New One Piece Filler Arc Sets Up Next Anime Movie

One Piece has been making waves with its latest arc, and anime fans are falling in love with the show all over again. The shonen series is doing all it can to hype its big anniversary year, but audiences knew One Piece could not keep up the Wano arc forever. This weekend proved that when a filler arc got started, but fans better not tune out of the story so soon!

It turns out this brand-new arc will tie into the next One Piece movie, and it will do so thanks to Boa Hancock.

Recently, One Piece set sail with episode 895, and it was there fans parted from Wano. While the arc is continuing behind-the-scenes in production, the anime is slipping into a filler arc to give animators time to ensure Wano looks great. In the meantime, the show’s new arc focuses on the upcoming movie One Piece: Stampede, and it brought in a favorite heroine.

Episode 895 began with the Straw Hats reunited, but they were separated yet again when a bounty hunter named Cidre came after them. Monkey D. Luffy was separated from the group and crash landed on an island. It was there he ran into Boa Hancok, one of the Warlords of the Sea, and she told Luffy her reasons for being there. It turns out Boa has been preparing for the Pirates Expo, and the event is the main one featured in One Piece: Stampede.

While some fans aren’t happy about this filler aside, others are glad to see the anime help set up One Piece‘s new movie. The film is slated to hit theaters in Japan come August, so the promo is timelier than ever. And at the very least, fans are able to revisit Boa and watch her fawn all over Luffy just like old times.

So, how do you feel about this aside One Piece arc so far…? 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.