Can someone please give me a total recap on One Piece

Question

I'm a Naruto fan, not really a One Piece fan. I want to start watching it, but I don't have any time to do a marathon.

Just a little summary would be nice.

Answer 1

Here's an answer to such a question on Yahoo:

First off One Piece started as a manga in 97 in weekly shonen jump. A new chapter is updated every week and they're currently on chapter 617. The anime started a couple years later owing to the success of the manga and is now on episode 489.

NOTE: One Piece is not 'a couple of episodes to get into' type of anime. While you can be hooked from the get go most agree that a big alienater is that the show takes a bit to get into. The first saga of One Piece is The East Blue Saga (east blue is 1 of 4 'lesser' seas where the Strawhats start before making their way to The Grand Line (the big league sea). The East Blue Saga is a divided up into a few arc with a few filler. I'd say once you come to The Baratie arc (~ep.18) the show will really start to hit its stride. If not Baratie then definitely by the end of The Arlong Arc (arc after Baratie). You see The East Blue Saga is about 61 episodes and pretty much sets the groundwork for the series. The Baroque Works Saga afterwords is the real beginning of the world of One Piece because the crew is in The Grand Line and you can see just how insignificant the world was in the east blue. The East Blue Saga though, while less exciting is still fun and interesting with some cool battles and quick development of the characters and recruitment of the crew.

What really makes One Piece shine is the idea of dreams that's prevalent through the series and the bonds of friendship and loyalty amongst the crew. You only really see Luffy as a lovable idiot who has a freakish rubber body through the first dozen episodes. It's not until The Captain Kuro Arc (ep.9-17) that you start realizing that the reason he's considered a monster is not because of his rubber powers but, because he's just unbelievably strong. Zoro, the 3 sword style swordsman and unofficial first mate is also ridiculously strong too and is often confused as the captain. Zoro's tough as nails and often serious but like Luffy he's pretty much an idiot. Nami is the brains and while definitely a b!+

The crew is tight nit and willing to do whatever for each other. That's actually my favorite thing about One Piece. You just seem to care about the characters in One Piece more so than other animes. Maybe it's because you're following the small crew everywhere while other animes just keep introducing more and more characters so because the anime is stretched the characters tend not to get as much attention. That aside, there are plenty of laughs but some tears as well and it only gets darker later on. Many of the crew have some sad pasts as well. However, no matter how dark and serious things get in One Piece, there's always the sense of balance with humor and action. All in all I don't want to say too much more because every time I write a sentence I realize it has too much spoiler and end up erasing it. So just go ahead and watch the show. Even if it moves a bit slow for you in the beginning since your best friend loves the show it'll be easier to get through that but, chances are you'll end up loving it before you know it.

A few warnings though. 1) If you watch the anime you only have 2 choices and both involve funimation.com. DO NOT WATCH THE 4KIDS DUB NO MATTER WHAT!!! It was so bad I don't want to even talk about it. However, if you prefer dubbed versions you are more than welcome to watch the funimation dub because funimation actually has a pretty good dub of One Piece. That horrible 4kids dub really, really hurt One Piece when it first came over to the U.S. The other option is to watch the subbed version. Either way you'll have to watch the subbed version from (as of this writing) ep.193 onward since they haven't dubbed all the episodes yet. In any case, funimation subs the new episode in japan within a day of it coming out which makes One Piece the most up-to-date of all animes. 2) Be careful looking stuff up on the internet because the manga is further ahead than the anime and you may get spoilers. 3) In general, anime fans do not like filler. Filler are episodes added to the anime which weren't in the manga for the purpose of delaying the anime from catching up with the manga since 1 episode is usually equivalent to 2 chapters. One Piece, according to most fans, tends to have better filler than most other animes and suffers from less filler as well. That being said if you want to skip the boring fillers you can find a yahoo answer question about which ones should be skipped.

It was written 3 years ago but is actually a pretty good summary. For more information you can check out the: One Piece Wiki for any specifics, but it's not going to give you a couple of paragraph summary to get you started on the show.