New One Piece Director Reveals Wano Arc Must-Sees

The Wano Arc is ramping up to be one of the biggest storylines of the long running One Piece anime. Promising to converge a series of storylines such as the confrontations between Kaido and Big Mom, the return of Shanks, and the reunion of the Straw Hat Pirates, Animedia Magazine sat down with the new season’s director, Tatsuya Nagamine, to hash out the upcoming season. Nagamine detailed some thrilling events that fans should keep an eye out for with the premiere of the Wano arc, including some spoilery bits so be warned!

Twitter Account YonkouProd posted pieces from the translated interview from Animedia Magazine promising some heavy developments for the series:

Aside from stressing the new characters and environments that have a “Jidaigeki” feel, aka a period drama, Wano Country will have plenty of samurai and ninja to stress the isolated nation’s feudal Japan surroundings. As has been shown, Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hats will be getting Samurai and ninja makeovers to blend into their environments, as they try to dodge the advances of series’ villains Kaido and Big Mom.

Speaking of Kaido, Tatsuya dropped the spoiler that the conclusion of the Wano Arc’s first act will feature a colossal battle between Luffy and the giant bull horned killer. Nagamine also stresses the reunion of the Straw Hat Pirates in this arc, along with Kinemon’s secrets being revealed to boot. To add more fuel to the fire of anticipation, the director is quoted as stating that this arc will “have the hugest meaning to the One Piece universe”. For fans of Luffy and crew, this is definitely the big one.

Another neat mention is that the arc itself won’t just have feudal Japan setting in terms of the backgrounds and designs of the characters, they also made sure to incorporate music that would be appropriate for the setting as well.

What do you think about these revelations revealed about the upcoming Wano Arc? What are you most looking forward to seeing? Feel free to let us know in the comments or 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.