One Piece Announces Wano Arc’s First Theme Song

One Piece‘s Wano arc is one of the most anticipated debuts in the anime yet, and that’s largely because of all the major shifts and changes the series will be making to introduce this region that has been teased for the past few years. Naturally with all major season premieres for the series, the anime will feature a brand new opening theme and has revealed new details for what fans can expect on first listen.

The latest issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump revealed that the new opening theme is titled “Over the Top,” and will be performed by the returning Hiroshi Kitadani. Shouko Fujibayashi is writing the lyrics for the theme, Kohei Tanaka is composing it, and Takayuki Negishi is arranging the theme.

Eagle eared fans might recognize Hiroshi Kitadani as he performed several of the most memorable opening themes over the course of the anime. He performed the first theme song, “We Are!,” and the fifteenth theme “We Can!” Shouko Fujibayashi and Kohei Tanaka also worked on those themes as well, so fans of those theme songs in particular will be thrilled to hear the big team has reunited for Wano.

One Piece‘s Wano arc will debut with the July 7th episode of the series, and it’s one of the major premieres of the Summer 2019 anime season overall. Fans are excited for the big arc not only because it will see the return of the missing Straw Hats Zoro, Robin, Usopp, and Franky, but it will be directed by Dragon Ball Super: Broly and One Piece Film: Z, Tatsuya Nagamine, as well.

Nagamine recently promoted the upcoming arc by teasing that some of its battles will remind fans of the Dragon Ball series for their high energy, and that’s an exciting prospect too. There’s a lot to look forward to with the Wano arc for sure, and it seems like it will get off to a great start with its new opening theme sequence.

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.