‘One Piece’ Animator Reveals ‘Dragon Ball’ Influence on Luffy v Katakuri

One Piece recently kicked off the much anticipated fight between Luffy and Katakuri, and fans noticed a similarity between Luffy and Katakuri’s quick movements and the fights found in the Dragon Ball franchise.

It turns out that one of the animators actually drew influence from Dragon Ball in order to effectively capture the speed of Luffy and Katakuri in the Mirro-World.

Twitter user @tuyongce2013 took to Twitter after Luffy and Katakuri’s fight first premiered, and mentioned this about their Dragon Ball influences, “it was a competition of speed, I used some Dragon Ball style when I was animating this part. I appreciated it a lot that I received the trust from [Episode Director Kouhei Kureta] and other staff!”

When Luffy’s fight with Katakuri began, Luffy used his Gear Second form in order to try and outrun Katakuri. But Katakuri, proving he can do everything Luffy can but better, was able to keep up with him quite easily. Not only did he mock Luffy’s attempts to dodge, he moved even faster in order to pour more salt in the wound.

This leads to the two of them darting around the Mirro-World in a way that fans can only see small streaks darting back and forth across the area. Much like the high intensity fights of Dragon Ball Z, Luffy and Katakuri were practically invisible in this moment.

One Piece‘s fight scenes have drawn criticism from fans in the past as the series is more about how Luffy overcomes his enemies with his clever gymnastics rather than pure power. This means that the anime sometimes has fights that aren’t necessarily fast moving since it’s all about how Luffy’s body adjusts to each fight. But this added injection of Dragon Ball Z already puts Luffy’s fight with Katakuri on another level completely.

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. You can currently find the series streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

As for Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Super currently airs its English dub on Adult Swim during the Toonami programming block Saturday evenings at 9:30 p.m. It is also available to stream on Funimation and Amazon Video. The Japanese language release of the series is complete, and available to stream on FunimationNOW, VRV, and Crunchyroll.