Demon Slayer Can Teach One Piece a Major Box Office Lesson

One Piece is the indisputable champion of the manga world, to the point at which its staggering sales are practically unnecessary in light of how popular it is worldwide. Still, with its 516.6 million copies being hundreds of millions more sold than any other contender, it’s left its mark. Despite all this, One Piece falls short in one key arena.

Part of the key victories of anime and manga is in how they’ve crept into the mainstream, like via memes, celebrities’ favorite series, or key merchandise. Yet, One Piece still has one vital arena it still hasn’t conquered outside of anime, manga, or live-action, and that’s the box office, with Demon Slayer pulling ahead instead.

One Piece Lags Behind Demon Slayer in One Mainstream Arena

One Piece has never technically struggled at the box office, although Film: Red’s $170-200 million dollar earnings (per Box Office Mojo and The-Numbers) or $246 million on optimistic conversions, falls short of anime’s movie greats. Instead, One Piece sits at #10 in the top-grossing anime movies, beneath Studio Ghibli classics, The First Slam Dunk, Makoto Shinkai’s works, and Demon Slayer.

It’s rather easy to find stories of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle’s astounding successes, crushing both the MCU and DCU at this point in the year. With winnings in excess of approximately $648 million, the series handily made back its $20 million budget, making it one of the most profitable comic or graphic novel adaptations in history.

What’s incredible is that Infinity Castle isn’t even raising the bar that much higher than the previous anime movie record-holder, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. The latter movie’s release during the COVID-19 pandemic saw it becoming 2020’s highest-grossing movie. Despite One Piece Film: Red releasing in 2022, it failed to grasp those numbers for a pretty clear reason.

Demon Slayer Makes Its Movies Required Viewing

The most apparent answer for how Demon Slayer stays ahead of One Piece is that it features canonical anime sourced directly from the manga, with its movies being the exclusive ways to continue the story. While you can wait for the anime to inevitably be broken up into episodes on Crunchyroll, the “Fear of Missing Out” kicks in.

This marketing strategy is shrewd, and the public doesn’t seem to mind, but I’ve always been skeptical. For years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s promises of integrating its TV shows and movies felt like they were coercing me to consume on multiple platforms, almost becoming homework. But it also led me to Daredevil, so it wasn’t all bad.

With Demon Slayer, however, it’s been part of the experience since Mugen Train ushered in season 2. What followed has been at times frustrating, for sure. I still remember seeing a friend walk out frustrated after To the Swordsmith Village, saying he didn’t realize it was mostly a recap. But this compilation, alongside To the Hashira Training, is becoming industry-standard.

Infinity Castle, though, has been marketed on another level entirely. Promised as part of a trilogy, effectively helping bridge one-third of the entire Demon Slayer story, it’s a meaty canonical treatment. Demon Slayer’s profitable canon movies are now thoroughly part of its DNA, which is certainly not how One Piece has approached the box office.

One Piece’s Movies Are Easygoing Outings for the Fans

During my months-long journey to catch up on One Piece, its movies naturally caught my curiosity. I’ve even learned about particularly strong canonical One Piece villains through One Piece Film: Strong World. But the most I can say about One Piece Film: Red is that beyond being well animated, it’s great for Ado and Shanks fans, and that’s about it.

One Piece’s movies feel almost more like Pokemon films, in that they’re non-canon romps, with some, like Mamoru Hosoda’s Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island, being oddly great with a bold divergence. But beyond the most passionate fans wishing to see Luffy’s next adventures, One Piece hasn’t unlocked its greatest box office potential.

To some extent, One Piece doesn’t truly need to conquer the film world, especially as it handily beats any box office cumulative totals of the other Shonen Big Three with Naruto and Bleach not coming anywhere close. One Piece might not be the true ultimate blockbuster franchise yet, but its position as a Toei Animation heavyweight affords a different leverage.

Per Toei Animation’s FY2025 Q4 earnings report, and indeed other reports preceding it, the animation company’s biggest individual wins aren’t from film gross or streaming rights or DVD sales, but from licensing. This includes gaming, merchandise, and collectibles like the One Piece card game. Despite short-term gains like The First Slam Dunk, licensing is typically Toei’s safest bet.

Keeping an anime running in perpetuity like One Piece has been for over 26 years, allows merchandising to stay in the here-and-now while catering to nostalgic crowds once it’s over. The One Piece video games may leave something to be desired, but the relatively new card game and countless adorable characters featured on merchandise are wildly attractive.

One Piece Needs to Make Its Final Arc a Movie to Match Demon Slayer’s Success

One can easily argue that One Piece is far more accomplished as a series than Demon Slayer. However, turning its final arc into a movie would be the most obvious answer to how One Piece could generate the best shots at profits high enough to exceed Toei’s licensing results, if at least for a year.

While the anime is committed to televising the Elbaph Arc, a film-oriented budget on top of Toei’s already wonderfully-improved One Piece anime would make for an enticing experience. Whether it’s a final battle with the likes of the Five Elders, Blackbeard, or even Imu, fans would likely come in droves to see Luffy and the Straw Hats reach Laugh Tale.

I personally see this as a cynical move, as it breaks with a tradition built across decades with now multiple generations growing up watching One Piece either on TV or streaming every weekend. On top of it being either paywalled or packed with ad breaks, charging a subsequent fee to see the final chapters in cinemas feels greedy.

However, unlike other studios like Pierrot who have altered their models to match Ufotable’s Demon Slayer success, Toei and One Piece are very similar to their origins, standing as a stubborn 1100+ episode monolith. I openly welcome them to try and match Demon Slayer’s success — it worked with The First Slam Dunk — but I have heavy doubts.

But the elements are all there: an epic conclusion, a cathartic defeat of the oppressive World Government, and the Straw Hats seeing what made Roger’s crew laugh so hard they cried. Cap it off with a rendition of “memories” and the crew sailing away with Laboon while playing “Binks’ Brew” and you’ve got a movie.

One Piece doesn’t need to do this to affirm its status as a generationally successful anime and manga franchise. Its volume sales, merchandise, and an actually good live-action adaptation all speak for themselves. But in order to strike true box office treasure and beat its licensing revenue, it will need to make a canon movie.