After a three-month break, the One Piece animated series returned to the air last Sunday (5) and kicked off the highly-anticipated Elbaf Arc. In this restart, Toei Animation adopted a seasonal format: each season will have a maximum of 26 episodes over the year, divided into two quarterly cours. The goal is to raise the animation quality, avoid outpacing the manga’s pace and make the narrative tighter, since each episode of the series will now cover exactly one chapter of Eiichiro Oda’s manga, without recap episodes.
The new episodes are released simultaneously on Crunchyroll, every Sunday at 1 p.m. (Brasília time), the same time as the Japanese broadcast, and arrive in Netflix’s catalog the following weekend. The first episode of the new phase, 1.156 – \”The Long-Awaited Elbaf! The Great Reunion Banquet\” – is already available on Crunchyroll with original audio and subtitles, and will be added to Netflix this Saturday (11).
With this scheme, fans can follow Luffy’s saga and his crew in a more organized way and with an enhanced visual, maintaining fidelity to the original material while enjoying a more steady release rhythm.
