Crunchyroll to lock most One Piece episodes behind a paywall

One Piece anime lovers, there is some not-so-good news for you. Crunchyroll, the anime streaming service, has announced a new change coming to its platform for One Piece. In a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) from its official account, Crunchyroll confirmed that to watch most of One Piece's content on the anime streaming platform, users would require a subscription.

Notably, the first 206 episodes of One Piece will be available for free, spanning from East Blue to Sky Island arcs. Thereafter, all the following arcs will be hidden behind a paywall and will shift to Premium Membership. This could be Sony's way of generating money after it spent over $1 billion in acquiring Crunchyroll. Moreover, it will affect both newcomers and long-time fans of the anime differently.

Here are the changes:

• December 23, 2024: Episodes from Water 7 to Fishman Island will require a Premium Membership.
• January 20, 2025: Episodes from Punk Hazard through Whole Cake Island, along with six specials, will be locked behind Paywall.
• February 17, 2025: Episodes from the Reverie arc, Wano Kuni, and the latest Egghead Island arc will also be available with a subscription.

For newcomers, the change ensures that they have enough content to understand and experience Monkey D. Luffy's (the series' main character) journey for free. However, those who have been in the series for a long time will now be required to pay a fee to access the series' content. The Premium Subscription comes with its own perks such as ad-free watching, early access to content, etc.

The best part is that all the 1122 episodes of One Piece anime are available for free on Crunchyroll, and have been free for over a decade. So, One Piece anime lovers can get their downloading hat on, and grab the episodes before they are locked behind a paywall.