One Piece: Red Producer Explains How the Movie’s Story Came Alive

One Piece: Red is now tearing its way through theaters across Japan, and the producer behind the series has opened up about how the new movie project came to have its story! Eiichiro Oda’s original manga series is now in the midst of celebrating the 25th Anniversary of it first hitting the pages of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and the franchise is celebrating in some major ways. This not only includes the manga itself reaching the final saga of the series overall, but a new feature film now working its way through theaters highlighting a major new character tied to Shanks and his mysterious past.

As One Piece Film: Red now works its way through theaters across Japan, and gets ready to hit theaters in the rest of the world later this year, One Piece anime producer Shinji Shimizu opened up about the production of the new movie and how its story ultimately developed. Speaking to ComicBook.com’s Megan Peters all about the upcoming feature film, Shimizu revealed that the initial idea for the story concept of the film was to craft something that would be appealing to all of the new and younger fans just jumping into the franchise recently. 

When asked about whether or not a specific pitch or idea helped One Piece Film: Red come about, Shimizu noted that the age of the general fan of the franchise has grown over the course of the series’ run so far and it was necessary to take a step back from this, “One Piece, the manga, this year marks the 25th year since it started serializing,” Shimizu began. “And even for the animated series, it’s been 23 years. So the average age of the fan, I think, has gone up considerably over the past 20 or some odd years. We have 1000 episodes. So, audiences in a younger demographic, they may know of One Piece but they don’t fully know the series or have the chance to get to fall in love with its characters. This new movie, I would say is, a chance for new, younger audiences to find a touch point with the franchise.”

As for what is the most exciting draw of the film itself, Shimizu touted the music, “The answer is its music. I think that’s one of the biggest components in this film. One Piece films of past didn’t necessarily have a huge focus on their musical component. I think it’ll really appeal to the existing One Piece fans, but this music will also expose the series to a new generation and demographic that never really got to experience One Piece.”

How do you feel about One Piece: Red aiming for a young audience with its story? Will you be checking out the movie when it releases in other territories later this year? 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!