One Piece has been around for quite a while. With the series first dropping in Shonen Jump in the late 90’s, the series has amassed over 890 episode of its anime series and over 80 volumes in manga format. With the 20th anniversary of the manga dropping in 2017, the anime began in October of 1999, so that 20th anniversary is right around the corner. At the popular anime convention, Anime Expo, Shonen Jump Editor and Vice President Hisashi Sasaki shared his thoughts on the upcoming anniversary and many more to come!
Videos by ComicBook.com
Funimation shared the excerpty by Sasaki-San from Anime Expo on their official Twitter Account from Anime Expo 2019, with Sasaki mentioning not just One Piece‘s 20th anniversary, but their 30th, 40th, and even 50th!
“…I’m looking forward to 30s, 40s, maybe 50s.”
Sasaki-san sharing his thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of One Piece! pic.twitter.com/ZfSkDneG3B
— Funimation 🚒🔥 (@FUNimation) July 7, 2019
One Piece is sailing it way to Wano Country in the anime, with the Straw Hat Pirates still in that country in the current run of the manga. Luffy and his crew will most likely still be in this country in both the anime and manga during the series’ 20th anniversary. Considering Eiichiro Oda, creator of One Piece, stated that the series was around 80 percent completed at present, we don’t think that Luffy and his pals will still be sailing the oceans blue on the 50th anniversary of the series, but we’re sure fans would still be celebrating all the same.
The Wano Country arc of the series has been touted as one of the most exciting story arcs of One Piece, promising not just big encounters with villains like Kaido and Big Mom, but also the promise of the reunion of the Straw Hat Pirates. On top of these big events, there are countless other subplots that are sure to be touched upon during this arc taking place in an isolationist nation.
What do you think of the upcoming anniversaries of One Piece? How will you be celebrating the birth of the Straw Hat Pirates and the world of the Grand Line? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics and anime!
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. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.
