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Depending on how condensed the plot is in a manga, the number of episodes that come out annually will be affected. For example, Haikyuu!! had 25 episodes per season for the first two seasons, and since it has almost caught up, there will probably be 10-12 episodes per year from now on each covering 4-5 chapters, as 50 episodes got them to about chapter 150, if they want to stay at pace with the manga.

In an action-based manga where a lot of the scenes are fighting scenes, it becomes pretty hard to lengthen a chapter time-wise. What are specific time-filling techniques One Piece using to keep the chapter-to-episode ratio at 1:1?

Aki Tanaka
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Jack Pan
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    The DBZ anime actually had a lot of techniques to lengthen fight scenes. Fights in this sort of manga usually have this rhythm where the momentum keeps shifting between one combatant and the other, so it's easy to pad out the scenes where whoever is currently losing is getting beat up. In older shows they would even use recycled animation to do this. The fights in the One Piece manga are pretty sharp but there are still places where you can slip in padding. – Torisuda Sep 11 '16 at 15:46
  • For dressrosa arc, there was a lot of 'filler' scenes where they would show people escaping or crying for help, or buildings collapsing... – Mansuro Sep 12 '16 at 09:24

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The One Piece manga and anime aren't in a 1:1 ratio. The distance between them even shifts around. The second arc took place between the 8th and 24th chapters in the manga, while the same in the anime took place between the 4th and 8th episodes.

The main reason why the anime is this slow is the fillers. They help the manga "catch a breath" and sneak in a couple of chapters. (side note: This is still no excuse for fillers in the middle of an arc though).

Oda likes to put in a few filler episodes after every arc or when there's a new movie out.

With these however, there's still a very big chance that the anime will eventually reach the manga. If this happens, there are 4 possibilities:

  • They stop airing One Piece for a year so the manga catches up.
  • They start airing the episodes every 2 weeks.
  • They do what Game of Thrones will do/did and continue with a separate storyline.
  • They start writing the story for the anime and make the manga based on that.
Aki Tanaka
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Bálint
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  • I mean currently, they are in a 1:1 ratio. In the beginning when the show had a lot to catch up on, it was fine to cover a lot of content. – Jack Pan Sep 22 '16 at 19:56
  • It's still not in 1:1 currently. It has a slight offset. The current arc starts at 700 in the manga, abd at 646 in the anime. – Bálint Sep 22 '16 at 20:53
  • They just keep doing fillers though. Consitering there is still 30% of One piece Manga that will likely contain some of the best stuff that we have been waiting for years for, they will do filler like they have been doing to keep the show going almost every week so they can animate the jucyness of the manga that is to come. – Ryan Sep 23 '16 at 17:10
  • @Bálint yes, I know the number of episodes to chapters is not 1:1. But the production rate should be there. – Jack Pan Sep 25 '16 at 23:23
  • Nope, the anime is faster than the manga. They can't do anything about that. – Bálint Sep 26 '16 at 05:57
  • "when" it will eventually catch up, which i don't think it will, they will do filler episodes and will make it a whole arc as a filler, like they've done several times in the past. IMO the manga will never be caught up to – Wouter Feb 01 '17 at 14:26
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One Piece uses a lot of still shots, pointless camera angles and shots, and a lot of dragging out short scenes to make them longer. A good video to watch would be Why Manga Fans Dislike The Anime | One Piece Discussion | Grand Line Review as it goes into deeper detail as to how One Piece keeps a nearly 1:1 chapter to anime ratio.

As for Bálint's answer that said they use filler to make this happen, that's just not true. One Piece is comprised of only 10% filler compared to Naruto which is in the 40%. The One Piece anime tends to just drag scenes out overall.

Aki Tanaka
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Kolter Schmucker
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