Short-Term Focused Cover Page Serials

Short-Term Focused Cover Page Serials (短期集中表紙連載 Tanki Shūchū Hyōshi Rensai^? ), usually shortened to Cover Stories or Cover Arcs, are a series of supplemental stories told through the cover pages of select chapters. With few exceptions, they focus on the activities of various antagonists and side-characters after their initial encounters with the Straw Hat Pirates.

Though easily overlooked, cover arcs are as canonical as the manga proper, many having introduced or explained elements pivotal to the main storyline—e.g. Vice-Admiral Garp.

(It should be noted that, despite similar—sometimes identical—construction, cover arcs are distinct from the Where They Are Now series, which follow a different numbering.)

Overview

Cover arcs follow a simpler, more disjointed storytelling format than the manga proper; their pages are never subdivided into panels, and their few speech bubbles always use pictograms or simple words in English. Each installment delivers the majority of its dialogue and narration in a page-bottom caption, which also gives the particular installment’s part-number.

Unlike the “main” story arcs, each cover arc has an official title, typically printed on every installment except the first (which instead counts off the total number of cover arcs serialized thus far). Reflecting this, most cover arcs keep their protagonists obscured—or outright hidden—in the first installment, effectively challenging readers to predict their identity from context clues.

Cover arcs are always printed in black-and-white, never color; on weeks Shonen Jump runs One Piece as a color feature, any ongoing cover arc will be interrupted by a color spread.

Complete Listing

By Eiichiro Oda’s official count, there have been twenty-four cover arcs thus far.

Sea of Survival: Super Rookies Saga

Buggy’s Crew Adventure Chronicles

Diary of Koby-Meppo

Jango’s Dance Paradise

Hatchan’s Sea-Floor Stroll

Wapol’s Omnivorous Hurrah

Ace’s Great Blackbeard Search

Gedatsu’s Accidental Blue-Sea Life

Miss Goldenweek’s “Operation: Meet Baroque Works”

Enel’s Great Space Operations

CP9’s Independent Report

Straw Hat’s Separation Serial

The Final Sea: The New World Saga

From the Decks of the World

Caribou’s Kehihihihi in the New World

Solo Journey of Jinbe, Knight of the Sea

From the Decks of the World: The 500,000,000 Man Arc

The Stories of the Self-Proclaimed Straw Hat Grand Fleet

“Gang” Bege’s Oh My Family

Anime and Manga Differences

Despite their Canonical status, the majority of cover stories have not been adapted by the anime, and the existing adaptations have received widely varying treatments:

• “Buggy’s Crew Adventure Chronicles” and “Diary of Koby-Meppo”—and, much later, the Straw Hat’s Separation Serial—were adapted into full-length episodes. Due to the stories’ compressed format, these episodes frequently added new scenes and dialogue to expand the material without (deliberately) contradicting it, or the wider continuity.
• “Wapol’s Omnivorous Hurrah” was adapted into a short montage during the Levely Arc, framed as a reminiscence by the present-day Wapol.
  • “Caribou’s Kehihihihi in the New World” was adapted into a similar montage during the Wano Country Arc (though illustrated purely with stills, and excluding more than half of the manga installments).
• “The Stories of the Self-Proclaimed Straw Hat Grand Fleet” had its Cavendish, Bartolomeo, Ideo, Hajrudin, and Orlumbus arcs briefly portrayed during the Levely Arc; unlike the above, no attempt was made to adapt the actual storylines.

Apart from these, the anime has faithfully adapted the cover stories’ aftereffects whenever they appear in the main storyline —e.g. Hatchan returning in the Sabaody Archipelago Arc as a civilian chef—but never the stories themselves. At most, elements introduced by cover stories are given brief cameos, or else repurposed for anime-original material. The reasons for this remain unknown (notwithstanding fan theories that stories not focusing on the Straw Hat Pirates—and Luffy in particular—are commercially unpopular in Japan).

Merchandise

Outside the standard manga volumes, several sources have been dedicated to compiling cover arcs:

• Bandai’s Visual Adventure card series, which adapted them—along with many other Cover Page pieces—in full color. This series was discontinued about halfway through Jango’s Dance Paradise.^[1]
  • Several years after, these cards were included as bonus unlockables in Grand Battle! 2.
• The first four databooks (which always resize the installments to fit two, three, or even four to a page, and add extra narration from the protagonists’ perspective):
  • Red compiles the Buggy’s Crew Adventure Chronicles.
  • Blue compiles the Diary of Koby-Meppo.
  • Yellow compiles Hatchan’s Sea-Floor Stroll.
  • Green compiles every cover arc from the pre-timeskip era.
• Most recently, the One Piece Doors! collections have reprinted them all at full (tankoban) size, alongside all the manga’s non-color cover pages.

Trivia

• Currently, “From the Decks of the World” stands as the longest cover story overall, at 48 installments. “Caribou’s Kehihihihi in the New World” stands as the longest with a single protagonist and plot, at 46.
  • Discounting the Straw Hat Separation Serial, “Wapol’s Omnivorous Hurrah” is the shortest, at 23 installments.

References

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