It may have only been streaming for less than a week, but the chances are already looking pretty high that One Piece will avoid a fate to have stricken dozens upon dozens of original shows before it and be rewarded with a renewal from Netflix.
Thanks to huge first-week viewing of 140 million hours, any fears among fans of the source material that it would either be butchered and bungled in live-action or end up being ignored by casual audiences can surely be allayed, because the evidence is right there that subscribers all over the world have made a point of devouring all eight episodes as fast as they possibly can.
However, despite proving itself as must-see television and one of the biggest success stories to have premiered on Netflix so far this year, One Piece is a long way away from becoming a record-breaker. It may have reached number one in more countries than Wednesday did during its first weekend, but it cant hold a candle to the Addams Family spin-off’s preposterous 341 million hour debut.
Not only that, but the anime adaptation is also lagging well behind the 168 million hours racked up by The Night Agent, the 148 million hours of Bridgerton offshoot Queen Charlotte, the 193 million hours of the main show’s season 2, the 196 million hours of Ryan Murphy’s DAHMER: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, and the 142 million hours of Henry Cavill’s second run of episodes as Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher.
Make no mistake, though, One Piece is massive; it just isn’t massive enough to be one of Netflix’s biggest-ever launches.