One Piece: Red, which was recently announced, has been confirmed for a Western release. Toei Animation has uploaded an English-subtitled version of the teaser video for the upcoming film to its official YouTube channel. While the video mostly contains the same content as the original Japanese reveal trailer, the release date at the end has been changed from the original Japanese premiere date of Aug. 6, 2022, to a more ambiguous “Coming Soon.” While the announcement does not provide a specific release date, it is the first official confirmation that the new film will be released outside of Japan.
One Piece: Red will be the franchise’s 15th theatrical release. The new film is being directed by series creator Eiichiro Oda, who revealed in a statement that the film was inspired by his desire to introduce a new female character to the series. “I’m sick of drawing famous old grandfathers in movies! I’d like to create a new female character! That’s the character I’d like to create right now! And that’s how it all began, “Oda stated. Tsutomu Kuroiwa, who previously wrote the scripts for One Piece Film: Gold and the CG-animated Gantz 0, will write the new film, which will be directed by Code Geass’ Goro Taniguchi.
The film will centre on the character of Red-Haired Shanks, the captain of the Red Hair Pirates and one of the New World’s four emperors. Shanks inspired the series’ protagonist, Monkey D. Luffy, to become a pirate, and he also provided the stretchy young hero with his iconic straw hat. The teaser trailer for the film also reveals that the previously mentioned new female character is some kind of singer.
The first One Piece set was sold in the pages of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1998. The ongoing storey of the Straw Hat Pirates has become the best-selling manga series in history, with nearly half a billion copies in circulation worldwide in the 24 years since. The manga’s 1000th chapter and 100th collected volume were both published in 2021. The anime adaptation, which debuted in 1999 and is produced by Toei Animation, recently aired its 1000th episode. Both Oda and Shueisha have hinted that the storey will end soon, but more One Piece is already in the works, with Netflix and Cowboy Bebop’s Tomorrow Pictures starting production on a live-action adaptation.
