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One Piece Creator Introduces Brand-New Character for Live-Action Series (& You Missed It)

One Piece has returned for the second season of its live-action series with Netflix, and it turns out that the original creator behind it all actually crafted a brand new character never seen in the anime or manga before. One Piece: Into the Grand Line sees Luffy and the Straw Hats heading into a new region with a ton of new islands to explore, and that means there are a ton of new characters who are introduced to the live-action world for the first time as a result. This even includes characters who have never appeared before.

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One Piece: Into the Grand Line sees the Straw Hats dealing with the deadly assassins of Baroque Works after they had been teased in the first season. They are all throughout these first few islands of the Grand Line, and it even includes the debut of a character, Miss Thursday, who was only briefly mentioned in the original series. As revealed by Netflix, series creator Eiichiro Oda actually designed the character for the first time for the live-action show. Check it out:

One Piece Creator Reveals Miss Thursday Design

Courtesy of Netflix / Shueisha

Miss Thursday (Sanchia Davids) is briefly seen in One Piece: Into the Grand Line as a deadly baseball throwing assassin seen fighting against Smoker heading into the finale, but it’s a character who never actually appeared in One Piece‘s manga and anime. She was a member of Baroque Works who was only briefly mentioned in passing, and in a special behind the scenes video from Netflix, co-showrunner Joe Tracz explained that Oda actually crafted this design for the first time for the live-action series.

Miss Thursday’s full design was revealed, and it’s teased that she has a connection to a character who appears in the third season. For those fans who are up to date with the events of the Alabasta saga, it’s going to be a bit familiar as there’s a baseball bat associated assassin who arrives as one of the threats in that region. It’s now confirmed that the two baseball fighters are related in someway with this design, and it’s certainly a cool expansion on the nearly three decades long canon.

What Does This Mean for One Piece?

One Piece‘s live-action series has made some big changes to the way the original manga tells its story, and with these changes has been able to incorporate more foreshadowing for the future. As a benefit of being worked on knowing everything that happens in the future, the live-action team has been able to incorporate characters and ideas long before their full debut to come later. But it’s also something that Oda emphasized as well as things are going to get a lot wackier moving forward.

“In Season One, the live-action team was focused on bringing out the human side of the characters instead ofย leaning into the extreme fantasy elements,” Oda noted about the differences between the seasons. “It was about grounding the story in humanity. For Season Two, I told the team that as we proceed with the story in the manga, we need to start unleashing those fantasy elements so Luffy can begin plausibly taking on formidable opponents. We need expose viewers to the more outlandish aspects of the manga now. Thatโ€™s an intentional shift.”

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