New One Piece Film Introduces the Strongest Villain Yet

One Piece: Stampede is a celebration of the anime's 20th Anniversary, and the film is going to have a huge amount of fan-favorite allies and foes make their big return to the anime after a long time away. But while the series has featured plenty of strong villains for Luffy to overcome, it seems that the film has introduced a villain worthy of such a big event film. By all accounts, he's the strongest villain of the series yet.

The new villain of the film, Douglas Bullet, is a newly revealed member of Gol D. Roger's crew, and according to reports of his strength and abilities he's got the power to back this up. Mastery of several Haki, and a high bounty, this new villain is to be feared.

Douglas Bullet is an absolute monster. He's got Gear Fourth level of Armament haki, Observation haki with possible Future Sight and Conqueror's haki. He has a bounty in the billions and is considered to not be far behind the point of being Pirate King. The wank is real pic.twitter.com/JsRCGThRKl

— Artur - Library of Ohara @Pirate Expo (@newworldartur) August 8, 2019

As noted by @newworldartur on Twitter, Douglas Bullet is a "monster" with "Gear Fourth level of Armament Haki, Observation Haki with possible future sight, and Conqueror's Haki." In the film, Bullet is described as having strength on par with Rayleigh in his prime back when he was a member of Gol D. Roger's crew, and has potentially even surpassed this strength at the time of the film. With a bounty in the billions, it seems he was close to being the Pirate King.

This does explain the premise of the film, in which pirates with only higher bounties were invited to an island to compete for Gol D. Roger's treasure. If this new villain is this close to being the Pirate King, this is probably a plot to eliminate all remaining competition.

Given how strong he is, it might take more than Luffy to take him down considering how much he's struggled to fight foes with only a type of mastery for a few of the types of Haki. This isn't even factoring in his Devil Fruit power, which is most likely some kind of magnetism as teased by the earliest promotional materials for the film.

With a villain like this, it's no wonder why the film has earned raved reviews thus far. One Piece: Stampede is now out in to theaters in Japan as of August 9th. There is currently no word on its release to other territories as of this writing, unfortunately.

Fuji TV officially describes the film as such, "The world's greatest exposition of the pirates, by the pirates, for the pirates - the Pirates Festival. Luffy and the rest of the Straw Hat Crew receive an invitation from its host Buena Festa who is known as the Master of Festivities. They arrive to find a venue packed with glamorous pavilions and many pirates including the ones from the Worst Generation. The place is electric."

As teased by the filler arc of the anime tying into the release of the film, One Piece: Stampede will feature the return of characters like Boa Hancock, Sabo, Buggy, Trafalgar Law, Smoker, and many more. There are new characters coming to the film along with all the returning cameos too, and include Tsutomu Isobe as the central villain Douglas Bullet, Yusuke Santamaria as Buena Festa, Rino Sashihara as Ann, Ryota Yamasato as Donald Moderate, and Chinese fashion model and singer Ron Monroe, YouTuber group Fischer's, and Naoto Takenaka in currently unconfirmed roles.