The Straw Hat Pirates have been around for decades at this point, thanks to Eiichiro Oda’s shonen masterpiece arriving in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump in the late 1990’s. Despite this fact, it took quite some time for Monkey D. Luffy and his friends to hit it big in North America. Thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of anime overall, One Piece has managed to ride the wave and make a name for itself in the West. With both the anime adaptation and Netflix’s live-action series sailing the Grand Line, a brand-new storefront is planning to open in the United States for the first time.
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Opening this fall in Los Angeles, California, the first official “One Piece Mugiwara Store” will sell plenty of merchandise from the shonen franchise. The storefront will have exclusive merch for fans to peruse, but will also have some surprises for anime enthusiasts to boot. According to a new press release, the One Piece Mugiwara Store will create an original anime video to celebrate its existence as well as create an environment for those visiting the store itself to enjoy. You can also check out the brand-new visual created for the store that assembles the full Straw Hat Pirates crew once again.
One Piece in America
As mentioned above, One Piece has never been bigger than it is right now worldwide, despite the fact that the manga and anime adaptation is in the “final saga” of the story. While creator Eiichiro Oda hasn’t confirmed when we can expect the final chapter to arrive, the players are moving to a place that certainly seems like the endgame is on the horizon. Luckily, despite the finale being teased, we could still be years away from seeing the grand finale actually take place, as Oda has routinely taken years to wrap some of the bigger arcs in One Piece’s past.
In Japan itself, One Piece has become a fixture in the culture in more ways than we can count. While North America is attempting to play catch-up with its own storefront, Japan has numerous odes to the Straw Hats across the country. On top of having plenty of stores devoted to Luffy’s crew, there is also a gym that allows anime fans to bulk up like a Straw Hat. In Universal Studios Japan, the amusement park has paid tribute to Eiichiro Oda’s shonen masterpiece with various attractions that look as though they were ripped straight from the Grand Line. Universal Studios in America has had “Universal Fan Fest Nights” that bring the Straw Hats to the West, though not in a permanent fashion such as its Japanese counterpart has.
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Via Press Release
