One Piece's First Non-Japanese Director Breaks Silence on Milestone

By Megan Peters

One Piece has been around for decades now, and it has earned its place among shonen's most famous series. While the One Piece manga walks through its final act, all eyes are on the anime right now as it is wrapping up the Wano Country saga. There is still more action to sort through before the act ends, and now, the anime's first non-Japanese director is speaking out after crossing a huge One Piece milestone.

The update comes from Henry Thurlow, an animator from America who has worked on One Piece numerous times in the past few years. An update from the anime confirmed Thurlow is set to direct episode 1066 later this month. Taking to Twitter, the animator addressed the big role with followers as many were quick to celebrate Thurlow becoming the first non-Japanese director to work on One Piece.

"I, Henry Thurlow, am the episode director of One Piece 1066 airing this month," he wrote. "As far as I can tell (& as far as the production staff knew when I asked) there has never been a non-Japanese ep director for OP, or possibly any Toei Animation TV series... ever."

As you can imagine, Thurlow has the entire One Piece fandom backing him as the anime moves closer to his episode. Currently, episode 1066 is slated to debut on June 25th, so we have some time left before Thurlow's directorial work drops. If you want to see some of Thurlow's work on One Piece, you can find examples littered throughout the Wano Saga act such as episode 1033. And for updates on his upcoming episode, you can follow Thurlow here on Twitter.

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If you need to catch up with One Piece, you can brush through the anime on Crunchyroll. As for the English dub, One Piece is streaming on Funimation as well as Hulu. The dub is slated to release episode 1000 this summer during a special Anime Expo event. If the One Piece manga is more your speed, you can find the series up to date through the Shonen Jump app or on the Manga Plus website. Viz Media also has physical editions of the manga available, so you can collect Luffy's adventures that way as well.  

What do you want to see from Thurlow's episode when it goes live? Have you been keeping up with One Piece's latest anime arc? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB.

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