Recently, as I’ve heard people talk about starting their One Piece journey, it comes with a plan to skip the filler episodes. After all, One Piece recently crossed the 1,100 episode mark—it’s a lot to watch, and it’s understandable to want to cut corners where you can.
But whereas several other tentpole anime series that launched in the ’90s—like Detective Conan and Naruto—are famous for having significant filler, One Piece has relatively little filler padding out its runtime. However, with One Piece, “filler” can get a little blurry—fights can drag on longer than they did in the manga (looking at you, Don Krieg), or recaps can be added to pad out the episode’s runtime. In more recent years, there are other full episodes—which are marked in Crunchyroll’s feed as specials, not included in the episode count of the series—that are simply recaps.
But if we’re defining “filler” as “an entire episode’s worth of events that don’t happen in the manga,” that narrows things down significantly.
A long series, but relatively little filler
Different websites offer different counts, but the general consensus is that the number of One Piece filler episodes is somewhere in the 90s—meaning less than 9% of the series total. For a late-’90s/early-2000s anime, that’s quite good indeed.
One Piece rarely delivers one-off filler episodes, and usually opts for short filler arcs. This often gives the filler episodes an air of deeper meaning, which means that One Piece actually has some really good filler episodes. For example, I was genuinely shocked when I discovered that the G-8 Arc, which comes right after Skypiea, was not in the manga. This also means that one of the anime’s best gags—”Condoriano!”—was pure anime energy.
Another interesting “filler arc” is episodes 1029 and 1030, which were released to tie in with One Piece Film: Red. The episodes depict the earliest points in Luffy’s childhood we’ve ever been shown, and while no official comment has been issued, they seem like they could actually be canon. The episodes just appear in the middle of Wano, which makes them technically “filler.”
So, in short, there are few enough filler One Piece episodes that the fandom largely has a warm attitude towards fillers. Many were even explicitly hoping for a filler arc between Wano and Egghead, mostly to help the anime widen the ever-shrinking gap between itself and the manga. Even if they had, there would still be less than 10% filler in all of One Piece.
(featured image: Toei Animation)
