Angry Birds Pays Secret Homage to One Piece

The Angry Birds went from a popular mobile game to becoming one of the bigger animated franchises, warranting a sequel this year thanks to the success of its first film. With the franchise's prosperity, its no wonder that new video games in the mobile market were released over time, with the recently released Angry Birds Evolution promising all new gameplay for fans of the avian series. Surprisingly, the game hasn't just given a number of new costumes to their bird protagonists, but has also given a nod to, arguably, the most popular pirate franchise in the world: One Piece.

Reddit User Monet4Nakama discovered that a high level costume available to the angriest of birds seems to deliver a costume similar to that of Charlotte Katakuri, one of the top lieutenants of Big Mom's gang:

So i was playing Angry Birds Evolution, and apparently they added a new character with a Katakuri costume. from r/OnePiece

Katakuri is a unique character in a sea of idiosyncratic characters, though he shares the similarities with several other One Piece pirates in that he calls upon the powers of a Devil Fruit that he ingested earlier in his life. One of the top three lieutenants of Big Mom's pirate crew, Katakuri has the ability to transform himself into the food, mochi, whenever he wants and also has the unique ability to see slightly into the future, which obviously comes in handy during many of his fights.

Katakuri's costume isn't just a fashion statement, it's necessary for the Big Mom pirate to hide his hideous visage that holds a mouth filled with fangs beneath the cloth cover. Though Big Mom is currently still a force in the new Wano Country arc, Katakuri is still licking his wounds following his defeat at the hands of Luffy, who managed to claim victory thanks to the use of his "Gear Fourth" ability.

What do you think of this clever crossover between One Piece and Angry Birds? What other costumes from either the pirate franchise, or other anime, would you like to see make appearances in the game? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the Straw Hat Pirates!

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.