One Piece: How to Watch the Anime and Read the Manga

Some people began One Piece by reading the manga in the pages of Shonen Jump. There are over 100 collected volumes that must be read from start-to-finish, no exceptions. For others, One Piece was always that anime with an impossible amount of episodes to catch up on. And now it’s beginning again as an English-language live-action series on Netflix. Clocking in at an easily bingeable 8-episodes, Hollywood’s One Piece represents the very tip of the series’ iceberg. There’s an incredible amount of lore, villains, adventures, and gags yet to unfold that are easily accessible if you know where to find them.

The Manga

Option 1. Shonen Jump

Price: $3 a month

Available on iOS, Android, and Web

Pros: 

• It’s cheap
• Unlimited access to every chapter
• Downloadable chapters for offline reading
• New chapters drop every week
• Discourages degenerate behavior with a 100-chapter-a-day limit

Cons:

• It’s another paid subscription
• Sometimes will crash
• Reading history isn’t preserved between iOS and web
• Prevents degenerates from reading manga all day

Basically, for $3 a month, you get to legally read every chapter of One Piece on your phone, no exceptions. And that includes each week’s newest chapter. With high-quality translations and a top-notch comic book reader, it’s hard to stop reading once you start, so this is a great option to binge chapter after chapter while supporting the officially licensed release. And a quick note on the app, a lot of comic book readers don’t zoom out to show you the full page when you “turn” to a new page. For a series like One Piece, which has impactful full-page illustrations and an expertly presented flow from panel to panel, this is an absolute must have to read on your phone.

Option 2. Manga Plus by Shueisha

Price: Free

Available on iOS, Android, and Web

Pros:

• You can read every chapter of One Piece once
• New chapters drop every week

Cons:

• The full library is only readable on the app
• Chapters can’t be reread

Manga Plus is the same deal as the Shonen Jump service, it’s a legal place to read manga in English and it’s even run by the same people with a different business model. It’s free to use, but you can only read each chapter of certain series once. One Piece is very much available to read for free, but there’s so much going on in the story that you’ll want to leaf back a few pages every now and then to revisit certain scenes. Not a huge deal, but if it’s a problem the Shonen Jump app has everything always available.

Option 3. Your Local Library

Pros:

• Free with your library card
• Physical and digital copies are available

Cons: 

• Manga is usually in the kids section
• Limited availability leads to wait times for certain volumes

You might have to elbow past a few kids to reach the manga section in your local library, but there’s a good chance that you’ll find plenty of volumes of One Piece there. You may not be able to start at volume 1, but if you’re coming from the Netflix series, any volume between 1 and 10 should cover what you just saw. You can also request the book and have your librarians prepare it for pick-up. And there are often ebooks for you to check out. And it’s all for free!

The Anime

Option 1: Netflix

Pros:

• Watch on the same platform as the live action series
• Easy to navigate to specific story arcs

Cons: 

• Limited number of episodes
• No English dubs

If you just watched the One Piece live-action series on Netflix, you probably have noticed that they have the original anime on there too. You can watch a good 400 episodes there with the original Japanese voice cast. But there’s close to 700 additional episodes that have been made, and there’s a new one each week. 400 episodes is more than enough to start with and you can also peruse their selection of made-for-the-big-screen One Piece movies, which always have great animation and a fun original story that has no bearing on the actual plot.

Option 2: Crunchyroll

Pros: 

• Has every episode in Japanese and English
• Includes a million more series to watch 

Cons:

• Paid subscription is $8 a month
• The way seasons are broken down on the PS5 app is terrible

To watch every episode ad-free, you’ll need a premium subscription to Crunchyroll, which includes access to the English dub of the anime. In a welcome holdover from the forums of the old internet, each episode has a nostalgia-inducing comment section where fans recorded their live reactions right after the episode aired. They also air new episodes as they come out in Japan, meaning you can skip all the way to the newest episodes, which have been absolutely fire. 

Option 3: Pluto TV

Pros:

• Free
• Fun to drop in on random episodes

Cons: 

• Not great for new fans wanting to start at the beginning of the series
• Lots of ads

If you don’t know where to start with the anime, there’s a dedicated channel that streams episodes of One Piece 24 hours a day with ad-breaks on Pluto TV. It may not make sense and you might be exposed to some momentous spoilers, but at least it’s free! Or if you’re a seasoned fan just looking to engage with some familiar content, the live-stream is a great place to drop into.