One Piece Producer Shares the Its Creator's Top Movie Requests
The producer behind One Piece: Red explained what kinds of requests series creator Eiichiro Oda had for the new movie production! Ever since the next film in the franchise was officially announced, it was teased that Oda had a lot of involvement in the new work despite not writing the story for the film himself like he has been able to do with some of the releases in the past. Serving as an executive producer for the new movie, it seems that while Oda has been involved he had some requests for Toei before the new movie started its production in full.
Toei Animation Shinji Shimizu opened up about One Piece: Red at Toei's 2022 film lineup press conference (as detailed by Anime News Network) and explained that Oda had two major requests for the new movie. The first was bringing in a director who isn't involved with the TV anime (which ended up happening with Code Geass franchise director Goro Taniguchi signing on to direct the movie), and the second was making sure that a female character had an important role in the new movie. Fortunately, both requests have been filled.
As Shimizu explained, Toei Animation was able to follow through on both of Oda's requests for the new movie with signing Taniguchi as the director following his relationship with Oda in the past as one of the first animators to ever bring Luffy to screens. As for the second, Shimizu did admit that there was a bit of trouble in making sure a female character had an important role. Though he did note while that was tough at first, screenwriter Tsutomu Kuroiwa (who also wrote the script for One Piece Film: Gold) was able to make it work.
At the same time, it seems Oda is more heavily involved in the production of this new movie and while there is still much we don't know about what to expect it won't be too long before it hits theaters. An international release date has yet to be set as of this writing, but One Piece: Red is currently scheduled for a release in Japan on August 6th. What do you think? What are you hoping to see in One Piece's next movie? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!