It’s an understatement to say that this is a great time to be a One Piece fan in the West.

From One Piece Film Red ads taking over Times Square in 2022 to Monkey D. Luffy getting his own balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City to the National Football League even doing a collaboration with the franchise for one of their games, this has been an incredible journey for a series that struggled to break through in my part of the world for a long time.

And let’s not forget about the live-action Netflix adaptation which doesn’t suck!

I think back to when I started this blog back in 2010, Naruto and BLEACH got most fans’ attention compared to One Piece. I never really gave One Piece a chance because everyone around me was either a Naruto or BLEACH fan. Plus there were other series like Death Note that took center stage.

I mostly wrote about Naruto and BLEACH characters. However, I did write this post in 2011 about One Piece’s popularity among adults in Japan. It’s one of my most-read posts to this day.

While I wrote in the post that I started after a big time-skip, I gave up afterwards after several chapters. The series didn’t stick with me.

I wonder what happened in the last 3-4 years that made One Piece finally blow up in America. 10 years ago, One Piece probably sold alright here, but nothing compared to the other mainstream shonen titles. Over the past 2-3 years and despite being now over 100 volumes, One Piece is now placing in top 20 manga charts in sales consistently.

And then I read about the Wano Country arc. It also helped that the Viz Shonen Jump app was starting to slowly take off around 2019 when they decided to have chapters released the same day as Japan. So now, everyone can get in on the fun. Fans got the see the events of Wano play out over time. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic helped as everyone bought manga and watched anime to kill time.

But I still feel it mostly has to do with what went happened in Wano. I decided to research the arc and I was left with this.

1.) The longest arc ever in the series.

2.) A lot of significant stuff happened.

3.) Gear 5. ‘Nuff said.

4.) Luffy is literally one step away from becoming the King of the Pirates.

I did hear that Wano was probably a homage to Japan, so adding a sense of Eastern flair to a mostly Western theme (pirates) helps.

I give props to the fans who stuck with the series and have felt ignored until these past few years. They did their best to promote One Piece even if it fell on a bunch of deaf ears at times. I personally know people who swore by One Piece since the start. To see it now as big as Dragon Ball Z in America in 2023 is incredible.

The One Piece community deserves this. Patience truly is a virtue here and it was rewarded. I can’t wait to see what Eiichiro Oda, Toei Animation and Bandai will do next for you guys for the potential endgame.