The One Piece Is Real

Editor's Note: This entry contains spoilers for One Piece; read at your own caution.

About

The One Piece Is Real is a catchphrase shouted by the character Whitebeard in the anime series One Piece at the time of his death. The phrase became a meme spammed in comments online, as well as part of video edits featuring the character, often set to the Kanye West song "Dark Fantasy," particularly featuring the lyrics "can we get much higher." The trend is also closely associated with the One Piece Cock Edits meme where users draw large penises on various characters from One Piece by integrating them into the original panel from the show.

Origin

On January 30th, 2011, episode 485 "Settling the Score – Whitebeard vs. The Blackbeard Pirates" of the anime series One Piece (based on the manga of the same name) premiered. In the episode, the character Whitebeard dies, shouting, "The One Piece is real!" as his final words.^[1] On March 15th, 2021, YouTube^[2] channel Anime Clips uploaded a clip from the English dub of the show showing the scene, gaining over 23,000 views in one year (shown below).

The One Piece is real!

On August 3rd, 2020, the Twitter artist dhlinez^[6] uploaded an NSFW image of Whitebeard with a penis proportional to his body size. This image was later used with the audio on September 17th, 2021, by the Twitter user @biscuittts,^[7] who used a rough take of the original dub audio sourced from the show as the precursor to the video meme format that would surface a year later. His inspiration came from an earlier post on September 3rd by Twitter user @BestBuyMilk^[8] who posted the quote on top of the earlier artwork by dhlinez.

This audio and the visage of Whitebeard as he is standing were later used as a video meme in July 2022, using the original version of the Whitebeard pictures after an edited version of the phrase started to circulate featuring edited photos in which Whitebeard and several other characters in One Piece were shown to have large penises that were made prior in 2020.

On April 23rd, 2022, Twitter^[15] artist @onepiececock, known for his cock edits of One Piece characters, posted a cock edit of Chopper, garnering over 200 likes in six months. On July 24th, the first version of these edited Whitebeard videos was posted to YouTube by the channel Boxnetic,^[3] where it went on to gain over 10,000 views in two months (shown below).

Spread

On July 31st, 2022, the TikTok account Pwnchy^[4] uploaded a TikTok in which Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks was the one screaming the catchphrase in classic Chipmunk sound, earning over 5,000 likes in two months (shown below).

On August 23rd, Redditor DeanDealsMang posted a Cameo where he got Patrick Fabian, who plays Howard Hamlin from Better Call Saul, to say the phrase "the one piece is real," garnering over 23,000 upvotes in a month (shown below).

The phrase and videos featuring Whitebeard screaming it started to incorporate the song "Dark Fantasy" from Kanye West, with the iconic line "can we get much higher, so high" becoming integral to the meme. The majority of the images used in the videos have popular cock edits made of them, many by Twitter user @onepiececock, adding a layer of IYKYK humor to the videos.

On August 25th, TikToker^[5] @eijaks posted an edit of the Cameo where the "Dark Fantasy" verse plays as it transitions to the Whitebeard picture, garnering over 600,000 views in a month (shown below, left). The phrase also became a popular spam comment on TikTok.

The phrase inspired numerous edits over the following weeks, some using carefully censored versions of "One Piece Cock Edit" images where the penises are just off screen (see related memes). For example, on August 28th, TikToker^[9] @.alessi0 posted an edit using the NSFW memes to TikTok that garnered over 3.4 million views in a month (shown below).

On August 29th, Lessons in Meme Culture posted a video to YouTube^[10] about the meme, garnering over 885,000 views in a month. On August 31st, YouTuber NoThisnot Joel posted an edit that gained over 800,000 views in a month (shown below).

Redraws

In late September 2022, the format gained popularity as a template for redraws, with users redrawing one or more images used in the meme. On September 25th, 2022, Twitter^[12] user @sealc4nfly posted the earliest The One Piece Is Real redraw, a Chainsaw Man version that gained over 14,500 retweets and 102, 400 likes in two weeks (shown below), also starting the Chopper Crying redraws.

On September 26th, Twitter^[13] user @AndromedaZach posted a Pokemon-themed redraw of three of the images, writing, "CAN WE GET MUCH HIGHER," garnering over 3,000 likes in three days (shown below).

On September 27th, Twitter^[14] user @joeriiin posted a Legend of Zelda version of the meme, redrawing four commonly used images, garnering over 65,000 likes in two days (examples shown below). Of the commonly drawn images, the image of Chopper Crying became the most popular, inspiring numerous redraws of that scene alone.

Related Memes

One Piece Cock Edits

One Piece Cock Edits is a series of edits made to several characters from the anime and manga series One Piece drawn to have large penises that integrate into the panel they originated from. Though the original pictures were made starting in 2020, they started to resurface again in mid-2022 as a video format.

Chopper Crying

Chopper Crying refers to a viral image of Chopper from One Piece crying in the snow with visible breath coming from his mouth. The screenshot comes from the ninth One Piece movie, Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in Winter, Miracle Sakura. It became popular as a reaction image and a source of redraws and ironic memes in 2022 in connection with the popularity of the One Piece Is Real and One Piece Cock Edit memes.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References