One Piece was lucky to have a number of factors align in close proximity which really pushed it to become as big as it's ever been worldwide.
-The Live action which was a huge hit among casual fans, this lead to a huge boost to the manga and anime sales/streaming numbers in North America. The demand was so high that the anime dub was able to produce all episodes and is now caught up to the Japanese version, which is an amazing feat in itself.
-The buzz around Gear 5 was huge. It was on major news outlets worldwide lol I've seen MLB stars, huge influencers (Streamers, cosplayers, etc...) with literally tens of millions of viewers wearing Gear 5 merch, jewelry, etc... This is more anecdotal, but before the winter when people wore T-shirts, I saw many young adults wearing OP apparel (I personally saw Gear 5, Law and Sanji). The only place where "One Piece is trash, Lolda fell off, Goofy is trash" is the dominant opinion is niche forum's like this where most people "read" the story for purposes other than actual interest in the story. The mainstream fandom opinion is still overwhelmingly positive.
-The Wano Kuni animation, especially episode 1015, Gear 5 animation, and the Zoro vs King and Sanji vs Queen, Aokiji vs Garp, etc... The massive improvements to the anime quality and production was pretty much the main talking point of the wide anime community every week. Mainstream anime fans who never gave One Piece a shot because of the episode length or goofy looking animation had no excuse to stay on the sideline anymore. Add to that the COVID quarantine where people where looking for series to binge.
-Even after 1100+ chapters, the manga storyline is still very interesting, and Oda does a great job of creating more mysteries as he answers existing ones. And even when the manga has a downturn like the last few chapters of Onigashima where Kaido and Big Mom's arc's were handled really poorly, it usually follows that up with really high points to balance it out. Think of Kuma's flashback, Blackbeard pirates invading Egghead, Luffy vs Gorosei and Kizaru.
I'm a big fan of Conan, Ippo, Jojo, and those 3 series have been going on for 25+ years now have 25% of the manga sales they used to achieve in their peak. All 3 series imo are still as good as ever, but at some points, fans are just going to move on for fatigue. That has happened with the One Piece manga to some extent, but the depreciation hasn't been nearly anywhere near the other 20+ year manga. As far as I recall, the highest selling volume in 2024 was the Kuma flashback, which is unheard of for a manga 25+ years in that it's still holding on to that much of a % of its readership.
There are other factors as well, but it's ultimately just luck that all these factors happened to coincide within the last 3-5 years, and now One Piece isn't the ugly child anymore lol OP fans used to get made fun of back in 2005
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the zionist media is using it to cuck gen z
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theories:
da juice
oda is blackmailing japanese media w/ the real treasure of mariejois
lolda has a dumb fanbase
youtube channels of our gen are making content and promoting it more for moneys and interactions
orrrr
Oda had a favor to turn in to the Gorosei aka the 5 big media companies to promte a movie and he did so, in 2021, when Wano fell off
Bro
Believe me, the zionist media has already cucked gen z a long time ago they don't need One Piece the last 3-4 years to do it lol
