Much like the mainline franchise,One Piece’s video game installments seek to expand the scale of its world. Many of the titles include new islands and realms for fans to explore outside the franchise’s main canon, allowing imaginations to run wild. However, some ofOne Piece’s games rely more heavily on the lands first shown in canon, with many of the islands along the Grand Line being featured in the franchise’s games. Nevertheless, a few important arcs have been neglected when adaptingOne Pieceto video games.
Many items, characters, and story beats from all ofOne Piece’s arcs are included in the franchise’s mainline games. However, the overarching plot, story, and location of some arcs are missing from these titles. This article focuses on the entirety of an arc being missing from the franchise’s games. For example, Luffy is able to wear aGerma 66 Raid SuitinOne Piece: World Seeker, but the Whole Cake Island arc is excluded from this installment as the game follows a different story entirely and takes place in a new location outside of canon.
Additionally,One Piece: Treasure CruiseandOne Piece: Bounty Rushare two mobile games under the franchise’s belt that consistently update alongside the anime and manga. Therefore,Treasure Cruise, which progresses through a variety ofOne Pieceislandsbased on the franchise’s arcs, andBounty Rush, which extends to the farthest niches ofOne Piece, have covered the large majority of story arcs available. Instead of handicapping the number of arcs that can be discussed in this article,Treasure CruiseandBounty Rushshould be noted as exceptions to this feature.
Spoilers for One Piece’s Amazon Lily arc and onward are present in this article
Amazon Lily and the Island of Women
Despitebeing crucial for Luffy’s character development, Amazon Lily has yet to be featured in a mainlineOne Piecevideo game. As one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Boa Hancock has been featured many times in the franchise’s video game installments, despite the arc of her origin never making an appearance.
This is likely due to the plot of Amazon Lily. Though there are several fights that take place in Amazon Lily, like Luffy’s battles against Bacura and sisters Marigold and Sandersonia, these bits aren’t the main plot of the arc. Though incredibly impactful, the arc is fairly short and focuses more on the impending execution of Luffy’s brother Ace, the Gorgons’ backstory, andestablishing Boa Hancock as a powerful ally, rather than visually dynamic elements like fight sequences.
With most video game adaptations of the franchise falling under some sort of action or fighting genre, it makes sense that Amazon Lily has yet to be fully developed into aOne Piecegame title. If Amazon Lily were to be included in aOne Piecetitle moving forward, its inclusion would likely be short-lived and act as a way tointroduce Boa as an importantOne Piececharacterwhile also setting up gameplay for a portion of the game inspired by Impel Down or Marineford.
Zou the Phantom Island
Zou is another arc that has been neglected byOne Piece’s video game developers. As the first arc in the Whole Cake Island saga, Zou is often left to collect dust as game installments choose to adapt the Whole Cake Island arc instead. Unlike Whole Cake Island, which focuses onSanji’s backstory and his estranged family, Zou introduces a new world and new characters. Developers likely picked Whole Cake Island out of the two arcs because its plot focuses on an established character that fans are attached to.
This leaves a wide range of possibilities for a video game adaptation of Zou. While a full adaptation of Zou seems unlikely, focusing on the expanded alliance of not just the Straw Hat and Heart Pirates, but alsothe additions of the Mink Tribeand Kozuki Clan, could act as a way to introduce a wide variety of allies into a fighting game.
Characters introduced in Zou like Pedro and Carrot have importance in later arcs like Whole Cake Island and Wano, and they have appeared in video game installments likeBounty RushandTreasure Cruise.Carrot was even featured inOne Piece: Pirate Warriors 4, establishing that the inclusion of Minks in mainlineOne Piecegame titles is a proven possibility.
Wano Country
Concluding in the anime last year, the Wano arc is still fresh in the minds of fans and video game developers alike. However, the arc ended afterthe last mainlineOne Piecegame,One Piece Odyssey, was released in January 2023. ILCA smartly held out on including elements from Wano inOdyssey, meaning a true canonical release featuring the Wano arc has not been released.
However,One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4features Wano Country heavilydespite being released in March 2020, two years prior to the conclusion of Wano in the manga in August 2022. This leaves many elements of the game non-canonical. In fact,Pirate Warriors 4’s adaptation of the Wano arc is so distinctly different that the game’s plot should be treated as something entirely different.
This leaves elements like Luffy’s Gear 5,Zoro’s King of Hell technique, and Sanji’s Ifrit Jambe unexplored byOne Piecevideo game installments. As some of the most powerful moves the Monster Trio fight with, adapting Wano into a video game in the nextOne Piecetitle only makes sense.
Similar to Wano, Egghead Island and Elbaf have yet to be adapted into video games due to their recency. While Egghead concluded in the manga in August of this year,One Piece’s animeis currently in the midst of adapting the arc and will also be on hiatus until April 2025. The next game installment in the franchise is unlikely to step on the toes of the anime despite the arc’s story being completely established.
Like Egghead’s freshness to the anime,the first chapter of the Elbaf arcin the manga was released last month. Not enough canon material from the arc exists yet for it to be featured in the nextOne Piecevideo game title, though it will undoubtedly be featured at some point in the future.
With such a wide range of content to choose from, it’s incredible thatOne Piecegame installmentshave managed to adapt the large majority of the franchise’s story. However, developers should turn to these neglected arcs to make the nextOne Piecetitle stand out.
One Piece
Cast
One Piece is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda. The series follows protagonist Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat Pirate crew as they explore the Grand Line to find the King of the Pirates' ultimate treasure, the One Piece, in order to become the next king. The manga’s popularity helped it spin off into a larger media franchise, including an anime with more than 1,000 episodes.
