One Piece Just Aired The Saddest Anime Episode Of 2025, And Fans Are Losing It

"One Piece" is a legendary anime, one whose reputation (and incredibly high number of episodes) make it quite an intimidating endeavor for newcomers. Still, we have advocated in favor of embarking on this unforgettable journey before. This is a show that seems too long at first, until you start catching up and realize there are actually not enough episodes. For 25 years, "One Piece" has told the funny, exciting, epic, action-packed, lore-filled story of Monkey D. Luffy as he sets out on a journey to find the legendary One Piece treasure and become the king of the pirates. That's the foundation upon which manga creator Eiichiro Oda built one of the best and most fleshed-out universes in all of modern fiction.

Indeed, "One Piece" is a universe that feels lived-in and fleshed-out, one that can hold countless numbers of stories and feels like it changes and evolves even when we're not watching. This is the secret sauce of the anime, which can go back and tie up loose ends decades later seamlessly, introducing characters we've never seen before and making them fit perfectly in the stories we are already very familiar with from 15+ years ago. For an anime with over 1,100 episodes, the fact that "One Piece" can still shock audiences even after 25 years is a testament to the power of this epic anime.

And shock it did in July 2025, when it released what fans online are calling the single saddest episode of the entire show, and one of the saddest episodes of TV this year.

"One Piece" has spent the last few weeks telling the story of Kuma, a man we initially met as a stone-cold villain with incredible power and no sympathy for his enemies. Through flashbacks, we learn of his backstory as the last member of his race, how he was forced into slavery, saw his dad killed in front of him, was sent to a sadistic "Most Dangerous Game" situation, and experienced a lot more suffering. The most recent episode saw Kuma fulfilling a deal he made with the World Government to literally sacrifice his free will and become a RoboCop cyborg for the government in order to gain a cure for his adopted daughter's illness.

Episode 1,136 is a brilliant episode of television. For the last couple of years, producer Toei Animation has allowed for more individual freedom in episode direction and visuals, with directors getting to apply their unique stamp and animators getting to go wild interpreting and adapting the manga. This episode shows arguably the best example of why that is a good idea, with Yasunori Koyama using the medium of television to best translate the story. Since most of the episode is told through memories, Koyama and his team apply a filter that makes the flashbacks look like they were shot on celluloid. They play with abstract imagery to show the subjectivity of Kuma's memories and highlight the emotions he feels as he surrenders his free will and essentially his soul.

Eiichiro Oda has included a father/daughter story in almost every story arc of "One Piece" since he became a father himself in the show's post-timeskip era, but none are as heartbreaking as the story of Kuma and Bonny.

This is a show with some extremely emotional episodes, but none get half as emotionally devastating as episode 1,136. It even recontextualizes one of the show's finest episodes by showing Kuma didn't just obliterate the Straw Hats when they first fought for fun, but to teach them, and help them get better. Kuma silently placed all his hopes on Luffy and helped him become the man he is today.

That's the key to why this episode is so powerful. It's not enough to just give audiences a sad story they can cry over. Rather, it's the fact that Kuma's life, for how sad it was, touched every aspect of the world of "One Piece" that makes it such a tragedy. Kuma never thought he deserved to live, or that anyone benefitted from him being here. As Dr. Vegapunk tells him right before taking away his will, "To live is to cause others trouble," and Kuma's death will be trouble for everyone who has ever loved him — and there are many, many people who did. What was originally introduced as just a hulking, silent monster was a hero, a revolutionary, a friend, a king, a pastor, a father, and a martyr. He helped save countless lives, even when he was forced into working for the Marines. He became a liberator of slaves during the God Valley Incident. He helped fight injustice with the Revolutionary Army and Luffy's dad. He's the reason the Straw Hat Pirates are alive. And in his very last act of free will, he asks to be programmed to protect the Straw Hats' ship until they get back to it, committing one last act of selflessness to help them on their journey.

Oda's greatest skill as a writer is connecting dots the readers never thought were meant to go together. He can and has woven a detailed, vast thread of lore and history, and with episode 1,136, it becomes clear that Kuma is close to the center of it all. Fans are losing their minds over the episode, and if you take a quick glance at YouTube, you'll see dozens of people crying their eyes out reacting to it. Even after a quarter of a century, even after more than 1,100 episodes, "One Piece" can still shock audiences.