One Piece Anime Welcomes Series’ Own Batman Baddie

Batman is here! Not just a character that happens to be a pirate that looks like Batman or a human being that is merged with a bat within the franchise of One Piece, but a pirate who is literally named “Batman”. In the Wano Country arc, Luffy and his crew of Straw Hat Pirates are going to have to tackle a ton of different threats in the forms of the denizens of the country itself, Big Mom, and the villainous Kaido and his Beast Pirates. One of his crew just so happens to sport a flying rodent moniker and may be more fitting on the streets of Gotham City rather than the seas of the Grand Line.

Twitter User NewWorldArtur shared a hilarious look at the Batman’s upcoming appearance in Wano Country, threatening the crew of the Straw Hats with several bat-like tools and abilities that would clearly give Bruce Wayne a run for his money:

So how did this Batman become…a Batman? Well his parents weren’t killed in any alley and a bat didn’t fly through the window of his living room, rather, he ate an artificial Devil Fruit that granted him several abilities from the flying mammal. A master of archery, the strange pirate also has huge bat wings protruding from his waist, allowing him to fly whenever he likes. Much like bats, he has large ears that allow him to overhear people from great distances, bringing him closer to DC Comics’ Man Bat rather than the Batman of Gotham.

One Piece hasn’t had a proper crossover with Bruce Wayne, and we doubt we’ll be seeing that any time soon, but the rivalry between the two is readily apparent in the book sales department. The pirate franchise is looking to outsell Batman in the department of overall book sales, which is pretty amazing considering Wayne has a head start of decades over the anime/manga franchise.

What do you think of this hilarious new pirate that is threatening the Straw Hat Crew of One Piece? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly

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.