For the longest time, anime and manga fans have compared Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece and Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto to find out which one of the two franchises is better. While Naruto fans believe that the characters of Naruto are better, One Piece fans believe that the world-building of Oda’s magnum opus is unbeaten.
Although fans have been comparing the two series, both One Piece and Naruto are completely different from each other in a lot of ways. One follows the journey of a pirate who wants to be the Pirate King; the other follows the adventures of a shinobi who is working hard towards his goal of becoming the Hokage of his village.
However, the main thing that has kept the two series at the top of their industries is the competition between their manga creators. Both Oda and Kishimoto have battled out their rivalry by trying to make their masterpieces the best. And Kishimoto even found a dark way to compete against One Piece and not let Naruto fall behind.
The Darkness of Naruto
In 2013, Masashi Kishimoto was featured in a Weekly Shonen Jump interview where he compared the two stories and pointed out the real differences between One Piece and Naruto. A section of the interview was translated by @sandman_AP and posted on X, where the manga creator revealed how he competed against One Piece by killing characters.
Kishimoto stated:
One Piece is basically a light-hearted story, so I always think of Naruto as going the opposite way. I try to make Naruto a more serious battle by killing characters, since Oda said he doesn’t kill many characters. Otherwise, Naruto wouldn’t be popular enough.
According to the manga creator, One Piece may have its dark moments, but overall, it is a fun-loving and relaxed series. Therefore, he had to take Naruto in the opposite direction of Oda’s masterwork, and he chose the one thing that Oda hates most. He decided to make Naruto more serious by killing the characters in the story, which ultimately made Naruto popular.
The Brightness of One Piece
While Kishimoto’s plan to make Naruto darker than One Piece worked, it didn’t make Eiichiro Oda fall behind. Naruto may be darker in terms of death and destruction, but One Piece has its own dark moments as it deals with issues like slavery, discrimination, trafficking, genocide, corruption, monarchy, etc.
However, the only thing that Oda tries to avoid as much as possible is the death of the characters. He believes that the story of every arc needs to end with a celebration with the Straw Hat Pirates enjoying their adventure. Thus, he makes sure that almost every arc ends on a happy note and motivates them to move on to the next adventure.
Thus, overall, One Piece is a mixture of both dark and bright elements, but the bright elements take center stage as he doesn’t want One Piece fans to feel gloomy and sad when the final moments of one of the best anime and manga series of all time arrive.
You can watch Naruto on Hulu and One Piece on Crunchyroll.
