The One Piece anime series has been on a roll lately with recent episodes garnering signigicant praise among critics and fans alike. The storytelling has been top-nothing and the animation and visuals are some of the best the series has seen.
But there seems to be a general consensus that the series is lacking when it comes to its sound effects. While there have been complaints from fans for years now, the One Piece fandom was shaken to see one of the show's actual animators come out and slam Toei Animation's sound team.
In a now deleted post on X/Twitter, One Piece animator Sota Shigetsugu called for Toei to fire the SFX team, calling their work "unprofessional."
"I think Toei should fire the One Piece sound team immediately," the deleted post reads. "It's unprofessional work."
While the criticism is harsh, it's not entirely without merit. Fans have long agreed that One Piece's sound effects are incredibly outdated and in need an overhaul. There are numerous complaints that Toei has been recycling the same SFX for decades. While the show's visuals and animation has evolved over the years, the audio design feels outdated, and now fans have really started to take notice.
Posting for the team to get fired on social media probably wasn't the best way to approach the situation though, which is probably why Shigetsugu ultimately deleted the post. But the damage is done and we all now know that even the show's animators are starting to get fed up with the lackluster sound design.
Despite the criticism, One Piece remains one of the most popular anime on air. Hopefully Shigetsugu's comments don't stir division within the show's staff, but rather inspires Toei to actually revamp its sound design and catch up tot he improved animation quality.
It's worth noting that WIT Studio is also working on a new anime adaptation of Eiichiro Oda's manga series. Titled The One Piece, the series will adapt the manga starting from the East Blue arc. One of the major improvements will hopefully be the show's sound design, especially for those starting to get fed up with Toei's SFX. The One Piece will stream exclusively on Netflix but no premiere date has been announced so far.