you say that.

What Oda is doing with THE ONE PIECE isn't nostalgia or a cash grab. It's a creator looking at the one thing about his legacy he couldn't control, the adaptation, and deciding to fix it before the story ends.

That's rare. Most creators either don't have the clout to demand a remake or don't have the self-awareness to see why one is needed. Oda has both.

And he picked a studio that's proven, repeatedly, that it knows how to tell a long story without wasting your time.

No release date. No trailer with actual animation. Just concept art and a promise of tight pacing from a studio that's earned the benefit of the doubt.

For now, that's enough.