For a long time, anime and manga fans have been comparing Eiichiro Oda's One Piece and Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto to find out which series is better. While Naruto fans believe that Naruto's characters are better, One Piece fans believe that the world building in Oda's masterpiece is unbeatable.
Although fans have compared the two series, One Piece and Naruto are completely different in many aspects. One follows the journey of a pirate who wants to become the Pirate King. The other follows the adventures of a ninja who is trying his best to achieve his goal of becoming the Hokage of his village.
However, the main thing that keeps these two series at the top of their industry is the competition between manga authors. Both Oda and Kishimoto have fought their competition, by trying to make their masterpieces the best. And Kishimoto even found a dark way to compete with One Piece, not letting Naruto fall behind.
In 2013, Masashi Kishimoto appeared in an interview with Weekly Shonen Jump, where he compared the two stories and pointed out the real differences between One Piece and Naruto. The Naruto manga author revealed how he competes with One Piece, which is to kill off characters.
Kishimoto said: “One Piece is basically a light-hearted story, so I always thought Naruto would go in the opposite direction. I tried to make Naruto a more serious battle by finishing off characters, because Oda said he doesn't let many characters die. Otherwise, Naruto wouldn't be popular enough.”
According to Masashi Kishimoto, One Piece may have its dark moments, but overall, it is a fun and lighthearted series. So he had to take Naruto in the opposite direction of Oda's masterpiece, and he chose the one thing Oda hated the most. He decided to make Naruto more serious by taking away the lives of the characters in the series, which ultimately made Naruto popular.
While Kishimoto's plan to make Naruto darker than One Piece worked, that doesn't mean Eiichiro Oda is behind. Naruto may be darker in terms of death and destruction, but One Piece has its own dark moments when it comes to issues like slavery, discrimination, human trafficking, corruption, and more.
The one thing Oda tries to avoid as much as possible is character death. He believes that each arc's story needs to end with a celebration with the Straw Hat Pirates enjoying their adventure. So he makes sure that almost every arc ends on a happy note and pushes them to continue on to the next adventure.
So overall, One Piece is a mix of both dark and light elements, but the light element is given more emphasis because the author 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 come.