‘One Piece’ Just Gave Fans an Eyeful of Reiju

There’s one particular moment of One Piece‘s Whole Cake Island arc fans have wanted to see animated since it was featured in the manga, and the Germa 66’s full transformation did not disappoint in the slightest.

But while the sequence featured major allusions to Toei’s Super Sentai franchise and magical girl anime, fans were struck by one transformation in particular: Sanji’s sister Reiju.

The scene was already a cause for hype given that fans learned that animator Naotoshi Shida was specifically brought on for the transformation sequence, and it shows in the nearly five minute transformation. While the rest of the Vinsmoke family gets more fierce transformative sequences drawing parallels to Super Sentai, Reiju’s was more of a reference to magical girl transformations.

As fans see her body draped entirely in pink, the camera quickly pushes up her legs and over her head as her shirt is completely removed. This is sort of like the transformations is Sailor Moon that begin in the legs and work their way upward.

The rest of Reiju’s transformation helped her stand out from her brothers as she gets more solo screen time in the transformation. Along with Judge, the matriarch, she gets a bit more attention in her transformation compared to say, Yonji. It’s definitely been appreciated by fans for sure.

Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best selling manga series worldwide with 430 million copies sold worldwide.

Eiichiro Oda also revealed some upcoming news for One Piece‘s future at Jump Festa 2018. Not only will the manga see Wano sooner rather than later, the next villain of the series is “one of the legends which lurks in the One Piece world. The greatest enemy ever for Straw Hats will hinder their way…Can you believe Marineford Summit War will look ‘cute’ compared to that?

The new live-action One Piece series also got some new information as it was revealed that the series will portray the Straw Hats’ adventures from the very beginning, and will take place in the East Blue. One Piece‘s anime series is currently in the middle of the “Whole Cake Island” arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.