How One Piece Memes Help Keep The Franchise Fresh

Memes are always a healthy part of any successful franchise. Oftentimes, fans enjoy expressing their love of a series through hilarious inside jokes and references that they find to be particularly funny. The One Piece community has them, the Naruto Community has them, Dragon Ball, Bleach, and the list goes on.

Although sometimes memes can feel a bit oversaturated, One Piece memes help keep an otherwise extremely long series fresh throughout the years. By constantly referencing classic jokes from old content, or by spreading new content across the internet in the form of jokes, memes can act as the solitary bridge between old content and new content of the series. In a way, One Piece memes act as a unifying force among many members of the One Piece community, strengthening the group’s goofy love of the franchise.

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Memes Can Help an Anime Grow

Anime Memes Are Helpful

Memes can assist in keeping a long franchise fresh for the audience. One show that does this particularly well is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Although every show has its memes, the memes of Jojo’s have infiltrated pop culture extremely well. With memes like “To Be Continued,” or “Girono’s Theme,” exploding into everyone’s social media pages, the franchise gained large amounts of popularity and notoriety through these memes.

Although memes for One Piece haven’t reached the same level of popularity as Jojo’s memes, the series has had its own fair share of memes enter the popular culture. Jokes, like the One Piece eye-catcher jingle as a TikTok sound, have shown the show to a completely different group of people than would normally be exposed to it. This, in turn, helps bring more people to watch One Piece, keeping the show popular, despite being over 25 years old.

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At the same time, the One Piece memes also bridge certain gaps in the community, helping unite the fanbase as one collective unit. One Piece, being a long-running franchise, has many different kinds of fans who watch it. From those who’ve been around since day one, to new fans who joined within the last few years, the One Piece community often comes together through the use of memes, especially on the Subreddit, r/MemePiece.

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However, outside of uniting the fanbase and introducing more fans to the series, the memes of One Piece also help bridge the gaps in the series, keeping older content relevant for longer than it normally would be. Many moments in pre-time skip One Piece that would normally be forgotten, are kept alive through the use of memes and references. For example, things like Down D. Stairs will always keep characters like Kuina relevant, or memes like the Con D. Oriano meme will remind fans to never skip the G-8 Arc.

Memes Keep Old One Piece Content Fresh

Classic Memes Never Die

In fact, many of the memes that circulate among fans reference older content from the One Piece series. In many ways, these memes act as a nostalgic reminder for fans to never forget the earlier parts of One Piece as the series enters its complex and climatic final saga. Although some fans consider the earlier content of One Piece to be more boring compared to modern content, it’s easy to see the love and respect that most fans have for the series’ origins just by browsing the memes of the series.

Finally, the plentiful One Piece memes help spread new content quickly around the internet, keeping even the newest episodes and chapters of the series relevant in the public eye. When Loki made his first appearance in the series, plenty of goofy memes speculating about the character’s origins were released. This helped spread public interest in the character Loki, potentially bringing new fans to the show, or reigniting the love of older fans who may have been taking a break.

In the end, memes are a powerful tool for a franchise, especially for a long show like One Piece. With the amount of inside jokes and references that are commonly memed, it’s easy to see just how much love the community has for the series. While they may just seem like all silly fun, spreading memes about One Piece has truly helped the series stay fresh over the years.

One Piece is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. The series follows protagonist Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat Pirate crew as they explore the Grand Line to find the King of the Pirates’ ultimate treasure, the One Piece, in order to become the next king. The manga’s popularity helped it spin off into a larger media franchise, including an anime with more than 1,000 episodes.

Seasons

20

Studio

Toei Animation

Number of Episodes

1116+

MyAnimeList Score

8.71