Nintendo Played An Unexpectedly Major Role in One Piece’s Latest Special

Much like One Piece, Nintendo and its beloved avatars have been a huge part of many people’s childhoods over the last two decades. While Nintendo has released a slew of One Piece games over the years, it is safe to say that no one could have expected the two to cross paths beyond that, that is, until One Piece‘s latest special Fan Letter. In fact, as per a recent interview with the episode’s creators, Nintendo’s beloved Miis may have played a bigger role in the production of One Piece Fan Letter than fans would expect.

In an interview with Newtype Magazine in January, Keisuke Mori, also known as Masami Mori or Soty, who served as the Character Designer, Animation Director, and Storyboard Artist for One Piece Fan Letter unexpectedly shared that Nintendo Miis were used to design the characters for the episode. The interview reveals that this idea to use Miis was, in fact, Megumi Ishitani’s, with Mori revealing he then simply “took the Miis and ‘One Piece-ified’ them.”

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One Piece Fan Letter’s Iconic Character Designs Were Based On Nintendo’s Miis

Though the animated special does take a few liberties, the characters, and various stories it depicts are based on a novel by Tomohito Osaki called One Piece Novel: Straw Hat Stories. With the source material being a novel and not a manga, the character designs were left entirely to Ishitani and Mori to build up from scratch, and luckily, the recent interview with Newtype gives fans a glimpse into the creative process behind crafting these various characters. In the interview, Mori reveals that Ishitani was the one who initially decided to use Miis when he asked for something simple to get a rough idea of the characters. Mori told Newtype, “I told Ishitani that anything was fine, a simple drawing or something from a game, I just wanted some kind of image for the character. So she showed me some Miis.”

Since they had nothing to go off, the simplicity of Miis, as Ishitani reveals, worked greatly in their favor, keeping the characters simple but with easily recognizable defining traits. As Ishitani explains, “This actually worked really well. If you do a drawing, you might overdo it, but with Miis you’re just putting together existing parts, so it narrows down the design elements. It makes it easier to understand what points make the character unique.” A brief glimpse at the central characters of One Piece Fan Letter reveals that Ishitani’s statement holds truth. The little girl who idolized Nami is easily recognizable by her short orange hair and round face, while the two Marine brothers are set apart from the rest by their distinct hairstyles. Even the bookshop owner’s design can be summed up by a few distinctive traits such as her signature bangs and chunky earrings.

Miis Simplified the One Piece Fan Letter Design Process

The facial proportions, the sometimes blocky face shapes, and the stocky-looking hands in One Piece Fan Letter begin to make more sense if seen as being built from the ground up using Miis rather than traditional drawings. Moreover, it seems the Miis not only simplified the character design process but also helped keep things simple yet just memorable enough. As Mori states, “The placement of the parts and face shape gave me a general impression of the character, so it was easy to grasp their image from there.”

As for how these Miis were turned into usable character models for the anime, Mori explains just as much in the interview saying, “I then took the Miis and ‘One Piece-ified’ them. I tried to match them to the original artist (Eiichiro) Oda’s style as much as possible.” Besides Fan Letter, Keisuke Mori has previously worked on four other episodes of One Piece, these being Episode 1015, 1072, 1089, and most recently Episode 1111, which more than confirms he has Eiichiro Oda’s style down pat, albeit with his own charming personal touch, of course. Nonetheless, One Piece Fan Letter has effectively set the bar for One Piece‘s special episodes and filler henceforth, and though fans may not see Nintendo play a hand in the series’ character design and production again, One Piece‘s anime will surely continue to blow fans’ socks off when the series returns in April.

One Piece Fan Letter is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Netflix.

Source: Newtype Exclusive Interview, via ANN.