The One Piece
While at one point it wasn’t necessarily a sure thing that Netflix’s live action One Piece would get a second season, but now? Netflix is all aboard the One Piece train in multiple ways.
Not only did that season 2 get greenlit, but now Netflix has announced they are doing an all-new adaptation of the original One Piece manga, starting with the East Blue Saga.
This is called ‘The One Piece’ so I guess the listing from the live action series can be different, and it’s being produced by WIT Studio, who you would know from SPY x FAMILY and Attack on Titan.
Netflix released this teaser announcing the project, which has perhaps a very minimal look at the art, or at least early drafts of it. But it’s not much, and details, like a release date, are scarce:
Why do this? Well, considering that One Piece, the original anime, is now over a thousand episodes long, this part of the series aired really, really early on. As in, the manga portion ran from 1997 to 1999, and the anime adapted it from 1999-2001, over 20 years ago now. While there’s nothing wrong with the original version, it does stand to reason that with One Piece taking off in live action, that Netflix wants to capitalize on newfound interest in the series with this newer take on the anime. The East Blue saga is indeed what the live action show adapted in the first place, so there will be a lot of overlap there.
Is the plan to…keep doing this alongside new seasons of the live show? That would be a bit odd, but hey, why not.
While we know these two projects are coming from Netflix, we have no dates for the anime or for season 2 of One Piece yet. There is, however, more of a discussion about the new anime on the official One Piece site. Here’s WIT Studio President Takeshi Wada, who actually issues a call for volunteers. In another section, WIT says “release is still a long way off, and it is a project that will take even more time to complete.” Here’s Wada:
“After thinking through many concerns before taking on this new adventure, I decided to discuss it with everyone and take a stand. “ONE PIECE” is an anime with over 1000 episodes created by everyone at Toei Animation. I am humbled by the weight of our history and the prospect of charting a new trajectory. We aim to electrify people all over the world by carefully depicting the challenges of pursuing dreams, friendship with friends, and hope for the future, as depicted by Eiichiro Oda. In order to deliver this work to every corner of the world, we still need the help of all creators. Would you like to participate in this project and engrave your name on the film? WIT STUDIO is looking forward to your participation!!”
So uh, go apply to WIT I guess if you want to help make this happen? Not really asking for specific roles there, but maybe there are job listings somewhere I can’t find. Anyway, this sounds like an ambitious project, but one that it seems like we may not see realized for years.
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