It was October 20 when the One Piece anime first began in 1999, and the anime celebrates its 22nd anniversary on this day in 2021. Remembering the iconic first opening “We Are!” by Hiroshi Kitadani, you can’t help but appreciate how long and how amazing the franchise has entertained us. Eiichiro Oda begah the manga 2 years prior in July 1997, and it now has 100 published volumes. The most recent cover:
One Piece is commemorating the 100th volume which released on September 3rd and the upcoming anime episode 1000 (confirmed for November 21) with several projects. One of them is the “TWILIGHT” song by RADWIMPS, which has an awesome music video:
It was used in the recent “WE ARE ONE” video collection, which featured 5 episodes of mixed live-action and with some older anime scenes re-animated into modern animation. You can check them all out (titled by the animated parts):
Hayami Saori joined the cast as Yamato this year, and she talked in an interview about how excited she is for the role and to work with Luffy’s voice actress Tanaka Mayumi. We also got a special one-shot by Nisekoi author, covering Vivi’s farewell chapter. Then we got a voiced manga version of Ryuma’s canon prequel story, who we know as the legendary Wano samuray from whom Zoro got Shusui.
A Hollywood live-action series was also announced, and it’s yet to release cast info and more details. Finally Eiichiro Oda left a message for the fans with the release of volume 100. One Piece has had a huge year, and the 22nd anniversary for the anime will certainly be special. As we anticipate the next episode and chapter, we can only appreciate Oda-sensei and everything he’s given us so far.
Both the One Piece chapter 1029 and episode 996 release dates are set for next week on October 24. The anime will premiere in Japan at 9:30am JST, with the international version premiering 1h30m later. You can watch the anime on Funimation or Crunchyroll, while you can catch up to the latest One Piece manga chapter for free on either VIZ website or MANGA Plus. There’s also the Shonen Jump mobile app, which costs $2/month and allows ‘unlocking’ 100 chapters per day. The chapter arrives at 24:00JST.
Source: MANGA Plus, ONE PIECE.com Twitter
©Eiichiro Oda/Shueisha/ Fuji Television Network/ Toei Animation