🔗 Share this article The Legendary Anime Concludes a Quarter-Century Tradition in the Coming Year It's the end of an iconic period for ongoing anime, with the production studio announcing a revised release plan for One Piece, which has been airing for over a quarter-century and featured dozens of non-canon storylines. Starting in January, once the current storyline wraps up, the anime will go on a quarterly break until spring, when the next major arc begins. Updated Production Plan From now on, One Piece will release two seasons every year for a cap of two dozen installments. The studio explains this will help the anime to “explore further into the core of the ONE PIECE world — incorporating more content, rhythm, and timing of the source material.” However, producers end by promising “thrilling developments” during the series' break, which means additional related projects, such as Netflix's live-action season 2, scheduled to debut during this gap. Learning from Past Breaks The One Piece anime previously took a half-year pause that started in October 2024 and concluded in April 2025. The hiatus was for the production team to enhance the visuals and allow the comic to get further ahead to prevent a faster anime pace and lengthy recap episodes. The anime couldn't benefit more from this break, and it has managed to supply viewers with numerous fight scenes, high-quality animation, and reduced non-canon content than previously. Embracing Seasonal Format Although some recap episodes appeared during this season, the positive effects of this new production schedule greatly outweigh the odd pause in the story. This additionally allows the original work, which is presently in the middle of the latest arc, to extend its lead on the anime. Per the news, this may lead to one episode of the anime adapting a single manga chapter, with others instead covering one and a half chapters or additional to make up for scheduling. This concludes of an era for anime, as One Piece is the last big series to abandon the traditional method of production, which prioritized being on air for most of the calendar. This explains why iconic series such as Naruto, and naturally itself have numerous filler arcs, and the quality of the art can vary widely between one episode and the next. Today, anime production is organized in cours, with one or two maximum releasing each annually, allowing for better quality and more faithfulness to the source material.