The recently announced One Piece: Red has been confirmed for a Western release.
Toei Animation uploaded an English-subtitled version of the upcoming movie's teaser video to its official YouTube channel. While the video mostly features the same content as the original Japanese reveal trailer, the release date at the end has been changed from the Japanese premiere date of Aug. 6, 2022 to a more nebulous "Coming Soon." While the announcement doesn't provide a concrete release date, it is the first official confirmation that there are at least plans to release the new movie outside of Japan.
One Piece: Red will be the 15th theatrical release in the franchise. Production on the new movie is being supervised by series creator Eiichiro Oda, who revealed in a statement that the movie was born out of his desire to add a new female character to the series. "I am tired of drawing legendary old grandpas in movies! I want to draw a new little female character! That's the character I want to make now! And that's how it started," Oda said. The new movie is being written by Tsutomu Kuroiwa, who previously wrote the script for One Piece Film: Gold and the CG-animed Gantz 0, and will be directed by Code Geass' Goro Taniguchi.
The film will focus on the character of Red-Haired Shanks, the captain of the Red Hair Pirates and one of the four emperors of the New World. Shanks is the man who inspired the series' protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy, to take on the life of a pirate, and he also gave the stretchy young hero his iconic straw hat. The movie's teaser trailer also reveals that the previously mentioned new female character is a singer of some kind.
One Piece first set sale in 1998 in the pages of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump. In the 24 years since, the on-going story of the Straw Hat Pirates has become the best-selling manga series in history, with almost half-a-billion copies in circulation around the world. In 2021 the manga published both its 1000th chapter and its 100th collected volume. The anime adaptation, which is produced by Toei Animation and originally debuted in 1999, recently aired its 1000th episode. Both Oda and Shueisha have hinted that the story will finally reach its end soon, but more One Piece is already in the works, as Netflix and Cowboy Bebop's Tomorrow Pictures have begun production on a live-action adaptation of the series.
Source: YouTube