Check Out One Piece’s Brand-New Ace Design

Looks like even ghosts are benefiting from the Wano Country arc anime makeovers! In the preview for the next installment of One Piece, the Wano arc continues with a flashback showing how Monkey D. Luffy’s adopted brother Ace had an affect on the people and country of Wano. With the anime series in the thick of things with the isolationist nation, Luffy and the gang are attempting to reunite the Straw Hat Pirates following the two year time jump. Now, we get our first look at Ace in the new art style that has been universally praised for One Piece.

Ace has a complicated relationship with the country of Wano, arriving to this new nation via a shipwreck that stranded him and his crew on the island for several weeks. After encountering the young girl Otama and the rest of the villagers in this new land, Ace took to the village quickly but unfortunately had to leave to continue his pirate quest. Following his departure, Otama waited for Ace to return but was left waiting as Ace died in attempting to save his adopted brother Luffy.

Ace himself not only was a part of the Whitebeard Pirates and the brother of Luffy, he also harbored abilities that he gained from his own Devil Fruit. With the fruit giving him power over flame, he made for one of the most intense fighters in the series to date, regardless of his tendency to fall asleep at the most inopportune times. Though he is dead in the series, his spirit lives on and his influence in the series is clearly still in place within the long running franchise.

What do you think of Ace’s new artistic design in the Wano Arc? What other older characters would you like to be given a “fresh coat of paint” in the latest arc of One Piece? 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.