General & Others Why has One Piece failed so miserably in the West?

#22
That doesn't mean JJK is more popular bro.
If you look at how much traction JJK gained in a time period , they surpass One piece easily.
One piece has old readers who are following it since decades and bored now.
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:jackcopium:

Bro, JJK manga spoilers about Gojo’s death generated way more buzz on the Internet than G5’s anime debut did…
Yet nothing ever gonna surpass Ultra Instinct.
:cheers:
 
#28
????

Bleach was popular during it’s original anime run lol and the 1000 year was arc trends on Twitter
I don’t know a single person irl who has watched Bleach lol. No offense, but Bleach has always been the Sakura / (insert borderline irrelevant female member of the main character trio) of the Big 3
 
#29
The 4Kids dub played a huge part. I was nine years old when I first watched it, and even I knew it was ass. Also Oda's artstyle isn't exactly the most appealing to look at, I mean Naruto, DBZ, Bleach are just cooler to watch. Also most in the west seem to prefer their shonen to be more actiony and serious than whacky/goofy like One Piece is.
Yah know people give the 4kids dub a hard time and when compared to the original series yeah its pretty bad but when I was growing up 4kids one piece was the only one piece I knew I didn't know about funimation until I was around 11

4kids is what got me into one piece in the first place and don't get me started on that 4kids rap epic
 
#33
Pretty sure it was the opposite in the U.S. Every kid I knew regardless if they liked anime or not watched bleach on adult swim
I remember adult swim was kind soft porn stuff,so my parents didn't let me watch it when i was a kid.
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I used to translate in English and I am not sure what type of spanish it is.

https://saintseiyaforos.net/ -- This is the site.
thank u man
 
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#34
I don't blame the 4kids dub, 100% but it definitely didn't help. It made One Piece feel alot more childish compared to Naruto and Bleach. Another big factor and I think the more important factor. Is the first couple arcs of One Piece were not very strong. Arguably until the Bartie arc and Mihawk vs Zoro and Arlong Park, One Piece is like a 3 or 4 out of 10. And for anime watchers back then who got one episode a week that 20-30 episodes. I think alot of people in North America dropped it before then.
 
#35
I don't blame the 4kids dub, 100% but it definitely didn't help. It made One Piece feel alot more childish compared to Naruto and Bleach. Another big factor and I think the more important factor. Is the first couple arcs of One Piece were not very strong. Arguably until the Bartie arc and Mihawk vs Zoro and Arlong Park, One Piece is like a 3 or 4 out of 10. And for anime watchers back then who got one episode a week that 20-30 episodes. I think alot of people in North America dropped it before then.
yeah,OP has a slow start.It takes like 40 episodes until things get interesting.
 
C

CensoredbyWG

#36
Anime quality light years between naruto and one piece.

Not to mention bleach that from hueco mundo and beyond had the finest animation in all of anime for some good 4-5 years.

One piece anime SUCKS.

On top of the fights not being nearly as cool as naruto, bleach and JJK.

Luffy was a trash main character even before the chosen one asura/indra copycat stuff.

One piece doesnt have a trendy cool one line powerup to break the Internet.

RASENGAN

BANKAI

DOMAIN EXPANSION

Can you imagine anyone in OP having something as cool as that? Of course not.
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No one outside of OP community gave a fk about G5 lol, meanwhile that new bankai on the final episode of bleach second final season was EVERYWHERE.

It's hard to follow such a long show with the author blueballing everyone as much as he can, its about time we see the heavyhitters doing their moves.
 
#37
The biggest issue with One Piece is that it's too childish for adults but too adult for children. Oda claims he writes the story for 15 year olds but I think the content is closer to middle school territory. If Oda removed all the cringe stuff like Sanji's noosebleeds, Brook asking to see panties and the constant crying and the dumb "open mouth" facial expressions then the story would be much more popular. It's hard for normal people to recommend this story to other people without feeling dirty or childish.

Oda said:
I think middle-schoolers are the core readers that could enjoy it the most. Of course when I was in elementary school I read comics but I realized later that I didn’t really understand any of it. So there are probably a lot of points that don’t get across to elementary schoolers. But, on the surface, you’ve got Luffy whose body can stretch and similar strange elements and they enjoy the images they see. As they reach middle school, they can slowly grasp the story and when they get even older they can start to see the themes. Every age group has a different way of reading the story but personally I’ve set the target age at fifteen. Every week I determine whether or not my fifteen-year-old-self would enjoy it. If not then it doesn’t qualify to be called a boys’ comic. Lately [One Piece] has a lot of adult readers but if I tried to adjust the story just because of that, it would lose the value of its existence. How about for music?
https://www.thegrandline.com/odakazint.htm

The other major issue is the bad character design. If Oda would draw the series with normal looking characters, such as these 2, then that would also increase the popularity. Likewise with female character design.


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What?Anime was fucking popular in Latin America pre-covid. Saint Seya is like a religion in some places lol
I feel there is a generation gap. I hope these new kids get into the masterpieces that were OP,Naruto and Bleach at some point.
Masterpiece. Bleach. Same sentence. No!
Bleach is a bad version of Saint Seiya x Yu Yu Hakusho.
I think Saint Seiya is closer to the "masterpiece" tier. As a whole it's worse than Naruto but it was a foundational Shonen, 1 of the first real battle shonnens along with Hokuto no Ken, and it has some aspects that are lost in most of its derivatives like Naruto or One Piece.

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I prefer lost canvas more so which is prequel. Anime quality is good and manga is goated. @Peroroncino
I skipped all the filler and I'm at the poseidon arc. This arc isn't great but it is acceptable i.e. bleach tier. I hear it gets better at hades arc.
Check our Fuma no Fojiro. It's proto saint seiya with swords. I love Musashi/Ikki.

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t's hard to follow such a long show with the author blueballing everyone as much as he can, its about time we see the heavyhitters doing their moves.
Stories that blue ball their readers, i.e. lots of mystery with no payoffs, tend to be the most popular like Lost (2004) and Game of Thrones. If anything this is the number 1 reason why One Piece is soo popular.
 
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#39
4kids dub played a huge roll.
Another thing is Naruto starts of crazy strong and then goes to shit. One Piece starts of meh-ok and slowly gets better but requires you to care about the characters and the world which isn't gonna happen if you aren't watching every episode(which was much harder when the series started appearing in the west). Something DBZ had going for it. You can skip 5 episodes and it wouldn't matter, you get to see cool character screaming and blowing shit up and it's just fun.
 
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