'One Piece' Art Reimagines Its Top Heroes As Children

One Piece is arguably the most popular anime and manga franchise in Japan, and a large part of its success is due to it well realized world and quirky character design courtesy of series creator Eiichiro Oda.

One piece of art both highlights this quirky character design, and takes it one step further and imagines them as children.

One Piece characters as children. from r/OnePiece

Many of the series' top heroes and villains are imagined as children and are given highly detailed backstories. The cute portraits include the likes of Apoo, Law, Killer, Drake, Bege, Hawkins, Bonney, Kid, Urogue, Marco, Whitebeard, Jozu, Vista, Izo, Jinbe, Hawkeye, Moriah, Boa Hancock, Crocodile, Kuma, Doflamingo, Teach, Hogback, Absalom, Cindry, Perona, Monkey D. Garp, Sengoku, Borsalino, Sakazuki, Kuzan, Hina, Smoker, Tashigi, and even the members of the Cp.9 like Lucci, Kaku, Jyabura, Califa, Fukurou, Blueno, Kumadori, and even Spandam.

Each portrait is so well done, you can imagine back stories for each of these heroes and villains, and suggests Oda has a huge universe in mind that he has still put on paper.

Eiichiro Oda's One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has been collected into 87 volumes, with a few chapters yet to be included. It 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 430 million copies sold worldwide.

Eiichiro Oda also revealed some upcoming news for One Piece's future at Jump Festa 2018. Not only will the manga see Wano sooner rather than later, the next villain of the series is "one of the legends which lurks in the One Piece world. The greatest enemy ever for Straw Hats will hinder their way...Can you believe Marineford Summit War will look 'cute' compared to that?"

The new live-action One Piece series also got some new information as it was revealed that the series will portray the Straw Hats' adventures from the very beginning, and will take place in the East Blue.

One Piece is currently in the middle of the "Whole Cake Island" arc and is now streaming on Crunchyroll and FunimationNOW.