One Piece's 'Wano' Arc Premiere Date Surfaces

One Piece is neck deep in the middle of its "Reverie Arc", finding Luffy and the Straw Hat combating external threats during a gathering of the world leaders of numerous countries. With the series' popularity continuing to skyrocket in both its anime and manga mediums, fans are wondering when the next big arc will take place. It looks like we have our answer with the next storyline, "the Wano Arc", getting a release date in the anime.

Twitter User SkippyTheRobot discovered the release date for the upcoming storyarc through Hochi News, an internet publication, that states that July 7th will feature the first episode of this new story, along with a new story director and OP:

New article mentions that the Wano arc in the One Piece anime starts on July 7th and will not only have a new OP and a new series director (Tatsuya Nagamine), but also a new character designer https://t.co/IOx9XfB1Vl

— Skippy (@SkippyTheRobot) May 28, 2019

Wano Country is a country that is not a part of the World Government, originally not joining because of its lack of ability to pay the tribute required to make it an "official" country. It eventually gained a society and way of life all its own, relying on the ways of the samurai and ninja to mold itself. What makes this country special, aside from cutting itself off from the world outside, is it acts as the designated meeting point for the Straw Hat Pirates, where Monkey and the rest of the crew may finally be reunited after their individual training arcs.

Of course, Luffy and his friends will have to contend with not just the recurring forces of Big Mom's Pirates, but also the Beast Pirates led under Kaido, one of the four pirate emperors. The island itself is ruled by a shogun, eliciting a feudal Japan theme that will surely make Zoro feel at home with his motif.

What do you think of the release date for the upcoming Wano Arc of One Piece's anime? If you followed the manga, what scene are you most excited to see translated into motion? Let us know in the comments or feel free to hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and 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 over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.