One Piece: The Movie

ONE PIECE (One Piece Movie 01)

7.1(88,024)

MAL Score

Ranked #4341

Popularity #1725

Action
Adventure
Fantasy

Episodes: 1
Duration: 50 min
Aired: Mar 4, 2000
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Long ago, the famed pirate Woonan is said to have seized a third of the world’s gold and hidden it on a secret island lost to legend, its location obscured by mystery.

Years later, Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat crew press onward toward the Grand Line, only to be stripped of their belongings by a band of thieves. Their leader, El Drago, is also chasing the rumor of Woonan’s island—pulling the Straw Hats into a race to reclaim what was taken and to track down the fabled hoard tied to Woonan’s name.

Otaku Consensus

One Piece: The Movie is best treated as a compact early-franchise snapshot: Junji Shimizu’s direction keeps the theatrical side story short enough to avoid the bloat that weighs down weaker One Piece films, and viewers still single out a few fun Luffy beats plus the Usopp/Nami interplay. Its lasting limitation is relevance; compared with later standouts like One Piece Film: Strong World, it is widely seen as a modest, skippable-leaning tie-in rather than an essential chapter.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want early One Piece in its leanest theatrical form: pirates, ships, food jokes, swordplay, and super-powered shounen action without the continuity weight of later franchise movies. It works best for viewers who enjoy the pre-Grand Line texture of the crew, when the appeal is less about massive lore revelations and more about seeing Luffy’s stubborn energy bounce off a tight ensemble. If Strong World is the big franchise event, this is closer to an early Dragon Ball movie: brisk, simple, and built around immediately readable character chemistry. It also has value as a historical artifact, showing Toei Animation testing how Oda’s weekly-adventure rhythm could fit into a single theatrical package only months into the anime’s original run.

Key Characters

M
Monkey D. Luffy
Fans tend to remember this movie most for Luffy in distilled form: direct, physical, impulsive, and funniest when the film gives him a clean shounen problem to punch through.
N
Nami
Nami’s appeal here comes through in the crew dynamics, especially the practical, sharp-edged exchanges that reviewers have noted in her scenes with Usopp.
U
Usopp
Usopp stands out less as a power player than as a timing character, giving the film a human-scale comic counterweight to Luffy’s headfirst confidence.
E
El Drago
El Drago is the film’s purpose-built movie antagonist, a reminder of the early One Piece formula where a memorable pirate gimmick could anchor a self-contained adventure.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
This is the first One Piece theatrical movie, released on March 4, 2000, with Toei Animation translating the TV anime’s weekly adventure energy into a single-film format.
2
The film’s biggest structural advantage is brevity: contemporary fan commentary often describes it as thin, but also short enough that its weaker material does not drag.
3
Kouhei Tanaka is credited for the music, connecting the film to one of the most recognizable musical voices associated with the broader One Piece anime identity.
4
The script is by Michiru Shimada, while character design is credited to Noboru Koizumi and Kazuya Hisada, giving the film a production profile distinct enough to be catalogued separately from the main TV run.
5
Among viewers who revisit the early movies, the most consistently praised character material is not the treasure hook but the Luffy moments and the Usopp/Nami dynamic.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Its database footprint reflects a cult side-entry rather than a franchise landmark: MyAnimeList lists it at 7.1/10 from 87,973 votes, with a popularity ranking of #1724.
Fun fact 2: AniList records a slightly cooler reception at 68/100 and 279 favourites, matching the broader fan view that only a handful of One Piece movies become truly noteworthy.
Fun fact 3: The directing team was larger than the headline credit suggests: Junji Shimizu directed, with Hirotoshi Rissen, Moto Takada, and Junichi Fujise all credited as assistant directors.
Fun fact 4: AniList’s tag profile is unusually concentrated: Pirates is tagged at 97%, Super Power at 90%, and Shounen, Ensemble Cast, Male Protagonist, and Ships all sit at 79%.
Fun fact 5: Eiichirou Oda is credited as original creator, but the film is generally discussed by fans as an early side adventure rather than a major canon-relevance watch.