One Piece's Elbaph Arc Anime Rating Crashes to 1 Star — Japan Blames Oda, Not the Studio

One Piece's anime has been airing its Elbaph arc for months, and its public viewer rating has now crashed into the 1-star range for the second time this arc — after briefly climbing back into the 2s on what commenters call planted five-star reviews. A Japanese reaction channel built a video around the collapse, and across 404 comments, the top comment (395 likes) draws a hard line: it's not the anime staff, and it's not the actors.

From there, the thread turns into a genuine post-mortem. Commenters who used to defend even the Wano Country arc say they're checking out, several single out creator Eiichiro Oda's current writing as the actual problem, and more than one points out that this is happening even though the anime is staying faithful to the manga — which, for this arc, some say has stopped being a compliment.

By the end, one line sums up the mood better than the rating itself does.

One Piece's anime has been airing its Elbaph arc for months, and according to a Japanese reaction channel, the show's public viewer rating has crashed into the 1-star range for the second time this arc — after briefly climbing back into the 2s on what commenters call planted five-star reviews. The video, built around that collapse and framed against the fallout of recent chapters, runs almost 400 comments deep, and it reads less like a normal comment section and more like a post-mortem being conducted in real time.

Start with how commenters describe the pattern itself — because several of them insist this isn't the first time the rating has bottomed out this arc, and they don't expect it to be the last.

And by their own count, this isn't a fringe complaint anymore. Commenters who spent years defending the show — including ones who say they used to argue in its corner during the Wano Country arc, generally regarded as one of the anime's high points — are showing up in this thread to say they've stopped.

Some of it is just blunt frustration aimed straight at the man behind the story, with no attempt to soften it.

That split — real praise for the production, real contempt for the writing — is the one thing almost everyone in the thread agrees on, and it repeats over and over as the comments go on.

It even flips one of anime fandom's usual compliments on its head. Being told an adaptation is faithful to the manga is normally the highest praise a Japanese fan can give a studio — here it's being used as an accusation.

And several commenters aren't expecting any of it to get better, since they figure the anime is only going to keep tracking the manga's current arc as closely as it has been.

Which, in one sentence, is the whole thread: the better the crew making this show does their job, the more obvious it becomes that the job they're stuck adapting is the problem. Nobody in the comments is asking Toei to try harder — they're asking Oda to.