Even before One Piece started broadcasting, a chunk of Japan's ACGN fanbase had their expectations cranked to the ceiling.
After the first episode aired, the One Piece plot landed roughly where the fans had hoped.
Luffy didn't have much in the way of standout moments in this episode, but the past between him and Shanks, inside twenty minutes of screen time, landed on most viewers.
In that short stretch of plot, the show also rolled out a world packed with imagination.
Unlike most anime where the protagonist drifts along in the early stages without a real sense of what he wants, One Piece, like Naruto, planted the main arc of the entire series in the first episode. With both One Piece and Naruto, that goal stays fixed from start to finish, and the audience understands that the moment the protagonist reaches it is the moment the work ends.
The first episode of One Piece was strong, though not at a divine level. It met expectations, and the praise online came in across the board.
"I'm following this."
"It moved me a little."
"The tone of the work is solid. Has Shirogane-sensei turned a corner this year? Less heavy?"
"I used to spend whole Shirogane works terrified my favorite characters would get killed off. This one feels much easier on that front."
"He's probably going after the kids' market. Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece don't carry the complex settings of his earlier works. The plots are simple, but the character writing feels stronger than before, especially in Naruto and One Piece."
"It's only the first episode of One Piece, and I'm already locked on Luffy and Shanks. That's impressive. That's the level of a master."
"The art style is rough, though. Doesn't that bother any of you?"
"Compared to Demon Slayer, the art isn't as refined. For a pirate-themed work, would polished pretty characters fit the tone?"
"Shirogane-sensei swaps art style based on the theme. You get used to it. None of his works carry over the previous look. There's always a shift."
"Of the three series running now, Bleach has the most stylish art, especially in the manga. The strongest impression of the three for me. The plot isn't as good as Naruto's, though."
"Give it a rest. Naruto can't hold a candle to Bleach. It's just a bunch of kids playing house."
"And Bleach's Ichigo is what, a few years older than Naruto? Isn't he also a kid?"
"Why are the Bleach and Naruto fans starting up again? Enough. This is the One Piece comment section. Take the fight somewhere else."
"Forget it, you can't talk them down. Wait until One Piece has more chapters under it. It'll probably go three-way between the Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece sides."
"Real."
"This isn't out of the question."
"Inside an anime industry without absolute judging standards, arguing over which manga is the strongest. These people must have nothing going on during the day."
Heavy advance promotion spend, paired with a Japanese production that outclassed the corner-cutting One Piece animation from Rei's previous life, meant the show got close to across-the-board acclaim after launch.
In plain terms, the "rough art style" criticism only stands out under poor production.
If every frame of the animation lets the audience smell the money behind it, viewers understand that the look is a stylistic choice, not a budget problem, and they accept the art and keep watching.
Over the next few days, Rei went hard on building momentum for One Piece, taking part in every promotional event he could fit in.
Anime conventions, fan meets, press interviews.
Every time he appeared, Rei would mention One Piece, and he'd plug Bleach and Naruto along the way.
April warmed up, and One Piece's popularity climbed fast in step.
Across several consecutive weeks, the One Piece plot moved through cleanly. Luffy went out to sea, met Coby, beat Alvida, ran into Nami, and pulled the Three Sword Style swordsman Zoro onto the ship.
Japan's anime fans understood the rhythm of One Piece now.
One island, one arc.
A shonen adventure anime where, on the journey, the protagonist Luffy gathers a crew of like-minded people and sails the world.
In the history of the anime world in Japan, and the wider global scene, no anime had ever carried this kind of premise.
Even so, after One Piece began airing, its reception across Japan's anime fan community kept climbing.
On world-building alone, the early East Blue arc of One Piece wasn't as compelling as Bleach's or Naruto's. The Devil Fruit setting was the one piece that stood out.
But across all three works, Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece, the character writing in One Piece was the one with no holes in it.
Not only were the ten members of Luffy's crew given full portrayals, plenty of early supporting characters could stay etched in fans' memory two decades later.
In the East Blue arc, the bounty-hunter duo Yosaku and Johnny, who appeared for only a few chapters and boasted they were going to cut down Hawk-Eye Mihawk, along with "Axe-Hand" Morgan, would still be living rent-free in One Piece fan conversations decades on.
The loyal Gin: even twenty years later, whenever a hooded character showed up in One Piece, fans would auto-respond with "That's Gin in disguise."
Enel, an early-arc villain who had been offline for twenty years, would still come up in fan discussion two decades later, as fans complained he'd suffered from being introduced too early and ran scale comparisons between Enel's true power and Emperor-tier, Admiral-tier, and First Mate-tier characters.
The vast majority of fans who could finish One Piece in full would carry deep impressions of at least a hundred characters from the work. Compared to plenty of anime where the audience can't recall the protagonist's full name after the credits roll, that was a dimensional gap.
Japan's anime fans hadn't been confident in pirate-themed work before One Piece launched. As the plot unfolded, they slid into the world-building all the same.
"Holy crap, this Zoro is too cool."
"Be honest, does something like Three Sword Style actually have practical use in reality? Zabuza in Naruto only bit down on a kunai to kill enemies after both his arms got broken. Why is Zoro out here training a fancy Three Sword Style?"
"There should be a plot beat later showing why Zoro trains Three Sword Style. From the few lines in the Buggy arc, you can see Zoro has real feelings for that sword in his mouth. Every other sentence is about becoming the World's Greatest Swordsman. Probably another standard setup where his whole family got killed by the current greatest swordsman and he's prepping for revenge?"
"None of that stops the guy from being cool. Even with a wound across his stomach, he still fought that acrobat swordsman and took the hits head-on into the same wound. That's a hot-blooded fight."
"True. Zoro is funny when he's being funny. He's also a real tough guy. Hope the later plot fills in his backstory."
"Don't try to predict it. Can Shirogane-sensei be guessed by us?"
"Nami looks like a traitor type too. There's a betrayal plot coming, guaranteed."
"This show is genuinely funny. Villains and heroes both."
"Is the One Piece plot going to feel like early Bleach, though? A cycle of one island per arc with new crew recruits? It says Luffy will become the Pirate King, but what are the actual conditions for becoming the Pirate King? Shirogane-sensei, explain it more clearly."
"Current goal is to wrap up Buggy the Clown and enter the Grand Line. As for how to become the Pirate King, the predictable path is sailing through the Grand Line and coming back alive. Like the explorer in the history books, the first one to sail around the world. Pulling off something like that earns you the Pirate King title, right?"
"It's a little like Attack on Titan. In Titan, Eren is after freedom. In One Piece, Luffy's reason for becoming a pirate is just that the life of a pirate is unrestrained, free from management and control. Honestly, the title One Piece doesn't have to lean on the word 'Pirate.' That word puts a lot of casual viewers off. Wouldn't a new name be better, something like 'King of the Sea'?"
"'King of the Sea?' That name is terrible. Even fewer people would click on it. At least 'One Piece' lets you imagine the pirate life. 'King of the Sea' just sounds like the protagonist heads out to fish. Even the imagined plot already feels boring."
"Shirogane-sensei really didn't disappoint. After only a few episodes, my expectations for One Piece have moved past Bleach and Naruto. I think it's the most interesting work currently airing in Japan."
"One Piece is good, but it still doesn't match Bleach, does it? In last week's Bleach plot, the scene where Ichigo is gearing up to learn Bankai was ten times cooler than anything Zoro has done."
"Be honest, isn't the current third round of the Chunin Exams in Naruto running circles around some of the Bankai stuff in Bleach? Sasuke using the Sharingan to copy Rock Lee's technique to push back the enemy while pinned down by the Curse Mark kept me hyped past my bedtime."
"Little kids just like characters who pose like Sasuke. Making his eyes go red, it looks ugly as hell."
So. Why is it that every popular post about Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece these days ends up turning into a brawl between fans of the three? Can the discourse not be a little kinder? They're all Shirogane-sensei's works. Is the rank fight that necessary?
Time moved into June.
Looking at the thick stack of cooperation proposal files on his desk, sent in from companies all over the world looking to partner with Shirogane Animation on Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece, Rei drew a long breath and started the day's work.
Most of the manga work on Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece was handled by assistants by now, with Rei handling the major battle sequences himself. The anime's broadcast success, though, brought the full IP development cycle along with it.
Games, merchandise, films, props.
The scope was wide enough that Shirogane Animation couldn't run it all in-house. Cooperation with major IP companies worldwide was required.
All three series were still early, but on the strength of Rei's track record in the market over the past decade, partners treated Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece as on par with blockbuster hits like Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer. Plenty of cooperation proposals stretched three to five years, and some opened at ten.
Rei spent less time on creation than before, but his workload on business operations went up to compensate.
"I want to clock out and go home and spend time with Hina."
Rei was getting bored of the company's operational tasks fast, but the complaint stayed in his head. He still had to walk through every document and sign each one. These project plans involved funding running from billions to tens of billions of yen, and the money didn't fall from the sky.
After a while, afternoon arrived, and Rei got up and left his office for the conference room to run a meeting with the gaming department.
The agenda was the mobile game development for Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece.
The gameplay direction was similar to a number of ACGN mobile titles from Rei's previous life. Since all three were long-runners, and the story content was the IPs' biggest strength, the game team could spend a year or two on development and then run regular content updates synced to the anime's broadcast progress.
Things like the Soul Society infiltration and Hueco Mundo arcs in Bleach.
The Alabasta, Skypiea, and Marineford arcs in One Piece.
The Konoha Crush and the Fourth Great Ninja War arcs in Naruto.
By that point, the game content would sit in step with the anime's plot.
The game launch was still a year or two out, but the funding for the project had to be cleared and moved now.
"These three really are something else. The IP development plans the major capital players around the world are putting together for these three are even more aggressive than what happened around Demon Slayer back in the day."
After the meeting wound down, Misaki, as the company's CEO, walked over to Rei's chair, her voice low.
With expected serialization timelines past ten years, long-runners held a much wider lane in derivative development than anime like Demon Slayer or Attack on Titan, which closed inside a few dozen episodes.
ACGN mobile games for Demon Slayer or Attack on Titan were hard to build because their popularity surged fast and dropped off soon after the series ended.
Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece didn't carry that risk. Development plans running three to five years were workable.
Earlier, Shirogane Animation's biggest weak point was that the company was at peak performance while every line of its business ran through Rei, and most of Rei's works were six-month or one-year series. They were hits, but the future picture was uncertain.
Long-runners gave the company's business development a backbone to lean on.
The same way Weekly Shonen Jump worked in Rei's previous life. As long as One Piece kept running, the magazine stayed one of the most popular comic publications in Japan, with readers locked in for the long haul. Series like Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen were the rotating headliners. The fixed foundation was One Piece.
"This is just the start," Rei said after a pause. "Down the line, Shirogane Animation will release a lot more works, and there won't be a shortage of long-runners on the level of One Piece and Naruto."
Series like Detective Conan, which would outlive One Piece in pure runtime. Series like Dragon Ball and Pokémon, which carried more commercial value than One Piece. Series like the Gundam franchise, with forty to fifty years of releases and new sequels still in production. Ultraman and Kamen Rider weren't off the table either, if Rei felt like reaching for them later.
The constraint at this stage was that he had one head and two hands. Even providing scripts and handing most of the manga production to assistants, the combined load from all the smaller tasks was heavy. So he couldn't run those titles in parallel with Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece.
Misaki looked at Rei for a long moment. At this point she no longer questioned whether he was painting a fantasy or describing an actual future.
Of every company chairman she had met, Rei was the most pragmatic person of the lot. The combined headcount of Shirogane Animation and Illumination Animation, over a thousand employees, was already running flat out just to finish the adaptations and operations of the works Rei kept handing them.
If Rei said he had a long list of long-running works waiting behind Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece, he did.
"At this rate of development, by the time your daughter is in elementary school, she'll be set with Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece anime and mobile games to her heart's content. From there into adulthood, if she has even a fraction of an interest in anime, every show she touches will be one of your works."
"If she doesn't get addicted, that's fine," Rei said after thinking it through. "As long as she doesn't burn through the family fortune and decide to start her own business as an adult, the money I have now would last her ten lifetimes. It's best if she does well in her studies, but if not, it doesn't matter. As long as her character is good, that's enough."
The happiest period of Rei's childhood in his previous life had been reading manga in the city's bookstores. If his daughter could have that kind of happiness too, what's wrong with that? The point of studying hard is to have a good life as an adult. If you already have a good life from the start, there isn't much reason for a person to grind.
"You're an open-minded father." Misaki was surprised, then laughed. "Miyu is going to be a different story."
"Miyu?" Rei thought for a moment and smiled. "She'll probably have Hina learning to draw manga at three, pushing her to submit manuscripts at six, and aiming for Hina to be a serialized mangaka by ten."
"And then Hina will set you, her cheat-mode father, as her life goal. She'll grind her whole life and find out at the end that humans have limits, and the gap to non-human existence can't be closed with effort alone," Misaki added.
Rei went quiet after hearing that.
"We'll have to teach her from elementary school. A person shouldn't push that hard. If you run into an opponent you can't beat with everything you've got, just go back to sleep. Don't get stuck on a dead end," Rei said after a pause.
Misaki: ".."
In June, after Shirogane Animation laid out the development trajectory for the Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece IPs over the next three years, large flows of capital moved from inside the company out into various markets across the global anime industry.
In parallel, Bleach and Naruto kept building.
In Bleach, the Soul Society arc moved into its late stages. The beats with Aizen faking his death, Rukia Kuchiki on the verge of execution, and Ichigo Kurosaki still grinding to learn Bankai brought this arc to its peak.
In Naruto, the third stage of the Chunin Exams began. The Konoha 11, with Naruto, Sasuke, Ino, Shikamaru, and the rest, took their turns showing what they could do.
Two boss-level characters of the Chunin Exams started to take shape.
Neji Hyuga and Gaara.
The process also fleshed out characters like Rock Lee and Hinata.
In One Piece, the story reached the point where Luffy met Usopp.
Bleach had been slow off the line, but that stretch was long behind it.
One Piece and Naruto had never been slow openers. As their worlds locked in, the popularity of both series spread fast.
All three were showing absurd numbers in the market.
The fanbase arguments between the three didn't damage any of the series. They created a chemical reaction of sorts and worked as an alternative form of advertising.
The most striking detail was that the anime market didn't lose attention for other works because of the rise of these three giants.
The opposite, going by the data.
Both the anime merchandise market and the derivative game market were growing.
Even after pulling Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece out of the totals, sales for other works across the anime industry kept climbing.
Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece were lifting the overall anime market, pulling a wave of elementary school kids into the anime fandom. Those new fans didn't only support Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece. They picked up other works in the Japanese anime market too.
Time moved into July.