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Tokyo Tower Celebrates One Piece Anime's 20th Anniversary With Cruise History Exhibit
posted on by Kim Morrissy
The One Piece theme park inside Tokyo Tower is celebrating the anime's 20th anniversary with an exhibit charting the Straw Hat crew's journey across the sprawling series. The "Cruise History" exhibit opened on April 24 and is located in the tower's 5th floor.
The exhibit covers the East Blue arc all the way until the Skypiea arc. It shows off character designs and illustrations from each of the arcs, plus some extra materials here and there. Here are some photos from the exhibit.
First, we get an introduction to the main characters, with storyboards from some of their establishing scenes. For example, you can see Luffy breaking out of the barrel in episode 1 and Nami's cry for help in episode 37.
A wall shows appreciation messages from the voice actors and other key figures involved in the anime, like its series directors and producers over the years.
Each arc has some text dedicated to it outlining its plot, plus screencaps of the highlights and character designs for some of the side characters who appear in the arc. You can see an example of this below.
A cabinet shows a sample of some of the One Piece figures produced over 15 years.
You can also see a copy of the script the voice actors would have used to read out their lines.
You can see recreations of the costumes worn by some of the characters, plus a life-sized model of Vivi's pet super spot-billed duck Karoo.
There are a few walls of key animation as well.
One bit of animation that got particular attention was the original OP sequence "We Are!" You can flip through the storyboards and look at some iconic key frames.
As you walk out of the exhibit, you're greeted with the sight of Gol D. Roger, ushering you to go out and search for treasure.
For those who are in a treasure-hunting mood, there's a free Sugolog Cruise puzzle-solving game right next door that lets you do just that. You search the Cruise History exhibit for key words and then claim a prize in the form of a card depicting an original scene. There are 92 cards to collect in total.
The One Piece theme park inside Tokyo Tower opened in 2015, and in its story, the Tokyo landmark is a triangle-shaped island called "Tongari Jima" (Chestnut Island). For more information about the 20th anniversary activities at the theme park, check out the official website.
