One Piece and Demon Slayer are two of the most popular anime to grace the planet. One Piece has seen legions of cosplayers, entire libraries of fanfiction, and has been a supporting pillar of Shonen Jump since its first chapter was released in July 1997. Demon Slayer has seen legions of cosplayers, entire libraries of fanfiction, and a movie that knocked out Spirited Away for the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time in 2020.
But if you were stranded on a desert island with nothing but cartons upon cartons of Pocky and a TV that had only the entire archive of One Piece or Demon Slayer’s coveted seasons, which would you pick? And no, the answer cannot be more Pocky.
That All Important Context
One Piece was initially released as an anime in 1999, a far cry from Demon Slayer, released in 2019, 20 years later. Both the audience and the expectations of the two series were vastly different. Where One Piece was expected to compete with the likes of Naruto and Dragon Ball, now considered anime staples, Demon Slayer had to go up against series like My Hero Academia, Dr Stone, and Chainsaw Man. Despite various high-quality manga being produced in both eras, with the introduction of modern technology, there was a lot more room for storytelling in the early 00’s series than there was with the sparrow-like audience in 2019.
As a result of those contextual differences, One Piece’s opening chapters are a lot slower than Demon Slayer’s. Luffy is able to establish his dream and his place in his universe throughout the first Season with Kobe and Zorro, and while the content itself is top tier, in today’s instant gratification geared society, Demon Slayer offers the more bang for the opening buck. Tanjiro is introduced alongside his family, his life established, and his place in his universe explored all within the first half of the first episode. It’s such a tight introduction that anime viewers can instantly comprehend how impactful the subsequent murder of Tanjiro’s family was and the meaning of the journey he chooses to undertake.
Over the course of One Piece’s runtime, it shows how Luffy accumulates members of his crew. Arcs are anticipated with a certain amount of predictability because when it was released, the audience would stick around to see what Luffy would discover where, after that first episode, Demon Slayer’s Tanjiro is set on a path that offers more surprising twists and turns just because of the nature of the audience its writing for. Inevitably, it depends on whether you want the slow burn of One Piece versus the instant hype of Demon Slayer to facilitate your final decision, oh, poor castaway.
A Vehicle For Character Development
Let’s not beat around the bush here, One Piece’s characters are absolutely immaculate. Each and every one of them is a glorification of the idea of good people adopting bad coping mechanisms to see themselves through their tragedy, and Monkey D Luffy, as our main character, sees through all of them to pull together a crew of people that he truly considers worthy to be his family. One Piece takes that found family dynamic that fanfictioners and dreamers yearn for with their little anime-binging souls and elevates it to such a degree that you’ll end up holding back tears whenever the series threatens infighting.
Demon Slayer, of course, offers different nuances. Though Tanjiro picks up good friends along his journey, he forms a team to eventually take on Muzan as Luffy does to traverse the sea in search of the One Piece, Tanjiro’s narrative is far more singular than Luffy’s. He connects to the demons he kills in his own way and on his own terms to showcase the true burden of being kind in the way that he is.
These demons decay, they have nothing to offer Tanjiro in the way of support, they have only their own absolution that they then find through Tanjiro and in the case of his friends, though they love him, they don’t always seem to understand his choices and he doesn’t adapt to them in the way that Luffy does. There is an underlying sense, therefore, of loneliness in Demon Slayer that is absolutely thwarted in One Piece…well, until it becomes plot-relevant. Yes, I’m looking at the Amazon Lily arc, thank you, Eiichiro Oda.
Overall, both series have excellent characters to explore and take joy in. Zenitsu’s eccentric terror in Demon Slayer juxtaposed with Inosuke’s headstrong antics makes for a fun and energising spectacle. Similarly, seeing Luffy palming around with his crew aboard the ship highlights the bond between them all and makes those tragic moments all the heavier when they do hit. In both cases, you feel like you’re making memories with these people as you watch through the anime so once more, for your own choices, it depends on whether you want the long-running deep dive into that found family mentality, or if you want something a little more singular, a little bit more lonely but no less ultimately uplifting.
Hitting Story Beats
Slow though One Piece is, though super fans will argue that it rightfully takes its sweet time, the simplicity of the over-arching narrative lends more creative room to the people that Luffy meets, including some brilliant villains such as Big Mom, Blackbeard, and Arlong. One Piece is a true testament to the notion that lore serves drama, with almost everything serving to tie Luffy’s people to him, to make them realise something new and intrinsic about themselves or their crew, or to introduce new peril on a specific, character-by-character basis.
Take the fight between Usopp and Luffy. In that moment, the plot has occurred to bring these two characters to this breaking point, and this is the first time that we’ve seen a member of the Straw Hats wanting to branch out alone without Luffy becoming involved. Luffy’s subsequent response to this seems unusual. He’s unable to think with the sort of clarity that we’ve become used to from him, and the focus is entirely on what this altercation is doing to our well-established character.
Demon Slayer tackles the plot of its tale a little differently, with the characters moving to facilitate its various requirements and forming bonds in light of this. Tanjiro meets Zenitsu because they’re assigned the same mission, and though Inosuke is picked up on the same mission, he has joined the ranks of Demon Slayers, like the other two, because of his own motivations. The story consistently pushes the characters to adapt and change, introducing new terrifying hooks in the demons they encounter and encouraging Tanjiro and his friends to metamorphose into something new.
Ultimately, Demon Slayer is a story about individual transformation. The lore is complex and convoluted, but engaging and exciting at the same time. It carries that throughline of instant gratification as the story unfolds, never quite hitting the mark of the predictable. It’s like Kotoharu Gotouge is trying to take you on a rollercoaster with this story, never quite sure where the loop-de-loop is coming as you follow her marvellous characters into Hell.
Your Own Preference
Either way, both are amazing series. One Piece, with its OTT cartoonishness, sets an animation precedent, and Demon Slayer boasts some of the most beautiful fight scenes that I have seen in anime as a whole. The stories are engaging for their own reasons. With Demon Slayer, I want to see how these isolated individuals can come together to defeat the final boss and get over their own tragedies, whereas with One Piece, I want to see how their found family dynamic will influence the face of the world they inhabit.
And of course, both of these tales have some of the most engaging characters in anime. Whether you want to connect with the unbeatable kindness of Tanjiro or you want Luffy to finally dig into his own affairs and see himself the way he sees his crew, the decision of picking one series over the other will have you anxiously gnawing through your entire stack of Pocky in record time.
Don’t worry, the desert island isn’t real, it can’t hurt you. If you run out of delicious chocolate-covered breadsticks, you can still go down to the convenience store to pick up some more. Crisis averted.
