One Piece is one of the most popular anime ever made, amassing hundreds of millions of fans and viewers over the last 25 years. Despite having well over 1000 episodes available, the series is surprisingly accessible, with almost the entire series available entirely for free on Crunchyroll. Unfortunately, that’s set to change soon.

Crunchyroll has announced that, starting later this month, most of the series will be locked behind a Crunchyroll Premium subscription. The Sony-owned anime streaming giant says that the first 206 episodes – covering from the East Blue arc to the Sky Island arc – will remain available to free watchers, but everything after that will be thrown behind the paywall.

One Piece anime straw hat crew
One Piece is a pirate anime stretching 1100 episodes over 25 years, focused on Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirate crew.

Toei Animation

All 1112 episodes are still free for the next few weeks, but on December 3, the Water 7 arc to the Fishman Island arc will move to subscription only, followed by the Punk Hazard to Whole Cake Island arcs on January 20, 2025, and the Reverie, Wano Kuni, and Egghead Island arcs on February 17.

The response from fans has not been positive, to say the least. The replies to the announcement tweet are filled with upset One Piece fans, with one saying that it’s a “terrible change” and another saying that the choice shows “unspeakable levels of greed.” Others have pointed out that having over a thousand episodes of a popular series available for free probably wasn’t a particularly sustainable business model in the long run, and were shocked that it was available for as long as it was. Crunchyroll has not provided a reason for the decision to move much of the series behind a subscription.

The decision comes after the announcement that the One Piece anime would go on hiatus for a few months, with the series not set to return until April 2025. In its place, Crunchyroll – and other services and outlets around the world with broadcasting rights to the series – have been showing an abridged version of the Fishman Island arc, which features enhanced and remastered visuals.