Soon, Luffy and company shall take on the almighty, himself in their grand adventure.
Earlier today, the official One Piece anime website updated with new details on the upcoming One Piece: Episode of Skypeia TV special. The main staffers, as well as the actor for Gan Fall.
We break the details down below.
Staff
Kōnosuke Uda (One Piece Episodes 1 – 278, Days) will direct the episode at Toei Animation, with Masayuki Sato (One Piece Film Gold, Gilgamesh) providing character designs. Tomohiro Nakayama (One Piece Episode of East Blue) is writing the script.
Other confirmed crew members include:
- Art Director: Yoshito Watanabe
- Chief Animation Director: Yūsuke Isouchi
Cast
The episode will cast Ichikawa Ennosuke IV as a guest star. Ennosuke is a kabuki actor, who played in the Super Kabuki One Piece II live show. In the performance, he played Monkey D. Luffy, Boa Hancock and Shanks.
In addition, Ennosuke was cast as a guest star in the One Piece: Adventure of Nebulandia special, where he played Komei.
A visual for the character was revealed, which you can check out below:
One Piece: Episode of Skypeia will air on August 25. Fuji TV will air the special at 9:00PM JST.
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece manga launched in Weekly Shonen Jump in July 1997. The title currently spans 87 volumes, with the most recent hitting stores on November 2. One Piece is the best-selling manga title in the world, with over 430 million copies sold across the globe.
The title spawned an ongoing anime TV series, which began airing on October 1999. Toei Animation produced the series, which has featured seven directors, three showrunners, and three character designers over the course of its run. 848 episodes have been produced to date.
In addition to the TV series, One Piece spawned over 30 movies and TV specials, as well as more than 40 video games. The most recent title, One Piece: Great Pirate Colosseum, hit Nintendo’s 3DS on September 21, 2016. The title launched at 9th place on the Media Create charts, with 9,097 copies reaching customers. An open-world title, One Piece: World Seeker is currently in development for the PlayStation 4.
Viz Media currently holds the rights to the One Piece manga, while Funimation releases the anime in the west. Viz describes the title as:
As a child, Monkey D. Luffy dreamed of becoming King of the Pirates. But his life changed when he accidentally gained the power to stretch like rubber…at the cost of never being able to swim again! Years, later, Luffy sets off in search of the “One Piece,” said to be the greatest treasure in the world… As a child, Monkey D. Luffy was inspired to become a pirate by listening to the tales of the buccaneer “Red-Haired” Shanks. Luffy follow him as hesets out on his adventure…one guy, alone in a rowboat, in search of the legendary “One Piece,” said to be the greatest treasure in the world…
Sources: MoCa News, Comic Natalie