One Piece Production Manager Departs Series After Anime Season Finale

One Piece production manager Ryoya Kaneko announced on December 29 that he is departing the series following the Egghead Arc‘s finale on December 28. In a post to X (formerly Twitter), he said:

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“I’ll be stepping off the One Piece ship and moving on to another team. For about three years from the final of Wano Kingdom through the end of Egghead, I had the privilege of working as a production manager on One Piece.“

Kaneko is credited as a production manager (製作進行) on episodes 1030, 1041, 1047, 1053, 1058, 1062, 1068, 1075, 1081, 1087, 1093, 1099, 1106, 1114, 1120, 1131, 1136, 1142, and 1154.

One Piece will transition to a seasonal format, starting with the Elbaph Arc, which is set to debut on April 5. You can check out the Elbaph Arc trailer here. The plan is to adapt 1 chapter per anime episode, with a maximum of 26 episodes per year. Upcoming One Piece projects include a new film (see Eiichiro Oda discussing the film’s production difficulties here), the second and third seasons of the live-action adaptation, the remake anime by WIT Studio, One Piece: Heroines (see Nami and Robin character designs), and, of course, the manga, which Eiichiro Oda teased will finally reveal the “the man with the burn scar“ and potentially the “island that only the King of the Pirates had previously reached,” teasing a year of major encounters and pacing at a “breakneck speed.”

Source: Toei Animation Production Manager Ryoya Kaneko’s X (formerly Twitter)
©Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha, Toei Animation