@RobbyBevard:
World building.
Character building.
Canon source material.
Possible later signifigance?
Endings for characters we spent dozens of episodes watching.
I think you're giving these cover stories way more credit that they are merited. We don't HAVE to see that stuff and One Piece wouldn't be an underdeveloped world or have underdeveloped characters without them. Some of them are actually pretty lame in my opinion, like the Wapol stuff. What happens when you take the lamest villain in all of one piece and give him his own side story? A snoozefest.
They're all great reasons the material should be adapted. Theres not a single good reason they shouldn't.
Well since the two cover stories which were adapated were about as boring as any filler episode I think that should be taken into consideration. If everything were peferct they wouldn't have need for filler or to stretch out the arcs or anything, but as it is they need to in order to let the manga have a healthy lead over the anime. I would prefer them to adapt the cover stories over filler sure, but I wouldn't expect them to be anymore entertaining. Those ten panels of cover stories really don't transfer well into anime really.
It showed how he and Caimie and Papug met, and meant the second we saw Caimie, we knew Hachi would be back. Its a level you don't get without the background info.
Again it's interesting and neat, but not necessary to the story. I don't really give a flip how they met. How did Zoro meet his bodyguard buddies? There is no canonical answer to that question, but it is something most readers and viewers should be able to discern for themselves.
Except when they're incredibly important, like learning of the lost history, Enel getting a moon army, CP9 becoing pirates and swearing to come back, Ax Hand Morgan being set on the loose again, Wapol creating Wapolmetal which was used during the Marineford arc, seeing how Buggy met Alvida, why Django is suddenly randomly in the marines….
(something that COMPLRTELY confused me when the anime got there. PLUS he was friends with fullbody? It was completely random and made NO sense at all... except oh wait, there actually was a story that told all about it. it wasn't a random drop in with no explanation in the manga.)
Well I said that the eneru one is important, but that is yet to be seen.
If CP9 turns up again I imagine most people will understand how those people became pirates, it's really not that hard.
Its part of the world and until the end we don't know what will be important and payoff, but considering how many of the coverstories HAVE come back to deal with the main story? It's important.
The other stuff you mention isn't important, warpolmetal? Really what the heck is that stuff? I don't care how Django became a marine (though that is one I would actually like to watch for the dance party), and I don't need to know how Ax hand escaped it is not important or a huge stretch of the imagination. How did Buggy meet alvida? I don't remember because its really not important. What is important is that they did meet.
Certainly much more than Hancock filler where she has a dream sequence for 20 minutes.
Sure it would be better than filler, I've said that before.
But as it is now we can just skip filler anyways if we don't want to watch it. But I get an impression from this thread that many people aren't interested in watching the anime but rather want to flame others who do enjoy it.