A new video shows off the impact that One Piece has had to multiple generations of fans around the world.
The collection of clips was uploaded to the official Toei Animation Youtube channel. Toei Animation is the studio that produces the One Piece anime adaptation, which aired its highly anticipated 1000th episode on Nov. 20. The video includes numerous video clips, social media posts, and other messages sent in by fans from around the world. "One Piece is very special to me because it helped me through a very difficult time in my life," says one fan near the beginning of the montage. "For us, One Piece is adventure, it's diversity, it is the acceptance of others, it's the joy, it's freedom... One Piece is us, the nakama," another pair of fans say in French later on the video. Many of the messages of gratitude were directed specifically towards Eiichiro Oda, the manga artist who created the series. "1000 chapters, 1000 episodes... Still going strong. Thank you Oda for everything, we appreciate you," said a fan in full One Piece cosplay.
The release of the 1000th episode caps off one of the most eventful years in One Piece's 24 year history. The series, which was first published in the pages of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997, published its 1000th chapter earlier this year and released its 100th collected volume this summer. Oda's pirate epic is the best-selling manga of all time, by a substantial margin: the series has a circulation of 490 million copies worldwide, with every single one of its 100 volumes managing to sell at least 1 million copies individually. The second best-selling manga series in history, Takao Saito's gritty assassin thriller Golgo 13, began in 1968, three decades before One Piece, and has a circulation of 300 million copies, while Akira Toriyama's beloved Dragon Ball comes in third with 260 million.
While One Piece's year of big milestones is drawing to a close, fans of the Straw Hat Pirates already something big to look forward to in 2022. The next One Piece movie, One Piece Red, has been announced and will be released in Japan in August of 2022. The movie will feature an all new female character designed by Oda, and will focus on the character of "Red-Haired" Shanks, the pirate captain who gave Luffy his iconic straw hat and inspired him to take up a pirate's life. A release outside of Japan has yet to be announced, but as that video illustrated, One Piece has many fans around the world and it's safe to assume that an international release is coming soon.
Source: YouTube