‘One Piece Stampede’ Reveals High-Quality Character Designs

One Piece Stampede is the major film project being released for the anime’s 20th Anniversary celebration, so all eyes are on the film as it continues to develop.

Fans recently got a closer look on Eiichiro Oda’s designs for the new movie in a recent magazine, and though they are still sketches, they provide the best look at the new Straw Hat outfits yet.

Though many of the major details for One Piece Stampede are currently still under wraps as of this writing, the new film has confirmed that it is currently scheduled to release August 9, 2019 in Japan. There are currently no concrete details as to how involved original creator Eiichiro Oda is with the new film, either, but he has provided initial design sketches for each of the Straw Hats’ new outfits for the film.

First showed off during the series’ panel at Jump Festa 2019, the character sketches reveal that the Straw Hats will be wearing wildly varied outfits once again. The Straw Hats usually get a full makeover for each of the films, thus appropriately making each one feel like a big event, and their newest looks seem to be the biggest departures for each of them yet. Luffy obviously leads the charge with his giant hats, and fans are definitely wondering why Luffy’s carrying a huge viking helmet on his back.

The official Twitter for the film has been teasing a deeper meaning for the title as well as it mentioned when the film was first announced, “One Piece: Stampede is the title! Stampede is a wording meaning rushing or running away. As a film made to honor the anime’s 20th anniversary, it will heat up the Summer of 2019. What is meant by the straw hat dancing in the sky!? And the huge monster made of rubble behind! Please wait for more news!”

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.