One Piece: An anime you should not be afraid of because of it's length

~ _There are minimum spoilers! (including images)_ ~

I do not know how to start, but I'm going to say that One Piece deserves its actual popularity and more. Perhaps it is a _VERY LONG_ show (+950 episodes), the story keeps getting you. Let's divide this review in some aspects: Plot, World Building, Characters, Animation, Music and Sound Effects.

PLOT
Basically, the story is about Monkey D. Luffy, the main character, who wants to find the One Piece, a legendary treasure that only one person could find it, that's the Pirate King Gold Roger, whose last words, before he was executed by the World Goverment, revealed that One Piece could be found in the Grand Line, kicking off the Pirate Era. This can sound like a boring story with nothing else to show, but in fact it shows a lot of everything. Besides this, an event from the first episodes can be retaken 200 episodes later, you cannot skip something that may look trivial at first, because Oda, mangaka of One Piece, knows how to make this perfectly.

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WORLD BUILDING
In my opinion, One Piece has the best world building in anime/manga I have ever seen. Let me explain this, everyplace in the story has it's own culture, backstory, desing and something that makes them different from the others. There are different types of islands, different races and creatures, different seas and a lot to show. Not everything revolves around Luffy, but the world advances without the need for him to participate: while he and his crew are chilling, in other parts some relevant characters are fighting, others are commiting big crimes, others are in war and so on. Definitely many events are happening at the same time. Also, you can find a lot of mysteries that to date have not been solved or are in process, and others that you will solve as you progress through the story.

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CHARACTERS
A very important part of the show are the charaters. In one hand we have Luffy, a strong, charismatic and silly, but somewhat intelligent, boy who does not care about anything else besides food and adventures but, when it is neccesary, he will risk his own life in order to achieve his goals and protect the others. On the other hand we have the Straw Hat Pirates, a crew full of weird and funny characters who have enormous respect for their captain and share a tragic backstory, each of whom have an important role in the crew, from cook, doctor and navigator to carpenter, swordsman and musician. I'm not going to describe them because that would be full of spoilers, but I can say that all of them, although they are not perfect and have their flaws, are also well developed. Apart from them, the villains are generally good, some are better than others, but they also have their own ambitions and desires, like the main cast. Another strong point in favor of this anime are the side characters, I do not have enough words to describe how good are most of them, you should go watch One Piece to meet that incredible characters.

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ANIMATION
At the start it is just a simple animation from the nineties (and it is not that bad) but, as you progress, it improves enormously, even in the current arc it is in its maximum splendor. Toei Animation is the studio in charge of animating this story and they do an outstanding job. Although there are scenes that are very badly animated and they tend to put a lot of filler as with any long anime, I cannot thank enough for the time that the studio has taken to do everything possible to deliver quality animation in a weekly anime, my respects.

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MUSIC AND SOUND EFFECTS
I love all the openings in One Piece, all of them are unique, they have awesome music and video. That is my personal opinion, but most fans agree with this point, you can hear the music without watching the scenes in order to not getting spoiled. The OST are also fantastic, but very repetitive, the studio uses the same sad OST for that type of scenes and another OST for most of the fights, this aspect is somewhat limited, but I am not complaining because I still love them. Sound effects are also very nice, here there is a great variety of them to enjoy the show.

~ Watch on YouTube ~
~ (ONE PIECE OPENING 1) ~
CONCLUSION
Despite being a very long show, One Piece truly shows everything that someone could expect from a show of this length: a simple plot but full of content in a very big world, relatable characters, a great experience with the animation and music and more. An experience everyone should try.