One Piece officially reveals the cover for the manga’s 101st collected volume, completing the three cover spread that began with Volumes 99 and 100.
One Piece has released the cover for the series’ upcoming 101st collected book.
The new cover was announced on the official One Piece Twitter account. The new volume, which will be issued in Japan on Dec. 3, will complete the interwoven illustration that began on Volume 99 and extended onto the series’ landmark 100th volume, which was released late last summer. The image was produced by series creator Eiichiro Oda to honor the launch of the 100th book. In-progress versions of the illustration were previously glimpsed in making-of videos, but this is the first time that the cover has been shown in its full shape.
The new image depicts Nami, the Straw Hat Pirates’ fashionable navigator, and Kaidou, the governor-general of the Beast Pirates and one of the Four Emperors of the New World.
Kaidou was also featured significantly in the promotional art for the One Piece anime’s 1000th episode, which recently broadcast on Nov. 20. The episode featured the series’ original opening animation sequence, remade with new animation and updated with each character’s current clothes and appearances. The anime version of Eiichiro Oda’s work originally launched in 1999, two years after the manga began its publication, and still continues to be one of Japan’s most rated anime programs more than two decades later. Crunchyroll recently developed a retrospective film that looks back on the series’ whole history by clipping together 1 second from each of the series’ 1000 episodes.
While the major celebration for the series’ 1000th episode is now over, fans of the series can now get pumped for the next animated movie in the franchise, One Piece Red. The movie will focus on the pirate captain “Red-Haired” Shanks, who is another one of the New World’s Four Emperors and is the guy who inspired series protagonist Monkey D. Luffy to seek the life of a pirate. Oda is supervising production on the movie, which will be helmed by Code Geass’ Goro Taniguchi. The picture is slated to be released in Japan in Aug. 2022, while an overseas release date has yet to be established.
In the 24 years since its first release, One Piece has managed to become the biggest selling manga series in history, with an amazing 490 million copies in circulation worldwide. Oda and Weekly Shonen Jump publisher Shueisha have both intimated that the series is reaching its completion, although the franchise may continue on with its new live-action adaptation, which is being developed by Netflix and Tomorrow Pictures. Oda will serve as the executive producer for this latest reinvention of his masterpiece.