Marathoning: it’s not just for people who leave their house anymore!

(Disclaimer: I am not saying you don’t leave your house, I’m saying that I don’t leave my house.)

Marathoning a series is where a fan continuously reads or watches or otherwise consumes a series for a long periods of time. Marathons can take hours or days or even longer. I’m basically a professional at it and let me tell you, One Piece is a great series to marathon.

Many of us read the manga and watch the One Piece anime as it updates weekly, and I definitely get a certain joy from the anticipation to the theories to the shocking reveals over and over again. Sometimes I just don’t want to stop. I want to see more of the characters I love, and how the plot to progresses and to feel those strong emotional moments. So you know what I do? I marathon. I reread or rewatch my favorite arcs to quench that One Piece thirst until I’m ready to go back to weekly pacing.

It’s never been easier in the One Piece fandom to marathon the series. While yes, I do highly recommend that you buy the One Piece volumes either physically or in virtual form, there are still places where you can find the whole series online. You’re going to have to put up with absolutely shit translations for most of it, especially the earlier things, but it is possible. (But still, buying the manga and actually supporting the series and getting a great official translation is by far the absolute best way to marathon it please please please do it). And guess what? It’s even easier to marathon the anime. Do you have a subscription to Hulu? Bam, One Piece. Crunchyroll? Guess what, also One Piece. How about the official One Piece site? There you go. There are subbed and dubbed options for those who prefer one or the other. Hulu doesn’t even pull a Netflix and ask me if I want to keep going after a few hours, because Hulu knows what I’m all about and that’s an endless stream of anime. Do you not have easy access to the internet, but access to plenty of money somehow? You can also buy the One Piece Voyage Sets and keep the fun going with marathons and even cast commentary. And if none of that is available in your country, there are places that you can access One Piece unofficially online. But if you can, do it legally!

So having the access to marathon One Piece is very easy, but why do it? Unless you are watching or reading One Piece for the first time, marathoning it isn’t going to involve reading new information. You know the characters and you know the twists. However, something that I love taking back with me when I decided to do another marathon is hindsight. I love going back to arcs that are many years earlier in the series, knowing what I know now, and trying to fit things up or guessing how Oda’s been setting the stage for things yet to come. I often come up with totally new theories that I would never have thought of if I hadn’t taken the time to go back and just do a hard marathon of the material.

A big plus of marathoning for me, which is often pointed out by other fans, is the way it can make the story flow so much better. With weekly releases, it’s a constant start and stop and you can forget things that happened ten chapters ago because that was over two months ago. It can be hard to keep things straight without constantly going back over it and especially when you have new information each week to plug into theories. However, when you marathon an arc, there are no constant starts and stops. Beyond breaks that you take (please don’t forget to nourish yourself, sleep, and bathe during a marathon, everyone will thank you for it), your reading or watching doesn’t get constantly interrupted and if you’re someone that is trying to pay major attention to details. People tend to complain during arcs they read weekly that they can get arc fatigue or that the pacing is so slow, but when they marathon the arcs go by much faster and slow pacing in the storyline isn’t as big of a deal.

And honestly, sometimes the biggest reason to marathon One Piece is just because we love it so much. “It’s just one episode/chapter more, and then I’ll go to bed.” Sure you will. But man, don’t you remember how great the next part of the arc is? You can’t stop now! Keep going, keep going. Getting sucked into One Piece is so easy and losing track of time and how long you’ve spent with it is at this point par for form. Sometimes it’s even worse when you are marathoning material that you’ve already gone over because you know what good points are coming up and you can’t wait to get to them, but then of course, you know which great moments come after those again and again.

So whether you are a newbie to the series or someone who just wants to repeat an already excellent adventure, go forth and have fun and don’t be ashamed at how long you spend doing it! Today I start my own marathon journey, in which I watch the entire One Piece anime, filler and all. How long will it take? How many tears will I shed? Will I still be living by the end of it? All are excellent questions. I guess we’ll just have to see when I cross that finish line.

“Fort Knight” is a monthly editorial by Jillian Knight written exclusively for the One Piece Podcast website.

If you want to ask me a question or need any cheering on for your personal OP marathon, you can post here or at my Twitter @PiratessUnluck.