Viral Photo Shows One Piece Bringing Together Strangers on a Train

One Piece has been around for decades at this point, and it has become a true global phenomenon. With an anime and manga backing it, the pirate-loving series has made millions of fans worldwide, and it has some impressive clout. In fact, One Piece can turn total strangers into friends, and a now-viral photo proved as much this week.

Taking to Reddit, a user known as Astronaut169 posted a photo taken of them on a train. As the fan explained, they were on their way home watching One Piece when a boy beside him began tuning in.

“Me watching One Piece with a little japanese boy on my train back from work. I didn’t know him but One Piece is life,” the user wrote.

As you can see above, the pair are sitting side by side while sharing earbuds. The episode playing is one featuring Monkey D. Luffy fighting Charlotte Katakuri, so the pair chose an exciting battle to watch. Further in the comments, the user said more on how he noticed the boy and his interest in One Piece.

“I was watching and they were talking japanese with his mum, but i could heard One Piece and the little dude was pointing at me, so I just give him an airpod and made a new friend. Yeah it’s was really cool,” they shared.

This is not the first time One Piece has brought strangers together, and it will not be the last. Just a year ago, the anime went viral when a One Piece theme song turned opposing soccer fans into close friends. When Senegal and Japan faced off in a World Cup match, a group of fans leaving the game went viral after a video of them singing the One Piece theme song went viral for all the heartwarming reasons.

So, have you met any friends through anime or One Piece? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB 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.