How was I not going to talk about this today? With the start of a brand new year and a brand new arc in the One Piece anime, Toei Animation delivered some amazing theme songs. Especially the new opening song is out of this world. Because it goes so heavily into the upcoming arc and shows a lot of interesting moments from it, this post will contain spoilers for the One Piece manga. If you’re not up to date on the manga, do not read this post. Before we dive into the opening, let’s talk about the ending first.
The 20th ending theme for One Piece is ‘Dear Sunrise’ by Otsuki Maki. It’s a pleasant song that reminds me of some of the early ending themes. It gives off similar vibes to the very first opening even in how calming it is. We get a nice collection of recaps of how each of the Straw Hats ended up joining the crew before cutting to the ship sailing off into the endless ocean. The art is pretty and the animation is fluid. Compared to the opening there’s not all that much here when it comes to visuals but the first shot of Luffy standing and staring out at the ocean while the crew slowly pops into frame one by one is a nice callback to the first ending. But this ending, pleasant as it is, does not compare to the absolute insanity that is the opening. The 25th opening may have been called ‘The Peak’ but opening 26 shows us that there are still higher heights to get to.
Where do I even begin? I think I’m just going to go through the opening entirely and talk about each cool moment it shows off. Spoilers ahead of course. We start off relatively simple. We see the ship from above the clouds before zooming in at Luffy laying on the deck. If you pay close attention you can see that this is from the manga chapter where Luffy talks about his dream, except animated and drawn in an incredible style. We then move on to the first shot of the crew in their Egghead outfits as they’re wal;king in front of the words One Piece that show off the buildings on egghead. The cool boots steal the show here and Jinbe is looking so fly.
We then get a few shots which include the ship being carried by a giant robot, a shot of all the different Punk’s as well as Lucci, Kaku and Stussy hiding in the background of the shot behind their masks. This is such a well done shot that the first few times I watched the opening I didn’t even realize what was there, I just saw the masks. We switch to Zoro and Luffy goofing off as a monitor behind them reveals many of the characters we see this arc at a rapid pace. Besides the punks we see Kizaru, the members of Sword and Garp, Buggy and his new company. We see the Heart Pirates drowning in their submarine followed by a quick rotating shot of the Sword members that will go in to save Coby later this arc. Speaking of Coby, we see him running away with the ball and chain in his hands. We flash cut to Sentomaru and then to Kizaru which turns into a beautiful shot of Kuma ripping free from the mechanical bindings that bind him to the world government, a final act of defiance against the people that took so much from him and never held up their end of the bargain. This opening is very well done guys, I mean it.
Amongst showing baby Sentomaru and one of the Punks we get our first shot of Bonney, trying to keep her head above the water. We then move to my favorite part of the entire opening. The crew is walking along different backgrounds, showing off the outfits they were wearing in those specific arcs. As they transition from one background to the other, their outfits change with them. Such a gorgeous sequence I’ve watched it on repeat numerous times. We then see a gorgeous clash between Luffy and Rob Lucci with gears flying through the screen, obviously referring to Luffy’s different powers. This makes me wonder if the side effects of using the gears that shorten his life are still a thing now that he’s awakened as Nika? Who knows.
We move on to the different clashes that will take place in the near future. First we see Kid versus Shanks, then Law versus Blackbeard. Kuzan and Garp clash in the aftermath of Coby’s jailbreak. Zoro fights the Mihawk pacifista and Luffy, of course, fights with Rob Lucci once more.
A shot of Morgan and Wapol is followed by a sad shot, presumably referring to King Cobra’s death. We move to the throne room with the swords of the twenty kings and Imu in the background, sitting menacingly on the throne. Sabo, Kid, Law and Coby all stumble through the frame, each going through their own serious battles. We very quickly transition into Vivi moving through the hole in the wall, signaling her escape from CP0 and then move onto Bonney stepping into Kuma’s memories to finish off the rapid sequence. We then get a shot of Egghead from overhead on a map and then the route along the grand line shows up. We see the crew one last time before we end the opening.
This opening is animated by the now legendary Megumi Ishitani. Anything she touches turns into pure art. And everyone else who worked on this did a stellar job too. I haven’t been this excited for the anime part of One Piece since the first Wano opening was released, showing an incredible uptick in quality. One Piece fans are eating good in 2024. Thank you so much for reading this, I have listened to the opening song way too much already!
Opal Kaharis 