New Naruto anime steals One Piece Gear 5 hype in less than 9 hours

This weekend saw major announcements for two major franchises - One Piece and Naruto. While One Piece announced the premiere date for Luffy's Gear 5 first appearance, the latter revealed the premiere date for the special episodes that are set to be released as part of the anime's 20th year anniversary. That said, given the response to the two announcements, it seems like there is a clear winner.

One Piece's Luffy Gear 5 moment has been highly anticipated by fans as many claim that it will break the internet. Last time, when Goku attained his Ultra Instinct form, the Dragon Ball Super anime had a one-hour special premiere. Toei Animation has been trying to create a similar hype for Luffy's Gear 5 moment. However, it seems like it would not end up being as big as people predicted it to be.

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New Naruto anime's announcement response surpasses One Piece Gear 5 hype

One Piece's official Twitter page revealed Luffy's Gear 5's first appearance release date on July 22, 2023. A day after that, Naruto's official Twitter page revealed the premiere date for Naruto's special episodes on July 23, 2023.

Following the two announcments, an anime fan on Twitter @dasiennn pointed out how the new Naruto anime's announcement hype had far surpassed that of One Piece's Gear 5 announcement. Only nine hours after the Naruto announcement was unveiled, the Twitter post had managed to receive more than 30,000 likes and more than double the views than One Piece's post.

Monkey D. Luffy as seen in the Gear 5 announcement video (Image via Toei Animation)

At the time of writing, despite being uploaded a day later, the new Naruto anime's post has received over 105,000 likes and 10.8 million views. Meanwhile, the One Piece post has only received 44,500 likes and 3.3 million views. With this, fans were certain which anime was more popular than the other.

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How fans reacted to the hype comparison

Naruto fans took the opportunity to mock One Piece. Unlike the latter, which was spending a lot of money to promote Luffy's Gear 5 moment, the Naruto anime had only uploaded a Twitter post as part of its announcement. Nevertheless, Naruto's new anime had way more hype than one of the biggest moments in One Piece.

Several fans took the opportunty to claim that Naruto was a much better anime than One Piece. Thus, fans claimed how the latter could never become as good as Naruto.

This was followed by fans claiming how Naruto's Mangaka Masashi Kishimoto was much better than One Piece's Mangaka Eiichiro Oda. These comments did not sit right with the latter's fans as they responded back.

Some One Piece fans decided to respond by analyzing the two announcements. As per the calculations made by Twitter user @aXentOG, the engagements on the One Piece's post were much better than that of Naruto anime's post. The only reason why Naruto was ahead was because of the number of total views, which helped push the other engagements up.

Meanwhile, another fan also shared how the One Piece announcement had also been uploaded to YouTube and received a much better engagement. With that, fans tried to claim that the Naruto fans' statements were delisional and incorrect.

Meanwhile, other One Piece fans were confident that Luffy's Gear 5 moment will manage to break the internet. So, instead of trying to defend it against Naruto fans, the fans chose to wait till August 6, 2023. They believed that the hype for the same will automatically shut down Naruto fans' comments.