Key Takeaways
- One Piece has numerous off-screen battles, both historical and during the series, leaving fans eager for more details.
- The perspective of protagonist Luffy leads to many off-screen battles, adding to the series’ mystery and allure.
- Despite potentially missing out on epic clashes, fans still hold the off-screen battles in high regard, eagerly awaiting their potential inclusion.
One Piece, through excellent writing and planning by its author Eiichiro Oda, has some of the best world-building of any anime out there. At times, with its intricate systems, governments, and characters, the world feels like a living, breathing place. Due to this, outside of Luffy’s adventures in One Piece, plenty of important events still occur, sometimes with Luffy never knowing about what happened.
While this is great overall for creating a complex story, one negative aspect is that sometimes events that are hugely important to the overall story happen off-screen, with various characters only mentioning these earth-shattering occurrences. From massive historical battles featuring Gol D. Roger himself to off-screen battles that still haven’t received any sort of further elaboration, the One Piece community is hungry to see just what happened during these important off-screen events. With the sheer amount of important fight scenes that happen off-screen, many fans are often left wondering; does One Piece have too many off-screen battles?
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One Piece Has Plenty Of Off-Screen Moments
Battles And More
So far, the off-screen fight scenes of One Piece can be split into two distinct categories; those that occurred before the events of the series, and those that occurred sometime during the events of the series. The events that took place before the series are often looked at as massive historical incidents, often being touted as massive world-changing battles. These off-screen events include the Rocks Pirates versus Roger and Garp, or the initial fight between Blackbeard and Shanks that left the latter with his scar.
The battle raged for ten whole days and the world waited on tenterhooks for the outcome. – Jinbe on the battle between Aokiji and Akainu
On the other hand, battles that occurred during One Piece’s timeline but were never given a full animation, although they seem to lack the same aura that the historical fights of One Piece have, still have plenty of fans who want to see them fully animated. This includes fights like Akainu and Aokiji’s battle for the position of Fleet Admiral or Marco leading the Whitebeard Pirates to fight against Blackbeard and his crew. At times, since these moments took place in the timeline of the show, some fans felt cheated out of seeing these potentially amazing fight scenes.
One Piece Off-Screen Battles Are A Consequence Of Luffy’s Perspective
Luffy’s Limited View
Firstly, as a whole, the sheer number of off-screen battles could be written off as a natural consequence of One Piece’s style of world-building. The audience experiences the story of One Piece mainly through Luffy’s eyes. Many of these off-screen battles aren’t fully revealed to the audience until Luffy himself learns more about them. Although this isn’t true for many of the other battles in the show, important moments, like Roger and Garp’s battle with the Rocks Pirates, may be saved until Luffy learns the details of the incident.
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On top of this, many times when it comes to off-screen battles, the hype and imagined scenario of the One Piece fight is often better than anything that could be delivered. These off-screen battles, if fully revealed, may only be met by disappointment, with the hype far exceeding the fight itself. For example, if the revealed fight between Akainu and Aokiji is much worse than fans expected, it’ll ruin something that once was considered a great element of lore for the series.
One Piece Probably Has Too Many Off-Screen Fights
Fans Want To See These Fights Realized
Despite this, overall, One Piece may have a few too many off-screen battles. While it’s nice to see the world mainly through the protagonist, Luffy’s perspective, seeing a few of these epic clashes between characters wouldn’t hurt the series. However, of course, One Piece is still going on and will be for the foreseeable future. This means there’s plenty of time to see these epic confrontations find their way into the main story of One Piece.
The wound I got from that guy [Blackbeard], aches whenever I look at your face. – Shanks to Whitebeard
In the end, although the world of One Piece may have a bit too many off-screen battles, these moments despite never playing out in the story, are still held in high regard by fans. In a way, the mystery surrounding these events has led to fans loving these moments even more. In a way, the very fact that these battles occurred off-screen has made them all the more mysterious and tantalizing to One Piece fans.
