One Piece recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the anime’s very first broadcast in Japan with a brand new special, and One Piece Fan Letter is anything but “filler” for the anime’s story. One Piece Fan Letter made its debut earlier this month, and quickly became regarded as one of the best anime specials of all time. It’s been ranking high with fans ever since its debut as One Piece celebrates how far its come in the 25 years since its release, but there’s been a bit of debate about the content for the episode itself as fans wonder about its place in the canon.
One Piece Fan Letter tells a story during a very important time in the Straw Hats’ journey. Taking place after the events of Marineford as Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hats gather at the Sabaody Archipelago, the anime special showcases the events through different characters’ perspectives. But while it’s revealing how other characters saw the events, it’s far from being “filler.” It’s an officially recognized part of the original canon, and it’s not even what “filler” is supposed to refer to when talking about anime releases anyway. It’s far from it.
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What Is Filler Anyway?
To further debunk whether or not One Piece Fan Letter as filler, it’s time to explain what “filler” refers to anyway. To put it simply, it’s additional materials exclusive to an anime that have been created to give the manga release more time to develop. It happens quite a bit with TV anime adaptations taking on a then in-progress weekly manga series. It’s when during scheduling, the anime’s content is quickly approaching the most recent chapters of the manga. Thus the anime team then decides to instead craft an original story to help further distance their materials from the manga.
In One Piece‘s case, “filler” arcs exclusive to the anime release include the likes of the Ice Hunter arc from Episodes 326-335 ahead of Thriller Bark, or G-8 (from Episodes 196-206) ahead of Long Ring Long. These arcs aren’t seen in Eiichiro Oda’s original One Piece manga, and thus is literal content made to fill time. Thus it had been dubbed by fans as “filler” because it’s considered non-canonical to the events of the series as anything that happens in these arcs usually is not considered important to anything that could happen later. It’s even gotten to the point where fans have even shared edited versions of the anime to make the experience faster without these extra episodes. But that’s not One Piece Fan Letter.
Why One Piece Fan Letter Isn’t Filler
First of all, One Piece Fan Letter isn’t something the anime produced to fill time. As production on the weekly series goes on hiatus until next April for the second half of the Egghead Arc, One Piece Fan Letter is an additional project released to celebrate the 25th anniversary. It’s something that was produced alongside with the anime, and not just meant to fill time on the schedule. Secondly, it’s adapting a novel that’s been recognized by Oda as part of the official One Piece timeline. Therefore, it’s part of the main series’ canon.
One Piece Fan Letter adapts material from the One Piece Novel: Straw Hat Stories spinoff novel written by Tomohito Ohsaki. This novel doesn’t shake up anything that happened during the Sabaody Archipelago, and doesn’t really shift any big moments to make them worse. It’s only making everything more fleshed out and full as One Piece fans actually get a new perspective on what the Straw Hats had been up to. It’s not like it’s a completely different story than seen in the manga.
Although it’s not adapting the manga, it’s by far from being a piece of “filler” meant to just buy time. It’s just an extra anime special adapting one of the many canonical side stories that have been released in novels and other materials that fans of the anime might not be entirely privy too. And with it being the only new piece of One Piece anime we’re going to get in several months, One Piece Fan Letter thankfully exists as, ironically, a way to fill the time until we get those new episodes.
