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It's the end of a long-standing era for ongoing anime, with the production studio announcing a revised release plan for One Piece, which has been airing for more than 25 years and featured dozens of non-canon storylines. Starting in January, after the Egghead Island arc wraps up, the animated series will take a quarterly hiatus until April, when the Elbaph arc kicks off.

Updated Production Plan

From now on, the series will produce a pair of cours every annually for a maximum of 26 episodes. Toei explains this will enable the anime to “explore further into the core of the universe — including more content, rhythm, and pacing of the original manga.” However, Toei conclude by hinting at “exciting surprises” during the series' break, which suggests additional related projects, such as the upcoming live-action adaptation, scheduled to debut during this gap.

Previous Hiatus Benefits

The series anime had a half-year pause that started in late 2024 and ended in April 2025. The hiatus was for the animators to improve the visuals and let the manga to get further ahead to prevent a rushed adaptation and repetitive summaries. The anime greatly benefited from this respite, and it has managed to deliver fans with numerous fight scenes, high-quality animation, and reduced non-canon content than ever before.

Adopting Modern Trends

Although some recap episodes appeared during the recent run, the benefits of this updated approach greatly outweigh the occasional interruption in the story. This additionally allows the manga, which is presently in the middle of the latest arc, to gain more ground on the anime. According to the news, this may lead to a single installment of the series covering a single manga chapter, with others instead handling one and a half chapters or more to make up for time.

This concludes of a generation for anime, as One Piece is the final major title to abandon the old-school way of creation, which prioritized being on air for most of the calendar. It's the reason why iconic series such as Naruto, and of course One Piece have numerous side stories, and the quality of the animation can change drastically between installments and the next. Today, series creation is organized in seasons, with a couple at most coming out each annually, allowing for improved visuals and greater accuracy to the source material.