The One Piece anime series turns 25 in just a few weeks, which means two things: 1) We're old and 2) It's time to celebrate.
To mark the occasion, a special episode adapting Tomohito Ohsaki’s Straw Hat Stories novel will air on October 20 (H/T Crunchyroll).
The One Piece Fan Letter anthology – which has never been released officially in the West – chronicles the larger-than-life personalities of Monkey D. Luffy and the rest of his pirate crew from the perspective of an everyday citizen. The stories focus on Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Robin, Sanji, Chopper, Usopp, Franky, and Brook.
A trailer, which you can see below, showcases the project – which is currently in a black-and-white art style. In it, a young girl rushes to deliver a letter.
One Piece, meanwhile, is still going strong as Luffy and his Straw Hats continue sailing the Grand Line in search of the mythical One Piece treasure. The anime is currently up to the Egghead arc of Eiichiro Oda's manga, while a One Piece remake is currently in the works from Studio Wit.
Speaking to Japanese outlet Real Sound, Studio Wit and Production IG president Takeshi Wada pointed to modern viewing formats as a contributing factor behind the decision to remake the epic saga.
Wada said (via machine translation): "For young people who are used to watching today's animation due to technological innovation, some may find it difficult to watch the images from 25 years ago, when One Piece started its animation broadcast, because of the different [ratio] format."
The live-action version is setting sail once more on Netflix next year. One Piece season 2 has cast several newcomers, while also teasing which arcs it will be adapting in the forthcoming episodes.
For more, check out our guides to new anime as well as the Bleach Thousand-Year Blood War season 3 release schedule and the latest on Jujutsu Kaisen season 3.
