One Piece Fan Letter Director Shares the One Scene Shaped by Her Life

Though it has been nearly four months since One Piece Fan Letter was released, the special episode has stuck with fans even after all this time. Despite initial concerns that a story not centered around the Straw Hats might not appeal to fans, One Piece Fan Letter was a massive success, projecting its director Megumi Ishitani, scriptwriter Momoka Toyada, and its character designer, animation director, and storyboard artist Keisuke Mori to further fame. Ishitani, in particular, has all but become a household name, gaining more and more fans by the day, and a recent interview reveals one particular scene in the episode was shaped by Megumi Ishitani’s own personal experience with fan mail.

In an interview with Newtype Magazine published in the January 2025 issue, Megumi Ishitani shares how one scene in One Piece Fan Letter was shaped by her own life. The scene in question is the climactic finale of the episode where the little girl enamored by Nami rips up her letter to stall the Navy and allow Nami to escape safely. As Ishitani reveals in the interview, the girl was initially supposed to tear up the letter into tiny confetti-like pieces, but after receiving her first-ever fan letter herself, Ishitani changed the scene to have the girl only tear the letter into two pieces, quoting the touching reason that “something so precious ought to be handled with care.”

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Director Megumi Ishitani Reveals One Touching Change Made in One Piece Fan Letter’s Ending

Long before One Piece Fan Letter could be released, Ishitani was already making waves with her name being associated with many of One Piece‘s most highly rated episodes like Episode 957, 982, and 1015, as well as the Egghead Arc’s stellar new opening theme ASSU! Ishitani is best known for her attention to detail and well-thought-out, often meticulous storyboards, and this is unsurprisingly the case with Fan Letter as well, which is largely why the One Piece special was so successful.

Though a fairly negligible detail from a viewer’s perspective, the thought put into even something as small as how many pieces the letter is torn into is specifically what makes Ishitani’s work so impactful. As she shares in the interview with Newtype, the reasoning behind wanting the letter to be torn up into tiny pieces was due to Ishitani’s liking for shots with flower petals or cherry blossoms flying around. Episode 1015, one of the episodes directed by Ishitani, notably makes use of a similar shot during Yamato’s flashback, albeit with feathers instead of petals as a testament to this statement.

Ishitani’s entire response reads: “In the last scene, there’s a shot where the girl tears up the fan letter. At first, I wanted to have her tear it into smaller pieces, like confetti, because I really like scenes where cherry blossoms or flower petals are flying all around. But while I was thinking about that shot, I actually received my very first fan letter ever from a viewer.”

She goes on to reveal that she changed her mind about the shot after reading the letter she received from a fan, considering it much too precious to be carelessly torn up. “After reading it, I changed the scene so that she only tore it in half. And then I put the fan letter carefully taped back together at the end. It made me realize that something so precious ought to be handled with care,” Ishitani told Newtype, closing the interview on this heartfelt note.

Overall, One Piece Fan Letter has proved just what Toei Animation is capable of producing with the right staff. Megumi Ishitani, Masami Mori, and Momoka Toyoda are all but shaping up to be the One Piece animation dream team, and hopefully, the overwhelmingly positive response from fans urges Toei to let them take the stage with even bigger projects in the future.

One Piece Fan Letter is available to stream on Netflix and Crunchyroll.

Source: Newtype Exclusive Interview, via ANN.