Netflix's One Piece: How Many Manga Chapters Does Season 1 Cover?
Contains spoilers for Netflix's "One Piece"
Netflix's "One Piece" is a show with eight one-hour episodes. The Eiichiro Oda manga it's based on has well over 1,070 chapters with no end in immediate sight, and the anime version's episode count is also in quadruple digits. Naturally, this is excellent news for the Netflix adaptation, since there's no risk of running out of source material any time soon.
Of course, the flip side of the coin is that in order to cover the big beats of the plot in a narratively satisfying way, the show needs to pick and mix the events it covers — especially in its first season, which needs to introduce the Straw Hat Pirates and the world they live in and find a way to end things with a bang that befits a season finale. That's a whole lot of story to tell in just eight hours, especially since the live-action series juggles extra plot points such as the premature introduction of Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp (Vincent Regan).
The show's solution is to cover everything from the beginning of the series to the end of the Arlong Park Arc. This translates to a whopping 95 manga chapters — or if you prefer, 11 volumes or 44 episodes of the anime version.
What's next for Netflix's One Piece?
If Netflix orders more "One Piece," the amount of story the show has covered gives us a fairly decent idea of the things to come in Season 2. As the end of "One Piece" Season 1 not-so-subtly hints, the first part of Season 2 will focus on the Loguetown Arc, which features the powerful, smoke-powered Captain Smoker — aka the guy who takes an interest in Luffy in the season finale's stinger.
After that, the show will move to the Reverse Mountain Arc, which revolves around the Baroque Works organization and a magnificent whale called Laboon. From that point on, the season will likely go on to cover the entirety of the Arabasta Saga, which focuses heavily on Baroque Works and its leader Crocodile, one of the show's most memorable villains.
Assuming that Season 2 is greenlit and its episode count is the same as the first season's, this will require some creativity and moving the plot at a brisk jogging pace. Cramming the Loguetown Arc and the entirety of the five-arc Arabasta Saga in eight episodes would proceed the plot all the way to manga chapter 217, which means Season 2 would have to adapt no less than 122 chapters. Still, considering how well Season 1 captures the source material's spirit, it's easy to feel confident that the show can recapture the lighting in the bottle.