Summary

• One Piece filler episodes add light-hearted scenes and character development not found in the original manga material.
• Some filler arcs enhance the story, like the G-8 arc, while others disrupt the canon and pacing, like the Silver Mine and Cidre Guild arcs.
• One Piece has relatively low filler compared to other long-running shōnen anime, making it more digestible for new fans.

Here are all the filler episodes in legendary treasure known as One Piece. When it comes to weekly anime series, however, filler episodes are an unfortunate fact of life. Defined as anything not found within the original manga, filler episodes are usually lighter, inconsequential stories written by the animation company to avoid catching up with the manga.

Compared to the likes of Naruto, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z, the One Piece anime is surprisingly light on filler. Despite clocking in at over 1,000 episodes, the TV show doesn't stray into non-canon territory often, and One Piece filler also isn't as bad as fans might've seen in other anime series. No Luffy and Zoro learning to drive here.

All episodes of One Piece are streaming on Crunchyroll.

Plenty of One Piece episodes embellish legitimate manga material with filler scenes - an extended fight scene here, some additional dialogue there - and these are definitely worth watching, but others are fabricated entirely and contain nothing of value.

Every Filler Episode of One Piece

One Piece Filler Episodes That Are A Secret Treasure

While One Piece's later episodes involve many large-scale situations, twisted class wars, and disgustingly evil villains, the series didn't start with stakes so high. One common complaint with later One Piece content is that viewers don't get much time to watch the Straw Hat crew interacting, which they often did in early filler episodes. Many filler episodes contain light-hearted scenes filled with comedy and time for the Straw Hat crew's cast to show off their quirks in a way canon stories don't always have time for. However, one particular filler arc after Skypiea exceeded all expectations.

Episodes 196–208 feature an arc where the Straw Hats land the damaged Going Merry in the middle of the impenetrable G-8 Marine base. The ship is captured, and many of the Straw Hats go undercover as Marines to find a means of escape. The G-8 filler arc is filled with moments for each member of the Straw Hats to shine, including Sanji's infectious cooking, Robin's infiltration skills, Usopp's lying, and Luffy's lack of subtlety, creating some of the biggest laughs of the series while telling a compelling story of cat and mouse as the Straw Hat's avoid total capture.

Another notable filler arc is the anime's most recent filler arc that served as a tie-in to One Piece Film: Red. While it did disrupt the Wano arc at the height of its action, the story of Luffy's friendship with Uta did a great job of fleshing out his character, even if it's not completely canon. It's one of the few times a filler arc added something meaningful to someone's character in One Piece, and with how much that sort of character writing was further emphasized in One Piece Film: Red, it makes the small arc even more worthwhile.

More Than a Few of One Piece's Filler Arcs Are Rough Sailing

Though One Piece undoubtedly has some strong filler arcs and episodes, there are more than a few that just don't hold up. The Warship Island arc, for example, has the typical hallmarks of a filler arc through things like bad art and an uninteresting story, and it also ruined the pacing by pushing back the Straw Hats' entrance to the Grand Line. The Warship Island arc is also infamous for how it goes against One Piece canon by introducing a dragon, as when dragons would be referenced years later, everyone would remark on how they thought dragons were only myths.

Most filler arcs in One Piece don't fair much better than that. For example, the Silver Mine and Cidre Guild arcs both disrupt canon for mindless action and stories that don't add anything to the overall narrative, and the Cidre Guild arc is especially infamous for that because of how it comes at the beginning of the Wano arc. Making things worse is how the Silver Mine and Cidre Guild arcs are movie tie-ins that don't have anything to do with their movies, and that weird handling of things makes them come off as even more pointless.

Even more infamous are the Spa Island and Foxy's Return arcs. Both the Spa Island and Foxy's Return arcs are infamous for bringing back the incredibly divisive Foxy and doubling down on everything people hated about him, including the anime's expanded take on the Davy Back Fight, and that only made him less popular with fans and further fueled the misinterpretation that Foxy isn't canon. There might not be a lot of filler arcs in One Piece, but unfortunately, most of them aren't worth anyone's time and are better off skipped at the end of the day.

How One Piece's Filler Content Compares to Other Shōnen Anime

Despite One Piece having over 1100 episodes, it has surprisingly few filler arcs and episodes compared to other long-running shōnen anime. At 99 episodes, One Piece's filler only s for roughly 9% of its anime; by comparison, its most immediate contemporaries, Naruto and Bleach, are 40% and 45% filler, respectively, and Dragon Ball's filler content only ed for roughly 13% of its length, as well. That means that despite its staggering length, One Piece has some of the least filler of any major shōnen anime, making its length the only major hurdle a prospective fan would have to deal with.

One Piece does fall short of modern shōnen anime in of filler, of course. Over the years, it's become less common for anime to run continuously without breaks, and with it being understood that a series can adapt a story arc or two and be done for a year, there isn't a need for filler in modern anime. Anime like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, for example, have no filler to speak of, so while it's not a completely fair comparison, One Piece's small amount of filler is still large by the standards of modern anime.

How One Piece Has Avoided Relying On Too Much Filler

One Piece has done a surprisingly good job of cutting down on filler arcs and episodes, and it's easy to see how. While One Piece doesn't have a lot of filler episodes, One Piece is known for either adding a lot of original scenes to episodes or dragging out canon scenes, both practices allowing Toei Animation to pad out arcs enough for there to never be too small a gap between the anime and the manga. There are very few points where the anime could organically insert filler arcs, so there's no better way for One Piece to handle things.

That practice isn't without its downsides, however. One of the biggest criticisms of the One Piece anime has been its excessive padding, as the One Piece anime is known to needlessly stretch out the content of every episode through things like adding original scenes that only serve to pad out the runtime or stretching out canon scenes to the point that they lose all their impact. It's better than having the story be put on hold for months at a time for random filler arcs, but it's still left the anime feeling tiresome to get through more often than not.

Fortunately, recent seasons of One Piece have taken steps to fix that. While the anime hasn't stopped padding out episodes, nowadays, the One Piece anime will stretch things out by expanding on scenes that were otherwise underdeveloped in the manga, and it's often an excuse for animators to give One Piece some of the most vibrant and creative animations of any anime. It doesn't completely fix the biggest issues with One Piece's pacing, but it's hardly the worst way of handling filler, and at the very least, it's made for some truly iconic moments in the anime in recent years.

One Piece's Filler Is A Problem The Remake Will Completely Avoid

Regardless of how fans feel about individual arcs, it's clear that the presence of filler arcs, episodes, and scenes hurts the One Piece anime's pacing when compared to Eiichiro Oda's original manga. Part of this is what makes the prospect of Studio WIT's The One Piece remake so tantalizing. Given that the remake will have no shortage of material to adapt and that the series will be seasonal as opposed to weekly, The One Piece can avoid filler altogether.

Though filler episodes get the lion's share of fan anger, it is actually filler scenes that are more detrimental to the pacing and narrative of anime like One Piece. Savvy watchers will be able to suss out which episodes are or aren't filler, meaning it's relatively easy to skip them. Filler scenes on the other hand only serve to pad out canon material and make it go on for longer than Oda had ever intended. Unfortunately, to maintain One Piece's relatively low filler count, these filler scenes are fairly common in the anime.

Given that The One Piece won't need to rely on these filler scenes nearly as much, it's possible that the remake could be an improvement over the original anime. While some filler episodes and arcs will be missed, their absence could help the remake become a much more streamlined story.

For comparison, the entire JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime covers a little more than 750 chapters in 194 episodes. The original One Piece anime covers the same amount of chapters in about 690 episodes, showing just how much filler episodes and scenes add to the run time and drag down the pacing. Though it's unlikely that The One Piece will ever completely eclipse the original One Piece anime, the lack of filler will certainly be a nice bonus for fans daunted by the original series' massive episode count.