New One Piece Director Teases Wano Arc’s Debut

In just a couple of weeks, One Piece‘s Wano Country arc will finally make its debut in the anime. This has been one of the most anticipated arcs to hit the anime, and fans have only looked forward to it even more when it was revealed that the series would essentially use the new arc as a way to usher in a new era for the anime. Leading the way will be new director for series, Tatsuya Nagamine. After his work on Dragon Ball Super: Broly, fans can’t wait to see what happen with Wano.

In a recent interview with Animedia (as shared by @YonkouProd on Twitter), Nagamine teased a lot about what’s to come for Wano Country in the anime and it sounds like there will be a lot of shifts for the series as a whole!

When asked about the essential story elements in the arc and how they’ll be translated to the anime, Nagamine had the following to say, “The Wano arc features Samurai and ninja so it’s got a strong [period drama] feel to it…[Eiichiro Oda] designed many characters with distinct characteristics – even the voice actors have put their all into making the speeches sound ‘powerful.’ So I’d like to put in my best to show the charm of all these pretty powerful characters.”

Speaking of powerful characters, Nagamine revealed that strong characters will lead to some of the biggest moments in the arc. In reference to some of the action fans can look forward to, “…definitely Luffy vs. Kaido…we took on that part with zeal to really get people pumped so they can feel the dramatic tension. Beyond that, there’s big Mom still coming after Luffy so that Yonko battle rages on…”

Nagamine hyped up Wano even more with a big message for fans, “Right now the Straw Hats are separated but soon they’ll all gather together, Kinemon’s truth will be revealed, they’ll see Kaido face to face, and the foreshadowing that has been occurring since the New World began will gather. I believe that this arc is thus far the one with the hugest meaning for the One Piece universe.”

With that, Wano Country’s July 7th premiere seems so far away now! 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.