![Picture](/uploads/5/1/8/8/51882967/7846333.jpg?357)
One Piece is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda since 1997 and is still ongoing.
The story follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a young man whose body gains the properties of rubber after unintentionally eating a Devil Fruit, and his diverse crew of pirates, named the Straw Hat Pirates. Luffy explores the ocean in search of the world's ultimate treasure known as "One Piece" in order to become the next Pirate King.
The manga series had grown to be so popular along the audience that the One Piece could afford to be distributed in other media sectors, across the world in that way increasing the profit. This includes not only the manga with over than 70 volumes, but also anime series produced by Toei Animation since 1999 with more than 680 episodes. It also has 13 animated feature films, 2 OVAs (original video animations), 5 television specials, many video games, TCG (trading card game) named One Piece CCG (collectable card game), CD music releases and even their own merchandise that includes books and figurines. However no all of these things are available in UK, America and Europe.
Spectatorship
The One Piece has quit an active spectatorship because of the huge level of audience involvement and verity of people attitude towards this franchise based on the geographical, historical, political and cultural difference.
The active spectatorship can be clearly identified in reviews that can be found in numerous languages, various styles and located in different sites. These reviews includes different viewpoints on One Piece manga volumes, anime series, movies, games, the story context, characters, music, art, voice acting, character development, etc.
For example on the website http://www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece/reviews, there can be found many people review of the One Piece anime overall. Another example is the website http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1485763/, where there are reviews of the One Piece movie Strong Words. There also are YouTube channels that reviews each of the manga chapters, anime series and even One Piece video games. There are also multiple blocks on forums and social media sites that reviews One Piece characters or settings. All of the reviews made by audience helps them to express their opinion, involve other people in discussions, and these reviews give hopes that they will be seen by important people that has the power to change something in One Piece.
There also is seen an active audience involvement through social media like in Tweeter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit and more with all the tweets, posts and messages with One Piece pictures, gifs, thoughts, reviews, facts, jokes, news, etc. There even are some fans that takes the One Piece character names or part of their manes and posts everything through accounts like Monkey D. Luffy, Chopper, or even King of the Pirates, in order to be involved in the One Piece franchise even more.
Not only there are many One Piece associate accounts, but also hashtags used that might lead to these One Piece posts. Mostly they include the title #onepiece #OnePiece or just #OP. Also there are hashtags for every character in the One Piece series like the #luffy, #zoro, #nami, #usopp #sanji, #chopper, #robin #franky, #brook, #ace, #trafalgar, #shanks, #arlong, #doflamingo, #buggy, etc. and not only that but there also are other hashtags that symbolize One Piece like #nakama, strawhats, #whitebeard, #strongworlds #3D2Y, etc.
One Piece is quite rich in the music and soundtracks in comparison of other franchises. It has overall 36 theme songs that includes 18 opening and 18 ending theme songs, performed by popular artists and artists that become noticeable because of the One Piece, like Hiroshi Kitadani, Bon-Bon Blanco and TVXQ. Without the theme songs there also are a lot of character songs, OST (original soundtracks), singles, and even some other composers classical music, such as IV part – Allegro con Fuoco from Antonin Dvorak`s New World Symphony that was used in the final fight of Luffy and Crocodile, Beethoven's Ode to Joy that is heard multiple times through anime and movies, and Etude in E – OP.10. No3 – Tristesse. The variety of music allows for audience to enjoy music alongside the art, makes the One Piece more interesting (otherwise it will get boring to listen the same music for 15 years), and also gains profit when the audience buys CD where is a OST or theme that they like.
There also are the 4Kids English adaptation of original songs as well as its own opening themes for the One Piece aired in US, with more up-bead tone. This helped One Piece anime to gain other audience attention in other countries beside Japan, and also, 4Kids ensured that children will watch the anime because of the lifting songs in language that they understand.
Because of the huge audience level and support, One Piece can not only produce manga and anime, but also manufacture products. And now in Japan One Piece has a stable product line and huge demand for these goods. One of the most demanded products are One Piece figurines and toys that mostly are manufactured by Banpresto as well as Bandai and MegaHouse. There also are 5 art and 5 guidebooks, light novels, TCG, clothing, furniture and even food.
Mostly all the products are imported from Japan to other countries through subcontractors or directly from manufactures, because having a factory outside China, Korea or Japan is not beneficial and even risky. Because the One Piece products aren’t that popular in other countries beside the Japan, the products can be found only in specialist shops or through online.
Fandom
One Piece has a huge Fandom that can be seen in websites with all the fanfiction and fan-arts, from all the OC (original characters) out there and the forums dedicated to One Piece as well as One Piece cosplay in the Anime Cons.
The One Piece fans have no special name that they are going for, although there have been debut about calling themselves kaizoku, nakama or even newkama, however none of them are really used so One Piece fans are recognised as just One Piece fans or shorter OP fans.
So what is the One Piece targeted audience? It actually varies from the country the One Piece is aired. In Japan the One Piece technically was aimed at young male audience under age of 14, as the One Piece is in shōnen category, however taking in to consideration that the One Piece had started in 1997 and the audience growing with the One Piece continued to watch it, and the young people nowadays are interested in more modern manga and anime instead of pirate adventures, the One Piece have shifted their target. There even was a survey on NHK (Japanese TV channel), of who reads and watches One Piece. The results showed that 88% are grownups and only 12% are young people.
Although it is still under shōnen, it is clearly seen some of the images and the meaning of the story is more aimed at grownups. The One Piece have many emotional and sometimes even dark moments that are more appropriate to the older audience. With each newer episode there is a lot more violence, voyeurism as well as loosing someone dear to you and even deaths.
In the US when 4Kids owned the One Piece rights, their target audience was children and because of these dark moments and violence involved in the anime, the 4Kids ended up censoring many scenes, cut out episodes and even change characters, for example the Smoker ended with the name of Chaser just because of his name being too inappropriate to children audience. And in the website https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/one-piece concluded that the One Piece is appropriate to 11 year olds. So in the rest of the world beside the Japan, One Piece targeted audience are children around 11 years for censored series and rest of the weird people watching anime.
Now, the OP fan can be anyone as long as he or she wants to. In Japan the fans usually are middle age people in the middle social class. In US, UK and Europe, the OP fans are usually teenagers, adults and middle age people that are in the middle social class. In rest of the world besides Japan, One Piece isn`t considered to be one of the best fandoms, because of the wired animation and the long, long series, although it is on top alongside Bleach, Naruto and Fairy Tail, but the other anime franchise such as Attack on Titan or Sword Art Online overtakes the fandom because they are more epic, the art style is better and the storyline more exciting.
The OP fans can be often seen by making the One Piece AMV (animated music videos), crack videos, editing the pictures or gifs, as well as creating their own One Piece contexts such as fanfictions and OCs (original characters), especially because Oda newer states the ships in the story allowing audience to express themselves as they wish. These works can be often found in One Piece forums and in any anime fanfiction and fan-art sites.
The OP fans can be recognised by closing, tattoos, and talking style. The fans also have started to use some of the worlds that are used in original One Piece anime and movies because of the awkward translation and just because it sounds cooler in Japanese. For example instead of friend, crewmate, teammate, fans are saying Japanese version – nakama. Also instead of pirate – kaizoku; strawhat – mugiwara; seven warlords of the sea – shicibukai. Also some of the OP fans are using One Piece laughter styles, such as shahahaha (Arlong`s laughter), Yohohohoho (Brook`s laughter), fuffuffuffuffu (Doflamingo`s laughter) or just self-created one. And it is so hilarious to hear how someone is trying to laugh. Often there is seen that OP fans acts and uses phrases of one of the One Piece characters. For example fan that acts like a Brook will often laugh with this characters laughter yohohohoho and use a lot of skull jokes such as: “I could play a flute instead of violin, if I would have lungs!
Yohohohoho!”
Because of One Piece having a stable working franchise, there is a small possibility that fan can possibly affect the industry, however there is a small, small chance of fans having an impact on the One Piece, because long ago Oda planned One Piece to last for five years, but seeing the huge audience level, and having fun writing it, he decided it to continue his work. Meaning, because of the fan support, One Piece has these new series. Also Oda uses from time to time real humans and setting as the source to his stories, so in a way, fans could try to persuade Oda to write something they want, such as in the future series when Luffy will fight one of the four emperors of the sea – Big Mom, Luffy accidentally makes Yo Mama joke (especially, because Luffy voice actor in Sakuracon 2010 panel had already said “Yo mama”).
Also why OP fans are so close to the One Piece fandom is because of the voice actor involvement and connection with the audience. The voice actors are often seen on stages in cons, they also participates in radio podcasts, TV shows, answers to audience questions and even goes outside the Japan borders to meet One Piece fans in other countries.
Frameworks of Interpretation
One Piece is an adventure comedy filed with action, while having slice of real world issues and having to fight for your dream with possibility of losing. Because One Piece being aired in different countries and for many years, the audience position differs from each other.
For example, people can find all of four uses of gratifications while watching One Piece, but it all depends on their own wish to see. Some people might watch One Piece because of the diversion, that might be showed with the light colours, silly images and some crazy storylines, where the characters goes on breath taking adventures to follow their dreams and having the end with a smile on protagonist face. The people might also watch the One Piece as a substitute for personal relationship, because One Piece is all about friendship and being part of family that will always be there for you no matter what and won’t leave as long as they can. Also One Piece includes so many characters who has different characteristics and their own way of living that might correspond to a viewer, and that is why an audience member might watch it for personal identity, where he feels involved with the storyline and sees himself in this character or community. And as silly as it sounds, One Piece contains a lot of real life issues, and the audience might watch the animation because of the surveillance need. In Japan, animations can be as much educating as movies or documentaries, and seeing in One Piece all the real life issues like the navy (can correspond to police) not always is right, that each person believes in his own right, that the government more or less sees only what they want to see, money actually has bigger power than you think, as well fighting against slavery and racism that never stops, can quite a bit show how the world works.
Depending of the audience geographical, historical, political, cultural and even social differences, there are all three types of the audience. For example the dominant audience will just watch the anime and will see a character that supposed to be bad will see him as the bad person, without questioning it, however when the anime shows his background and offers him as a good person, the audience will shift his thoughts as the anime shows. He will view the One Piece as adventure story and that is all. The negotiated audience can be seen in the One Piece forum discussions where they express their opinion and listens to other judgments, in order to have more or less educating conversation. Of course there are also oppositional audience that watches the One Piece just to disagree with it.
Intertextuality
In One Piece Series there can be seen a lot of intertextual references, however they are changed majorly to better suit the One Piece world, and many of them can’t be so easily spotted. The references can be seen in the character appearance, the behaviour, the setting, and in the story.
First of all, fans have spotted the similarities between popular people and One Piece characters.
Eminem = God Enel; Steven Tyler = Jango; Jim Carrey (Lloyd Christmas) = Mr.2 BonClay; Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura) = Franky; Freddie Mercury = Peeply Lulu; Joey Jordison = Basil Hawkins; Michael Jackson = Hody Jones; Lenny Kravitz = Mr. 5; Twiggy = Miss Valentine, Hugo Boss Model = Paulie; Al Capone = Capone Bege; Valentino Rossi - Trafalgar Law; Mick Foley = Spandam; Louise Brook = Nico Robin;
Uma Thurman (Mia Wallace) = Shakky; Stevie Ray Vaughan = Postgas D. Ace; Tim Curry (Dr. Frank N. Furter) = Emporio Ivankov; Yusaku Matsuda = Aokiji/Kuzan; Kunie Tanaka = Kizaru; Bunta Sugawara = Akainu/Sakazuki
There also are different behaviours for these One Piece characters that are similar to others. For example the Jango moves moonwalking in reference of Michael Jackson, fishmen in One Piece represents black people, Caesar the Clown`s whole behaviour was similar to Josef Mengele, Chopper being pushed back by other reindeers because of the blue nose just like the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and a lot, lot more.
Some of the stories, such as the Little Red Riding Hood, The boy who cried wolf, Pinocchio and Gulliver references are put into the story context as well as biblical stories such as Noah or even films like Jurassic Park with all the dinosaurs.
Not only some characters are based on real people, but also a lot of real cities and places are used in One Piece world.
Dressrosa and the Park Güell in Barcelona, Spain
Saigon Dinner Cruise, Vietnam.
These references helps audience to get excited about the things they have spotted and are familiar to them, as well as it encourages audience to search for more, knowing that Oda likes to twist his stories and surprise his audience.
Media Literacy
One Piece has no deeper meaning than the world being a harsh place where nothing goes as planned, however people are still hoping and following their dreams. Though Oda often changes One Piece context as well as character role, and hiding a lot of references and messages in his work, that gives to predictable story a lot of plot twists, that surprisingly doesn`t change the primly story.
This message is mainly send by the visuals that are seen in the manga and anime because they can express people emotions faster and with easier than words. Also visual image can wonderfully portray the scenery without a need to describe it.
Also dialog or monolog can often send the message to ensure that it can be received by the audience. It can be done by the words spoken, the tone of the voice, the pitch and the speed of it. This mostly works to the One Piece anime or movies rather than manga where the spoken words can be expressed only by words that are said, caps lock, word size and punctuation.
However not all people will understand the send text the same as others. For example a person that has watched the One Piece for a while will see the pattern of how the story is tolled and will already know what could happen next, however a person that still hasn`t understood the pattern and the send messages that leads to something important, won`t be aware of what happens next and will be easier to surprise.
Pre-and-Post Viewing
The anime preview is usually 14 second long trailer at the end of the previous episode. The trailer usually includes small cut scenes starting from 0.30 seconds to 2 seconds of the most important events happening without any context why and how creating enigma and anchoring people to watch the next episode to understand the reason for these cut senses. Also in these 14 seconds the narrator briefly states what will be shown in the next episode without mentioning any plot holes or exact actions preformed in the next episode. The One Piece trailers puts all of the possible, random and epic cuts from the next episode that actually in not as epic as they seemed while they were out of context. Also the biggest hook for the next series is the title, that usually includes the most information of the next episode than the trailer for itself, however these titles are sometime misleading or just for one short scene from the episode, such as “A Desperate Situation! Luffy Gets Caught in a Trap!” where the part about Luffy being caught in a trap is only in the last scene of the episode. These previews often gives high expectations of the next episode that usually only last for few minutes, making people to watch the next episodes to see the conclusion.
The post viewing for the previous episodes are quite fan especially for the negotiating audience, because of the discussions about the episode overall including the art, the characters and the storytelling, as well as leading clues of what we might see in the next episode. Not always these reviews of the episode are good and quite often audience views differs leading to many assumptions, but because of the One Piece often having twists, the audience can never know what will happen for real, and why the episode was made like that. Also when looking back at the previous episodes, it is possible to see how few earlier actions lead to the story position now and possibly even next episodes, making the audience indreaged about the following conclusions. For dominant and oppositional audience post viewing gives nothing except conformation or disagreement of their thought aroused in time of the episode.
Condition of Reception
The One Piece can be available through different sources such as the online, TV, DVD, Blue-ray and CD allowing audience to enjoy it in a way that suits them best.
The One Piece anime and movies as well as soundtracks and theme songs can be found online, however not the specials or commentaries.
The One Piece also can be viewed through TV. The movies usually can are aired in the Japanese school spring break. The anime can be seen on TV screens every Sunday at 9:30 of the following channels shown in this website – https://one-piece.com/anime/broadcast.
There also are Log Collection (TV series) and Season Package (TV series) available on DVD. The Movies are available on DVD and Blue-ray. The One Piece Specials are available on DVD and the movie specials are available also on Blue-ray. There also are soundtracks, theme songs and character songs are available on CD in English the anime series with the commentary and some special features are available on DVD, and the Movies are available also on DVD as well as on Blue-ray
Networks
As the One Piece is well known globally, but there is a difficulty of fans to communicate with each other because of the distance, there are some popular websites and forums that are used, in order to have possibility of fans interacting with each other and be aware of anything new in One Piece franchise.
Every fan that wants to know a little bit more about One Piece or share a new information, than there is a website known a One Piece online encyclopaedia – http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
The official news of One Piece from Japan can be found in the website https://one-piece.com/.
In the website http://forums.arlongpark.net/, there is possible to find out everything new about the One Piece.
In the forum website http://opforum.net/ it is possible to involve with the OP community and have discussion about everything, starting from the One Piece reviews to what should I have for dinner?
In the website http://onepiecepodcast.com/ there can be found the broadcast of the newest information connected with One Piece.
For all the newest anime series and movies can be found in http://onepieceofficial.com/; the manga series in http://www.readmanga.today/one-piece.
The story follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a young man whose body gains the properties of rubber after unintentionally eating a Devil Fruit, and his diverse crew of pirates, named the Straw Hat Pirates. Luffy explores the ocean in search of the world's ultimate treasure known as "One Piece" in order to become the next Pirate King.
The manga series had grown to be so popular along the audience that the One Piece could afford to be distributed in other media sectors, across the world in that way increasing the profit. This includes not only the manga with over than 70 volumes, but also anime series produced by Toei Animation since 1999 with more than 680 episodes. It also has 13 animated feature films, 2 OVAs (original video animations), 5 television specials, many video games, TCG (trading card game) named One Piece CCG (collectable card game), CD music releases and even their own merchandise that includes books and figurines. However no all of these things are available in UK, America and Europe.
Spectatorship
The One Piece has quit an active spectatorship because of the huge level of audience involvement and verity of people attitude towards this franchise based on the geographical, historical, political and cultural difference.
The active spectatorship can be clearly identified in reviews that can be found in numerous languages, various styles and located in different sites. These reviews includes different viewpoints on One Piece manga volumes, anime series, movies, games, the story context, characters, music, art, voice acting, character development, etc.
For example on the website http://www.crunchyroll.com/one-piece/reviews, there can be found many people review of the One Piece anime overall. Another example is the website http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1485763/, where there are reviews of the One Piece movie Strong Words. There also are YouTube channels that reviews each of the manga chapters, anime series and even One Piece video games. There are also multiple blocks on forums and social media sites that reviews One Piece characters or settings. All of the reviews made by audience helps them to express their opinion, involve other people in discussions, and these reviews give hopes that they will be seen by important people that has the power to change something in One Piece.
There also is seen an active audience involvement through social media like in Tweeter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit and more with all the tweets, posts and messages with One Piece pictures, gifs, thoughts, reviews, facts, jokes, news, etc. There even are some fans that takes the One Piece character names or part of their manes and posts everything through accounts like Monkey D. Luffy, Chopper, or even King of the Pirates, in order to be involved in the One Piece franchise even more.
Not only there are many One Piece associate accounts, but also hashtags used that might lead to these One Piece posts. Mostly they include the title #onepiece #OnePiece or just #OP. Also there are hashtags for every character in the One Piece series like the #luffy, #zoro, #nami, #usopp #sanji, #chopper, #robin #franky, #brook, #ace, #trafalgar, #shanks, #arlong, #doflamingo, #buggy, etc. and not only that but there also are other hashtags that symbolize One Piece like #nakama, strawhats, #whitebeard, #strongworlds #3D2Y, etc.
One Piece is quite rich in the music and soundtracks in comparison of other franchises. It has overall 36 theme songs that includes 18 opening and 18 ending theme songs, performed by popular artists and artists that become noticeable because of the One Piece, like Hiroshi Kitadani, Bon-Bon Blanco and TVXQ. Without the theme songs there also are a lot of character songs, OST (original soundtracks), singles, and even some other composers classical music, such as IV part – Allegro con Fuoco from Antonin Dvorak`s New World Symphony that was used in the final fight of Luffy and Crocodile, Beethoven's Ode to Joy that is heard multiple times through anime and movies, and Etude in E – OP.10. No3 – Tristesse. The variety of music allows for audience to enjoy music alongside the art, makes the One Piece more interesting (otherwise it will get boring to listen the same music for 15 years), and also gains profit when the audience buys CD where is a OST or theme that they like.
There also are the 4Kids English adaptation of original songs as well as its own opening themes for the One Piece aired in US, with more up-bead tone. This helped One Piece anime to gain other audience attention in other countries beside Japan, and also, 4Kids ensured that children will watch the anime because of the lifting songs in language that they understand.
Because of the huge audience level and support, One Piece can not only produce manga and anime, but also manufacture products. And now in Japan One Piece has a stable product line and huge demand for these goods. One of the most demanded products are One Piece figurines and toys that mostly are manufactured by Banpresto as well as Bandai and MegaHouse. There also are 5 art and 5 guidebooks, light novels, TCG, clothing, furniture and even food.
Mostly all the products are imported from Japan to other countries through subcontractors or directly from manufactures, because having a factory outside China, Korea or Japan is not beneficial and even risky. Because the One Piece products aren’t that popular in other countries beside the Japan, the products can be found only in specialist shops or through online.
Fandom
One Piece has a huge Fandom that can be seen in websites with all the fanfiction and fan-arts, from all the OC (original characters) out there and the forums dedicated to One Piece as well as One Piece cosplay in the Anime Cons.
The One Piece fans have no special name that they are going for, although there have been debut about calling themselves kaizoku, nakama or even newkama, however none of them are really used so One Piece fans are recognised as just One Piece fans or shorter OP fans.
So what is the One Piece targeted audience? It actually varies from the country the One Piece is aired. In Japan the One Piece technically was aimed at young male audience under age of 14, as the One Piece is in shōnen category, however taking in to consideration that the One Piece had started in 1997 and the audience growing with the One Piece continued to watch it, and the young people nowadays are interested in more modern manga and anime instead of pirate adventures, the One Piece have shifted their target. There even was a survey on NHK (Japanese TV channel), of who reads and watches One Piece. The results showed that 88% are grownups and only 12% are young people.
Although it is still under shōnen, it is clearly seen some of the images and the meaning of the story is more aimed at grownups. The One Piece have many emotional and sometimes even dark moments that are more appropriate to the older audience. With each newer episode there is a lot more violence, voyeurism as well as loosing someone dear to you and even deaths.
In the US when 4Kids owned the One Piece rights, their target audience was children and because of these dark moments and violence involved in the anime, the 4Kids ended up censoring many scenes, cut out episodes and even change characters, for example the Smoker ended with the name of Chaser just because of his name being too inappropriate to children audience. And in the website https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/one-piece concluded that the One Piece is appropriate to 11 year olds. So in the rest of the world beside the Japan, One Piece targeted audience are children around 11 years for censored series and rest of the weird people watching anime.
Now, the OP fan can be anyone as long as he or she wants to. In Japan the fans usually are middle age people in the middle social class. In US, UK and Europe, the OP fans are usually teenagers, adults and middle age people that are in the middle social class. In rest of the world besides Japan, One Piece isn`t considered to be one of the best fandoms, because of the wired animation and the long, long series, although it is on top alongside Bleach, Naruto and Fairy Tail, but the other anime franchise such as Attack on Titan or Sword Art Online overtakes the fandom because they are more epic, the art style is better and the storyline more exciting.
The OP fans can be often seen by making the One Piece AMV (animated music videos), crack videos, editing the pictures or gifs, as well as creating their own One Piece contexts such as fanfictions and OCs (original characters), especially because Oda newer states the ships in the story allowing audience to express themselves as they wish. These works can be often found in One Piece forums and in any anime fanfiction and fan-art sites.
The OP fans can be recognised by closing, tattoos, and talking style. The fans also have started to use some of the worlds that are used in original One Piece anime and movies because of the awkward translation and just because it sounds cooler in Japanese. For example instead of friend, crewmate, teammate, fans are saying Japanese version – nakama. Also instead of pirate – kaizoku; strawhat – mugiwara; seven warlords of the sea – shicibukai. Also some of the OP fans are using One Piece laughter styles, such as shahahaha (Arlong`s laughter), Yohohohoho (Brook`s laughter), fuffuffuffuffu (Doflamingo`s laughter) or just self-created one. And it is so hilarious to hear how someone is trying to laugh. Often there is seen that OP fans acts and uses phrases of one of the One Piece characters. For example fan that acts like a Brook will often laugh with this characters laughter yohohohoho and use a lot of skull jokes such as: “I could play a flute instead of violin, if I would have lungs!
Yohohohoho!”
Because of One Piece having a stable working franchise, there is a small possibility that fan can possibly affect the industry, however there is a small, small chance of fans having an impact on the One Piece, because long ago Oda planned One Piece to last for five years, but seeing the huge audience level, and having fun writing it, he decided it to continue his work. Meaning, because of the fan support, One Piece has these new series. Also Oda uses from time to time real humans and setting as the source to his stories, so in a way, fans could try to persuade Oda to write something they want, such as in the future series when Luffy will fight one of the four emperors of the sea – Big Mom, Luffy accidentally makes Yo Mama joke (especially, because Luffy voice actor in Sakuracon 2010 panel had already said “Yo mama”).
Also why OP fans are so close to the One Piece fandom is because of the voice actor involvement and connection with the audience. The voice actors are often seen on stages in cons, they also participates in radio podcasts, TV shows, answers to audience questions and even goes outside the Japan borders to meet One Piece fans in other countries.
Frameworks of Interpretation
One Piece is an adventure comedy filed with action, while having slice of real world issues and having to fight for your dream with possibility of losing. Because One Piece being aired in different countries and for many years, the audience position differs from each other.
For example, people can find all of four uses of gratifications while watching One Piece, but it all depends on their own wish to see. Some people might watch One Piece because of the diversion, that might be showed with the light colours, silly images and some crazy storylines, where the characters goes on breath taking adventures to follow their dreams and having the end with a smile on protagonist face. The people might also watch the One Piece as a substitute for personal relationship, because One Piece is all about friendship and being part of family that will always be there for you no matter what and won’t leave as long as they can. Also One Piece includes so many characters who has different characteristics and their own way of living that might correspond to a viewer, and that is why an audience member might watch it for personal identity, where he feels involved with the storyline and sees himself in this character or community. And as silly as it sounds, One Piece contains a lot of real life issues, and the audience might watch the animation because of the surveillance need. In Japan, animations can be as much educating as movies or documentaries, and seeing in One Piece all the real life issues like the navy (can correspond to police) not always is right, that each person believes in his own right, that the government more or less sees only what they want to see, money actually has bigger power than you think, as well fighting against slavery and racism that never stops, can quite a bit show how the world works.
Depending of the audience geographical, historical, political, cultural and even social differences, there are all three types of the audience. For example the dominant audience will just watch the anime and will see a character that supposed to be bad will see him as the bad person, without questioning it, however when the anime shows his background and offers him as a good person, the audience will shift his thoughts as the anime shows. He will view the One Piece as adventure story and that is all. The negotiated audience can be seen in the One Piece forum discussions where they express their opinion and listens to other judgments, in order to have more or less educating conversation. Of course there are also oppositional audience that watches the One Piece just to disagree with it.
Intertextuality
In One Piece Series there can be seen a lot of intertextual references, however they are changed majorly to better suit the One Piece world, and many of them can’t be so easily spotted. The references can be seen in the character appearance, the behaviour, the setting, and in the story.
First of all, fans have spotted the similarities between popular people and One Piece characters.
Eminem = God Enel; Steven Tyler = Jango; Jim Carrey (Lloyd Christmas) = Mr.2 BonClay; Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura) = Franky; Freddie Mercury = Peeply Lulu; Joey Jordison = Basil Hawkins; Michael Jackson = Hody Jones; Lenny Kravitz = Mr. 5; Twiggy = Miss Valentine, Hugo Boss Model = Paulie; Al Capone = Capone Bege; Valentino Rossi - Trafalgar Law; Mick Foley = Spandam; Louise Brook = Nico Robin;
Uma Thurman (Mia Wallace) = Shakky; Stevie Ray Vaughan = Postgas D. Ace; Tim Curry (Dr. Frank N. Furter) = Emporio Ivankov; Yusaku Matsuda = Aokiji/Kuzan; Kunie Tanaka = Kizaru; Bunta Sugawara = Akainu/Sakazuki
There also are different behaviours for these One Piece characters that are similar to others. For example the Jango moves moonwalking in reference of Michael Jackson, fishmen in One Piece represents black people, Caesar the Clown`s whole behaviour was similar to Josef Mengele, Chopper being pushed back by other reindeers because of the blue nose just like the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and a lot, lot more.
Some of the stories, such as the Little Red Riding Hood, The boy who cried wolf, Pinocchio and Gulliver references are put into the story context as well as biblical stories such as Noah or even films like Jurassic Park with all the dinosaurs.
Not only some characters are based on real people, but also a lot of real cities and places are used in One Piece world.
Dressrosa and the Park Güell in Barcelona, Spain
Saigon Dinner Cruise, Vietnam.
These references helps audience to get excited about the things they have spotted and are familiar to them, as well as it encourages audience to search for more, knowing that Oda likes to twist his stories and surprise his audience.
Media Literacy
One Piece has no deeper meaning than the world being a harsh place where nothing goes as planned, however people are still hoping and following their dreams. Though Oda often changes One Piece context as well as character role, and hiding a lot of references and messages in his work, that gives to predictable story a lot of plot twists, that surprisingly doesn`t change the primly story.
This message is mainly send by the visuals that are seen in the manga and anime because they can express people emotions faster and with easier than words. Also visual image can wonderfully portray the scenery without a need to describe it.
Also dialog or monolog can often send the message to ensure that it can be received by the audience. It can be done by the words spoken, the tone of the voice, the pitch and the speed of it. This mostly works to the One Piece anime or movies rather than manga where the spoken words can be expressed only by words that are said, caps lock, word size and punctuation.
However not all people will understand the send text the same as others. For example a person that has watched the One Piece for a while will see the pattern of how the story is tolled and will already know what could happen next, however a person that still hasn`t understood the pattern and the send messages that leads to something important, won`t be aware of what happens next and will be easier to surprise.
Pre-and-Post Viewing
The anime preview is usually 14 second long trailer at the end of the previous episode. The trailer usually includes small cut scenes starting from 0.30 seconds to 2 seconds of the most important events happening without any context why and how creating enigma and anchoring people to watch the next episode to understand the reason for these cut senses. Also in these 14 seconds the narrator briefly states what will be shown in the next episode without mentioning any plot holes or exact actions preformed in the next episode. The One Piece trailers puts all of the possible, random and epic cuts from the next episode that actually in not as epic as they seemed while they were out of context. Also the biggest hook for the next series is the title, that usually includes the most information of the next episode than the trailer for itself, however these titles are sometime misleading or just for one short scene from the episode, such as “A Desperate Situation! Luffy Gets Caught in a Trap!” where the part about Luffy being caught in a trap is only in the last scene of the episode. These previews often gives high expectations of the next episode that usually only last for few minutes, making people to watch the next episodes to see the conclusion.
The post viewing for the previous episodes are quite fan especially for the negotiating audience, because of the discussions about the episode overall including the art, the characters and the storytelling, as well as leading clues of what we might see in the next episode. Not always these reviews of the episode are good and quite often audience views differs leading to many assumptions, but because of the One Piece often having twists, the audience can never know what will happen for real, and why the episode was made like that. Also when looking back at the previous episodes, it is possible to see how few earlier actions lead to the story position now and possibly even next episodes, making the audience indreaged about the following conclusions. For dominant and oppositional audience post viewing gives nothing except conformation or disagreement of their thought aroused in time of the episode.
Condition of Reception
The One Piece can be available through different sources such as the online, TV, DVD, Blue-ray and CD allowing audience to enjoy it in a way that suits them best.
The One Piece anime and movies as well as soundtracks and theme songs can be found online, however not the specials or commentaries.
The One Piece also can be viewed through TV. The movies usually can are aired in the Japanese school spring break. The anime can be seen on TV screens every Sunday at 9:30 of the following channels shown in this website – https://one-piece.com/anime/broadcast.
There also are Log Collection (TV series) and Season Package (TV series) available on DVD. The Movies are available on DVD and Blue-ray. The One Piece Specials are available on DVD and the movie specials are available also on Blue-ray. There also are soundtracks, theme songs and character songs are available on CD in English the anime series with the commentary and some special features are available on DVD, and the Movies are available also on DVD as well as on Blue-ray
Networks
As the One Piece is well known globally, but there is a difficulty of fans to communicate with each other because of the distance, there are some popular websites and forums that are used, in order to have possibility of fans interacting with each other and be aware of anything new in One Piece franchise.
Every fan that wants to know a little bit more about One Piece or share a new information, than there is a website known a One Piece online encyclopaedia – http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
The official news of One Piece from Japan can be found in the website https://one-piece.com/.
In the website http://forums.arlongpark.net/, there is possible to find out everything new about the One Piece.
In the forum website http://opforum.net/ it is possible to involve with the OP community and have discussion about everything, starting from the One Piece reviews to what should I have for dinner?
In the website http://onepiecepodcast.com/ there can be found the broadcast of the newest information connected with One Piece.
For all the newest anime series and movies can be found in http://onepieceofficial.com/; the manga series in http://www.readmanga.today/one-piece.