Japan To Honor 'One Piece' With New Tourism Statues

One Piece is finally ready to enter the Wano arc in the anime, and it seems the franchise is expanding in other ways. Not only is the manga going strong, but One Piece is bringing its heroes into the real world with some big statues.

Over on Twitter, the official page for One Piece confirmed a set of Straw Hat statues are going to be placed around Japan in the coming year.

According to the report, the statues are being built to honor the series' creator Eiichiro Oda. The artist famously donated a large sum of money to recovery efforts for the Kumamoto earthquake, and it seems the country is wanting to thank Oda for his continued support.

熊本地震から3年、今なお仮設住宅で暮らす方も多く、復興は途上であると言えます。
ONE PIECEはこれからも熊本の力、その源となるべく、県の皆様と共に力を尽くして参ります。

昨年上陸したルフィに続き、一味8人が「ヒノ国」上陸待機中です！！
どんな姿になるか、お楽しみに！！ pic.twitter.com/67fCRNRLdw

— ONE PIECE スタッフ【公式】 (@Eiichiro_Staff) April 17, 2019

"Three years after the Kumamoto earthquake, many people are still living in temporary housing, and it is said reconstruction is on the way. One Piece will continue to do its best together with the people of the prefecture to power Kumamoto and its source," the post reads.

"After Luffy landed last year, eight people are waiting to land. Please look forward to seeing what it looks like."

As you can see above, the post confirms where the rest of the Straw Hats are going to go. Previously, Monkey D. Luffy got his own statue in Oda's hometown, and the rest of the crew will be spread about the Kumamoto prefecture for tourists to visit. So far, there is no firm date on when the statues will be erected, but fans are hoping to see the pieces sooner rather than later.

So, will you try to check out these statues once they go up? 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.

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