One Piece Fan-Art Sees The Straw Hat Pirates Meet Their Younger Selves

You'll find a lot of fan discussion when it comes to the time skip in One Piece. The time skip itself was only two years in the story itself, with the characters deciding to split up and train individually to fight the Admiral Kuma Bartholomeow. The cyborg mariner not only defeated the Straw Hats but also sent them spiraling to different sections of the world, giving Luffy and company the perfect opportunity to improve their skills. One fan decided to portray the characters of One Piece meeting their younger selves and their reactions in doing so.

Time skips aren't new to anime series. They allow the artists and creators to take new interpretations of the characters as they age through the years. Naruto did something similar with Naruto: Shippuden and Boruto and certainly, the Dragon Ball series isn't averse to aging up a number of their characters. With One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda deciding to incorporate a two year leap, so to came entirely new designs and power buffs given to the straw hats.

Reddit User AltriaScarlet18 decided to show the differences that two years make with older and newer interpretations of the Straw Hat Pirates side by side:

The Straw Hats and trafalgar law meeting their past selves from r/OnePiece

Currently, the anime sees the Straw Hat Pirates becoming wrapped up in the Reverie gathering. With over 50 representatives of 170 countries and islands, Luffy and his crew are going to need all the skills that they've learned during this time skip to make sure everyone gets out safely. A kidnapping plot is currently underway to try to capture one of Neptune's daughters, who may just be one of the fabled ancient weapons.

This fan art interpretation isn't the only new take on old favorites that we've seen as the recent Happy Days promotion from Nissin Foods has shown the Straw Hats in a completely new light, aka as high schoolers.

What do you all think of this fan art of Straw Hats past and present? What were your thoughts on One Piece's time skip overall? Let us know in the comments or feel free to 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.