New ‘One Piece’ Special Announces Simulcast Details

One Piece is gearing up for a new special, and it plans to revamp one of the anime’s most adventurous arcs. After a long way, the ‘Skypiea’ arc is ready for a comeback, and it seems fans worldwide will be able to check out its big special.

Recently, Toei Animation took to social media to let fans in on a secret. The company behind One Piece made the announcement that its ‘Episode of Skypiea’ TV special will simulcast outside of Japan.

“Welcome back to Skypiea! On August 25, the new TV special ONE PIECE: EPISODE OF SKYPIEA will premiere in Japan,” the company confirmed.

According to Toei Animation, the special will go live on sites like Funimation, Anime Lab, and Crunchyroll. Fans can expect the special to go online shortly after the One Piece special wraps in Japan, and fans are ready to see how ‘Episode of Skypiea’ updates the classic arc.

Directed by Konosuke Uda, the special will follow in the same vein as the ‘Episode of East Blue.’ It will summarize the events of Skypiea while giving the anime an updated look to match its current arc. Right now, the anime is working through the manga’s ‘Whole Cake Island’ arc, and it is moving into a truly epic fight. Monkey D. Luffy is ready to fight Charlotte Katakuri one-on-one, and audiences are hyped to see the long-awaited clash.

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’s 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.

So, are you looking forward to this impending special? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!