For years, One Piece fans had one major complaint about the series: It’s too slow.
Now, during the Final Saga, an increasingly interesting criticism has emerged.
What if One Piece is actually moving too fast?
At first, that sounds ridiculous. This is a series famous for taking years to resolve mysteries, stretching battles and building enormous storylines.
But the current Final Saga has created a strange contradiction: the story can feel extremely slow in individual moments while simultaneously rushing through major developments.
And that contradiction is becoming increasingly noticeable.
The Final Saga has too many things to resolve
The biggest reason is simple.
There is an enormous amount of story left.
- The Void Century.
- The Ancient Weapons.
- Joy Boy.
- The Will of D.
- Imu.
- The World Government.
- The Revolutionary Army.
- The Four Emperors.
- The One Piece itself.
And now Elbaf is bringing even more lore and historical material into the story.
The Final Saga therefore has to answer questions that have been building for decades.
That creates a pacing problem.
Oda can’t spend another five years slowly developing every individual mystery if the story is actually approaching its conclusion.
So the series has increasingly started connecting major pieces together.
For longtime readers, that can feel incredibly exciting.
It can also feel rushed.
Elbaf is the perfect example
The Elbaf arc represents a major shift in the franchise’s pacing.
The anime entered Elbaf in April 2026, and the production model changed dramatically. Instead of the previous near-continuous schedule, the anime moved toward a 26-episode annual format designed to better manage production and stay aligned with the manga.
At the same time, the manga itself has been moving through major revelations.
This creates an unusual situation.
The anime is deliberately slowing down its adaptation pace, while the manga’s story is increasingly accelerating toward the major mysteries of the Final Saga.
So which one is moving too fast?
The answer may depend on what fans mean by “pacing.”
The story can be slow and rushed at the same time
This is the paradox.
A One Piece chapter can spend considerable time on a single mystery, reaction or conversation.
But then an enormous revelation can happen almost immediately afterward.
Characters who have been absent for years can suddenly become central.
Long-running mysteries can suddenly receive answers.
Important historical information can be revealed in rapid succession.
That creates an unusual rhythm.
The moment-to-moment story can feel slow.
The overall narrative can feel fast.
Recent fan discussions have captured exactly this contradiction, with criticism arguing that One Piece can somehow be both dragged out and rushed at the same time.
The anime has its own pacing problem
Interestingly, slowing the anime down hasn’t automatically solved the issue.
The new production model is intended to give the adaptation more room and better align it with the manga.
But some fans still dislike the one-chapter-per-episode approach.
That is because adapting one chapter doesn’t necessarily mean the episode feels fast.
If a manga chapter contains dialogue, reaction shots and relatively little physical movement, stretching it across an entire episode can still create the impression that nothing is happening.
This has already produced criticism from viewers who believe the Elbaf adaptation remains too slow despite the new production strategy.
So the anime has almost the opposite problem from the manga.
The real problem may be expectations
There’s another factor that shouldn’t be ignored.
One Piece has trained its audience to expect extremely long storytelling.
Fans have spent decades waiting for answers to questions introduced hundreds of chapters ago.
Now those answers are finally arriving.
Naturally, that creates a feeling of acceleration.
When a mystery takes 15 years to build and receives its answer within a few chapters, the answer itself can feel rushed, even if the author deliberately planned the reveal for years.
That’s the strange position the Final Saga is in.
The story has to accelerate because it spent so long building its mysteries.
So is the Final Saga actually moving too fast?
There is a legitimate argument that it is.
But the stronger argument may be that One Piece is entering a phase where slow and fast storytelling are colliding.
The world is enormous.
The mysteries are enormous.
The stakes are enormous.
And yet the story is increasingly moving toward its final answers.
That means Oda has less room to spend entire arcs slowly exploring every individual thread.
For some fans, that’s exactly what makes the Final Saga exciting.
For others, it’s creating the feeling that the series is rushing through material that deserved more breathing room.
Either way, the criticism is worth taking seriously.
Because One Piece may have entered the strangest pacing phase in its entire history:
The series that fans once criticized for taking too long may now be criticized for finally moving too quickly.
