One Piece: Anime vs. Manga

Not the most original of threads, but seeing how i'm thinking about reading the manga it should fulfill it's purpose rather nicely

I'm especially interested in the opinions of some of the manga readers.

Oda is an excellent writer and most of his chapters end up covering several bases so it feel like you've actually read something after you get done.

I believe it's due to this that some chapters just translate so well to anime form.

Episode 397 essentially cover chapter 503 along with a few added scenes. Despite covering only one chapter, i thought that episode was really good and didn't feel that stretched out. Sure One Piece have a slightly longer intro scene along with a recap to fill some time but that was still roughly 17 minutes of content that was covered by one chapter. Try doing that with something like Bleach and you'll end up with a 10 minutes staring contest.

Certain things like the music during Rayleigh appearance add impacts that was missing from the manga. I think the anime is doing a fine job with the adaptation, and the upcoming content will just looks amazing animated. I suggest at least waiting until this arc is over before starting to read the manga.

The manga crams a lot of stuff into each chapter. For basically this entire arc, the anime has been 1 to 1 between their episodes and the manga's chapters. Sometimes it feels like it moves almost too fast, other times its just like the anime - you just can't wait to see what happens next.

Then there's the typical differences....less censorship, less low-budget cheese, etc. The music is usually the best thing the anime has to offer.

I'm of the opinion that anime is always better where shounen is concerned since for me, so much of the appeal of shounen hinges on the fights being awesome, and black and white still images just doesn't make for an awesome fight scene for me.

I do read alot of One Piece manga though after I've seen it in anime form, and I can honestly say that One Piece feels like it's written FOR anime, because the pacing of the manga just feels frenetic. It's jumps around like crazy and just crams so much stuff into each chapter that it feels like it's rushing around all the time.

But that turns out to be perfect for the anime, because when you pace that out just a little bit, and add pauses for effect, it comes out perfectly.

Whereas other manga are paced around the manga, and flow well within the manga, and then when you convert that to anime, it becomes stretched out and ends up with alot of awkward pauses.

It also helps I think that One Piece has a much more comedic tone overall than most of the other shounen I watch. Because the anime writers can throw in little funny bits here and there and it feels much more natural than when they try and add something in that's serious.

As people mentioned already there is usually a lot of dialogue in each manga chapter. I think the best thing about that is that there is a lot less filler in the One Piece anime, compared to Naruto (ugh) and Bleach.

I do think that some segments translate better in the anime though. I didn't think Thriller Bark was all that good of an arc (till the closing chapters) in the manga, but it was a bit more tolerable in the anime (what I saw of it anyway).

The problem with the Thriller Bark arc was that none of the badguys except Moria himself(and Oz vicariously) actually seemed like a threat. Up until that battle started, the arc almost felt like the Davey Back Fight arc. Where all the enemies were joke enemies.

Perona would've been a great threat if the great Usopp-sama weren't around. :P

As a Shichibukai, Moria didn't seem too dangerous either. Well, he's the kind that depends on others so that could be a reason; or it's just because he looks like some kind of clown / weird thing.

for somone who depends on others he had the weakest minions also i thought, even weaker then crocodiles!

on the other hand, we've only got to see the 'brain' fraction of his crew.
the doctor, the invisible cheetah, the lady. they were all non-fighters. most of his high-hitters were defeated by OZ (not surprising) before they could show their deal.

oh, and of course, there was the dead samurai brooke. all things considered, he was quite tough (I don't think that neither chopper nor Franky could have beaten him).